Global Petition to Drop the Charges

(The petition was delivered to the Department of Justice before the trial but you can still sign to show support, and you’ll be added to the mailing list.)

See the list of more than 100 distinguished signers.

Sign Global Petition to Dismiss Charges Against Anti-Nuclear Plowshares Activists Facing Years in Prison

CLICK TO JOIN THESE THESE SIGNERS OF THE PETITION

This is an urgent request that you join distinguished citizens of the world including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, other Nobel laureates and many others by signing our global petition to dismiss all charges against the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 (KBP7). They face years in prison for exposing illegal and immoral nuclear weapons that threaten all life on Earth. The seven nonviolently and symbolically disarmed the Trident nuclear submarine base at Kings Bay, GA on April 4, 2018, the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (View KBP7 reading their statement here.)

This petition is also a plea for us all to be involved in rebuilding the anti-nuclear weapons movement that helped disarm the world’s nuclear arsenals from 90,000 down to 15,000 weapons in the 1980s. The KBP7 trial is expected to begin this summer in GA. Time is short. Please sign the petition and visit kingsbayplowshares7.org. Help KBP7 by forwarding their petition to your friends, to lists, and post it on social media.

The Kings Bay Plowshares 7 have offered us their prophetic witness. Now it’s up to us!

In peace and solidarity,

The Kings Bay Plowshares 7 Support Committee

Petition:

TO: US ATTORNEY GENERAL WILLIAM BARR 

The Kings Bay Plowshares 7 (KBP7) are facing a federal trial and years in prison for having confronted a system in which nuclear weapons that can destroy all creation are accepted as a normal, even inevitable, part of life.

This threat, and the lack of public outrage over it, compelled seven principled activists (Elizabeth McAlister, Stephen Kelly S.J., Martha Hennessy, Clare Grady, Patrick O’Neill, Mark Colville, and Carmen Trotta) to enter Naval Station Kings Bay Submarine Base in Georgia on the 50th anniversary of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination. Kings Bay is homeport to six U.S. nuclear ballistic missile submarines carrying hundreds of nuclear weapons, many of which have up to 30 times the explosive power of the bomb that destroyed the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945. Following the Prophet Isaiah’s Biblical command to “beat swords into plowshares” (Is. 2:4), the seven were also acting legally to uphold anti-nuclear treaties as the supreme law of the land according to the U.S. Constitution, international law manifested in the U.N. Charter and the Nuremberg principles. By their actions at Kings Bay, they sought to draw attention to the urgency of withdrawing consent and dismantling what Dr. King called the “triple evils” of racism, excessive materialism, and militarism. The KBP7’s action statement reads: “Nuclear weapons eviscerate the rule of law, enforce white supremacy, perpetuate endless war and environmental destruction, and ensure impunity for all manner of crimes against humanity. Dr. King said, ‘The ultimate logic of racism is genocide.’ We say, ‘The ultimate logic of Trident is omnicide. A just and peaceful world is possible when we join prayers with action. Swords into Plowshares!’”

We who share the moral vision of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 proclaim our support for their courage and sustained sacrifice and call for the immediate dismissal of all charges against them. The defendants invite us to act creatively. They invite us to join global coalitions working to promote governments’ adherence to, and full implementation of, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. They also invite us to participate in campaigns for divestment from nuclear weapons as complementary efforts towards the realization of a world free of nuclear weapons.

Sincerely,

Sign the Petition

Notable Signers from Around the World

Ray Acheson – Director, Reaching Critical Will, Woman’s International League of Peace and

Freedom’s Disarmament Program (WILPF)

Christine Ahn – Founder, Exec. Dir., Women Cross DMZ

 Robert Aldridge – Former design engineer, Lockheed. Editor of the Trident Resisters’ Handbook

 Anthony Arnove – Author, The People Speaks

 Huwaida Arraf – Atty. Founder, International Solidarity Organization (ISO) in Palestine

 Dr. Hanan Ashrawi – PLO Executive Committee Member, Member of Palestinian Legislative Council and Head of the PLO Department of Culture and Information, activist, and scholar, Exec. Dir. of MIFTAH, the first woman elected to the Palestinian National Council, awarded the Sydney Peace Prize, 2003

 Harold W. Attridge – Sterling Professor of Divinity; Dean of the Yale Divinity School, 2002-2012

