5 Catholic Workers Arrested for Blocking Access to Nuclear Sub Facility
Five Catholic Workers were arrested on Monday, March 4th, while blocking access to the General Dynamics Electric Boat facility in New London, Connecticut. The engineering facility is involved in designing a new class of submarines equipped with nuclear weapons. This article is slightly adapted from a press statement released by Scott Schaeffer-Duffy of Sts. Francis and Therese Catholic Worker House, Worcester, Massachusetts.
On Monday, March 4—the 55th anniversary of the first public meeting of the Union of Concerned Scientists— Catholic Workers from five communities joined other activists protesting outside General Dynamics Electric Boat engineering building in New London, Connecticut, where 12 Columbia-class nuclear submarines are being designed and built to replace 14 Ohio-class nuclear submarines.
The $114.1 billion project is part of a larger $1.5 trillion, 30-year plan to upgrade the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal. The Columbia-class nuclear submarines will each carry 16 Trident II nuclear missiles; each of those missiles will be capable of carrying either eight larger nuclear warheads or 14 smaller nuclear warheads, each of which has an explosive yield of 450 kilotons or 100 kilotons. By comparison, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, yielded 15 kilotons of explosive power. Altogether, the completed fleet will carry the equivalent destructive power of more than 46,000 Hiroshima-sized nuclear explosions—enough to annihilate life on Earth.
The anti-nuclear activists brought 27 life-size images of Robert Oppenheimer mounted on wooden frames with banners saying: “DON’T BE A ‘DESTROYER OF WORLDS’ STOP THE COLUMBIA SUB,” to block the main entrance to the weapons plant.
The demonstrators hoped to bring attention to a new nuclear arms race which is now heating up between the nuclear superpowers in violation of international arms control treaties. They also wanted to protest the fact that an Ohio-class nuclear submarine, built at the Electric Boat facility, has been deployed in the Mediterranean Sea to enforce Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The group distributed leaflets explaining their action. The leaflet read in part: “We ask the scientists and engineers at Electric Boat who, according to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and (the) Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, are designing illegal weapons, to consider if they can live with the effects of what they are making….”
“Especially now that the movie Oppenheimer is up for 13 Academy Awards this weekend,” Scott Schaeffer-Duffy (Sts. Francis and Therese Catholic Worker, Worcester, Massachusetts) said, “we want to remind the scientists and engineers of Electric Boat not to repeat the nuclear sins that Oppenheimer regretted for the rest of his life.”
Jackie Allen, a resident of New London, said, “We come here in the spirit of the 1943 anti-war and anti-Nazi German activist movement called the White Rose to say ‘no’ to the evil conducted by our government.”
The five arrested for criminal mischief and trespass were:
- Jackie Allen of Hartford Catholic Worker (Hartford, Connecticut);
- Ellen Grady of Ithaca Catholic Worker (Ithaca, New York);
- Frank Kartheiser of Mustard Seed Catholic Worker (Worcester, Massachusetts);
- Mark Scibilia-Carver of Ithaca Catholic Worker (Trumansburg, New York);
- Scott Schaeffer-Duffy of Saints Francis & Thérèse Catholic Worker (Worcester, Massachusetts).
All five were released until their arraignment on March 15th at New London Superior Court. Outside the police station, Scott and Ellen both said that police officers expressed sympathy and support for the demonstration.
“We are spending too much on weapons and war when homelessness and other human needs beg attention,” one officer told Scott Schaeffer-Duffy. Jackie emphasized that the five arrested prayed for disarmament while standing behind the Oppeneimner cut-outs blocking the entrance to Electric Boat.
Separately, Claire Schaeffer-Duffy said that the protest was inspired by Peace Camp Volkel, a weeklong peace camp at Volkel Air Base in the Netherlands coordinated by the Amsterdam Catholic Worker community.
Catholic Workers plan to gather in Kansas City, Missouri, this April to protest at the Kansas City National Security Campus (KCNSC), whose 7,000 employees produce more than 80% of U.S. nuclear weapons’ non-nuclear components.
Cover photo: Dave Maher, Frida Berrigan, Bill Hartman, and Claire Schaeffer-Duffy. (via Scott Schaeffer-Duffy)
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