Carmen Trotta Goes to Prison tomorrow

Carmen Trotta (58) will not spend this Christmas looking after the needs of the poor in St Joseph's Catholic Worker House in Ithaca New York where he lives and works. On 12 December 2020 he will be brought to prison in FCI Ottsville, NY to start a 14 month sentence in the middle of a raging pandemic. Carmen is well known to Irish anti-war activists as he directed the public marches of supporters from O’Connell St to the Four Courts in Dublin during the 3 trials of the five Pitstop Ploughshares in 2005 and 2006.

In the early morning of 4 April 2018, with 6 other protestors (the Kings Bay 7) he entered Kings Bay nuclear submarine base in Georgia  to “beat swords into plowshares”. All seven were sentenced in the course of the past year. In Ireland, the Pitstop Ploughshares successfully defended their own similar actions at Shannon airport on the plea of lawful excuse and were acquitted by a jury; the Kings Bay Seven Plowshares were denied the same defence in the USA.

 

For Carmen’s moving address to the court after his sentencing see below {subheadings added].

Child of the Vietnam War

In my opening declaration to the court, I remarked that I’m a child of the Vietnam war, and my primary reason to go to college was to discover who was telling the truth about the war in Vietnam and the reasons for which we fought it. I’m only like 18 years old. It was in college that I first heard Rev. King’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech, and in a way, that was the saddest day of my life.

It also redirected my life.

The proof was simple enough. As King explained it, by 1954 the United States was paying for 80 percent of the French effort to recolonize Vietnam. Then and there, I learned that the U.S. has no more noble reason to be there than the colonizers we sought to replace. Then did I begin a journey that has led me to my presence before the court today.

“Extensive Criminal Record”

I was told by the prosecution that I have an extensive criminal record, and when I heard this, I was dumbstruck. I didn’t think I had any criminal record, but I did at some point come to understand that I had 20/30 arrests, but in my mind they were all justified. Every one of my actions has been a reaction to an American war crime.

Moreover, in every instance, my arrests were for acts of nonviolent civil disobedience or civil resistance. Let me say, unambiguously, that in all of my extensive criminal history, I have never raised a hand in anger and violence against another. In court, I had mentioned my concern that the “institutional memory of the court is perverse.”

The court knows where and when I was arrested, what the charges were and what I was sentenced to. But nothing of the context within which I was arrested: and context is everything. We may remember in our own trial, Mark Colville was confronted with the notion that what he had done was like running a red light – a straight forward violation of the law. But there are times when, in a particular context, anyone in their right mind would run a red light, as for instance the several times I rushed my ailing father to the hospital, saving his life.

Nonviolent Responses to Concerns of Conscience

So as regards war crimes, I’ve run a lot of red lights. To be clear, this criminal has never assaulted anyone, never stolen anything, has never threatened anyone. If convicted of disorderly conduct, it was not for being drunk and urinating in the street. It was for holding a banner in front of the White House and refusing to move… unfortunately the court would not know what the banner said.

Notably, the longest sentence I’ve ever been given, prior to my fifty days for the action at hand, was twelve days. So in short, all of my arrests were deliberate, nonviolent responses to the concerns of my conscience, which I hold to be a divine gift. It is not merely a divine gift to me. It is to everyone. It is what makes a human.

Nicaragua – Reagan and his “Contras” Terrorist Militia 1986

My first incarceration was in 1986 in Des Moines, Iowa. A number of Catholic Workers had joined a larger coalition petitioning then Gov.Branstad to reject a federal request for the state’s National Guard unit to go down to Honduras “to build roads.” In actual fact, they would be building invasion corridors into Nicaragua for the so called Contras, a terrorist militia adopted, funded, trained and advised by the Reagan administration, to overthrow the first democratically elected government in Nicaragua in more than 40 years. Prior to the Sandinista revolution Nicaragua was a US client state, under the despotic control of the Somoza family.

We should all be aware of the fact that the US has almost no history of supporting democracy abroad.

Prior to our action, six states, under public pressure, had refused federal requests to state National Guard units. We were hoping to make Iowa the seventh. We went to the Capitol to meet with the Governor, and he failed to show up. Some 25 of us decided to remain in the office until he appeared. When the building closed for the night the coalition members decided we would wait overnight. Subsequently, state police entered the office to escort us out. I went limp, and was incarcerated overnight.

