On August 8, 2022 thirteen activists blocked traffic entering Naval Abase Kitsap-Bangor in Washington State. Eleven of the activists were removed and cited by the Washington State Patrol, while the other two who crossed onto the Naval base were detained and cited by the Navy.
Bangor is the U.S. Navy’s West Coast ballistic missile submarine base and nuclear weapons storage depot (known as Strategic Weapons Facility, Pacific or SWFPAC), and represents the largest operational concentration of nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal.
So far, five defendants have appeared in Kitsap County District Court to present their testimonies explaining the actions they took on August 8th. You can read a summary of their court appearances and highlights of their testimonies in the October 2022 Ground Zero Newsletter. Click here to read more about the August 8th nonviolent direct action.
Two of the defendants, Anne and Dave Hall, appeared via Zoom and prepared written statements, which you can read below. Another defendant, George Rodkey, did not appear in court and sent his statement to the court for consideration. You can read it following the testimonies from the Halls.
ANNE HALL
Good afternoon, Your Honor, my co-defendants and friends,
I am Anne Hall, a Lutheran pastor, wife, mother, and grandmother. Forty years ago, Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility, along with a coalition of concerned citizens, sponsored a series of events called Target Seattle. It was the height of the Cold War, and 14,000 people gathered in the Kingdome. I attended a presentation by Dr. Judith Lipton. She described
what would happen if a nuclear bomb hit Seattle. She spoke of a fire ball 3 times the temperature of the surface of the sun, winds up to 300 miles per hour, human beings vaporized, or horribly burned, crushed by falling buildings, sliced by flying glass. And she said, if the bomb hit during a weekday, when parents were at work and children were in school or daycare, children would die without their parents ever reaching them.
My children were small, I couldn’t bear that. I couldn’t bear it happening to my children or to any parents and their children, in any country.
So, I called and wrote to the Congress and the President. I met with my Senators and Representatives. I spoke at public events.
And not long after Target Seattle, I joined the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action. We leafletted asking workers on the base to leave their jobs. We walked into the base attempting to speak to the commander. We sat on the tracks to stop trains bringing nuclear missiles to Bangor. We blocked cars at the base gate, always trying to spread the alert that these disastrous,
illegal, immoral weapons must be abolished everywhere.
Over the last 40 years, this work has brought me many arrests, court appearances, convictions, a few acquittals! and occasional jail time. At the SeaTac Federal Detention Center, some years ago, I had a conversation with a friendly guard. Luis, knowing I was there because of a nonviolent protest, asked if I had done this kind of thing before. I said I had protested against nuclear weapons many times.
“But we need nuclear weapons,” he said. “If they bomb us, we need to bomb them back.”
“No we don’t!” I said. “So if they burn up our babies, we burn up their babies? What would Jesus say to that?”
“Jesus is dead,” he responded.
“No, he isn’t. He lives in you; he lives in me!”
Luis was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “If Jesus were alive today, they would put him in here.”
Exactly. I am a Christian pastor, a follower of Jesus. I do my best, in my small way, to walk where he would walk.
Amen.
********************
DAVE HALL
Statement by David C Hall (Case #2A0405945) for mitigation hearing September 27, 2022 in Kitsap County Superior Court: on a charge of unlawful presence in the roadway entering NBK-Bangor on August 8, 2022
Your honor, thank you for your time to listen to us as we share our concerns about the nuclear weapons here in our shared backyard. Anne and I were among those here today who blocked the entrance to the Bangor base in a symbolic protest against the weapons of mass destruction carried on the Trident Submarines.
I’m a third generation physician, son of a Navy surgeon who commanded a landing hospital for 30 months in WWII following US troops across the Pacific toward Japan. His father organized the first ambulance corps from the West Coast to WWI in 1914. I spent 3 years doing alternative service at Western State Hospital prior to training as a Child Psychiatrist, joining Physicians for Social Responsibility upon graduation serving as both national and state chapter president of PSR. From 2006 to 2010 Navy submarine Capt Tom Rogers and I led the volunteer build of a new house at the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action adjacent to NBK-Bangor.
We’ve been at this continuous protest since the Banger base opened for nuclear-armed submarines. We’ve learned over the years that many folks here in Kitsap County share our concerns about the potential holocaust the Trident submarines may become party to in the event that nuclear weapons are used anywhere for any reason. I know you are aware of how devastating nuclear weapons can be, or I hope you are. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are warnings from the early days with small atomic bombs. The Trident submarines are now built so that each one can carry well over 2500 Hiroshima bomb equivalents, sufficient nuclear fire power to block out the sun and create worldwide famine. Recent studies modeling a nuclear war between India and Pakistan involving only 200 Hiroshima-type bombs dropped on cities conclude that smoke and soot carried into the upper atmosphere could block the sun enough that agriculture is severely compromised and 2 billion people could starve to death, a billion in South Asia and a billion in China. In a catastrophic scenario if Russia and the United States are involved in all out nuclear war, half the world’s people could starve to death.
The policies that create these scenarios are decided in our country in Congress and by the President, but in reality they are dominated by US military-industrial-Congressional complicity. Meanwhile we deeply appreciate and depend on the integrity and reliability of the military personnel at NBK-Bangor who must manage these weapons safely. “We the people” must change the policy makers who vote for this suicidal march toward the end of any civilized life on the planet, but our voices are drowned by the money and jobs making nuclear weapons. For these reasons we continue to protest in a symbolic way as a prayer for peace and as a way to assure that we can tell our children and grandchildren we did not go quietly into the dark night, we did not agree to the fundamental insanity and moral bankruptcy inherent in the development and use of these horrific weapons of mass destruction.
