How the Obama Administration Charged 3 Pacifists with Violent Acts of Sabotage

[The Straight Story]

Three peace activists, including an elderly Roman Catholic nun, who trespassed onto a leading nuclear weapons facility now face decades behind bars after the Obama administration leveled one charge after another at them in the wake of the embarrassing episode.

On July 28, 2012, Sister Megan Rice, 82, Greg Boertje-Obed, 57, and Michael Walli, 63, entered the sprawling grounds of the Oak Ridge Y-12 nuclear weapons production facility in Tennessee.

The three activists managed to cut through not one, not two, not three, but four fences and reach the uranium enrichment facility on foot before one of the plant’s security guards, Kirk Garland, finally detected the unlawful entry and arrested them. Garland was subsequently fired. The government pays $1.2 billion for security at Oak Ridge every year.

...

A couple days after their apprehension, the three were arraigned in court and charged with federal trespassing, which is a misdemeanor that carries a penalty of up to one year in jail.

...

In the months after the incident, the Obama administration did do something—deciding they elevated the charges against Rice and the others.

More charges were filed, and still more after that. The defendants went from facing upwards of a year in prison to six years, then 16 years, and finally 35 years. Eventually the Justice Department charged them with “aiding and abetting each other, with intent to injure, interfere with, and obstruct the national defense of the United States” and that they “did willfully injure, destroy and contaminate, and attempt to injure, destroy and contaminate national-defense premises, specifically, buildings and grounds of the Y-12 National Security Complex.”

http://www.allgov.com/news/controversies/how-the-obama-administration-charged-3-pacifists-with-violent-acts-of-sabotage-130519?news=850062

[NYC_SKP]

1. And they remain in jail until sometime in September.

Tragic.

http://www.mintpressnews.com/nun-vietnam-vet-charged-with-terrorism-by-us-govt-for-peaceful-protest/

[Buzz Clik]

2. Let's just have everyone break into high security areas with no repercussions, right?

If you want to commit acts of civil disobedience, expect to pay consequences. Sometimes severe consequences.

[Ms. Toad]

3. The acts they committed were trespass and graffiti

How many crimes of trespass and graffiti are charged as felonies with potentially 35 year sentences? The article is worth reading.

People who commit actions of conscientious objection do expect to live with the consequences. But they also expect the consequences to correspond to the actions they took. The posted signs warned that trespass was a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine or up to a year in jail.

What happened here was that they trespassed, two sets of alarms (at least one of which the government had known was not functioning for months) failed to go off. So the three wound up sitting for hours singing peaceful songs and praying, waiting to be arrested. Had they been intent on sabotage (the crime of which they were convicted) they could have carried it out multiple times over. This reality embarrassed the government - which responded by ramping up the crimes with which they were charged repeatedly - Like a parent who beats a child because the child exposes the dirty little (true) family secrets.

There is a vast difference between believing strongly enough that something is morally wrong - and willingly accepting the consequences commensurate with the acts taken - and being turned into an example which is intended to chill the exercise of further free speech because your speech (inadvertently) embarrassed the government. This isn't about whether the trio remains willing to accept the consequences which stem from their actions. I have seen nothing indicating they are not. It is about how we expect our government to respond to the peaceful exercise of conscientious objection.