Kathy Kelly, U.S. Anti-War Activist/Visitor to Ireland, Jailed in U.S. on 450 Mile Peace Walk

international | anti-war / imperialism | press release

Wednesday August 13, 2008 09:37

by Nukewtach

Closed Navy "Nuclear War Trigger" Still Casting Long Shadow

Kathy Kelly founder of the sanctions busting group "Voices in the Wilderness" has been lifted on an old warrant during the 450 mile peace walk from her hometown of Chicago to St. Paul site of the forthcoming Republican Convention (where John McCain will be nominated as the party's Presidential candidate for November's U.S. Presidential elections).

Kathy Kelly was a regular visitor to sanctions strangled Iraq and present in Baghdad during the U.S. "Shock & Awe" campaign 03. She had spoken at Afri's 03 Brigid Festival in Kildare en route to Baghdad and gave the PItstop Ploughshares photos of Iraq victims which were taken into the Shannon Airport hangar during their disarmament action the following weekend. Kathy returned to Dublin for the 3 Pitstop trials to testify as a witness and address public meetings.

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
about 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.

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