We Choose Life!!!

Dear Friends,

Over the weekend of March 4th the Pacific Life Community (PLC) held its annual retreat in Menlo Park, California. Frida Berrigan delivered the keynote address. In the spirit of resistance the PLC Community held a vigil and nonviolent action at the Lockheed Martin plant in Sunnyvale. Among those arrested for trespassing were Disarm Now Plowshares members Susan Crane and Steve Kelly.  Lynne Greenwald and Anne Montgomery were there vigiling and witnessing to the action.

Larry Purcell of the PLC wrote an opinion piece that he submitted to the San Jose Mercury News.  It’s an indictment of Lockheed-Martin, builder of the Trident D-5 missile, and really poses a deeper underlying question: “Where is our treasure?”.  The newspaper declined to print the piece; told Larry that it was “too much anti Lockheed rather than anti nuke and it would entail a lot of fact checking and demand a response piece from Lockheed.”  Fact checking???  Here’s a fact that is irrefutable.  If we ever start launching those Lockheed-built D-5 missiles bristling with nuclear warheads the radiation concerns currently on people’s minds – and which are serious – as a result of the nuclear reactor crisis in Japan will pale in comparison.

War is not healthy for children and other living things…

Our dear Fr. Bix brought people together on December 28th, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, to remember not only the innocent children murdered long ago by Herod, but also the innocent children murdered today in war. People gathered together, vigiled and sang in front of the Tacoma Federal Courthouse, which is representative of our government that bears responsibility for the senseless slaughter of innocents and of the desecration of the very land intended to sustain life. The prophetic message that follows is from the leaflet handed out to those who gathered on the 28th:

Major threats to children and the next seven generations:

1. Nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.
2. Perpetual and unending war driven by an imperial claim to control Mother Earth’s resources.
3. Dehumanizing poverty, a consequence of a greed-driven global economy that is collapsing and causing untold suffering and death
4. Global climate crisis and ecological destruction: consequence of our addiction to consumer life-styles.