http://www.huffingtonpost.com/helen-young/the-nun-behind-bars-nuclear-weapons_b_5367421.html

The Nun Behind Bars in Brooklyn
by Helen Young
Posted: 05/27/2014 Updated: 05/30/2014

You could call it a homecoming of sorts, but without the welcome home party. After growing up in the shadow of Columbia University in Manhattan's Morningside Heights, serving the Catholic Church as a biology teacher in Africa for more than 40 years, and a peace activist in Nevada, 84-year-old Sister Megan Rice has landed back in New York City. She's at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn. It's Sunset Park, but without the grass and trees.

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Since her conviction last year Sister Megan has spent time in a number of prisons in Georgia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and now New York. She told me she ministers to the women by listening to their stories and sharing in the emotional pain. "Clearly these are the most vulnerable people in society. They are those who cannot find the jobs. The jobs are not being created, and many of them, because of that, fall into the drug industry just to survive, to buy diapers for their children. As we know the military budgets are eating up everything and have for so long, " says Sister Megan.

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Besides comforting the women trapped in the system... there are the letters. Sister Megan told me during a recent phone call from MDC Brooklyn that she does not have enough time in the day to attend to the flood of letters that are sent to her. Since she can't respond to each one individually, she's enlisted a circle of six friends (one jokingly describes herself as Sr. Megan's secretary) to disseminate her response letters. Recently this circle sent out 120 letters.

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From behind bars she continues to follow events in the outside world. And, ever the teacher, in her letters she counsels her supportive community on how best to keep moving forward on the issue closest to her heart:

"And in the what can we be doing now? category, we can begin by signing the petition at www.nuclearzero.org in support of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, which has filed suit in the International Court of Justice and U.S. Federal District Court against the nine nuclear-armed nations for "failure to comply with their obligation under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and customary international law to pursue negotiations for the world wide elimination of nuclear weapons."

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Helen Young is producing the documentary "Nuclear Insecurity" on nuclear disarmament activists, including Sister Megan, and the policy experts on the frontlines of the global movement to abolish nuclear weapons.