Author’s Note:

Since September 2018, I have been reporting on the extraordinary story of the Kings Bay Plowshares Seven (KBP7), a group of veteran anti-nuclear Catholic activists currently awaiting sentencing for acts of non-violent ‘symbolic disarmament’ at the Kings Bay Trident submarine base in Georgia, home to America’s East Coast fleet of first-strike Ohio-class submarines, a multi-billion-dollar force capable of killing millions of people in minutes.

On 4 April 2018, the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Seven – Mark Colville (56 at the time), Clare Grady (60), Patrick O’Neill (62), Martha Hennessy (63), Fr. Steve Kelly (70), Liz McAlister (79), and Carmen Trotta (55) – entered the base ‘armed’ with crime-tape, hammers made of recast guns, baby-bottles of their own blood, spray-paint and banners.

Their ‘crimes’ included leaving a copy of a book (Daniel Ellsberg’s The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner), ‘hammering’ a public ‘missile display’ (or ‘shrine to mass destruction’), and issuing a detailed indictment against Trident, “the world’s deadliest weapon.” The group’s Mission Statement concluded:

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.’

The Kings Bay action was the latest in the long history of the Catholic Plowshares movement, begun in 1980 by one of the Seven, former nun Liz McAlister, her husband (and former priest) Philip Berrigan and his brother Daniel. Plowshares is part of the Catholic Workers Movement founded in 1933 by the legendary anti-poverty, anti-war and social justice campaigner Dorothy Day, grandmother of the Seven’s Martha Hennessey.

Though ignored by mainstream media, the case of the Seven has become a progressive and pacifist cause célèbre, inspiring peace and social justice campaigners across America and beyond. One of them is Peace Quest Cape Breton’s Christine Gwynn, a 24-year old artist, activist and recent CBU graduate, who traveled to Brunswick, Georgia, to meet and stand with the Seven during the week-long trial – October 20-24 – that led to their conviction on all counts. She hopes to return to Georgia for the sentencing, expected in January.

On November 26, I spoke to Christine Gwynn about her motivation, experiences and reflections on the trial, widely criticized for excluding expert testimony – including from Daniel Ellsberg – and a range of relevant evidence. We also discussed the broader merits and limits of non-violent resistance to extreme forms of violence, the current alarming disconnect between the anti-nuclear and climate justice movements, and the power (and limits) of art as ‘advocate’ for both humanity and the wider natural world.

The following is an edited and condensed version of our hour-long conversation.

 

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Sean Howard: There are many causes and issues you passionately care about, so why did this one in particular lead you to take the step of actually going down to Georgia, to meet people you’d never met before, and to bear witness at the trial?

Christine Gwynn: When I was originally introduced to the case, I think it was the theater of it all that caught my attention. Patrick (O’Neill) called it the ‘high drama’. But the more I learned about the Catholic Worker movement the more in awe I was of these people: these seven people, aged 56 to 79, that have dedicated their entire lives to peace, and love, and faith, and were willing to put their lives and their freedom on the line, to open our eyes and draw attention to the omnicidal threat that nuclear weapons pose every day. And I thought they’d made such a big sacrifice that the least I could do was show up and bear witness. And I also felt, as a Canadian, that I had this moral responsibility to go and acknowledge my own country’s complicity in the nuclear weapons complex – something that the Canadian government rarely acknowledges.

SH: When I was your age, early to mid-20s, when I went on major demonstrations I went with 20 friends, most my age: it was the issue of my time and place (Britain in the 1980s). But in this case, when you talked to people, friends and family about going down to Georgia, about the Seven and what they’d done, what kind of responses did you get? Did people say, ‘I wish I could go with you!’? I suspect it’s a bit of a lonelier business these days.

