Mothers Day '96

"We women of one country will be too tender to those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says, DISARM, DISARM! In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask that women promote the alliance of different nationalities, in the great interest of peace." ... Julia Ward Howe, Founder of Mothers Day, l870.

Echoing Howe's call on May 12, l996, forty Faith and Resistance retreatants gathered outside and eventually inside the U.S. Navy's Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) antenna in the national forest near Republic Michigan. Using a double jointed ladder, ten retreatants climbed over the razor-wired fence that protects the antennas transformers from intruders.

Before this non-violent invasion ELF, the "trident missile trigger" of Michigan, retreatants had gathered in Marquette to hear Sisters Ardeth Platte and Carol Gilbert O.P, former Traverse Citians, tell of their life at Jonah House in Baltimore. Ardeth & Carol joined the Jonah Swords into Poughshares Community last year after spending many years in Michigan witnessing near Wurtsmith Air Force Base then K.I. Sawyer. Having "closed" these two bases with a little help from their friends, they are now full time working on the institutions, like the world bank and pentagon.

ELF transmitters send radio waves to signal the Trident submarines to surface for instruction to launch their nuclear missiles, a first strike for nuclear holocaust. The Trident fleet of eighteen multi-billion dollar submarines, fully loaded, are capable of 134,000 independently target Hiroshimas.

This ELF transmitter site extends from Republic Michigan to Clam Lake in Wisconsin. A similar witness took place at the Wisconsin end of ELF on Mothers Day where over one hundred people gathered It was at Clam Lake on Earth Day that Donna and Tom Howard-Hastings cut down three of the ELF antenna poles.

Donna, answering the voice of Julia Ward Howe to DISARM, responded: "Every pole which supports this trigger for the most deadly and costly weapons system ever built does so in our names. I am simply removing poles which falsely represent me and my sons."