Allan Appel photo
Colville, at left, at home in the Hill the week before trial.
The founder of the the Hill’s Amistad Catholic Worker House and six fellow peace activists have been found guilty of all felony and misdemeanor charges related to their breaking into a Georgia naval base last year and spraypainting peace signs and pouring symbolic blood onto nuke-carrying submarines.
On Oct. 24, the Hill’s Mark Colville along with Clare Grady, Martha Hennessy, Steve Kelly, Elizabeth McAlister, Patrick O’Neill, and Carmen Trotta, who are collectively known as the Kings Bay Plowshares 7, were convicted in the U.S. District Court of Brunswick County in Brunswick, Georgia of three felony charges (destruction of government property, depredation of government property, and conspiracy) and one misdemeanor charge (criminal trespass).
According to a press release put out by a group supporting the Kings Bay Plowshares 7, the seven peace activists face more than 20 years in prison and are scheduled to be sentenced in the next 60 to 90 days.
Click here to read an interview with Colville about his motivation for anti-nuke activism and the connection between his fighting for peace and his Catholic faith.
See below for the full press release, and read more about the group here.
BRUNSWICK, GA – More than 18 months after they snuck onto the site of one of the largest known collections of nuclear weaponry in the world, a jury found the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 guilty of all four of the charges brought against them.
The defendants face more than 20 years in prison for destruction and depredation of government property in excess of $1,000, trespassing, and conspiracy.
Late at night on April 4, 2018 Mark Colville, Clare Grady, Martha Hennessy, Fr. Steve Kelly, S.J., Elizabeth McAlister, Patrick O’Neill, and Carmen Trotta used a bolt cutter to enter a remote gate at Naval Base Kings Bay in St. Mary’s GA and walked two miles through swamp and brush. They then split into three groups and prayed, poured blood, spray painted messages against nuclear weapons, hammered on parts of a shrine to nuclear missiles, hung banners, and waited to be arrested.
“The Pentagon has many installations – and we just walked out of one of them,” Colville said outside the courthouse. “It’s a place where they weaponize the law. And they wield it mostly against the poor, the people who have all the red lined neighborhoods in this county know that very well.
“And once in a while the people who are privileged like us get a taste of it. And when we do we should hear the word guilty as a blessing on us because it gives us an opportunity to stand with people who hear guilty all the time every day.”
The seven expect to be sentenced in 60 to 90 days. Until then, six of them have been released under bond conditions each had prior to trial.
During the course of the trial, which began Monday morning, the defendants and their supporters had expressed pleasure with the unexpected amount of information they had been able to provide to the jury about their reasons for undertaking their protest. Federal Judge Lisa Godbey Wood had issued an order late last Friday night restricting any evidence or testimony having to do with a necessity defense, international law and treaties restricting nuclear weaponry, and religious and moral reasons.
“I really think that the verdict was, frankly, reactionary,” Trotta told supporters outside the courthouse. “They heard a lot. The judge allowed them to hear a lot. And it’s a little frightening that nuclear weapons could be hidden in plain sight. We have to understand that we are a remnant.… We remain a remnant of the spirit that I think was stronger in our country at other periods on time.
“But we all know which way the wind is blowing. There’s the Black Lives Matter movement. There’s the Extinction Rebellion. There’s the Me Too movement. There’s an activist community waiting just behind us.”