Letter to the Editor: We must support Ithaca anti-nuclear activist

In the early AM of April 5, 2018, seven Catholic nuclear activists including Clare Grady of Ithaca cut through the metal fence around the Kings Bay Trident submarine base in Georgia. To protest the nuclear ballistic missiles on the American subs and the potential they pose for a criminal first strike on Russia or China they poured their own blood on the storage bunkers and used hammers to symbolize beating swords into plowshares. They left a copy of Daniel Ellsberg’s “The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner” to show the evidence of proactive U.S. plans to initiate nuclear war.
The “Kings Bay Plowshares 7” were arrested by military police and imprisoned. Their trial will be late March or early April: they face a possible 25 years in prison. In this trial, The Religious Freedom Restoration Act will be applied for the first time so they will be able to testify that their non-violent action opposed weapons considered illegal by international law.

In support of these courageous activists, I submitted the following statement to the court that will hear their case:

“I write the court to support the courageous action of the defendants in this case who have chosen to violate state law in order to take necessary action to protect humanity from the danger of nuclear war.

“The need to eliminate nuclear weapons must be seen not as a political, or even a security issue, but rather as a humanitarian imperative. The scientific evidence now available leaves no doubt that even a limited use of these weapons, involving less than 0.5% of the world’s nuclear arsenals, would pose an existential threat to humanity. And the historical record, which shows numerous well documented near misses, makes it clear, as Robert McNamara famously said, that “It is luck that prevented nuclear war.”

“Given this data the need to eliminate nuclear weapons should be no more controversial than the need to eliminate smallpox or polio. The continued existence of these weapons poses an imminent existential threat to humanity and we have an overriding obligation to take any non- violent action which will help to protect the world from this threat.

“If we fail, any of our children and grandchildren who manage to survive, will not forgive us. Sitting in the ashes of a burned-out planet, they will not excuse our failure because we did not have the moral courage to act. Let us applaud those who have had the courage to act and support their efforts.”

I urge the community to support Clare Grady and her co-defendants and to join the national Back from the Brink campaign (www.PreventNuclearWar.org) that seeks a fundamental change in US nuclear policy based on the realization that our security requires that we actively pursue a verifiable, enforceable, time-bound agreement with the other eight nuclear-armed states to eliminate these weapons before they eliminate us.

Ira Helfand, MD
Member, International Steering Group, ICAN, the recipient of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize,
Co-President, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, the recipient of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize
Co-Founder and Past President, Physicians for Social Responsibility, the US affiliate of IPPNW