David Hartsough: Finding joy in resistance and prison

Republished from Waging Non-Violence

As she begins a 229-day prison sentence in Germany, Catholic Worker Susan Crane talks about why she has devoted her life to resisting nuclear weapons.

As part of an international peace camp in 2018 and 2019, dozens of activists participated in nonviolent “go-ins,” or civil disobedience actions, at Büchel Air Force base in southwestern Germany. One of the participants in six of these actions was Susan Crane, who is now 80 years old. She and others were able to get inside the base and even climb atop earthen bunkers used to store both nuclear weapons and German Tornado fighter jets.

Soldiers at the base routinely train to drop the U.S. H-bombs on targets in Russia, most provocatively this winter in an operation called “Steadfast Defender 24,” which was launched in the midst of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Susan began a 229-day sentence in prison in Germany on June 4. Two other U.S. citizens, one Dutch national, and dozens of Germans have already done prison time in Germany for related go-in actions. The peace camp was organized by the local German group Nonviolent Action to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, a coalition of 64 German peace groups, and Nukewatch.

Susan has taken part in several Plowshares actions and devoted her life in California to serving poor and often homeless people of Redwood City, where she lives and works at the Catholic Worker. “I see people living in camps, living in cars, and I see working people who don’t have enough income for basic needs like rent, food or medical care,” she said. “Then I think of the money wasted on war-making by the U.S. and NATO nations, and that 3 percent of the U.S. military budget alone could end starvation around the world.”

At trial, in Germany, Susan argued that she was justified in attempting to interfere with an “ongoing criminal conspiracy,” the unlawful plan to wage wars of mass destruction, wars in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Nuremberg Charter and Judgement. She appealed her conviction all the way to Germany’s highest court, and then to the European Court of Human Rights, in Strasbourg, just as five others in the campaign have done. 

The activities on the base have been challenged several times in German courts, but all expert witnesses on international humanitarian law and on nuclear weapons have been denied. The courts continue to maintain that the acts of resistance at the Büchel airbase are no different than breaking into a private garden. Susan van der Hijden from the Netherlands and Gerd Buntzly from Germany will both be in prison starting in June for similar actions at the Büchel Air Force Base. 

In May, I sat down with Susan at my home in San Francisco to talk about why she took part in the actions at Büchel and her forthcoming time in prison.

Please introduce yourself, share what you would like people to know about you.

I grew up in New Jersey in a working-class family and was fortunate enough to be able to go to college and then into the Peace Corps. The Peace Corps was educational for me. I was troubled by the extreme poverty in Ethiopia, and I was also troubled by the influence of the U.S. military and U.S. corporations.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=dbxoBzsfvdI%3Ffeature%3Doembed

When I came back to the states, we were in the middle of the Vietnam war. That limited where I could get a job because when I applied for jobs I’d go through the interview and then ask, “What are you doing to support the war?” Then I said, well I can’t work for you, because I don’t support the war. I was a math major so it felt like there wasn’t a way for me to get a job in my field.

So I ended up being part of a Situationist group called the Radical Action Cooperative. We were trying to live in a way that was different from the society around us. We experimented with living without class, without economic barriers and without hierarchy. We treated each other as brother and sister. We studied the times in history when workers rose up and had control of the production and control of their lives. We wanted to help bring about direct democracy and the Beloved Community.

So, tell us more about how you got to where you are today. What made you an anti-nuclear activist?

I was part of the demonstrations against the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. At one point, the police held us several days and we had workshops for each other. People were saying you can’t just be against nuclear power, you have to be against nuclear weapons too, because they’re connected. That made so much sense to me. Our affinity group went to Vandenberg Air Force Base and we continued demonstrations against war and nuclear weapons.

Several years ago, I guess in 2017, Marion Küpker from Germany and John LaForge from Nukewatch came to a big Catholic Worker national gathering. They gave a presentation about the nuclear weapons that are in Europe: the B61 H bombs that are in Belgium, Turkey, the Netherlands, Italy and Germany. I didn’t know that the U.S. had nuclear weapons in these forward bases that border western Russia. Marion, with the backing of 64 different German peace organizations, set up a peace camp outside the Büchel base and has been demonstrating against the U.S. B61 H bombs since 1996. Marion invited U.S. American war resisters to join them.

The next summer John LaForge from Nukewatch organized a U.S. peace delegation to Germany. We joined the international nonviolent peace camp. It was an amazing community experience. There were Catholic Workers, doctors, Communists, war tax resisters, neighborhood peace groups, Evangelical Lutherans and there were women who came with their banner and tied it up between trees, set up a table, got their chairs, and sat down and drank tea as they vigiled.

