Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 13. August 2008 / Timeline August 13, 2008
Version 3.512. August 2008, 14. August 2008
08/13/2008
Closed navy "nuclear war trigger" still casting long
shadow
By John LaForge, Nukewatch
TUNNEL CITY, Wisconsin -- The long history of anti-nuclear protests
in Wisconsin caught up yesterday with Kathy Kelly, a founder of
Voices for Creative Nonviolence in Chicago, when a group of 13
peace activists walked onto the grounds of Ft. McCoy, the National
Guard base near here, calling for an end to the U.S. occupation of
Iraq.
Ft. McCoy is one of the country's largest Guard bases and is a
central training and deployment hub for occupation troops being
shipped into Iraq and Afghanistan.
Of the 13 peace activists that were charged and ticketed with
trespass, only Ms. Kelly was kept in the Monroe County jail in
Sparta, because of an outstanding warrant. Kelly, who has twice
been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, was being held on a 1999
warrant from Ashland County, Wisconsin. The warrant stems from a
protest against the now-closed submarine transmitter Project E.L.F.
near Clam Lake.
The Extremely Low Frequency (E.L.F.) transmitter was the object of
nuclear weapons protests from 1968 until it closed in 2004. Critics
called it a "nuclear war trigger" because of its function in
signaling a potential first-strike with submarine-launched
ballistic missiles.
The Ashland County Sheriff's Dept. did not return calls inquiring
ab out whether the county would go to the expense of sending
deputies 237 miles to Sparta to execute the nine-year-old
warrant.
A January 17, 1999 Martin Luther King Day demonstration at Project
E.L.F. resulted in trespass fines being issued to 15 people. Kelly
refused to pay her $756.00 fine and Ashland County Circuit Court
Judge Robert Eaton issued the warrant which is still in effect.
After 1984, when a federal court decision
that shut-down Project E.L.F. over environmental concerns was
reversed by a federal appeals court, the site was inundated with
civil disobedience. Over 44 demonstrations, resulting in more than
660 arrests, took place at the secluded site between 1984 and 2004.
On five different occasions disarmament activists temporarily shut
down the transmitter, using hand saws to cut utility poles that
suspended the antenna. Long prison and jail terms were served by
the "Swords into Plowshares" activists as well as by war
resisters who refused to pay trespass fines.
Non-payment of fines or war taxes in civil disobedience campaigns
is an long-standing American tradition beginning with Henry
David Thoreau, whose famous essay "Resistance to Civil
Government" or "Civil Disobedience," lambasted the
hypocrisy of supporting with taxes a war that one opposes in
principle.
The August 10 action at Ft. McCoy was part of the Witness
Against War campaign, a 450-mile walk from Chicago to Saint
Paul to end the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Organized by Voices for
Nonviolence, the walk began on July 12 and will arrive in Saint
Paul on August 30 for the Republican National Convention. (Witness
Against War can be contacted at 312-286-8535, or 773-391-0040.)
The walkers chose a historic day to start their seven-week-long
trek. Thoreau was born in 1817 -- on July 12.
 |
 |