Court Report on Tuesday, October 25th hearings in Kitsap County District Court prepared by Mary Gleysteen
This was one of the most amazing hearings yet before Judge Pro Tem Susan Caulkins.
Two of those who risked arrest at the Bangor Trident base Main Gate on August 8th during Ground Zero Center’s vigil and nonviolent direct action appearing in Kitsap County District Court.
The judge said, “This is a ticket I don’t see everyday. I am dismissing it because there is no officer’s report.” Delaney asked if the judge wanted to hear her testimony and the judge asked if she wanted to risk the fine just for the judge’s entertainment.
At the conclusion of Delaney’s faith-based testimony the judge said, “ I respect your exercise of the right of free speech and applaud your willingness to come tell us. The matter is dismissed.”
Just before Murray spoke, a young woman in uniform entered the courtroom and took a seat behind us. She looked visibly stricken at the conclusion of the testimony and thanked Murray. The mother of another defendant was also visibly moved.
The judge said, “THANK YOU FOR COMING, GO FORTH AND HAVE A GREAT DAY.”
We also took a picture of the flags at a local wine bar which match the flash mob flags and t-shirts from the August 8th vigil at Bangor.
Banner Photo Note: Photo by Mary Gleysteen; Elizabeth Murray (left) and Susan Delaney (right).
You can read the defendants’ written testimonies (as presented to the judge) below.
ELIZABETH MURRAY’S TESTIMONY:
Good afternoon, Your Honor
My name is Elizabeth Murray. I spent 27 years in the CIA as a political and media analyst, and was Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East in the National Intelligence Council. I have chosen peace work as the most meaningful way to spend my remaining years.
I would like to acknowledge the presence of three fellow Ground Zero colleagues in the courtroom today. Thank you for your support and solidarity.
So as I stand before you, Judge Caulkins, we face a time of unprecedented nuclear tension between the United States and Russia. Our friends and neighbors at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor are no doubt in a state of high alert after Russian officials yesterday announced they had evidence that Ukraine has completed a dirty nuclear bomb which could be used in a false-flag operation — something that could potentially trigger World War III.
None of this, Your Honor, is speculation or hyperbole, it is where we are at right now at this moment in time. Please allow me to quote excerpts from a 1961 speech by our former President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy:
”In the thermonuclear age, any misjudgment on either side about the intentions of the other could rain more devastation in several hours than has been wrought in all the wars of humanity.” (Report to the American People on the Berlin Crisis, July 25, 1961)
And at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy showed courage in daring to speak of peace in his Report to the American People on the Soviet Arms Buildup in Cuba, October 22, 1962:
“I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all the allied air forces in the Second World War. It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn.”(End quote.)
With Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor a likely target in any nuclear confrontation with Russia, members of our community here in Kitsap County want know what they can do to stop this dangerous game of brinksmanship and say ‘no’ to war. And that is where we at the Ground Zero Center come in.
For nearly 50 years the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action has sought the reduction and destruction of nuclear weapons. With the UN’s adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in 2017, that goal is no longer just a dream–it is a reachable destination and a practical matter of life or death. Nuclear weapons are illegal and nuclear states must disarm. The risks inherent in nuclear disarmament pale in comparison with the risks inherent in an all-out nuclear war. As all of us here know, such a war would yield no winners. We all stand to lose.
So turning back to the matter before the Court today, sometimes an injured party has to step into the roadway to draw attention to a grievous moral harm, Your Honor. Sometimes a higher moral law outweighs what is, under the circumstances, a lesser law.
We at Ground Zero believe that no change can occur in our country’s present first-strike nuclear policy without first drawing the public’s attention to a dire situation that righly should provoke profound alarm in all of us.
Your Honor, I have done nothing less than stand against the criminal existence of nuclear weapons and the ever-present threat of their use against not only our adversaries, but anyone and anything within their range – whether they be mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, our ecosystems on land and at sea, or perhaps even just a tiny, newly hatched baby bird.
In closing, I would like to recall the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian executed by the Gestapo for taking a stand against Hitler and fascism:
“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil.
God will not hold us guiltless.
Not to speak is to speak.
Not to act is to act.”
Thank you, Your Honor.
SUSAN DELANEY’S TESTIMONY:
I am here to give testimony as to my reasons for the infraction of blocking the road at the entrance to the Bangor submarine base on August 8, 2022.
I am a practicing Catholic who takes Pope Francis seriously when he says that the manufacture, possession and of course, use of nuclear weapons is immoral and sinful.
The Archbishop of Seattle, Paul Etienne, has directed Catholics in our area to take immediate action to avert nuclear disaster.
Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe says we must start a public conversation to find a new path toward nuclear disarmament before it is too late.
These leaders are all correct. Nuclear weapons are immoral and we need a conversation and a new path now. This requires making people aware of the dangers that we all face. Raising local awareness has been my motivation for organizing and participating in the peaceful, non-violent dancing-musical blockade at the entrance to Bangor. There has been no formal news coverage of our actions at the Bangor gate for years and so we are now filming ourselves and posting our actions on-line.
Your honor, I invite you to view our dance video by checking out the Ground Zero website and to consider our musical peace work as one small step to get people talking about this critical issue.
Thank you for your consideration.
Susan DeLaney
Ground Zero Activist
