Washington Post interview with Sister Megan
Rice
regarding the act of civil disobedience for which she now faces criminal
charges.
Sister
Megan Rice, an 83 year-old nun who helped conceptualize and organize the
OccupyNukes coordinated day of actions on August 6, 2012 to remember the suffering of those in Hiroshima and call for an end to
nuclear weapons, is presently facing a possible 30-year jail sentence for
breaking into a high security nuclear weapons facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee last
summer.
The
facility, known only as "Y12", is used to enrich uranium to
produce nuclear weapons. Hoping to bring attention to its existence—and to the
massive amounts of money poured the
nuclear weapons industry—Rice and two other members of a peace organization
known as Transform Now Plowshares managed to cut, climb and hike their way
inside the facility on July 28, 2012.
After reaching its highest security area, the group spray-painted messages of
peace on the building, splashed human blood on the walls, and erupted into
prayer and song before they were finally discovered by a guard.
The U.S. government is now seeking the stiffest penalties possible
for the three—charging them with "federal crimes of terrorism"
including sabotage and felony property damage,
which could yield them sentences of up to 30
years in prison.
A
Common Dreams article explains:
In a
mere five months, government charges transformed them from misdemeanor
trespassers to multiple felony saboteurs. The
government also successfully moved to strip the three from presenting any
defenses or testimony about the harmful effects of nuclear weapons.
The U.S. Attorney’s office…asked the court to bar the peace protestors from
being allowed to put on any evidence regarding the illegality of nuclear
weapons, the immorality of nuclear weapons, international law, or religious,
moral or political beliefs regarding nuclear weapons, the Nuremberg principles
developed after WWII, First Amendment protections, necessity or US policy
regarding nuclear weapons.
Rice
said the word "sabotage" is grimly ironic."
"They want to say that what we did was what each of them are doing all the time with
their nuclear weapons industry," said Rice.
In response to a question about whether the protesters did "willfully injure,
destroy and contaminate, and attempt to injure, destroy and contaminate
national-defense premises," as the indictment charges, Rice said,
"Each of the verbs you have repeated would apply to what the government
would do in the nuclear weapons industry alone."
The case, she said, is "a very good opportunity to point that out to those who
live in a state of denial."
I had the honor and privilege of spending several days with Rice in the summer of
2006, including a ceremony held on August 6
th at the Nevada Test
Site in commemoration of the 61
st year since the Hiroshima atomic
bombing that was organized by the
Nevada Desert Experience grassroots peace organization.
I was deeply moved by how Rice viewed problems such as war, poverty and
environmental destruction as sharing the same diseased root—and how she
cultivated a profound hope that human beings would indeed one day reverse the existing
destructive trends to
achieve a world of
sustainability, love and connection.
"Although
we all may have different beliefs, everyone has a piece of the truth," Rice
told me during one of the numerous inspirational conversations I was able to share
with her.
During
an interview, Rice also told me:
Our
mission (at Nevada Desert Experience) is to bring people to the desert so that
they –we—can physically feel the energy and the beauty and the harmony which is
there, and get to know in a new and deeper way the enormous wounding and injury
which has been done to mother nature in all its forms—the mountains, the
atmosphere, the plants, the animals, and certainly the humans in all their
psychic dimensions—as repercussions of that very unnatural, steady, unbelievably
excessive detonation of bombs that will hopefully never be used, but had to be
tested, perhaps because there were a lot of contracts—this is a way of keeping
up an economy—this military industrial economy which has been a form of
corruption in the latter half of the 20th century, and moving even
more so into the 21st century. So our focus is on creating that
awareness and trying to create awareness about the contractors who promote this
and keep it going.
Megan Rice, just before her trial, speaking powerfully on "being led" by holy (and wholely) forces in her actions,
how the media is practicing selective focus on the incident, and how "our lovely planet is "under desperate, imminent sabotage" which we are now at the stage of "transforming into
an almost infinite number of possibilities... that are totally life-enhancing."
These
articles from
Waging Nonviolence and the
New York Times give more background on
the incident for which Rice and the two other protesters now stand charged,
with a particular focus on Rice's lifelong history as a passionate activist advocating
the ideals of love and justice.
This powerful
piece put together by the Washington Post—which also filmed the video
above—recounts the incident together with the philosophical ideals that led the
three to commit the act for which they have said they were willing to give
their lives if it would help them achieve their objectives.
Transform
Now Plowshares is
sponsoring a initiative asking for postcards to be sent to
the sentencing judge to request leniency for the three accused. Sentencing will
be held on September 23, 2013.
--Kimberly Hughes
