Longtime Anti-Nuclear Activists Face Prison, Again, After Breaking Into Naval Base

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Seven Catholic activists, known as the Kings Bay Plowshares, broke into a naval submarine base in Georgia on April 4, 2018.

Kings Bay Plowshares

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Kings Bay Plowshares

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The protestors poured bottles of their own blood on the naval base shield at Kings Bay.

Kings Bay Plowshares

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Kings Bay Plowshares

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Patrick O’Neill, 64, is a member of the Kings Bay Plowshares. He reports to prison in January for a 14-month sentence.

Emma Peaslee/NPR

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Patrick O’Neill, 64, is a member of the Kings Bay Plowshares. He reports to prison in January for a 14-month sentence.

Emma Peaslee/NPR

Martha Hennessey, 65, had already been to prison three times before beginning her sentence at a federal prison in Danbury, Conn. on December 14. She is the granddaughter of the journalist-turned-activist Dorothy Day, who founded the pacifist Catholic Worker Movement in the 1930s.

Rather than dwell on her own sentence, she drew attention to the mass incarceration of people who have committed minor offenses.

«I mean, there are people being thrown into prison for years for, you know, things that are not even crimes,» she said in an interview before reporting to prison.

Members of the Plowshares group prefer not to talk about the risks they might face in prison, but their families are worried.

«I’m afraid that my dad might die in prison,» said Maura O’Neill, 26, one of O’Neill’s eight children. «I worry that he might contract COVID and get really sick, and it feels like a real possibility.»

• nuclear protests
• nuclear weapons
• Prison
• Catholics