Rosalie G. Riegle’s book Doing Time for Peace: Resistance, Family, and Community (2012) gathers the oral histories of over seventy-five radical peacemakers—activists who, from World War II to the present moment, have engaged in civil disobedience and spent time in jail for it, most of them moved by faith. Sister Anne Montgomery is one such, her gifts as a speaker and storyteller brought out wonderfully by Riegle’s questions. The interview is practical, concrete, unpretentious—in the tradition of American self-help books, really. It is also eloquent. What stimulates her eloquence is not, perhaps surprisingly, the reasons for her radical pacifism, most notably her having entered a General Electric plant in 1980 to hammer on two missile nose cones and pour blood, her own blood, on documents stored there. It is rather the task of forming a community within which an individual can act.
Montgomery (1926–2012) was born in San Diego to a military family, became a Religious of the Sacred Heart, taught high school, and began doing civil resistance at the United Nations in 1978. In 1980 she became a member of the Plowshares Eight, the other members of which included both Philip and Daniel Berrigan and also Molly Rush, and entered the GE plant in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. She remained active in radical pacifism till the end; in 2009 she helped cut through a fence at a naval base in Washington to take action against the Trident missiles stored there, at the age of eighty-three.
Montgomery: My first experience with civil resistance was at the UN in 1978, its first session on disarmament. Through that, I came in contact with Jonah House and began to come to their summer sessions. That experience of community and action within a little group impressed me very much, so I kept coming back.
In the early spring of 1980, I was invited by John Schuchardt to be part of an action which would raise the level. It would be actually reaching some component of a nuclear weapon, disarming it, and possibly serving a long jail time. I went away to discern that and wrote down my pros and cons. Finally I just tore them all up and said, “In the end, this is an act of faith.” So I decided to go ahead.
I wrote my provincial. “I’m going to do a more serious action and it might involve more jail time.” She really didn’t connect on how serious. Because you don’t give people information that might get them a conspiracy charge, bring them up before a grand jury. We have to be very careful about that.
So we did it. We called ourselves the Plowshares Eight, and it was sort of a shocker to many people, both outside the peace movement and in, because it was the first time we’d actually taken hammers to something. Some people considered destruction of so-called property “violent.” I think Dan Berrigan gave the best one-sentence definition of property: “Property is what enhances human life.” If it kills human life, it’s not true property, because it’s not what’s proper to human life.
When we were sentenced, our superior general in Rome, a woman from Spain, sent me a telegram of support. Both the international community and my local communities have been very supportive, which is wonderful, because I know other sisters who’ve done even simple acts of civil resistance and not had that support.
Riegle: You were really a pioneer.
Montgomery: In that respect, yes. I mean, there have been plenty of sisters involved in demonstrations or in crossing the line onto a military base, but I don’t know of any before us who received felony charges. In this country.
We went to jail right after our arrest, awaiting trial. The six men were together in Norristown. Molly [Rush] and I were the only women. We were put in another county jail because the women’s jail in Norristown had been condemned as unhealthy for human life, I guess. Then everybody was separated and shipped around to five different county jails. We had a very difficult time communicating, even with the lawyers. The men could plan things, but then they’d have to write us through a lawyer.
At first we were going to just let them do whatever they wanted with us, but our supporters said people needed to understand and that we needed to speak up in court, so when the bond came down, my congregation paid my bond and part of Dean Hammer’s so we got out. Then the other men were put out of jail because they were organizing too much in there and weren’t welcome anymore. So, in the end, we could all make decisions together.
[The Plowshares Eight were convicted of burglary, conspiracy, and criminal mischief and given sentences of five to ten years. After a complicated ten-year appeal process, their terms were reduced to time served. In the final sentencing, Judge James Buchanan “listened attentively to statements by the defendants, attorney Ramsey Clark, Dr. Robert J. Lifton, and Professors Richard Falk and Howard Zinn, placing the ‘crime’ in the contest of the common plight of humanity, international law, America’s long tradition of dissent, and the primacy of individual conscience over entrenched political systems.” Such judicial consideration rarely happens in Plowshares trials today.]
Montgomery: Actually, by the time our sentence was changed to “time served,” Carl and I and Elmer were in prison for other Plowshares actions. I’ve been in six or six and a half actions altogether. See, there were two Kairos Plowshares, because we didn’t make it to the Trident [in Groton, Connecticut] in the first one, so Kathy Maire, a Franciscan sister, and I decided to finish that one, and went back to Quonset Point and hammered on parts of the Trident submarine.
Riegle: How do people plan Plowshares actions?