Who have been some of your role models, people that you admire over the years, that have helped influence you?

I certainly have done a lot of study about nonviolence and so nonviolent resisters like Dr. King are very important to me as well as Desmond Tutu. The Sermon of the Mount gives an outline for nonviolence. I have been influenced by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Sophie Scholl of the White Rose, a resistance group in Germany during World War II.

Tell us about some of your earlier actions of nonviolent resistance to militarism and nuclear weapons.

I’ve been part of four different Plowshares actions where we took the words of Isaiah seriously: to turn swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. In other words, we used hammers to begin to convert these weapons that have nothing to do except death-dealing to something useful for human life. And of course that also means converting our own hearts, from hearts of stone to hearts of love, which is a daily struggle, and converting our economy away from this war economy to a peace economy.

Closer to home, right here in Sunnyvale, California, Fr. Steve Kelly and I went into Lockheed Martin and hammered on a Trident missile section that was being built there. We went to court and the judge would not listen to our defense, and didn’t want us to talk about international or national law and found us guilty.

How many years have you been in prison already for your past actions?

I think about six years.

Wow, and how was that for you?

I met many wonderful, compassionate women who were in the prison with me. I learned a lot about how others live. I was fortunate that I could use my teaching skills for most of the time to teach either English as a second language or high school equivalency classes, and I felt I was doing something useful.

So that made the time go well. What keeps you going?

I get restless because I don’t want to be compliant with this warmaking empire we live in. So how do you withdraw your compliance? Maybe you try voting, that doesn’treally work, and you try writing letters to congress people, and that’s doesn’t seem to make a difference. I withdrew paying the portion of my tax that goes for war making and that had a lot of consequences for me, but it didn’t stop the war making. I figured I still benefited from living in this society, and I’m still compliant. I just felt like I needed to resist more.

So the place you really feel comfortable is when you’re following your conscience.

Yes. Now at the Catholic Worker I have a lot of good things that I’m doing with others at the breakfast program and with helping people with food and sleeping bags and such. But they’re Band-Aids and they’re very necessary and I’m happy to do them and I get consolation from that, but it’s still not enough. I keep thinking, why are these people so poor? Why isn’t there enough money for schools, health care and housing? Why are we destroying the climate? We all are living a life of poverty, and I say that because even those of us who have a home and food on the table, still aren’t in control of what is happening in this country. We don’t really have agency over our lives.

Who wants to be part of an empire that is creating war and strife and killing and death all over the world? All this nuclear production, testing and radiation is causing so much cancer: we’re making ourselves sick. I want to withdraw my compliance and try to do something that makes sense.

Do you want to say anything more about Büchel Air Force Base? What do they do?

Büchel air base is a German military base. Through NATO, it is the only base in Germany with U.S. nuclear weapons. These weapons are illegal for many reasons. One reason is that under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which both the U.S. and Germany have ratified, nuclear nations cannot give nuclear weapons to a non-nuclear nation, and non-nuclear nations cannot accept nuclear weapons from a nuclear nation. This treaty becomes law in every country that has ratified it. And so the weapons are illegal: the base is a crime scene. We went on the base to point that out to the military personnel on the base. We had a flyer, in German and in English, to give to the people we met.

There’s a certain joy in that resistance and it was very hopeful for me that people around the world and around Europe want peace: maybe not the governments, but the people.

I like former President Eisenhower’s quote “I want to believe that the people of the world want peace so much that the governments should get out of the way and let them have it.”

Yes, I agree. I like that.

What did you do at Büchel Air base that got you arrested?

We had many vigils and many blockades where we blockaded all the gates and the roads. The police would take our names but they didn’t bring charges. We also did what the Europeans called go-ins, where we cut a little fence and walked onto the base.

I was part of one go-in where 18 of us formed five international groups and, in broad daylight, made five holes along the base fence, and we all went through. Some of the people got on bunkers of the protected aircraft shelters that might have held the nuclear weapons.

Eventually the military rounded us all up. We had “An appeal to the soldiers and military personnel” that told them that what they were doing was illegal according to international law and we tried to explain that the base was a crime scene. We wanted them to resign their commission, and/or not load the weapons on planes.

Büchel is a NATO base. People sometimes think of NATO as a treaty alliance that’s for the common good of a lot of people, but really it’s a very dangerous warmaking force. For example, NATO has not ever said it won’t use nuclear weapons for a first strike.

Did you do these actions with others? Say a little bit about the importance of community when you’re doing these actions.

