40th Anniversary ZOOM Celebration of the Plowshares 8

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2020 AT 7 PM – 9PM – 40th Anniversary ZOOM Celebration of the Plowshares 8, featuring members of the Plowshares 8 – Molly Rush of Pittsburgh, Dean Hammer, and John Schuchardt, from the House of Peace in Ipswich, Massachusetts, offering their reflections on the action.

September 9, 1980,  a group of anti-war activists who became known as the Plowshares Eight were arrested for breaking into the Re-Entry Division of the GE Aerospace in King of Prussia, PA, pouring blood on design documents and damaging  Mark 12A nuclear warhead casings for Minuteman III  long-range ballistic missiles, symbolically beating “swords into plowshares”. (Isaiah 2:4: “Then He will judge between the nations and arbitrate for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will no longer take up the sword against nation, nor train anymore for war. “). Nuclear weapons continue to threaten   the future of life on this planet. In 1993, GE Aerospace was sold to Martin Marietta which subsequently merged with Lockheed to become the world’s largest war profiteer and U.S.’s chief nuclear weapons contractor, including the site of the Plowshares 8 – Lockheed Martin in King of Prussia, PA. The Brandywine Peace Community organizes ongoing demonstrations and nonviolent resistance at Lockheed Martin, King of Prussia, PA

Participants in the action included: Dan and Phil Berrigan (both now deceased), Karl Cabot, Dean Hammer, Sr. Anne Montgomery and Elmer Maas (both now deceased), Molly Rush, and John Schuchardt. Theirs was the beginning of the Plowshares Movement: an anti-nuclear weapons and Christian pacifist movement that advocates active resistance to war. Since then, over 100 plowshares witnesses have been done around the world.  Updates will be shared on the progress of the Kings Bay 7 Plowshares witness. Information and suggestions for action will also be provided on the PNC Stop Banking the Bomb campaign based in Pittsburgh.

To get the link to join the ZOOM gathering on Sept. 9, contact Joyce Rothermel at rothermeljoyce@gmail.com . 

This ZOOM event is being hosted by the Stop Banking the Bomb Campaign.  A film, “In the King of Prussia” was made based on the trial of the Plowshares 8 starring Martin Sheen and the members of the Plowshares 8 and can be viewed on YouTube at https://youtu.be/kUph8GWFupE   A book was also written about the Plowshares 8 by Liane Ellison Norman called “Hammer of Justice: Molly Rush and the Plowshares Eight”.