Category Plowshares
The Valve Turners, the Plowshares and other protesters
I wanted to share some news about protest with you that was a bit less… gruesome than the recent protest in Prospect Park. These are the Valve Turners, who’ve shut off oil pipelines and raised havoc with the companies pumping ‘unconventional oil’ (derived from the planet-wrecking practices of refining bitumen from shale and tar-sands). One […]
Flirting with nuclear disaster: a play excerpt
This is me NOT at Hiroshima. A recent Clown setup, taken by Owen Long. I have come to the realization over the past few weeks that the Masters of War are flirting with mushroom clouds again. Even though we’re unleashing routine mayhem on the poorest people of the Middle East, we have a president who […]
Hiroshima, 72 years ago today
This is an excerpt from my play A CLOWN, A HAMMER, A BOMB, AND GOD. It’s based on a true story/ A CLOWN, A HAMMER, A BOMB, AND GOD is about a pacifist priest named Carl Kabat who disarmed a Minuteman III missile on Good Friday 1994 (which also fell on April Fool’s Day that year) while wearing […]
The 20th anniversary of my Peace Play
The latest incarnation of ‘Father Ben, upper left; Ben Roberts as Father Ben in the Netherlands, 1999; The real thing, Father Carl Kabat, pictured prior to his breaking into another nuclear facility, mid 2000’s. Tempus Fugit. The clock goes around and I have reached a sort of milestone. 20 years ago next week, my play […]
Daniel Berrigan, Presente!
Father Daniel Berrigan, the Jesuit priest/activist/poet/playwright/convict, passed away yesterday at age 94. I had met him several times (and had his support of my own projects) over his lifetime. I felt a real loss here, though I haven’t seen him in ages. Thanks to my friend Schuyler Rhodes, I had the pleasure of having dinner […]
Father Carl takes on the empire again
While I was doing my fun little play about Father Carl Kabat’s Good Friday 1994 action yesterday (Saturday August 8) at Tompkins Square Park, the real Carl Kabat was getting himself arrested. Jane Stoever, a member of Peaceworks Kansas City writing for the Nuclear Resister newsletter, relates the story: On August 9, at about 7 a.m., […]
The clown play at Tompkins Square Park–August 8
Unless things change drastically, I will be performing my play A CLOWN, A HAMMER, A BOMB, AND GOD at Tompkins Square Park in NYC on August 8 at 1 PM. This is part of a War Resisters League commemoration of the 70th Anniversary of the dropping of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A CLOWN, A […]
Appeal filed for Transform Now Plowshares seeks reversal of convictions
Originally posted on Transform Now Plowshares:
Two years after Megan Rice, Greg Boertje-Obed and Michael Walli entered the Y12 Nuclear Weapons Complex in Oak Ridge, TN to issue an indictment against the continuing production of nuclear weapons components there and to oppose plans for a multi-billion dollar Uranium Processing Facility which would produce thermonuclear cores…
Father Carl Kabat celebrates Fourth of July
How did you spend your Fourth of July? Father Carl Kabat, an 80 year old priest who has spent some 17 years in prison for protesting against war and weapons, spent the Fourth of July spattering red paint across a sign at a Kansas City plant just opened. He is spending this weekend in jail as […]
A 20th anniversary for nuclear weapons protest
Like many of you, I have been distracted by (code for ‘taking extra Klonopin‘ over) the heightening tensions between the US and Russia over the Ukraine. There seems to be little agreement about who the guilty parties are in terms of what’s going on. True, the Russians have responded with military force, but there appears […]
The Brooklyn Culture Jam 