It's 6 a.m. The sky is glorious, purple and pink-tinged clouds. The sound of chanting and two steadily beating drums is steadying. Sixty people are along the road at the entrance to Bangor. A peace vigil is taking place outside the largest active nuclear weapons depot on the west coast. Cars, a few trucks, some motorcycles pass on their way to work. A banner hangs across the overpass "CREATE A PEACEFUL WORLD FOR ALL CHILDREN, Abolish Nuclear Weapons. Scrap Trident." How did I get here? How did we get here?
Twenty minutes pass, maybe thirty. There is an opening in traffic and our team of 6, crosses the fog line, under the yellow tape, and into the 3 lanes of traffic. Three peacekeepers in orange vests, holding signs to stop; three holding signs that tell the amount of schools, housing, child care, nutrition that could be provided with the dollars being spent to maintain this arsenal of genocide (1,988 nuclear warheads). One pair blocks each lane of traffic. The lanes won't be blocked for long; the police are in the median. What is the duty of citizenship in these times?
The police approach. They take the signs and lead us away, to waiting police cars. Later seven people holding candles walk, one at a time, across a blue painted line onto Federal property and they, too, are arrested. Is this foolishness, putting oneself at risk? Possibly jail time?
This is my first act of civil disobedience. I'm scared that this might cost me a long-planned trip with my sisters. But, then I see images of both Iraqis and American soldiers injured and killed by our weapons, laced with depleted uranium. I think of those Iranian people under threat from my country of nuclear attack. What is the cost of civil disobedience compared to what our brothers and sisters are suffering daily?
We are booked, taken to holding cells, fingerprinted and photographed. A first for me, a school teacher for over 30 years. One of my co-workers said I was endangering my reputation. I think not, this is a time citizens must act, because our democracy is being swept away, as in a river after rapid snowmelt. Each right, each honor, each support given to the disadvantaged, the wealth of our nation, all caught in the roaring flood, jetson racing by, on the words of the morning news. I feel like I've woken up to find that the nightmare called the death of democracy is unfolding before my eyes. If not now, when will I speak up, act out?
Our country has become a world terror machine. Who would have believed, that we would be the country to invade another country, bombing its cities against international law. That we would join the list of torturers and jailors of the disappeared. That we would endorse 15 years of sanctions that starved families and killed 500,000 children in Iraq and we are proposing a similar policy for Iran and Palestine. Spying on its citizens, our major industries war and war profiteering, environmental regulations in taters. I grew up believing that the United States stood for peace, free expression and justice (which I've learned since, was not entirely true). I want that to be true now. The acronym for the U.S. is us. We are this country; what's being done, here and around the world, is done in our name.
I have known of Ground Zero and wanted to participate for several years, not necessarily in civil disobedience, but to protest nuclear weapons in person. This year, knowing that America, OUR country, threatens Iran with attack, possibly nuclear, I knew that I could no longer stand on the sidelines. These bombs are in our backyard (20 miles from Seattle), just one small one, has the power of 15 Hiroshimas. The U.S. is like a country gone mad, mindlessly building weapons, supplying them to others, contaminating Iraq and our own soldiers with D.U. My surprise, at Ground Zero, is so few; I hope next year there is a groundswell of people, speaking for peace and justice at Bangor and other nuclear sites..
Sitting in the cell, I think of those who suffer from the insane actions of our government. Each person's scream in the night is our scream. Those Iraqi parents of bleeding children are not separate from us, our grown children bleed too. It would be much more comfortable at a backyard barbeque this Mother's Day with my daughter. But for today, we're here in this cement cell, the six of us, waiting, sharing stories, knowing we made a stand for peace.
Really it's not a choice, we must resist. Not all will choose civil disobedience, but we all must take some action, whatever baby-step, to change our own government when it chooses to build weapons of mass destruction, over peace and justice for its citizens and the rest of humankind.
The next planned direct action at Bangor will be on August 6 and 7, 2006, in commemoration of the 61st anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. In 2007, there will be direct actions on Martin Luther King Day and Mother's Day.
Ground Zero Center for Non-Violent Action
16159 Clear Creek Road NW, Poulsbo, WA 98370
Website: www.gzcenter.org, E-mail: info@gzcenter.org