 John Bach – Quaker Chaplain, Harvard University

 Rev. Dr. William Barber – Poor Peoples Campaign Co-Leader

 Medea Benjamin – Code Pink Co-founder, author, global activist

 Ruth Benn – Co-Founder, NYC War Tax Resistance

 Phyllis Bennis – Fellow, Institute for Policy Studies

 Most Reverend John Michael Botean – Bishop, Romanian Catholic Diocese, Canton, Ohio

 Prof. Francis Boyle – Author, professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law

 Dr. Helen Caldicott – Australian physician, author, and anti-nuclear advocate, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War

 Sr. Simone Campbell, SSS, JD – Executive Director, NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice

 Noam Chomsky – Author, Linguist, Historian, Social & Political Commentator

 Rosa Clemente – Puerto Rican Activist, 2008 Green Party Vice-Presidential Candidate

 Jeremiah Coffey – Professor of Philosophy and Religion, Albertus Magnus College, New Haven

 Fr. Robert A Cushing – Pastor, St. Joseph Catholic Church, Waycross, GA

 Ben Cohen – Co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream

 Gerry Condon – President, Veterans for Peace

Dr. Angela Davis – Global human-rights activist, feminist, prison abolitionist, scholar, and author.

Miriam Dean-Otting – Donald L. Rogan Professor of Religious Studies, Kenyon College

Terri Delahanty Many Feathers, Cree and Ojibwa, Ordained Minister; Board of Trustees @ Institute of American Indian Studies in Washington Depot, Ct., & Steering Committee for creating a Commission on American Indian affairs in CT. Founding member of the Board for Women In The Spirit (WitS); Planning committee for the Wisdom Keepers Conference in Kansas. Terri facilitates workshops on ‘Meeting Death.”

James W. Douglass – Mary’s House, Birmingham Alabama; co-founder of Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, Author

Shelley M. Douglass – Mary’s House, Birmingham Alabama; co-founder of Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action

Gwen Dubois, M.D. – Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Baltimore

Leonard Eiger – Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action

Daniel Ellsberg – Whistleblower, released the Pentagon Papers and authored the book The Doomsday Machine; Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner

Robert Ellsberg – Publisher, Orbis Books

Jodie Evans – Code Pink Co-founder

Beatrice Fihn – Nobel Peace laureate, Executive Director of ICAN, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

Terry Fitzgerald, M.D. – Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Baltimore

Jim Forest – Author of books on Thomas Merton and Daniel Berrigan

Jeff Furman – President of Ben & Jerry’s

Sr. Carol Gilbert OP – Sacred Earth and Space Plowshares, Jonah House Community, Baltimore, D.C. Catholic Worker

Caroline Gilbert – Co-Chair, Christian Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, (CND) United Kingdom

Commander Robert D. Green – Royal Navy (Ret’d), Author of Security Without Nuclear Deterrence, Co-Director of Disarmament & Security Centre, New Zealand.

Ismael Guadalupe – Leader of the Vieques, Puerto Rican Peace Movement to remove the U.S. Navy after 60 years of bombing practice

Bishop Thomas Gumbleton – Archdiocese of Detroit

William D. Hartung – Director of the Arms & Security Project at the Center for International Policy

Stanley Hauerwas – Duke Divinity School, Professor Emeritus of Divinity and Law

Dr. Ira Helfand – Two-time Nobel Peace Laureate on behalf of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and ICAN (International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons)

Chris Hedges – Pulitzer Prize Winning Author & Professor

Dahr Jamail – Reporter, author of The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption; The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan and Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq. War correspondent reporting from Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Turkey for 10 years, winner of the Izzy Award and the Martha Gellhorn Award for Investigative Journalism, among other awards.

Tito Kayak (aka Alberto DeJesus) – Puerto Rican Activist, Actions: Climbed the Statue of Liberty for Vieques & P.R., and climbed an Israeli Surveillance Tower, in Bil’in, Palestine

Kathy Kelly – Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Nobel Peace Prize Nominee

Paul Kennedy – J. Richardson Dilworth Professor of History, Yale University

Bill Kidd – MSP, Member of Scottish Parliament, Co-President of the Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (PNND), Scotland

David Krieger -President, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Bishop Joseph Kopacz – Diocese of Jackson, Mississippi

Sharon M.K. Kugler, Yale University Chaplain

Peter Kuznik – Director, Nuclear Studies Institute, American University

Brian Larkin – Edinburgh Peace and Justice Centre, Scotland

Annie Leonard – Executive Director of Greenpeace, USA

Robert J. Lifton – Psychiatrist & Author, with a focus on psychological effects of wars and political violence

