are very lucky to have with us live in the studios this morning susan crane and linda greenwald susan crane is we have joined a house in baltimore maryland and lynn greenwald is with the ground zero center for nonviolent action and they were both arrested for an act of nonviolent civil disobedience at the bangor triton nuclear submarine base in kitsap county on november second disarm now try to plow shares action and when we talk about that over the next half hour susan and lynn i want to thank you both very much for coming to spend time with us this morning thank you for having us start out and tell us how did you get involved in the issue of nuclear weapons and  why this particular action that you took part in on november second well you know as you grow up you learn about hiroshima and you learn about  pictures of what happened there and i couldn't get those pictures out of my mind the pictures of people burnt the pictures of shadows where there was a person and then the bomb hit and there was no person where people were vapor the pictures of people with their skin falling off them and i know that the weapons we have now are much stronger much but there's more blast and more radiation than hiroshima for example the warheads that are at naval kid naval base kits bangor some of them have seven times the blast and heat and radiation of hiroshima and some of them have thirty two times that so for me i can't i can't forget that you know that's twenty miles from where we are here in seattle and and that just stays in my mind and i feel that morally and legally i have to say no to that i got involved with the anti nuclear movement in the mid seventy's i was it was following the vietnam war protests and i was at an action at the pentagon and saw two people pour ashes in the middle of the pentagon at that time we had access to and i had this really strong visceral reaction of this is truth this is what i must do with my life i have to show that nuclear weapons are wrong and in that process  process during that preparation time i saw films that were recently released about the atomic bombings and testings that happened about the fire storming in tokyo which was in a nuclear weapon but just as incredibly horrible shortly after i went to new york city to a united nations and met survivors of the bombings and like susan was just horrified at what the human cost was of dropping that bomb i moved to montana nineteen eighty and shortly afterwards found out about the nuclear trains traveling from amarillo texas to the tritone sub base and washington i was working at a shelter three months pregnant with my or a few months pregnant with my diet first daughter and had a really strong reaction about the weapons were actually sitting over night behind the shelter where i was working and living and shortly after came to ground zero to take part in the  ground zero community twenty six years ago right sir tell us more about the action that took place on november second so on november second which is all souls thing you know it's a special day when we remember all those who have gone before us and we were remembering the war dead people who have died in wars in the last hundred years and aren't at sea on the tridents and we went to and the perimeter fence and we cut through the fence and we walked north we walked along roads and through trails until we got to the weapons storage area we were on the base for about four hours we got to the second the first fence outside of swift pack at around sunrise that morning and cut through the first fence we all went after hanging a banner on the first fence similar well the banners said disarm now plow shares tried an illegal and them immoral we had about twenty feet between fences there were large sensors that i assume tripped off the marines security we got to the second fence which was different than the other fences we went through in that it had barbed wire around high tension barbed wire cut through the second fence and we got through that second fence and were face to face with bunkers storing  nuclear weapons at that time so i want to talk for a minute about what we brought with us we brought with us symbols we brought with us hammers household hammers that we had to begin a disarmament war anymore so we were we were saying that they in the in the scriptures is us that we have to begin the disarmament process and so it's very symbolic but we brought hammers to begin to hammer on the bunkers or hammer on the trident if we could and we also brought with us baby bottles that had our own blood in it and we were we wanted to show the results of the use of those weapons and that blood is spilled when those weapons are used and so we we put we sprinkled some of the blood on the roads as we came in i was thinking that at this site at this naval base there are rivers of blood that are starting there and we were showing that by sprinkling some of the blood on the roads that are used and we put a sprinkle blood on the fence also around swift pack and on some some some covers in the ground that we found it's with pac and also we brought sunflower seeds which which are symbols of hope for us that new growth will happen and the sunflower is the international symbol for disarmament for nuclear disarmament but we also had a letter for the base commander with us requesting that the disarmament process be again now and i had a photograph of a friend's granddaughter because the future of all of our children children around the world is implicated by not only the use of nuclear weapons and trident but the threat to use that which is a criminal action  we went there to uphold international law and geneva convention by serving as policeman sheriffs saying these weapons are gold their existence is a criminal act and we need to begin the disarmament process now so you're like citizen weapon inspectors to a degree yes and swift back perhaps you already mentioned this is the strategic weapons facility dash pacific