CG: It was lonely. Not many people understood why I was going, not many people were aware of the threat that nuclear weapons continue to pose, that they’re still an issue, and even on a greater scale that war is still an issue, it’s something that we’ve kind of become numb to. During the time of the great peace movement, during the war in Vietnam, the obvious threat was one that you could see, it was corporal, it was there: and now it’s almost as if it’s this veiled thing, hidden behind ‘deterrence’ policy…

SH: And maybe also the fact the Bomb hasn’t been used in anger for so long – and 1945 I think for many young people seems like 1845…

CG: Absolutely…[T]hat’s one of the things that really struck me about the Seven, I mean you can’t overlook their ages, that people in their golden years, when they’re supposed to focus on rest and relaxation, are still at the forefront of the fight against nuclear weapons, because there’s really no one standing behind them, ready to take up the torch. One of the things that really struck me was the ages of all the people who’ve been in Plowshares actions, I mean I was one of the youngest, by at least 30 years…

 

Facing arrest

SH: I wanted to ask a question, both personal and political, about the courage it takes to open yourself up to the prospect of arrest and imprisonment, possibly for a long time. I’ve known some brave people who’ve made that sacrifice – and for some years I worked for an amazing woman, Rebecca Johnson, imprisoned for completely non-violent anti-nuclear protest in Britain – but it’s a step that I’ve never taken, and I don’t know if I ever will. But how do you feel? I know you’ve taken risks on other issues as well, and I’m sure that even in the week you were down in Georgia, it was in your mind that you may have been arrested…

CG: Yeah, it did go through my mind, and my thought, along with others, was I was willing, if called upon, to stand up in Court and risk arrest. But I think that’s a huge ask. But I think that’s is a huge ask of someone, I don’t think it’s something you can expect, I mean the Seven reflected for two years before taking their action. I think maybe my initial, recklessness maybe, in regards to my own freedom says more about my naïvety rather than my commitment, but I think when you’re faced with structures of violence like this that are life or death…

I mean, for me, the one time that I had troubles with the law was in regards to stealing an animal that would have subsequently been slaughtered, but for me that was the sanctity of life, of all sentient life, that’s a value that’s so deeply entrenched within me that if it means giving up my personal freedom, if it means putting my life on the line, I have to.  And I think that’s something that really inspired me about the Seven, that you have to believe in something so deeply in order to be willing to do something like that, and I don’t think that anyone’s who’s not willing to do something like that, that kind of action, should be discredited, or seen as ‘less than.’

The idea of arrest was something that we talked about a lot in Georgia, again especially among people that were younger, because sometimes it felt that some Catholic Workers…were a bit too blasé about it, were willing to get arrested for things that maybe…

SH: Like a ‘badge of honour’?

CG: ‘Badge of honour,’ yeah. I don’t know, for me getting arrested has to have this power to it, and I think sometimes, when you see climate activists for example, continually being arrested, I mean it’s gotten to the point where the police issue a fine and you go back to the front lines and get arrested again. It’s kind of lost this power that it once held. And so, I think that’s something that I’m worried about, is protecting that sanctity of getting arrested and putting your freedom on the line.

SH: And obviously being fined and released is a different thing to breaking into a base – and committing one of the ‘worst’ crimes of all, I think, which is ‘making a fool of the state’ …

CG: Which is often why Plowshares activists get let go…

SH: That’s right! But I mean there have been very draconian sentences passed on activists in the past. In 1984 two Plowshares women, nuns I believe, were sentenced to 18 years for an action. They didn’t serve 18 years, but they were imprisoned for a number of years, and I believe Clare Grady was in…

CG: Five years.

SH: For five years! And Father Kelly has spent 10 years of his life in jail, much of it in solitary, so that’s a totally different…

CG: And I think having such strong religious beliefs allows these people to do these things, they feel these are actions that they just have to take. So I think for people who don’t have such strong faith, these actions can be a lot harder, I mean you don’t have God to keep you company in prison, so…

SH: Yes, and there’s not that broader, ‘what will happen to your soul?’…

CG: Exactly. You have an afterlife to make up for these, well, lost years…

SH: I get the feeling very much that the Seven are not expecting anyone else to do what they do: that commitment is supposed to be exceptional…

CG: Absolutely. And it has been.

 

Joining generations

SH: Did you get the sense from talking to the Seven and their supporters that the Kings Bay action has had any effect in trying to generate broader inter-generational solidarity between different struggles, like the climate change movement?

CG: I think so. But something that came up a lot when I was in Georgia was the issue of making the link, or the neglect of making the link, between the climate crisis and the nuclear crisis. One Plowshares member in particular shared with me his feelings… He felt ostracized by the climate community. No one wanted to hear from him or felt that he had anything of value to offer…

SH: It’s so strange, because the anti-nuclear movement, in my experience, has always been a green movement. I mean it’s never made sense for anti-nuclear activists to say ‘let’s just talk about the Bomb,’ it’s always been about the world, been vehemently anti-capitalist, for example, because that’s destroying the planet.