Days after the action, congressional legislation was passed making it impossible to deny a federal request for a National Guard unit, unless the Governor declared a state of emergency, the so-called Montgomery Amendment.

Iran Contra Scandal Exposed- Oliver North

So, my first arrest was in resistance to an act of American terrorism which came to be know as the Iran Contra scandal. The most active agent of the scandal was Lt. Col. Oliver North, a decorated Vietnam veteran who moved into a secret office within the National Security Council. Behind the back of congress and in violation of the Boland Amendment of 1985, North solicited money from private donors and various nations and turned a blind eye to money garnered from shipments of crack cocaine, brought into the the United States via drug cartels with ties to the Contras.

Eventually the scandal was exposed. Over a dozen government officials were convicted of crimes. Oliver North was given a 3 year suspended sentence for being a kingpin in an act of American terrorism which kicked off a ten year war which took the lives of 30,000 people. All of those convicted were pardoned by the next administration. Having never raised a hand in violence, it seems odd to me that I’m destined to serve more prison time than Oliver North.

US War With Iraq and Sanctions

Another war, indeed a series of wars that I responded to, were related to Iraq. For 30 years now we have been bombing Iraq.

Despite the brutal, dictatorial rule of Saddam Hussein, the people of Iraq managed to create a decent infrastructure. Before US intervention and occupation, Iraq had top of the line hospitals; child mortality rates were comparable to European nations; the populace was supplied with clean safe water; illiteracy was basically eradicated.

But in 1991 American bombs systematically obliterated that infrastructure. This was compounded by the most deadly regime of economic sanctions in history. Prior to the war Iraq 70% of the country’s food came from imports. The sanctions forbade UN member states from selling any foodstuffs to Iraq, with the exception of “humanitarian circumstances.” More the bombing destroyed nearly every water treatment plant in the country. Chlorine, an essential agent in water treatment facilities was deliberately sanctioned. This was done with the full knowledge that water borne diseases would result. Cholera and typhoid, previously almost non-existent, spiked dramatically in the next few years.

Madeline Albright’s Comment about 500,000 Children Dead

These were unconscionable policies! Deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure, and men women and children.

More than 200,000 Iraqis perished by the end of the first Gulf war. The Clinton administration then took the reins, and persistently, if sporadically, continued bombing. In 1996, the UN issued a report that 500,000 children below the age of 5 had died due to the harsh sanctions imposed. Then Sec. of State Magdalene Albright was questioned on this by Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes: “We have heard that a half million children have died…I mean…that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?”

Albright responded:”I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it.”

Albright never apologized for that statement.

Protection of Dissent

So, this is my great dilemma: the conflict between my love of country and my conscience and, what seems to be, the increasing numbness of the nation's conscience.

It still strikes me to hear the words “all men are created equal,” and the words “certain God-given and inalienable rights.” Rather obviously we have not lived up to these ideals. But somehow, it is still music in my ear. It is this very conflict that has led me to my actions and to this moment standing before you. I’ve read some of your stuff Judge Wood, and I know that you have some regard for the protection of dissent. Let us pray for the strength and resilience of one another’s conscience. And I hope you develop a relish for dissent.

Colm Roddy and Dave Donnellan Not Guilty

After four years five months and eighteen days, the trials of peace activists Colm Roddy and Dave Donnellan have ended with a Not Guilty verdict by a jury in the Circuit Criminal Court in Dublin. They had been charged with criminal damage to a fence and runway without lawful excuse, at Shannon airport on 5 May 2016.  Both Dave and Colm pleaded not guilty.  On Friday last, eleven men and one woman took less than two hours to give their verdict.

The Long Wait

They have been in various courts some 36 days since the day of their action. The years, months and days have been punctuated with some bizarre episodes both inside and outside of court. They had been banned from the whole of Co Clare at a court in Gort, Co Galway.. They were both re-arrested on 18 November 2018 near the court room in Ennis to bring "new charges" against them, based in part on an absurd change in the amount of damage from €300 to €3500 (for cutting a hole in the fence and painting some red crosses on the runway).  Then, on that same day, the case against Colm was dismissed. This decision was reversed by the same judge on another day. And almost 4 years later a jury in Dublin. in effect. has dismissed the State's action against both Colm and Dave.  The net result apart from the dogged and unnecessary persecution of two very honourable citizens is enormous cost to the State, faces redder than the crosses that were painted on the runway, personal lives disrupted - and the message of the two peace activists loudly proclaimed again and again, not least in their final addresses to the jury on Friday last.