it is is it a building is it a complex of buildings give us more of a description of what's with packages  area that has about eighty four bunkers in it and there might be eighty four lights i don't know there's a lot of lights there seems to be a bunker and a light huge light next to it and there are some guard towers and then it's all surrounded by this double fence we could see one side of the bunkers and they appeared to be the part that we could see were like little cottages looked like there was a little cottage and a light but we know that underground there that's where the weapons are held where the materials that that are used to make the weapons last all right and this particular action you began early on the morning of november second yes it was dark out yes three in the morning there was around two when we got inside the base in the first digit just inside the base you have to go over a fence is that correct we did have gone over a fence as it turned out we cut through the fence ok and then you were walking down the roads for took you four hours to get there is i right so yes  i have to imagine did you know where you were going did you have a map and well you anyone can go on google maps and see the roads that are in the base and that's what we did and within the base did you what was the basis response when you penetrated that second when you set off the the detectors and penetrated that second to fence we actually the marines were  there to greet us i guess they were coming when we got through the second fence and were standing there we had an opportunity to hold the banner and to put down our weapons to father down or him put down our hammers on the ground our weapons i'm sorry put down our   father beck's had some water and i performed an exorcism in that land and the marines came and i don't know if you want to talk about what happened then well first i want to say there were five of us that went in and one of the other people was steve kelly he's a jesuit priest from oakland he's been working with the catholic workers and sister in montgomery who's religious a sister of the sacred heart of jesus and she's from new york city and the other big from tacoma i'm sure many of your listeners know who he is he works has started that diploma catholic worker and has been there for decades all right and the response when they got in there were did they were they pretty forceful i would imagine and in the handling of you well first they watched us as lynn was saying because we had time to be there and kneel down and pray and and then they they moved us apart separated us eventually we found ourselves down on the ground and cuffed and hooded and and we stayed there for about four hours on the ground or did they take you somewhere else on the ground in swith pak ok and did you have any did you try to talk to them did you have any communications with them well i did try to talk to them and what i found out is that after i was hooded they you know i'm sure you've seen pictures of prisoners in guantanamo or afghanistan or kandahar a big room where they have hoods on their heads i never expected that here in this country and americans citizen would be hooded after they were hooded with these opaque sandbags covering those i guess i don't know what they were but we couldn't see out of them and it's a very interesting thing because the the marines that are holding guns on us all the time don't know if we're they don't know our if we are man or woman if we're older or younger or who we are because you can't tell when someone's face is entirely covered up and they yelled at us to be quiet they didn't want to us to talk at all so people tried to make statements about why we were there about the weapons  father bex was singing i remember that and conversations but we were told repeatedly to be quiet i got uncomfortable always trying to turn and was told reminded and someone in a very quiet voice would say stay on your stomach stay on your stomach and so finally we were removed from swift pack by being carried out by the marines through the fence openings that we made interesting so they didn't figure out through a gate now now we were still herded and cuffed and carried there were i understand some perth one person in our group who actually could see more and heard more of the conversations about this said that there were six marines carrying us out i remember asking where are you taking me and let me walk our walk you don't have to carry me they took us through both fences around sort of packed backwards hooded and we were kind of dropped on at least i was dropped on my stomach and then the base five people who participate in this were older people yes that would be so you have to say well our ages are from i guess sixty to eighty three so you know when i say is we're old enough to know that nuclear weapons are there you were old enough to know that nuclear weapons are a danger that it isn't right to have weapons and threaten to use them which the united states has not only is the only country whose use these nuclear weapons but we threat we've threatened to use them over the years almost every president has threatened to use them and we have we still say we'll use them first we haven't disavowed that and we claim the right to use a weapon that can exterminate all life in a city to me that's just so wrong you know my my faith teaches us we're supposed to love our enemies were supposed to love one another and we're supposed to find nonviolent ways to resolve differences and just the existence of these weapons is an affront to my fa every day we ask young people to sacrifice their lives in their lives or be on last day there in the military or as innocent victims in war and as and as an adult as a mother as a human being in this country i have the responsibility to do what i can dystopic nuclear weapons from ever being used and certainly capable of making that statement and what i felt to be the strongest way possible