Doing actions with others is so important. You sit together and talk about what these weapons can do, and what they are doing in their very production. Maybe you pray or reflect on the immorality and illegality of the weapons, and you think of what a reasonable nonviolent response is to them. It’s amazing what creativeness can come out of people working together and doing what’s in their heart and working for the common good. I think there’s a certain joy in that.

Wonderful, and will you be in prison with others?

I’ll be in prison with other sentenced folks, but I believe there’ll also be another resister in with me from the Amsterdam Catholic Worker: Susan van der Hijden. We were co-conspirators in several go-ins. Many other resisters have already done their time, including two Americans.

What changes do you hope your action can help make in the world?

When we go on the base, we always hope that some soldiers will decide not to load the weapons, or we hope the commander will think about being the commander of a base with 20 nuclear weapons, or that maybe he won’t agree to load the weapons. We hope the judges who hear us and send us to prison, will one day join us in resisting these weapons of death.

Nuclear weapons are indiscriminate and can destroy whole cities, and possibly the climate of the earth. We hope that others will think that what we’re doing makes sense and join us, or do what they can in their own way to move us toward a more peaceful world. We hope at least that others become aware of the situation and realize that these forward bases and U.S. nuclear weapons don’t make any sense.

What were some of your pastimes in prison, and what have been some of thegreatest challenges for you?

It is hard to seethe injustice and racism of the courts that sentences women to 10-20 or more years. The women that I’ve met in prisonhave been generally very kind and compassionate people and I keep thinkingthat if the American people knew who was in this prison, theywould let them out. All of us make mistakes, but in the carceral system there is no redemption.

The hardest thing? There are guards who are overly oppressive and just use their power in excessive ways. But I remember Philip Zimbardo’s prison experiment, and I know that the problem is the carceral system, not the particular person.

Boredom?

Generally, I haven’t been bored in prison because I find there’s not enough hours in the day to do everything I want to do.

What are some of the pluses and negatives you have for other people who may be considering powerful acts of nonviolent resistance?

Well, I think you always have to think about how this resistance might affect your life in 10 years. You might also think about how not resisting might affect your life, too.

I think that if you get together with other folks and talk about your nonviolent plans, and pray and reflect, you stand on pretty solid ground.

Good, and do you have fears about your time in prison and how do you deal with those fears?

Of course there’s some anxiety. I don’t know much German. I am trying to let go of expectations, because I’m not in control and it’s all a consequence of doing these actions which I believe were truthful and the right thing to do. I think I’m ready to let whatever happens, happen.

That’s beautiful, thank you. Are there other things you’d like to share with others about the need to get more actively involved in acting and building a powerful movement to abolish all nuclear weapons before they abolish us?

Get together with your friends and organize. Go help the students in the school encampments. Why shouldn’t we all divest from warmaking?

I understand there are people in Germany who are going to be walking with you from the base to prison?

Yes, Marion has organized the walk from Büchel Air Base where the U.S. nuclear weapons are deployed, to the prison, JVA Rohrbach where I’m going. It’s about 111 kilometers and we’ll be walking with banners on hiking trails and roads. It’s going to be a good time to talk about how we are all imprisoned by these nuclear weapons.

They imprison our imagination and take the money we need for a myriad of projects. They are a theft from the poor… from all of us.

The German people have been very supportive and very kind around this prison time. Their lives are at stake, as all of ours are. How do you spend your time while you’re in prison?

I need to take time in prayer, and exercise. I like to walk with other folks. I usually have a job, often teaching.

So it’s not just a waste of time?

No, there is a lot to learn about others, about our carceral system, and about ourselves. There are many ways to help others, and there are just as many ways people find to help you. It can be a humbling experience, a time of both grief and joy.

And so what advice do you have for others about dealing with their fears of spending time in prison. I think everybody would agree with you that nuclear weapons are stupid, but they are afraid about spending months and years in prison. Do you have any thoughts you’d like to share with them as they wrestle with their own hearts and consciences?

I think fear and faith are opposites. I think we have to believe that what we’re doing is the most imaginative and best thing we can figure out to do and that our call to love one another is stronger than that fear of the consequences. It’s helpful to be in a group that’s trying to discern together.

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You can write to Susan at: Susan Crane, JVA Rohrbach, Peter-Caesar-Allee 1, 55597 Wöllstein, Germany

This story was produced by Campaign Nonviolence. Included in Vox Populi with permission.

David Hartsough is author of “Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist.” He is co-founder of Nonviolent Peaceforce and World Beyond War, and a member of San Francisco Friends Meeting.