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Among the heavily censored documents that Sr. Ardeth Platte and Sr. Carol Collins received from the Maryland State police was one that identifies their activities the week after the U.S. began bombing Afghanistan in October 2001.
The two Dominican nuns, who were incorrectly identified as involved in terrorism during an overzealous 14-month Maryland state police surveillance in 2005 and 2006, have spent more than 30 years opposing U.S. militarism, particularly the development of nuclear weapons.
But in 2001 -- well before any surveillance by Maryland state police -- they had appeared outside the White House on October 8, the day after the Afghanistan invasion began, and then four days later at the National Security Agency. Welcome to a week in the life of Sisters Platte and Collins.
The NSA is one of their regular stops, usually a rally and protest on the Fourth of July, but in 2001 they showed up that day in October to protest the bombing of Afghanistan. They made it past the first security checkpoint to a parking lot before security caught up to them. Platte and Collins spilled some of their own blood, saying, “The blood of innocents is shed with the participation of this agency.”
Theirs is a life of symbols and symbolic acts aimed at some of the most powerful agents on the planet.
A year after the incident at the NSA, for which charges for unknown reasons were ultimately dismissed, the two nuns traveled with fellow Dominican Jackie Hudson to northern Colorado, where they broke into a Minuteman III missile silo site. There they poured their blood, carried in baby bottles, in the form of six crosses on the lid of a missile silo and used a household hammer to bang on the 110 tons of concrete protecting the missile. Then they waited for the military to arrive and take them away.
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See main story: 'Terrorist' nuns put spotlight on homeland security
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At the time Hudson spoke of the hammer and blood that characteristically are used in “Plowshares actions,” acts of civil disobedience. The name is taken from a line in the book of Isaiah: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares.”
“We use household hammers because they are used to tear down what is not needed and to build what is needed. We use blood because it is the lifeline of all animal life, and we’d rather shed our blood than shed the blood of innocents. Blood is carried in baby bottles because women, children and the elderly are always the innocent victims of warfare.”
They were charged with interfering with the nation’s defense. At sentencing, Platte received 41 months in federal prison; Gilbert received 33 months; and Hudson 30 months.
All three nuns are members of the Dominican Congregation of Grand Rapids, Mich.
Their current contention over files held by the Maryland State Police is hardly a new experience. Back in the 1970s when they were working with migrant farm workers, said Gilbert, information on the two was kept by Michigan State Police in what were dubbed “red squad files.”
During the next decade, as they found out as a result of a later Freedom of Information Act request, the government had kept files on them when they worked for the Center for Constitutional Rights.
The right to dissent, said Gilbert, runs into problems when people become afraid to even go to a meeting. “Democracy gets threatened when people make lists like that.”
Platte and Gilbert met around 1976 when both were teaching in neighboring parishes in the Saginaw, Mich., diocese. Platte had been involved in the first meeting of Call to Action, a group that was initiated by the U.S. bishops but evolved into an independent Catholic reform organization.
Platte was on the Saginaw city council at the time and she and Gilbert began advocating and teaching in parishes around a number of social justice issues.
They worked, for instance, on part of the underground railroad for Latin American refugees, and they worked with a group of suburban women to keep a junior Reserved Officer Training Corps program from being established at a local high school.
In 1983, they decided to focus their efforts on opposing nuclear weapons. They worked on a ballot proposal that passed in November of that year prohibiting the placement of nuclear weapons on Michigan soil. In April of the following year, the first Cruise missiles were brought to an air base in Michigan. They continued for the next 12 years to live and protest and organize at several bases in the state that eventually were closed, though no one is claiming it was because of their actions.
In 1995 they moved to the East Coast and took up residence, with their order’s blessing, at Jonah House, a community of pacifists and non-violent activists founded by the late Philip Berrigan and his wife, Elizabeth McAlister.
(Tom Roberts in NCR editor at large. His e-mail address is troberts@ncronline.org.)