Montgomery: It’s a long process. I’ve helped with several Plowshares preparations, during the eighties especially, and we’ve learned that many things should be worked out before an action, because the action is more than one moment. There’s a before and especially an after, when people are often separated in prisons and often can’t communicate very well. Maybe you’ve made an agreement that you won’t put up bond or sign things. But what about family emergencies? People have to be able to support people who decide to bond out, for instance, and all that stuff has to be worked out ahead of time so there are no bad feelings and people don’t feel betrayed. You don’t want a breakup of community. So now the process is—or should be—that there are very serious times for retreat.
First, a community forms, but they don’t pick a site right away. They do research and get input on different weapons systems. They learn about biblical resistance and learn about building community and praying together, so the preparation is both spiritual and political. Also, they get to know each other—life-sharing and feelings.
Then there’s a whole list of questions about how much legal stuff you want to participate in. Do you represent yourself or have a lawyer? What about bond resistance? Cooperating in prison? These things need to be talked out ahead of time and you make agreements, but you also allow for trusting each other if an emergency arises.
Most of us like to speak for ourselves in the trials. Often, generous lawyers will offer their time free of charge, to advise us and help people write briefs. You have to know all these legal technicalities, and decide if you want an opening statement and who’s going to make it. And whether you’ll take the stand or not, because that means you’ll be questioned by the prosecutor. Are we going to question jurors or are we just going to let the first twelve be selected?
And then there’s always a planning discussion on fear. What if somebody gets hurt or killed? You don’t act in such a way that some young soldier or policeman is going to shoot because they’re afraid, because that puts a burden on them as well as on you.
Now, this preparation has sometimes gone on for a year. People come and go. There is a point, somewhere about two-thirds of the way into the planning, where the community decides who’s in and who isn’t. You don’t want people just deciding at the last minute. Although at the last minute, everyone is still free to say, “I’m sorry, I can’t do this.”
Somewhere in the process, people choose the kind of weapon they want to target. Is it depleted uranium, is it nuclear weapons, is it nuclear weapons in space? Then we scout the places where these things [are housed]. Sometimes the actual actors will go and sometimes someone who’s supporting us and willing to take the risk. You get information about security and so forth. Toward the end, when the site has been decided on, a few people will offer to be support, to drive us to the site and so forth. They’re willing to risk the conspiracy charge—because it is a risk. But not many, you know, just a couple.
Riegle: Have there in fact been conspiracy charges?
Montgomery: Prosecutors have tried, over and over again. People just refuse to speak, even though they’re threatened with contempt. Usually, the actors get a conspiracy charge for each felony, because it ups the ante. Prosecutors try to force plea bargaining and all that stuff. They’ve learned that Plowshares people will talk to international law and to justification and refer to spiritual matters, so they present pretrial motions saying these things shall not be allowed, and the judge always goes along with it. It really limits our court witnesses.
More and more, we try to argue from our heart instead of bothering with all the legal briefs. You know, you don’t want to play lawyer. You have to be human about it. The courts always insist that you need a lawyer because you don’t understand, you’re not expert enough, or not bright enough, or something.
That’s not right. Because how can you keep a law if you can’t talk about it? If you can’t express it in your own language? So to change the language rather than play lawyer, which we can’t do, we put it in our own words, and talk about life.
Riegle: If you’re thinking of guiding—or shining a light, I guess—on people who might be coming along on this kind of thing, what would you say to them?
Montgomery: I think if they don’t have a community already, they need to find others of like mind and begin talking with them, praying with them, forming a little community. We have Kairos in New York City which meets twice a month. People are free to come who’ve never been there before. There are no papers to sign. You pray together, you discuss what you’re doing. You see, there’s a principle: if we want the world to be in community, we’d better be able to act in a community ourselves and to be a community.
So find a community of support—others who think alike—and work with those who’ve had some experience. And maybe before thinking about serious action, watch people in action, so you’re not so afraid anymore of the police. Then get involved in less risky things first. As Americans, to break the law—even in a little way—is a big deal. So I don’t look down my nose at anybody who finds it difficult. Sometimes the hardest work is being part of a support community, because they have to keep going with their own work and do all the support work, too. And then, you know, somebody may not be called to this kind of resistance at all. They may not feel they can handle prison.
Riegle: How do you know whether you can handle it?
Montgomery: Well, I think that’s part of doing something a little less risky at the beginning. When we did it, I said, “This is it. I may be in for years.” And we might have. I wouldn’t recommend that as a general plan of action, but I trusted the people I was with.
I think faith is important to us. When I think of the French Resistance and Camus, whose love of human beings was so great that he could do the things without the sense of support from a faith, I really admire him. It doesn’t really matter what faith tradition a person comes from; if a person has that, it’s a great support. Otherwise, it takes great heroism.