The Long Walk

Time after time, the Irish State had refused to search suspicious planes at Shannon, planes that activists from local groups such as Shannonwatch knew were carrying troops and arms to foreign wars. During the Iraq war debacle even rendition planes had, disgracefully, passed through Shannon; but when Taoiseach Bertie Ahern was challenged on the issue he told the Dáil "I looked at the great President Bush and I said to him, 'you know, I want to be sure to be sure' and he assured me". Even today,  US planes are still carrying troops through Shannon airport to war. In the early morning of 5 May 2016, Dave and Colm did their long courageous walk (45mins) along the runway to a US Army Lear C-21 jet and requested its Irish minders, both military and police, to do a search of the aircraft.

Reasons for the Action

They gave their reasons to the jury in their final addresses. Dave said that he believed his prosecution for allegedly cutting the fence shows “we have lost perspective on what's really important.  I believe what's really important is life itself.  The life we share with our loved ones and the life we share with people we don’t know; people in Iraq and Libya and Syria and all the other places affected by US-led wars. Their lives are as important as our own. That's what took me into Shannon airport four years ago."

Colm said that the US military has been using Shannon as an effective forward operating base for over 17 years and he has been protesting about this since then.  Around 2.5 million US troops have transited through the airport on their way to wars; and taxpayers’ money is being used to pay overtime for army and garda officials to guard US military planes at the airport. Many of these US soldiers have come back in bits and in boxes and are as much victims as the people who die in the wars in countries in north Africa and the Middle East.  “As a citizen of Ireland I'm made complicit in this destruction and torture. My actions show that I will not meekly allow the State to make me complicit in the murder. This is both a rational and reasonable position to hold.” he said. He believed his actions had lawful excuse by raising awareness of these issues.

Both Colm and Dave told the jury that their actions on the day were a protest against the use of Shannon airport by US military. They assert that the presence of US military planes and troops is a breach of Irish neutrality and has, according to international law, turned the airport into a legitimate target for enemy combatants of the US. 

The State's Witnesses

Earlier in the trial the State had produced several witnesses including Mark Reidy, maintenance manager at the airport who in reply to Colm said that the costs (€3500) were estimated because the programme of works was ongoing and that “that section of the fence has not been repaired yet”. He said a suggestion that “you've spent no money on repairing the fence” was correct.

Pat O'Brien of Airport Police in reply to Dave said that he had seen the Law of War manual of the US Department of Defence produced earlier in the week. He did not agree that the security at Shannon Airport was “laughable” (in the light of that document)

Corporal Thomas Dillon told the jury that he and other officers were on duty that night and were stationed beside a US plane. He told Mr McGillicuddy (prosecuting) that “we stay on the ground until the plane takes off” and remain for some time after take off in case the plane needs to return to the airport.

He said that when he first saw two men approaching the plane at around 6am “I thought my eyes were playing tricks” and he picked up binoculars to view the men. One was carrying a flag and banner the other a wooden cross. He said he warned both men to stop and that he and his colleagues had their weapons behind their backs at all times.

In reply to Colm's suggestion that “the purpose of the Irish armed forces at Shannon is to ensure that peace activists like myself and Mr Donnellan don’t get near the American planes you are guarding, to search or to damage [them]”, he replied that Colm needed to put this question to somebody in government

Judge and Jury

At the end of the trial, Judge Karen O'Connor, instructing the jury, said:  “You must decide whether they (Dave and Colm) believed their actions to be justified. It does not matter if the belief is justified or not, as long as Mr Roddy and Mr Donnellan honestly hold the belief,”

When they returned the Not Guilty verdict, Judge O'Connor thanked them for diligently carrying out their duties especially in the midst of a pandemic and she graciously thanked the defendants (who are lay litigants) and their legal advisors, (Mc Kenzie Friends Seán Ryan and Raymond Walker) for their courtesy and dignity throughout the trial.

Statements from Dave and Colm

After the event, Dave Donnellan said: “Our actions were faith based. As Irish citizens we felt compelled as a matter of conscience to highlight Irish Government complicity in war crimes and it is a matter of deep regret to us that this complicity is still ongoing almost daily since 2001".

