Trials of Nonviolence

On the night of Apr. 4, 2018, seven Catholics successfully broke onto Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay in St. Marys, Georgia — the east coast home to U.S. nuclear armed submarines — undetected by base security. In this episode, host Jesse Remedios explores these questions: Who are they? What drove them to choose Kings Bay? How did they pull this off? 

When seven Catholics broke onto a naval submarine base to protest nuclear weapons, they did so on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. They then hung banners with King's image and read quotes from his speeches. What does Martin Luther King, Jr. have to do with nuclear weapons? A lot, according to the Kings Bay Plowshares 7.

In some ways, breaking onto a nuclear submarine base was just the beginning of their witness. After their arrest, the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 faced another formidable challenge: the United States justice system. In this third and final episode, we hear the Plowshares activists explain why trial and sacrifice have always been essential to their movement. For one activist, sacrifice included spending her 79th birthday in a jail cell.