But I also don’t think people know the history of the peace movement. They think they know the history of, for instance, the civil rights movement, because it’s been presented to them, but in a very selective way, barely touching on issues of war and peace, which were so central to the struggle, to the broad and deep message of Martin Luther King, that there’s no point in achieving racial justice only to see the world destroyed either through capitalism or nuclear war. That history has been largely lost…

CG: But I think that the main reason why the peace movement hasn’t resonated with people of the younger generation is the triumph of the ‘American Mission’ to synthesize militarism and religion. There’s almost this religious aura that prevents anyone from questioning the military-industrial complex…

SH: In other words to talk about a ‘culture of peace’ can come across as blasphemous, almost?

CG: Absolutely. I think so.

SH: I guess that’s the whole concept of idolatry, one of two religious concepts, central to Plowshares, which I’m not sure have much contemporary resonance: idolatry and prophecy…

But there’s a sharp contrast, I think, between such overtly spiritual language and the climate justice movement’s emphasis on ‘science,’ science as the ‘savior,’ almost, because it’s showing us the path we’re on and the spiral we’re in, that could lead to mass death and mass extinction. I mean people can have spiritual reactions to that, but the framing isn’t spiritual, so do you think that concepts like prophecy and idolatry can still resonate?

CG: There’s an interesting duality that happens there, because I think that that reclaiming of the spiritual is absolutely necessary – to acknowledge what we’re doing to the climate – but I also think that the language that’s used alienates people from a younger generation. And I think that that’s where the power of aesthetics can also help, because language can be so constricted, and the aesthetic dimension can transcend language and really present these ideas, can recombine spirit and matter for people in ways that language just can’t.

 

Performance art

SH: Another way of resisting is through art….What sense do you have of how important that dimension is going to be in your struggle going forward? I mean we both want to believe that it plays a crucial role – the poetics of the struggle, and the aesthetics of the struggle – but do you sometimes worry that that’s a kind of dream, that given the impoverishment of contemporary culture that it’s almost become – terrible though it is to say – almost a marginal luxury?

CG: It’s been a question weighing on my mind for a long, long time. But there really is nothing I believe in more than the power of the aesthetic dimension. I think it’s absolutely essential to the production of what Gramsci would call the ‘counter-hegemony.’ I don’t think there’s anything that has the same kind of ability to transcend the barriers that inhibit us from confronting and dismantling the status quo. Adorno believed that all art is political, that all art is an uncommitted crime. But it’s difficult…

SH: I don’t know if you’d agree with this, but I think there’s something in our day and age – or maybe the nuclear age more generally – there’s almost a chutzpah thing to it: ‘OK, faced with that you still think poetry can possibly matter? Or a painting is going to make any difference, except maybe as a pressure valve?’ It’s almost comparable, on one level, to thinking: ‘I know what we’ll do, let’s have seven of us walk into a nuclear weapons base and we’ll throw some blood around, put up some crime tape, and that will somehow be taken seriously as an act of resistance…’ You know, it’s a lonely step, and you almost can’t rationally calculate it before you do it, because you wouldn’t do it…

CG: Absolutely.

SH: And maybe the aesthetic dimension by definition brings in those kind of trans-rational factors, broadens and deepens what we mean by ‘reason’ and ‘logic’ anyway. So that kind of ‘leap’ aspect of it is part of the courage you need…

CG: I think it’s in these kind of times that you really do see the power of the aesthetic dimension, how aesthetics gets its power by shifting the way we see and experience the world, by creating new sensibilities, and enabling us to think the unthinkable by allowing the light of our own unawareness to illuminate and transform itself. So I think reality isn’t static, and aesthetics shows us that, and gives us a platform to dream up what the world could be.

