'Anti-nuke nuns pray, won't pay'

[Guest guest]

Diane Carman: 'Anti-nuke nuns pray, won't pay'

 

April 05,2006

Denver Post

 

At the end of " Conviction, " the documentary about the

three Dominican sisters sent to federal prison for

their 2002 peace demonstration at a Weld County

nuclear missile site, a clip from President Reagan's

second inaugural address appears almost hauntingly.

 

" We seek the total elimination one day of nuclear

weapons from the face of the Earth, " the

then-president says.

 

His words stand in stark contrast to those of the Rev.

Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of

Evangelicals, who appears throughout the film calling

the women " terrorists. "

 

It's just one of the delicious ironies in the story of

Jackie Hudson, Carol Gilbert and Ardeth Platte that

premiered Sunday at Regis University. The sisters

attended the gala along with filmmakers Brenda Fox,

Mary Casper and Robin Koenigsberg, and more than 300

supporters. It was the first time the three Catholic

nuns have been together in Colorado since their

sentencing in July 2003.

 

The women also are scheduled to meet with their parole

officer to present their plan for an alternative to

paying the court-ordered $3,082 in restitution.

 

 

 

In lieu of payment to the government, they are

offering the combined 148 years of service they have

already devoted to the community; thousands of hours

of counseling, teaching and other services to the

prison system during their various periods of

incarceration; and more than $600,000 that they have

raised over the past year to support " life-giving "

services, including an inner-city literacy program in

St. Louis, soup kitchens across the country, homeless

shelters, battered women's shelters, construction of a

school in Africa, and relief to the victims of the

tsunami and Hurricane Katrina.

 

" We have told our probation officers that as a matter

of conscience we cannot pay the restitution, " not even

under the $25-a-month payment plan proposed by the

courts, Hudson said.

 

It's not happening. They will not send money to

support the war machine. No way.

 

They smile beatifically when they say that.

 

The women are immovable, rooted deep in their

convictions, unbowed, yet eager to embrace their

persecutors.

 

They say they pray every day for the judge, the

prosecutors, the prison guards, the president whose

policies they consider crimes against humanity, even

Haggard. And they thank heaven for the new documentary

about their work.

 

" I'm humbled, " said Gilbert. " I still think we're

ordinary people, common people. "

 

It's their message that is extraordinary, they say.

 

" I hope people will come to understand it, " said

Platte.

 

On the day when they cut the lock on the fence

surrounding the Minuteman III missile site, chanted,

prayed, spilled their blood on the ground and

symbolically turned weapons into plowshares by banging

small hammers on the concrete silo, it was not civil

disobedience like so many have assumed. " It was an act

of civil resistance, " Platte said.

 

" We resisted the crimes of the government. It was

symbolic nonviolent civil resistance.

 

" We should not have gone to prison at all. "

 

Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Brown, who also appears

in the film, disagrees. He says the women were charged

with felonies not so much because their crimes were

heinous, but to teach them a lesson.

 

That appears to have backfired.

 

With their elevated stature as international peace

activists - and film stars - Hudson, Gilbert and

Platte are newly energized.

 

" How many times have we seen in the history books the

power of nonviolent activism? " Platte said, recalling

Gandhi, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks

and others. " We will continue to hold the government

accountable. "

 

But how? Almost anything they do now could send them

back to prison.

 

" We don't use the word 'strategy,' " Gilbert said. " We

simply speak the truth. "

 

And with that, the three elderly ex-con peace

activists smiled benevolently.

 

Stay tuned.

 

Diane Carman can be reached at dcarman.

 

Source: The Denver Post

http://www.denverpost.com/carman/ci_3669475