More details of stunning Y-12 break-in; protesters offered bread to guards
Source: Knoxville News Sentinel
Emerging accounts of what took place in Saturday's predawn hours at Y-12 are surely unlike any of the threat scenarios regularly tested during security exercises at the government installation. It apparently was a surreal scene inside the nuclear weapons plant.
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Instead, three aging peaceniks were hanging banners in the dark, splashing blood, and painting messages on the plant's pride-and-joy storage facility, a $549 million fortress which contains the nation's primary supply of bomb-grade uranium.
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Their words and actions were not that unusual. They were standard fare for many protests staged around the U.S. and beyond. What was unusual was where these acts took place — the inner sanctum of the Oak Ridge weapons facility — which heretofore had been portrayed as impenetrable and deadly dangerous to unauthorized visitors.
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The three protesters identified themselves as "Transform Now Plowshares," a title given to their direct action at Y-12.
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Read more: http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2012/jul/31/more-details-of-stunning-y-12-break-in-offered/
Congratulations to the "three aging peaceniks" for getting their message into one of the highest-security nuclear weapons sites in the world!
= new reply since forum marked as read
Activists Michael R. Walli, Sister Megan Rice and Greg Boertje-Obed, left to right, pose with banners in a picture taken days before the Y-12 break-in.
Base it on the tv show "America Ninja Warrior"!
http://www.nbc.com/american-ninja-warrior/
On September 9, 1980, Daniel Berrigan, his brother Philip Berrigan, and six others (the "Plowshares Eight"
began the Plowshares Movement under the premise of beating swords to ploughshares.[2] They trespassed onto the General Electric Nuclear Missile facility in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, where they damaged nuclear warhead nose cones and poured blood onto documents and files. They were arrested and charged with more than ten different felony and misdemeanor counts. On April 10, 1990, after 10 years of appeals, the Berrigans' group was re-sentenced and paroled for up to 23 and 1/2 months in consideration of time already served in prison.[2] Their legal battle was re-created in Emile de Antonio's 1982 film In the King of Prussia,[3] which starred Martin Sheen and featured appearances by the Plowshares Eight as themselves.[4]
Other actions followed. As of 2000, some 71 such actions happened on several continents, sharing these elements: 1. absolutely nonviolent to people, 2. each actor claimed personal responsibility for her or his actions, never fleeing the scene but rather standing accountable, 3. making some effort, big or small, real or symbolic, to turn swords into plowshares. There have been several more such actions in the new millennium. Over the years, some of these have resulted in acquittals and the vast majority end in prison time for the actors, the longest of which were those meted out to the 1984 group, the Silo Pruning Hooks (after the Biblical verse admonishing people to turn swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks—both Micah and Isaiah), two of whom earned 18 years in federal prison.[5] The "swords" have included live nuclear weapons, components of the nuclear arsenal, and even armed forces personal field weapons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plowshares_Movement
I have always had great respect for the fact their faith gave them the emotional strength to go through all of this.