Betty Lyons – President, American Indian Law Alliance

Mairead Maguire – Nobel Peace Laureate, Northern Ireland, Co-Founder, Women for Peace

Fr. James Martin – Editor-at-large, America magazine, Consultant to the Vatican’s Secretariat for Communications

George E. McCarthy – NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor of Sociology, Kenyon College

Louise McDonald – Mohawk from Akwesasne, Condoled Bear Clan Mother of the Mohawk Nation Council of Chiefs

Ray McGovern – CIA analyst for 27 years

Michael McPhearson – Executive Director Veterans For Peace

Rosa Meneses Albizu-Campos, Esq., Granddaughter of Pedro Albizu-Campos, famed leader of the Puerto Rican Independence Movement, Delegate abroad of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico (PNPR) / Liberating Movement.

Ched Meyers – Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries, Author

Anuradha Mittal -Founder and Executive Director, The Oakland Institute

Michael Moore – Filmmaker/ Actor / Activist

Rosemarie Pace, EdD – Director, Pax Christi Metro New York

Bishop Richard Pates – Diocese of Des Moines

Sr. Ardeth Platte OP – Sacred Earth and Space Plowshares

Lord Martin Rees – Royal Society, leading astrophysicist. Senior figure in UK science

Royal Rhodes – Donald L. Rogan Professor Emeritus, Kenyon College

Sr. Megan Rice- Transform Now Plowshares

Oscar Lopez Rivera – Puerto Rican Ex-Political Prisoner and Independendista, freed after 32 yrs,

Arturo Rodriguez – Past President, United Farm Workers Union

Bishop Peter A. Rosazza – Bloomfield, CT

Dr. Janet K. Ruffing, RSM – Professor in the Practice of Spirituality and Ministerial Leadership, Yale Divinity School

Elaine Scarry – Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value, Harvard University, author of Thermonuclear Monarchy: Choosing Between Democracy and Doom

Monsignor Gerard G. Schmitz – Chaplain, St. Thomas More Catholic Center, Yale University

Susan M. Schnall – President, NYC Chapter, Veterans For Peace

Andy Shallal – an Iraqi-American artist, activist, owner of Wash. D.C.’s Busboys and Poets Café.

 Martin Sheen – Actor / Peace Activist

 Seth Shelden, Esq. – United Nations Liaison, ICAN

 Alice Slater – UN Representative for Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

 Paul Stookey – Musician and activist, member of Peter, Paul, & Mary

 Bishop John Stowe, O.F.M. Conv. – Bishop of Lexington, Episcopal President of Pax Christi USA

Rev. Dr. Frederick J Streets – Senior Pastor, Dixwell Avenue Congregational United Church of Christ, New Haven, CT; former Yale University Chaplain and Senior Pastor of the Church of Christ in Yale

Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis – Poor Peoples Campaign Co-Leader

Mary Evelyn Tucker – Senior Lecturer and Senior Research Scholar in Religion and Ecology, Yale University

Dr. James Turner – 1969 Founder of the Africana Research and Studies Program at Cornell University

Dean Janice Turner – Cornell, Assistant Dean School of Arts and Science, retired 

Archbishop Desmond Tutu – Nobel Peace Prize Recipient, Outspoken Critic Of Apartheid, & The First Black Anglican Archbishop Of South Africa.

 Frank Velgara – NYC -Vieques Solidarity, ProLibertad, Jericho Project, Al Awda

 Timmon Wallis – Executive Director, NuclearBan.us, Author of Disarming the Nuclear Argument

 Rabbi Brian Walt – Founder of Rabbis for Human Rights

 Dr. Cornel West – Harvard Divinity School, philosopher, political activist, social critic, author, and public intellectual.

 Tomiko Morimoto West – Hibakusha (Hiroshima survivor)

 Agnes Williams LMSC – Coordinator of Indigenous Women’s Initiatives, Seneca Nation

 Jody Williams – Nobel Peace Laureate, Founder of Int’l Campaign to Ban Landmines

 Kayeneshenh Paul Williams, Esq. – Onondaga Nation at Six Nations Territory, member of the Haudenosaunee External Relations Committee, Author, Kayanerenkó:wa: The Great Law of Peace

 Col. Ann Wright – US Army Colonel (Ret) Peace Activist, VFP, Code Pink