SH: I regard what the Seven did as a work of art…

CG: It was performance art, for sure. And I think one thing that highlights how powerful art is, is how the first thing oppressive governments tend to do is oppress the arts, I mean the Nazi party when it first came to power went on this fevered mission of aesthetic censorship, they started destroying and banning the works of Klee, Kandinsky, Chagall, like this was the mission, because they realized how powerful and transformative these pieces can be…

SH: And is the aesthetic dimension, then, a way of illustrating, to people who aren’t overtly religious, that what ‘prophecy’ means, and overthrowing idols, means…so that faced, for instance. with fascist bombing in Spain, Picasso produces Guernica: it’s an indictment of what he sees, but it…also by definition opens a dimension that suggests there’s an alternative to what he’s seeing…

CG: And then there’s what that does to the viewer, the shift that that creates within the viewer. It enables freedom, that’s what aesthetics does. And there is a moral realm to aesthetics, it’s not void of morality the way that the modern religion of western science is. And it’s not just in activist art, I mean of course there’s the work of Pavlinsky and his pain performances, Picasso’s Guernica, The Hiroshima Panels by Ira and Toshi Maruki, these have all played roles in transforming and lifting the veil to these suppressive powers.

But then you can also look at the abstract works of painters like Rothko, Barnett Newman, and when you’re in a room with these paintings they do, they absolutely transform the way that you see the world, they do this strange thing to you, this mystical thing when they connect you, they balance you in this strange way where you can think about something but you also can feel it, in such a way that I don’t think you can in other medium. And it opens you up to human morality in a way that nothing else really can.

 

Catholicism

SH: I want to ask a couple of questions about the Catholic aspect of the Plowshares movement. Feminism is very important to you, liberation feminism in particular: did you feel any personal discomfort, or even regret, that it was such an overtly Roman Catholic protest, given the terrible history with the Church in condoning, codifying, even glorifying violence against indigenous peoples, the relegation of women to inferior roles, etc.?

CG: Well, first, I’ll stand in solidarity with anybody that is fighting for peace on Earth. But also, I do have a complicated relationship with the Catholic Church. I grew up Catholic, and I have my own personal qualms about the Church, particularly with its role in egregious acts of violence, colonialism, and perpetuating the myth of the Dominion of Man, but the Seven, and the community they come from, are radical Catholics, and they are continually acknowledging and dissenting from the Church’s complicity in war and violence. In the Action Statement alone that they posted in 2018 they repented of white supremacy, the destruction of indigenous lands and bodies…

SH: And they don’t deny the Church’s complicity in that.

CG: No they don’t! They call it out. And they also do acknowledge the gendering that underlies all these different systems of violence. So I can’t say that there were never times when I felt a little uncomfortable with the religiosity, but whenever that occurred I could simply, respectfully disengage myself without any repercussions. And there were a few questions about the role Catholicism played, and should play in the peace movement going forward, but it wasn’t so much among the older members. There were three members under 50 – someone who was 18; myself, 24; and one other woman in her early ’20s – and between us the question existed.

SH: We’re speaking as the Pope is in Japan, and I’ve been following in recent days how the Seven have been standing in solidarity with him as he goes to Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and they’re obviously thrilled that he has broken with traditional Catholic acceptance of nuclear ‘deterrence,’ something they point out in their Mission Statement. But though they wrote to the Pope, just after their arrest, I think, I believe they haven’t yet had a response…

CG: No, they haven’t. There’s been no direct response from the Pope on the Plowshares action, but Carmen Trotta, and a couple of others, have received letters from the Pope in regards to their other Catholic Worker activities…

SH: I didn’t get the sense, from the vigils held in the last few days, that there’s any sense of disappointment about the Pope not calling for their release, or citing their action – which would be the most dramatic thing imaginable, you would reach a billion people in a hurry! His calculation seems to be, ‘what I needed to do is make this very, very dramatic statement that the mere possession of nuclear weapons is a sin, that it cannot be reconciled with the Catholic faith’ – something that’s caused consternation amongst lots of conservative Catholics. I mean, I would totally understand if the Seven were much more direct, publicly appealing to the Pope for support. So are they just being diplomatic, or have they decided, ‘well, this is a broad struggle, and the Church is taking a very dramatic step, away from the deterrence comfort zone it’s been in’, and that’s enough?

CG: I think that that’s most definitely the mentality, that they’re very happy with the Pope, and the stance the Pope has taken. And I think that they’re used to not being supported, they’re used to not having anyone at their back, so no, I don’t think they were expecting it or hoped for it.