An equally modest and sobering comment came from Colm Roddy: “The result of this trial gives us no cause for celebration. Our peaceful non-violent actions in May 2016 were undertaken to highlight Irish complicity and participation in US wars in the Middle East that have caused the deaths of millions of people in the Middle East, including the deaths of up to one million children since the First Gulf War in 1991"

The decision of the jury rested eventually on whether or not they had lawful excuse under Irish law to carry out their action.  They had. 

Another interesting aspect of the case was the fact that the prosecution were not allowed to make a closing address to the jury because of a legal rule which applies when the defendant is a lay litigant and does not call any witnesses.

Sources: Declan Brennan (for Limerick Leader and Irish Times), Indymedia Ireland, Shannonwatch, Partners in Faith (including picture), Edward Horgan (email), The World News, court observers and others.

LINKS: limerickleader  

shannonwatch irish times theworldnews partners in faith

Patrick O'Neill Sentenced

On Friday last, 16 October, Patrick O'Neill was sentenced in Georgia to 14 months in prison for a non-violent protest In Kings Bay Trident Nuclear Base on 4 April 2018. He is the third of the Kings Bay 7 to be convicted.

One by one these defendants, all of whose actions are faith based, have been making powerful statements about their witness - so powerful that they cannot but impress those of us who are not  faith based. They have also lifted a veil on court proceedings for those who were not present there. In the case of Patrick O'Neill who was one of four who opted for bail, he also exposed the cruelty of US ankle monitoring.

His statement is packed with challenging one-liners:

"Although the base commander testified that he would neither confirm nor deny that Trident is a weapon of mass destruction, it is common knowledge";                                                                          "in this courtroom, the fact that Trident is a diabolical death machine has been deemed irrelevant";    "If the Trident D-5 missiles are ever launched and millions of people die, including many of you who reside here at the center of Ground Zero, one fact will remain clear: No laws were broken".               "Rather than criminals, we are Messengers, just like the abolitionists were in the face of legalized slavery, or pacifists who went to prison rather than kill";                                                                    Historically, the Boston Tea Party and biblically, Jesus cleansing the temple of the money-changers, both involved damage to property to make a point and to challenge injustice"                                    "So, off to jail and prison we go, all 7 of us thrice convicted felons"                                                         "I think the message we brought to Kings Bay and to this court is painful to hear, and unthinkable to contemplate".                                                                                                                                                "... you, Judge Wood, in perhaps the only time you expressed your personal opinion during the trial, said Trident is probably not unlawful"                                                                                                  "Giving agency to Trident submarines and their cargo of nuclear weapons of mass destruction carried the day over our sincere religious intentions. So our jury never heard any evidence about the Religious Freedom Restoration Act".

To Irish people who find Covid-19 lock downs intolerable the following account of how gentle pacifists were ankle monitored and surveilled in the USA for two and a half years will make stark reading:

"From Day 1 of our arraignment, this court has taken a very hard line against the 7 of us, and for more than 2 and one half years now that punitive policy has been unrelenting.

"First came a high cash bond, house arrest and ankle monitors; justified by claims that we were a danger to community safety. Requests for loosening those restrictions were mostly denied. Since my release from the Glynn County jail in the spring of 2018, my life has been under the daily management of my probation officer, Woody King, who I personally like and have gotten to know. However, he treats me like a teenager, not an adult.

"When Woody stopped by my house as I was taking out the trash, he said, 'Mr. O’Neill, you’re supposed to be in your house.'

“ 'I’m just taking out the trash,' I replied.

'Tell Mary to do that,' Woody said.  I’m not sure that was the way Magistrate Stan Baker saw my house arrest, but that´s what Woody thought.

"When I had my first meeting with Woody and his supervisor, I was told I was allowed to go to Mass on Sunday, but I was not permitted to stay after Mass to share a cup of coffee with my faith community. I was only allowed out for two hours on Sundays.

"In addition, my more than two years under supervised house arrest and curfew will not count toward my sentence, despite the fact that I have now spent more than 400 days (thatś 400 24-hour days) confined to my house.

"Three times since my release under these strict conditions I have had my children hospitalized outside the Eastern District of N.C., so I was unable to get permission to visit with them because of my home confinement, even though the Chapel Hill hospital was just 35 minutes from my home.

