NH #444: Anti-Nuclear Peace Nun Sister Megan Rice of Plowshares

Anti-nuclear peace nun Sister Megan Rice of Plowshares
with co-protestors Michael Walli (l) and Gregory Bortje-Obed (r)

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This Week’s Featured Interviews:

Anti-Nuclear Peace Nun Sister Megan Rice – To celebrate the holidays, a reminder of one of 2015’s successes — the early release from prison of Sister Megan Rice, one of three brave activists who broke into high security nuclear weapons at the Y-12 nuclear facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee – the so-called “Fort Knox of Nuclear“- to protest nukes and war.  She was arrested on-site and, at age 82, convicted of sabotage – a conviction that was overturned after she’d already served two years in prison.

We’ll hear from:

  • Sister Megan Rice, the now-89-year-old anti-nuclear peace nun.  She speaks at length about the peaceful 2012 Transform Now Plowshares protest action.   She and two other activists broke into the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee which resulted in her being charged with sabotage and sentenced to almost three years in prison.  This interview was recorded when she was newly out of prison pending a re-sentencing hearing.  All further charges were later dropped.  The break in was an antiwar protest referred to as “the biggest security breach in the history of the nation’s atomic complex.” All it took? Three determined senior or senior-adjacent activists, some wire cutters, and a deeply spiritual love for people and the planet.
  • Co-defendant Gregory Boertje-Obed, 60, who along with co-defendant Michael Walli, 68, was sentenced to over five years in prison for their non-violent protest.

Originally presented on May 26, 2015, for Nuclear Hotseat #205.

Anti-nuclear peace nun Sister Megan Rice, age 84, seen upon her release from prison
after serving two years for peaceful protest of nuclear weapons at the
so-called “secure” Y-12 facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

LINKS to the Transform Now Plowshares statement and Indictment of Oak Ridge for War Crimes that were drawn up by these three brave activists and read at the Y-12 site.

A future program on Nuclear Hotseat will focus on the Kings Bay Plowshares 7, the current group of Plowshares activists convicted of Trident Disarmament Action Against Nuclear Weapons and currently awaiting sentencing. Send Letters to the Judge and Sign Petition calling for their release. They face years in prison for exposing illegal and immoral nuclear weapons that threaten all life on Earth.