Hier onder
is ‘n berig oor ‘n Amerikaans vredesaktivis van 82 jaar. (Kyk net die
ouderdomme van haar mede-beskuldigdes en sien hoeveel energie kan daar in
ouderdom wees as ‘n mens se hart aan ‘n saak uitverkoop is).
Die NYT vertel vanoggend in 'n artikel van
die vreeslose non ‘n paar merkwaardige dinge.
Maar in die berig sien ‘n mens
ook ‘n boeiende nadraai van die Bybelse teks in Jesaja 2:4 – daardie pragtige
gedeelte wat in poëtiese taal, gelaai met metafore, en met treffende parallelle
vertel van tye sonder geweld:
Daar kom ‘n
tyd dat die berg waarop die huis van die Here is, ‘n blywende plek sal hê
bokant die bergtoppe en sal uitstaan bo die heuwels. Al die nasies sal daarheen
stroom, baie volke sal daarnatoe gaan en sê: Kom, laat ons optrek na die berg
van die Here toe, na die huis van God van Jakob sodat Hy ons sy wil kan leer,
en ons daarvolgens kan lewe’, want uit Sion kom die openbaring, uit Jerusalem
die woord van die Here.’Hy sal oordeel tussen die nasies, regspreek oor baie
volke. Hy sal van hulle swaarde ploegskare smee en van hulle spiese snoeiskêre.
Die een nasie sal nie meer die swaard teen die ander opneem nie, en hulle sal
nie meer leer om oorlog te maak nie.”
Spiese in
snoeiskêre! Swaarde in ploegskare. Hoe aangrypend is dit dat die Bybel veral en
in die eerste plek aan die goeie tyd, die tyd van die drome, die tyd van God se
toekoms dink as ‘n tyd waarin mense alles wat dodelik is uit die weg ruim en
aanvaar dat hulle saam met mekaar in God se skepping kan deel. Sommige mense
herinner ons dat geloof beteken dat ons God se drome vir ons skepping ons eie
drome moet maak. Dan gebeur die onvermydelike: niks is te swaar of te kosbaar
om alles in te sit dat daardie drome nou reeds werklikheid word nie.
Hier is die
berig:
She has
been arrested 40 or 50 times for acts of civil disobedience and once served six
months in prison. In the Nevada desert, she and other peace activists knelt
down to block a truck rumbling across the government’s nuclear test site,
prompting the authorities to take her into custody. Sister Rice is one of three
people arrested in a break-in at a the Oak Ridge nuclear reservation.
She gained
so much attention that the Energy Department, which maintains the nation’s
nuclear arsenal, helped pay for an oral history in which she described her
upbringing and the development of her antinuclear views.
Now, Sister
Megan Rice, 82, a Roman Catholic nun of the Society
of the Holy Child Jesus, and two male accomplices have carried out what nuclear
experts call the biggest security breach in the history of the nation’s atomic
complex, making their way to the inner sanctum of the site where the United
States keeps crucial nuclear bomb parts and fuel.
“Deadly
force is authorized,” signs there read. “Halt!” Images of skulls
emphasize the lethal danger.
With
flashlights and bolt cutters, the three pacifists defied barbed wire as well as armed
guards, video cameras and motion sensors at the Oak Ridge nuclear reservation
in Tennessee early on July 28, a Saturday. They splashed blood on the Highly
Enriched Uranium Materials Facility — a new windowless, half-billion-dollar pant encircled by enormous guard towers — and
hung banners outside its walls.
“Swords
into plowshares,” read one, quoting the Book of Isaiah. “Spears into pruning
hooks.” The plant holds the nation’s main supply of highly enriched uranium,
enough for thousands of nuclear weapons.
The actions
of Sister Rice, a New York native who grew up on a prosperous block in
Morningside Heights, and her companions, ages 57 and 63, are a huge
embarrassment for President Obama. Since 2010, he has led a campaign to
eliminate or lock down nuclear materials as a way to fight atomic terrorism.
Now, the three — two of whom, including Sister Rice, are free and are awaiting
trial in October — have made nuclear theft seem only a little more challenging
than a romp in the Tennessee woods.
In
interviews this week, Sister Rice discussed her life — somewhat reluctantly at
times — and kept emphasizing what she called “the issue.”