"When I told Woody my daughter Brianna was in the hospital with postpartum complications following the birth of my grandson, Luke, Woody said coldly, matter of factly, he could not approve the hospital visit. He never said anything kind or comforting about my daughter’s plight or ever asked again about her well being.

"Like your families need you, my family needs me. The harsh conditions of pre-trial and post-trial release were hard on all 14 of us — Mary and I, our 8 children, two grandchildren and two sons-in law. I think it is clear that all seven of the Kings Bay Plowshares are honorable people who devote our lives to making the world a more peaceful, loving and safe place".

The full text of Patrick's statement and that of his daughter Bernadette Naro can be found at http://www.nukeresister.org

Steve Kelly sentenced to 32 months

Plowshares activist Fr Steve Kelly was sentenced today to 32 months in prison for his part in the protest action in Kings Bay Nuclear submarine base on 4-5 April 2018.

He is the second defendant to be sentenced - already Liz McAlister had received a 3 year sentence for her part in the same action: declaring Trident weapons a crime.

Neither Steve nor Liz will be too perturbed by the ridiculously long sentences as they both have been in prison awaiting trial    In effect Liz was sentenced to "time served" - to be followed by "supervision"! (she is 80 years of age); Steve(59)  may have to serve 3 months and will probably refuse supervision.

Liz's daughter, Frida Berrigan, made a statement of love and support at the sentencing of her mother. It is not just a beautiful, heart-rending tribute from a daughter, it is also a brilliant defence of non-violent action and a powerful indictment of the system of oppression and inequity which her mother Elizabeth fought against non-violently throughout her life. Everything is there: George Floyd's murder, jogger Ahmaud Armery's murder, Martin Luther King's inspirational targetting of racism-militarism-materialism, the $720+ billion spend on the military during a pandemic, poverty,  the brokenness of every fiber of the social safety net: because her Mom has wed her anti-racist philosophy  with her anti-nuclear analysis.   

For her "Black Lives Matter" and "Trident is a Crime" may be one and the same.

Steve Kelly, a priest coming from the same faith base as Liz, had a character witness, Dennis Apel, who made a similarly resounding statement to the court.

"I am no stranger to the typical U.S. courtroom where the 'law' is treated as God while justice takes a back seat" he said "where even the most fundamental morals are ignored for the sake of upholding the system designed to maintain idolatry to the Pentagon; where witnesses are sworn in with the admonition 'to speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you God' and then [are] essentially gagged in front of a jury of their peers through motions In Limine, denied the ability to speak the truth about why they did what they did, the horrors they are confronting and the spirituality behind their actions. ...  In what kind of system could a person with the spirituality, conviction and love of God’s children that Fr. Steve Kelly has, be dismissed as a criminal and left to languish for two and a half years in a county jail, while his basic message is expunged in the courtroom; the message that the most horrific and abominable weapons designed by human technology... are allowed to exist and proliferate.

"Fr. Steve Kelly is a man of deep faith who speaks truth to power and accepts the consequences. That is his character. Any other assessment of his character is false. I know this because I have known Steve for decades. He has spent more than 10 years of his life behind bars, giving up the warm embrace and camaraderie of loved ones as well as the comforts of a truly-accessible easy life, to instead speak the truth that God sees nuclear weapons as an abomination. I defy anyone in this courtroom to make a case for a God who embraces weapons of indiscriminate destruction and human misery. It’s not complicated. We who accept nuclear weapons are wrong, wrong, wrong. Fr. Steve just says that with his life and body. That is his character. He has taken up his cross to follow Jesus, pure and simple. We dismiss that fact at our own peril. ..."

All of this seems a long distance from the days when Cardinal Spellman visited the US troops in Vietnam in December 1966 and told them that what America expected was total victory.  

Or maybe not.  Pope Paul VI rebuked Spellman for his warmongering.  Also the same Cardinal Spellman condemned the Berrigan brothers, Philip and Dan for their anti-war activity, 

And just by coincidence, Liz McAlister is Philip Berrigan's wife and Frida Berrigan is their daughter

 Five more Kings Bay Plowshare defendants await sentencing.

 

Apology for lacuna: For some unknown reason I have been unable to post to this site since November 2019. Apologies to readers.