as we can't we can't afford to go on just talking about getting rid of nuclear weapons we have to begin the process now and we have to shift our priorities in this country to the funding the human needs that the real human needs of health care and housing and education and we need to start that now we need to turn things around so would it be fair to say that you believe what you were doing was waging peace sure i think we were we were trying to say let's disarm these weapons now and we're willing to to work to do that you know i was while we were talking here i was thinking about president obama and his talk in prague where he said that  declared america's commitment to seek peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons and you know i take that very seriously i think the people of prague took it seriously too they were very excited about that and i think the rest of the world does want a world without nuclear weapons and of course as we as this country continues to enhance them as livermore lab still designs the next generation of nuclear weapons other countries feel that in their own self defense they need to have nuclear weapons but i would hope we would take seriously the disarmament  process to two questions that i know people who wouldn't do agree with your methods would bring up one being did were you prepared to did you expect potentially harsh treatment  once you broke into the high security zone there was definitely a possibility and i was aware totally of what i was going into the address that violence is my goal and going on to the base gena house community started these faith and resistance gatherings and the first ones were in the late seventy's and it was just a time and we used to be able to go in the inside of the pentagon it was like a shopping mall so we would have our vigils and stuff actions inside the pentagon it was called the concourse and i had seen an action and people poured out in i actually had this experience of knowing that this is truth and this is what i had to do with my life so i wasn't i was in my twenty's so  i've had kind of a you know kind of a direct path and resisting nuclear weapons but the normal stuff of having kids and taking care of kids and and then of weaving in and then when iraq war started i started getting involved again with actions i mean i had been involved with the trains and then i ended up in a single parent so that was my priority i was working and taking care of my kids and then my kid two of my kids were in high school and one was in college when the iraq war started and that's when i started getting more involved again and it was still nuclear weapons as the primary focus but all the other injustices that are related and can lead to nuclear wars anyway and that got me into so the plow shares but i had been back east i was part of the atlantic life community when the first discussion of the first plowshare started and at that time i was more involved with issues around violence against women and we had a lot of the take back the night marches and things like that in the late seventy's in baltimore i was in baltimore and then i moved to hartford connecticut and i was still involved with the nuclear things but that was my main focus at the time so so anyway and then i ended up always to try to it was always involved kind of weaving in and out of my life in that the first time i heard about bob all bridge  resigning his job because of his conscience about the first strike capability of tried and i was gathering in washington d c and we were demonstrating at the pentagon and the department of energy at that time and then i moved up and was part of a small community connected to the lenox life community in hartford connecticut and we were  we took turns sponsoring or facilitating the gatherings and i went to facilitate one of the gatherings have met the person who became my husband and father of my children and he was from montana and i moved to montana and nineteen the end of one nine hundred eighty there were two hundred missile silos then montana at that time and it was the cold war was you know going hot and heavy and so our focus was mel mel storm maelstrom air force base in great falls montana and i was arrested on easter sunday we used to have a demonstration there and cross the line and that was the first time i was arrested in montana and then in november of nineteen eighty two i was arrested for climbing over a missile silo to prey on that that missile would never be used and that this time the missiles ward targeted towards soviet union at the time soviet union countries so i climbed over a fence i had a small group of supporters but we didn't take pictures or i and and i prayed and i was three months pregnant with my daughter i had planned this a long time before and by the time it worked out that i could do it i was awesome managing a homeless shelter in missoula montana by the time i could climb over the fence i was three months pregnant and that felt appropriate because the top of the missile was targeted towards families and i just felt really connected to prison i was given a six month sentence for trespass because i just climbed over the fence and i had to serve one month to that so i was in  jail and for months it was i was in great falls montana there were four women in my cell and three of us were pregnant it was like this camaraderie but then anyway through my incarceration jim douglas knew about me and had written and said do you know there's a train carrying nuclear warheads that goes through missoula montana and the railroad tracks are right behind our shelter where we had our homeless overnight homeless shelter and we had food in all kinds of things there law center so jim told us about that and we made a huge banner out of an old sheet that said silences be trailed the nuclear train comes through this town and we started  people the homeless people and people we connected with various peace groups in the university