We must move to intensive diplomatic engagement with potential nuclear antagonists to bring them all to their senses, beginning with the United States. This will be essential for solving the climate crisis as well.
International pressure to ban nuclear weapons has led to the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, now in force since January 2021 but only for non-nuclear nations. The United States has actively campaigned against this United Nations generated international treaty despite ratifying the treaties banning chemical and biological weapons, so we pursue a Sisyphian task.
Thank you for your attention and for opening your heart to our call for the elimination of nuclear weapons. I leave it to you to decide what penalty, if any, we deserve.
***************
GEORGE RODKEY
August 22, 2022
Kitsap District Court
Re: Infraction 2A0405944
46.61.250.1 “Pedestrian on Roadway Unlawfully”
Issued 8/8/22
Your Honor,
This statement is being submitted for consideration as mitigation in reference to the action cited above. I do not contest the infraction, but wish here to explain the circumstances which motivated my presence on the road in front of the Bangor submarine base checkpoint.
I would like to offer this brief statement to explain myself and why I believe that I had a reasonable purpose for doing what I did on August 8th of this year.
In preparation for this statement, I looked back on my testimony before Judge Riehl on June 7, 1999 here in this courthouse at a jury trial for a similar activity. You or may not know that the result was an acquittal by the jury. I was interested to see what had changed since that time, for me and in our world. A lot has changed, but much has not.
I personally became fully aware of the threat of the Trident weapons system in l978, when I was living in California and became acquainted with Robert Aldridge, a former engineer at Lockheed Missiles and Space at Sunnyvale. (The Lockheed corporation had recently won the contract to design the re-entry vehicles for the Trident missiles.) Mr. Aldridge explained the offensive nature of the Trident system, which he had initially been involved in designing, following a promising career designing Polaris and Poseidon missiles for Lockheed. He felt compelled to sound the alarm. He had resigned from that secure career despite the demands of a large family because the demands of his conscience and following his faith were greater. The Trident’s short flight time, high accuracy and ability to “hide” in ocean depths ended up making it a much more destabilizing weapon, although it was promoted for its ability to enhance national security. I believe that Trident was then and remains potentially the most destructive and destabilizing weapons system in human history.
Soon after that, I attended a conference sponsored by Physicians for Social Responsibility in San Francisco which gave me a visceral and overwhelming sense of the capacity of nuclear weapons to destroy human life and the balance of nature. I distinctly remember coming outside
for a break between sessions and sobbing uncontrollably. I am not a person prone to this type of behavior. The kindness of a complete stranger offered me comfort.
This awareness gave me and still gives me clarity that these weapons are in direct contrast to the Christian faith I grew up
with and embraced and now profess as an adult. The teachings of Christ include love of enemy, going the extra mile, returning good for evil and suffering harm rather than inflicting violence.
As a Roman Catholic, I stand in the tradition of those in that faith, like Dorothy Day, St. Francis, Thomas Merton and countless others who interposed their lives between danger and innocent victims. These are the blessed ones who are called, not “peace lovers”, but “peace makers”.
Recently, the leader of our Church, Pope Francis, while visiting the site of the 2nd atomic blast in Nagasaki, declared that not only the use, but the design, production, deployment –and the very possession – of nuclear weapons is sinful. I invite us all take his moral clarity to heart and act accordingly.
I know that these beliefs have no particular standing in this court and cannot be either assumed or imposed. Yet, I cannot help but believe that our world would be vastly more livable were they more widely accepted and lived.
Another significant development within the last two years is the passage and enactment by the United Nations of a complete ban on the design, funding, production, deployment and possession of nuclear weapons. The United States (and other nuclear powers) have thus far chosen to ignore this directive, but it is, nonetheless, standing international law.
At the trial referenced above, in 1999, I had recently become a father. Eli, now 24, has a brother, Gabe, who is 21. The need to take action for a more secure future for them and their generation has not diminished – nor has the need for me to be an example to them of a responsible adult and Christian. No, being a father has served to deepen my commitments substantially.
For me, the purpose of the action itself, standing in the middle of a highway, in the path of oncoming traffic, was to be an impediment in the normal flow of business as usual at the Bangor base and to appeal to the consciences of those involved in the Trident program here. I intended to symbolically close the base with my co-defendants, and to disrupt, even if briefly, the tendency that all humans sometimes have to continue on in a certain direction, even if it might be destructive or detrimental. I know that I appreciate it if others take that initiative with me when they see me going in an unhealthy direction, uncomfortable and risky though it might be for them.
Beyond this personal and direct effect, I believe that we were acting as the tip of an iceberg of opposition which has deep roots both in this country and throughout the world. We often hear about various governments and their attempts to gain nuclear weapons (Iran, North Korea), but seldom or never do we hear of the growing non-governmental organizations, groups and individuals acting to bring an end to nuclear weapons. Our acting is, in part, to be a catalyst for even greater changes and initiatives to take place. This is a reasonable expectation because taking a personal risk such as this, with altruistic motive, gets peoples’ attention like nothing else. Thus the necessity of our action.
Finally, it’s my belief that Love is at the beginning and end of our lives and is the purpose for which we all have been created. Love has been defined as “willing the good of the other”. This proceeds from Our Creator whose essential character is Love. More than the romantic aspects of human love, wonderful as they are, it goes to the heart of how all humans are meant to relate to each other and to the rest of God’s creation.
The sooner we get our lives in line with this, the sooner we facethe threats to this way of living, such as the TRIDENT, the sooner we will be living life on earth as intended – in peace and harmony.
Respectfully,
George W Rodkey