“It’s the
criminality of this 70-year industry,” she said. “We spend more on nuclear arms
than on the departments of education, health, transportation, disaster relief
and a number of other government agencies that I can’t remember.”
Federal
prosecutors, needless to say, take a different view. “This is a matter of
national security,” William C. Killian, a United States attorney, told
reporters outside a Knoxville courtroom. “It is a significant case.”
Sister Rice
is no geopolitical strategist. But her bold acts and articulate fervor
highlight how the antinuclear movement has evolved since the end of the cold
war. They also illustrate the fierce independence of Catholic nuns, who met this week in St. Louis to decide how to
respond to a Vatican appraisal that cast them as rebellious dissenters.
“We’re free
as larks,” Sister Rice said of herself and her older religious friends. “We
have no responsibilities — no children, no grandchildren, no jobs.”
“So the lot
fell on us,” she said of fighting nuclear arms. “We can do it. But we all do
share the responsibility equally.”
In 1998,
she was arrested in a protest at the School of the Americas, an Army school at
Fort Benning, in Georgia. It taught generations of Latin American soldiers to
fight leftist insurgencies; some went on to commit human rights abuses. The
school has since been closed.
Sister Rice
served six months in federal prison. “It was a great eye-opener,” she said.
“When you’ve had a prison experience, it minimizes your needs very much.”
Malaria and
typhoid fever began to impede her work in Africa and brought her back to the
United States permanently. Around 2005, her order gave her permission to join
the Nevada Desert Experience, an activist group based in Las Vegas that
organizes spiritual events near the atomic test site in support of nuclear
abolition.
“She’s the
kind of person who would risk her life to protect others,” Jim Haber, the
group’s coordinator, said in an interview.
Late last
month, Sister Rice set her sights on the Oak Ridge nuclear reservation, which covers more than 50 square
miles, including wooded hills. Her aim was to draw attention to its nuclear
work. After the break-in, the protesters released an "indictment" accusing the United States of crimes
against humanity.
On Thursday
in Knoxville, federal prosecutors shot back with an indictment of their own.
They charged Sister Rice, Michael R. Walli, 63, of Washington, and Gregory I.
Boertje-Obed, 57, of Duluth, Minn., with trespassing on government property (a
misdemeanor) as well as its destruction and depredation (both felonies). The
charges carry penalties of up to 16 years in prison and fines of up to
$600,000. All pleaded not guilty.
A trial in
Federal District Court in Knoxville is set for Oct. 10. If found guilty, the
three defendants might be allowed to serve their sentences for the various
charges concurrently, shortening their imprisonments to five years.
“She’s a
pretty sympathetic character,” Ralph Hutchison, coordinator of the Oak Ridge
Environmental Peace Alliance, said of the nun. “Sixteen years would be signing her
death warrant.”
Sister Rice
plans to leave Knoxville on Saturday for the Catholic Worker residence in
Washington and commute to the trial from there.
She called
her life privileged. “I’ve sort of fallen heir to it,” she told the interviewer
from the University of Nevada. “I’m grateful.”
Megan
Gillespie Rice was born in Manhattan on Jan. 31, 1930, the youngest of three
girls in a Catholic family. Her father was an obstetrician who taught at New
York University and treated patients at Bellevue Hospital. Her mother received
a doctorate from Columbia University in history, writing her dissertation on
Catholic views about slavery.
In the oral history, by the University of Nevada, Sister Rice
portrayed her mother as strongly in favor of interracial marriage. “I just
can’t wait,” she quoted her mother as saying, “until everybody in the world is
tan!”
Sister Rice
went to Catholic schools in Manhattan, became a nun at 18 and received degrees
in biology from Villanova and Boston College, where her studies included class
work at Harvard Medical School on how to use radioactive tracers. From 1962 to
2004, with occasional breaks, she served her order as a schoolteacher in
Nigeria and Ghana.
“We slept
in a classroom — no electricity, no water,” she said of her early days in rural
Africa.
While
visiting Manhattan in the early 1980s, she joined in antinuclear protests. She
began visiting the Nevada test site for demonstrations and prayer vigils. Her
mother accompanied her at times.
Around
1990, Sister Rice and other nuns set out on foot in the desert toward the
site’s operational headquarters to distribute antinuclear leaflets. But guards,
she recalled, “came up with their guns and treated us as though we were
terrible criminals.”