started vigil laying on the tracks and shortly afterward the train when it was coming through before our vigils would stop overnight in missoula and it was actually stopped and there was this whole thing of me being pregnant been in a shelter and this train that made me feel really violated and angry so anyway after we started vigil laying the trains rerouted itself and it went rather than going through missoula it went way into eastern washington and up through the endor indian reservation and over north montana to avoid ms below where all the hippies were wild whatever reason but anyway so after my daughter was  born it was i really wanted to be part of a community that was resisting nuclear weapons and i was attracted to the community out here because of the gandhian approach to look at that our violence within a s well as addressing trident and when my daughter kristi was three months old we came for a visit and ended up staying and the original house was here and we stayed about six weeks before we got a house in what was then the projects in paul's and we lived there and opened a real simple catholic worker called a manual house and got involved with  at that time the community that involved included three couples with children and clued in jim and shelly and their son thomas and three lay women and you know single women and and they actually had been part of religious orders at that time and then we started the tracks campaign was going strong and my husband and i started out taken turns being arrested he was arrested a missile motor train that was coming to bangor eighty five was the white train that came and twenty one of us were arrested in front of that train and we had a trial and kitsap county and were found no t guilty for for that action and at that time i was pregnant with my second daughter and so so my whole life my children's lives are all wrapped around  the try to resist anyway so in the back of my mind i always had the idea of maybe being involved with the plow shares section some time it's one of those things  love the monks here the peace walkers i'm sorry anyway the it was a love hate relationship with me because no way it was kind of scary to do anything that was related to a plow shares action i had already climbed over missile silo fences had use of deadly force authorized and in my mind the only deadly force was the missile what self and i was not authorizing that and so that was related to what i was doing and here  bangor a group of us started meeting discussing about the possibility of doing a plow shares action somewhere in the country my heart was right here with the tritone campaign and we ended up selecting this but it was definitely more of a consensus decision and then we spent a year going through this discernment process of you know what does that mean how do we do it what's the message we want to say and then our personal discernment which was probably more critical to be in the right framework to do something like this where you are risking your life i mean it's not a frivolous thing to to go into an armed military base and anyway the five of us committed to do in this section and on november second two thousand and nine on all sold today we cut through the fences and got to swift pack where the nuclear weapons are stored and i was telling someone earlier of i don't regret any of that it was the most deeply spiritual trees were leafless in november so you have these black sticks sticking in the ground this eerie light that turned night into day at this storage weapons area and it just cast a airy light and and then we just together and very silently knew what we were going to do we were going through the next fences there were two more fences  and susan and i tied one of our banners to the outside of this fence and then we went through the first fence nothing happened we  knew at least in my mind i knew something was going to happen soon because of these huge sensors in the ground we got to the next sense decided to cut through it and it had this out there was tension wire through had decided ahead of time that we would go first and hold the banner that explains why we were there and to be as peaceful as possible to go on to that area standing right next to the weapons storage and in my mind i've had always had a vivid image of this area because the photos that were taken after with the white downloading in these areas so the bunkers were there and and then my background is i'm a registered nurse and a social worker but my original work was in a merge into a room in baltimore and then i worked in the trauma unit so i worked a lot with horrible trauma and burns and i've always had this vivid image of you know this is the bomb this is what happened in hiroshima this is what could happen here and that's unacceptable and so to be on that spot and to be able to be totally at peace and prayerful was really meaningful to me and several months later when we had our trial i was also working i had quit my job and everything so there was this possibly this opening  to come a catholic worker connected with the become a catholic worker and so i took a early retirement and became a residential manager for women coming out of prison  before i went to prison that's what i was doing so anyway ended up spending six months in prison and as i told one of the prosecutors a  couple weeks ago i said it was great it was better than the job training for me because even though i've worked with women who have been in prison and families connected with addictions and mental illness  i got to be there firsthand and it's a whole different viewpoint and i value that six months opportunity sharon a different kind of women's community  and and to bring that into my working life today on the track and the train was coming right at us and then it went right to the left of us we started stand up and we said oh we're going to break the discipline so we said ten hundred originally and the desert originally met