Dorothy Day and the Deep Roots of Resistance

"They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation. Neither shall they learn war any more." Isaiah 2:4

Over a year ago, on April 28th 2015, I found myself standing before the Isaiah Wall, directly across the street from the United Nations building. It was 8:30 AM, and across the street delegates to the NPT Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference were entering the building as it began its second day.

April 28, 2015 at the Isaiah Wall

Police vans were pulling up and and New York's finest were making preparations for the expected onslaught of nuclear abolitionists who would soon arrive for the 9:30 vigil here and the subsequent nonviolent direct action at the US Mission to the United Nations just down the block.

The sun was shining and the tree in front of the Isaiah Wall was bursting with the beauty of Spring. In an instant all this could disappear in a blinding flash and, quite ironically, Isaiah's words just might remain while every living thing around it would be vaporized or incinerated, the shadows created from their ash etched into the stone surface.

The letters etched into the stone of the wall are a permanent reminder of the words of the prophet Isaiah who, like most prophets, have been ignored through the centuries by leaders of so many nations and those who follow them blindly into the endless madness of war.

Civil Defense sign above the Isaiah Wall

Yet many people have resisted and called humanity to something better. As I walked up the steps circling up by the wall I saw, at the top of the stairs, an icon of the Cold War - the days of duck and cover, of bomb shelters and mutually Assured Destruction. It was a faded, rusting fallout shelter sign over a nondescript door.

It was a stark reminder of my childhood, when students at my elementary school would walk from the school roughly a mile or two to the nearest official fallout shelter during the many Civil Defense drills held in those days.

It was also a reminder of Dorothy Day and other resisters who, during the Cold War, refused to enter the fallout shelters in New York during the drills, and were arrested for doing so. As today, the actions of Day and her co-conspirators were part of a small but significant witness against the nuclear arms race.

Dorothy Day (far right) and others seated on a park bench at Washington Square Park, New York City, on July 20, 1956, in protest of the mandatory "Operation Alert" civil defense drill. Police subsequently arrested them. (photo credit: Robert Lax)

At one of those early civil defense protests, the resisters shared a leaflet that read:

We will not obey this order to pretend, to evacuate, to hide. In view of the certain knowledge the administration of this country has that there is no defense in atomic warfare, we know this drill to be an act in a cold war to instill fear, to prepare the collective mind for war. (from a 1955 protest leaflet)

In much the same spirit participants in the more recent (April 28, 2015) action engaged in active resistance to the nuclear weapons policies of the US, and in the spirit of Dorothy Day and so many others, blocked the entrances to the US Mission to the United Nations, risking arrest for their actions. The name of the action was "SHADOWS AND ASHES: Direct Action for Nuclear Disarmament."

Resisters blocking the entrance to the US Mission to the United Nations on April 28, 2015 shortly before they were arrested.

Indeed, as in Day's time, all that would be left after a nuclear war today are shadows and ashes, and so we continue to resist the forces of madness with Isaiah's words etched on our hearts. If we keep on in this wonderful, long tradition long enough, perhaps one day the words of Isaiah will ring like a clarion call and we will truly beat our swords into plowshares and make war no more.

Declaring Our Independence From Nuclear Weapons

FOR A NATION TO BE, in the truest sense, patriotic, its citizens must love their land with a knowing, intelligent, sustaining, and protective love. They must not, for any price, destroy its health, its beauty, or its productivity. And they must not allow their patriotism to be degraded to a mere loyalty to symbols or any present set of officials. (Wendell Berry: from A Citizen's Response to the National Security Strategy of the United States of America).

At the end of that same essay Berry says that "If we are serious about peace, then we must work for it as ardently, seriously, continuously, carefully, and bravely as we now prepare for war."

When it comes to nuclear weapons, Berry's words ring particularly true. We have seen time and time again that our government has no real intention of honoring its commitments to work toward global disarmament under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The lofty rhetoric of President Obama's famous 2009 Prague speech has long since faded away.

It is clear that the only thing that will convince our elected officials to fulfill their legal (and moral) obligations to abolish nuclear weapons is a massive citizen-led movement bringing pressure to bear on every member of Congress and the President.

This movement will require every method of conventional and unconventional (nonviolent) strategies and tactics, including nonviolent civil resistance.

On July 5, 2010, during a large gathering of anti-nuclear activists outside the Y-12 Nuclear Weapons Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, 13 resisters walked onto the facility, each one carrying a document declaring independence for nuclear weapons at Y-12.

Here is the final version of the document carried into the Y-12 Complex by the 13 nuclear resisters on this day in 2010. May we all declare our independence from nuclear weapons, and may we do the hard work to abolish these horrific and omnicidal weapons.

Declaration of Independence from Nuclear Weapons at Y-12

The Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 indicted a government that engaged in barbaric conduct contrary to the laws of Humanity that included "works of death, destruction and tyranny unparalleled in the most barbaric ages" until the Age of Now!

Current Law requires an end to all planning, preparation, production, threat, or use of nuclear weapons and adherence to the fundamental rules and principles of Humanitarian Law.

The cardinal rules and principles of humanitarian law require that civilians never be the object of attack and prohibit weapons that are incapable of distinguishing between civilians and military targets.

The International Court of Justice found that the destructive power of nuclear weapons cannot be contained in either space or time, and nuclear weapons have the potential to destroy all civilization and the entire ecosystem of the planet.

All W-76 and W-76-1 thermonuclear secondaries produced at Y-12 are designed and intended to unleash 100 KT of uncontrollable and indiscriminate heat, blast and radiation, six times more than the Hiroshima Bomb. Because any threat or use of these weapons is a crime against peace, war crime or crime against humanity any complicity in planning or preparation for threat or use is similarly unlawful.

Under principals of democracy we exercise the right of every citizen of this republic and this planet to peacefully resist the nuclear threat; attacking as it does every core concept of human rights.

We act to exercise our basic rights to life and freedom from violence and we exercise our duty to protect children and future generations.

We act to ensure that our government fulfills its promise and responsibilities to unequivocally pursue and achieve nuclear disarmament in good faith.

We call on this government to end the use of our tax dollars to wage permanent war and demand clean up all chemical and radioactive contamination.

July 4, 2010