82-year old nun and comrades shut US nuclear weapons facility - force security changes
The general manager of the Oak Ridge, TN nuclear weapons facility was this week "relieved of his duties" after an 82-year old nun, Megan Rice (pictured center), along with Michael Walli (left), 63 and Greg Boertje-Obed, 57, successfully breached security at the plant last week. The three activists cut through perimeter fences to reach the outer wall of a building where highly enriched uranium, a key nuclear bomb component, is stored. They then painted slogans and threw human blood on the wall of the facility, one of numerous buildings in the facility known by the code name Y-12 that it was given during World War Two. The action was reminiscent of the Swords into Plowshares acts of civil disobedience initiated in 1980 by brothers and priests, Philip and Daniel Berrigan. As noted historian, Howard Zinn said: "Democracy requires civil disobedience. Without civil disobedience does not exist."
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Excerpt from letter carried by Y-12 Infiltrators: “We come to the Y-12 facility because our very humanity rejects the designs of nuclearism, empire and war. Our faith in love and nonviolence encourages us to believe that our activity here is necessary; that we come to invite transformation, undo the past and present work of Y-12; disarm and end any further efforts to increase the Y-12 capacity for an economy and social structure based upon war-making and empire-building."