by James Manista
I had no strategy for the court appearance and became concerned that for all my bravado at the gate I could easily fail in court and have little to show for my vaunted defiance. Consulting the GZ lawyer I decided to plead not guilty at the arraignment, and then negotiate to enter a statement if I changed my plea to guilty. The trial was scheduled for October 23, 2019 at 1:30 PM before Judge Theresa Fricke at the Federal Court Building in Tacoma, Washington.
Arriving with my colleague Joanne Dufour of the Olympia Committee to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (OCANW), we were met at the courtroom door by several Ground Zero members.
When my case was called Judge Fricke began by explaining that my pleading guilty now precluded any future legal action by me on the charge at hand. I told her I understood and requested to make my statement. The courtroom was fairly large and empty except for a few accused and their supporters. A microphone at a nearby desk had been provided for answers, questions, or statements. She directed me to take the chair and I began reading my statement, periodically looking up to the judge and the others about:
“After study and prayer I concluded our nuclear policy of Mutually Assured Destruction is an irrational delusion which, by accident or intention, will inevitably one day annihilate all life on earth—an omnicide where neither we nor roaches nor viruses survive. We have ignored this for close to 75 years as if, cowed and lulled by our country’s militarism, we slept on an ever costlier, ever larger pile of dynamite, trusting that diabolical MADness to prevent our obliteration.
But we have seen ingenious systems fail and we know fissile materials have been misplaced, lost, or stolen. For decades we presumptively feared it would be a maniac from some other country who might topple the Jenga tower of worldwide death. I decided I could no longer by silence be complicit in this risk of the greatest conceivable evil.
“Heartened by the heroism of protestors and filled with a hope of responding rationally and creatively to the prospect of planetary horror, I had a banner made asserting Nuclear Weapons Are Immoral to produce, stockpile, and use and displayed it on the ground of those most likely to benefit from reading it and taking its message to heart. I did not just trespass on the base which—without my banner—I had no cause to do—but with it I finally and publicly answered the duty of my conscience and exercised my right of free speech where the federal government seemed not to want me to.
“Your honor has the opportunity—as do all—to join the community resisting nuclear madness. Declare the money, genius, and effort we have so far expended out of fear a moral waste. Declare we could have aided the world to have cleaner water, wider education, more hospitals, and all manner of economic development instead of spreading a debilitating fear of impending doom.
“Through our well-intentioned wizardry we led nations to the precipice of nuclear despair. By courage we can lead them safely away to begin the tasks of justice for a peaceful world.”
The courtroom had grown quiet before and during my delivery. The silence persisted as if to underscore my message. Then the Navy prosecutor stood and recommended a $50 fine. Judge Fricke accepted my guilty plea and stated: “In recognition of the defendant’s conscientious plea I will lower the fine to $25.” She closed her remarks with, “I respect your First Amendment protest and your firmly held beliefs.”
Unlike standing at the corner of Fourth and Water Street in downtown Olympia, where you can disagree with the government’s nuclear policy for free, doing so on their territory up close and personal, will cost $65: $25 fine, $10 mandatory fee, and $30 to cover court costs. The maximum penalty allowed was six months in jail and a $5,000 fine. The GZ lawyer had advised me my instance of trespass was a misdemeanor and, depending on the judge, a harsh sentence was unlikely. Other than creating a federal record, this civil disobedience fell well within my tolerance.
The support from GZ, from Olympia friends, from OCANW, and others transformed the shame of a guilty plea to the euphoria of realizing I had (however briefly) placed a thorn in the briefs of the military and gotten away with it.
Although in the larger picture my action did not create national notice as had the Kings Bay Plowshares7 at the Georgia Trident Base on the Atlantic coast. Except for a couple of peace movement newsletters, my nonviolent resistance disappeared in the flood of Mother’s Day stories and other news of the day.
If so, was it worth the effort, or was it just theater for anti-nuclear partisans? As an answer I’d like to enter a quotation from Pulitzer Prize winning author Chris Hedges on the nature of protest and hope:
“Hope has a cost. Hope is not comfortable or easy. Hope requires personal risk. It is not about the right attitude. Hope is not about peace of mind. Hope is action. Hope is doing something. The more futile, the more useless, the more irrelevant and incomprehensible an act of rebellion is, the vaster and more potent hope becomes.
Hope never makes sense. Hope is weak, unorganized and absurd. Hope, which is always nonviolent, exposes in its powerlessness, the lies, fraud and coercion employed by the state. . . . Hope posits that people are drawn to the good by the good. . . . Hope sees in our enemy our own face.”
Are we nuts? as what so many around us are thinking: Are they really advocating unilateral nuclear disarmament? How naive. How utterly unrealistic. Russia . . . China . . . North Korea would not hesitate to blast us from the face of the earth but for our ability to exterminate any attacker in retaliation and not bat an eyelash doing it.
I’d like to go farther than reducing stockpiles or totally eliminating nuclear weapons. I’d like to end war itself in any form, small bombs, big bombs, chemical agents, biological weapons, even poking each other in the eye with Pic-Up-Stix.
Our present reality is any war we’re in today (or conceive of being in tomorrow) can escalate into full nuclear exchange without a prayer of stopping it before every last weapon is hurled along its deadly path.
Only very recently we witnessed the irresponsible shenanigans of two toddler personalities—North Korea and the good ol’ #1 US of A. The recent rush of activities against nuclear weapons can be laid at the feet of Un and Ump.
How did we ever give any mortal the opportunity to expunge all humanity from this part of the universe? George Washington set this country on the wrong path when he stated, “If you want peace, prepare for war.” Unmindful of our demonstrated aggressive disposition we accepted his profoundly paranoid orientation to foreign nations. We devised modern equivalents of unchallenged xenophobia: “Peace through power.”
We refused to see the dangerous but only way out. As JFK said to the General Assembly of the UN on September 25, 1961: “We must abolish nuclear weapons before they abolish us.”
Rather than concoct a system of checks and restraints (all fallible)to prevent anyone flipping a Doomsday switch, we must disassemble Doomsday itself. Dismantle every weapon starting with our own. Risky? You betcha. In the long run though, is Unilateral Nuclear Disarmament truly any more risky than relying on the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction? The people of our so-called enemies likely have no more desire to exterminate us than we have of exterminating them—including their military.
World War I was almost stopped before it began when the Wobblies (International Workers of the World) openly questioned, “Why should French workers kill German workers?” Similarly the classic pacifist rationale War will end when men refuse to fight remains unaddressed.
Among both nuclear and non-nuclear states there is no shortage of powerful incentives:
- GONE—the budget busting waste of maintaining, modernizing, or developing weapons
- FREEDOM of scientists and engineers to work on peace-producing projects among all nations: clean water, higher education, better no-cost health, new economic development
- ELIMINATION of debilitating fear of annihilation among both nuclear and non-nuclear nations
- FUTURE of resolving disputes without resort to fighting
Through accidents of history we stumbled into international leadership. For seventy five years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki we have been gambling that threats of war and death will keep us safe. To me personally, gambling on hopes for peace and life is a far better bet.
