ACTIVISM
Clare Grady at 100 Seconds to Midnight
Lifelong peace, racial justice activist two months ahead of her federal prison sentence
BY SUSIE DAY
April 4, 2018, 50 years
after Martin Luther
King’s murder: Seven
white, aging Catholic
peace activists cut a fence and
enter Georgia’s Kings Bay Naval
Base, the largest nuclear submarine
base in the world. They carry
hammers and bottles of their own
blood to deface nuclear monuments
and banners decrying “omnicide”
— the unimaginable destruction
promised by nuclear weapons,
not only of human life, but of life
on Earth. They read a statement,
repenting of “the sin of white supremacy”
and resisting US “militarism
that has employed violence to
enforce global domination.”
They’re arrested and thrown
into jail.
Heartfelt and daring, this protest
was meant to be known around the
world. It’s barely been noticed.
This Plowshares 7 action is just
the latest in decades of nonviolent,
Catholic-led protests, wielding
hammers, blood, and banners,
begging the world to pay attention
to the increasing threat of nuclear
war.
Said Clare Grady, 62, a Plowshares
7 defendant, “When I was
younger, if you had this anti-nuclear
awakening, there were any
number of activist choices. That
doesn’t exist now, except for some
older white people still doing it —
it’s defi nitely not cool.”
Since Plowshares actions began
in 1980, many arrests, convictions,
and much jail time have accrued.
On November 12, Clare was sentenced
to one year and a day. She’s
due to report to federal prison in
February.
I also fear nuclear weapons, energy,
and accidents. Yet I’ve done
almost nothing to speak up about
this. That’s why I called Clare at
her home in upstate Ithaca and
asked her about her life. Here’s
what she told me:
An Irish Thing
I was born and raised in the
Bronx. My dad was the child of
Clare Grady faces a year and one day in federal prison beginning in February for a peace direct action
protest at the world’s largest nuclear submarine base in 2018.
The Plowshare 7 protesters — Clare Grady, Patrick O’Neill, Elizabeth McAlister, Father Steve Kelly, SJ,
Martha Hennessy, Mark Colville, and Carmen Trotta — at the time of their action at Kings Bay Naval
Base in Georgia.
Irish immigrants. His mother was
a maid her entire life and never lost
her Irish brogue.
My dad was underground a lot,
doing draft resistance, draft board
actions. The FBI were always trying
to catch him; they’d come to
our apartment. The neighborhood
kids had a fun time, calling them
fl atfoot and things, ‘cause they
were so obvious. But my nana was:
speaking in brogue “Go away, will
ye?” My childhood was fi lled with
these experiences, which is perhaps
unusual for people that look
like me.
This was the late ‘60s, early
‘70s. My dad was part of the Camden
COURTESY OF CLARE GRADY
PHOTO COURTESY OF CLARE GRADY
28 anti-Vietnam War activists
charged in a 1971 raid on the
Camden, New Jersey, draft board,
so he was hugely on J. Edgar
Hoover’s wanted list. The FBI referred
to my dad as “Quicksilver”
because he kept evading them. He
was always in — I guess you’d call
it “good trouble” these days.
Our mom had fi ve kids and more
than anything loved being a mother
and being in the Bronx. She was
from Chicago, so she didn’t talk
like everybody else’s muthah.
We grew up with dear, beloved
friends — almost all of whom we’re
still in touch with. It was really a
tight neighborhood. I went to John
Philip Sousa Jr. High School, and
Angela Davis was on everybody’s
minds then, like the Black Panthers.
My school was maybe 10
percent white, with the rest Black
and Puerto Rican. We have good
times now, connecting over our
childhoods and what it looked like
from different perspectives.
My mom supported my dad
‘cause he was underground so
much. Us kids knew he was underground.
It’s an Irish thing — we
had this friend from Ireland, Lonnie
Donegan, who’d come over here
to do music. He’d warn us: brogue
“Tell them nothing.”
Because we’d been colonized for
700 years. So there was this culture
already in place, and our dad
— even though he was born in the
Bronx — identifi ed with the Irish
rebel more than anything.
He was arrested during that
Camden raid and put right in jail.
I remember they brought him into
the courthouse. Everybody was
chained, shackled together, walking
through the hallway to the
courtroom, singing Irish rebel
songs. He was surrounded by a
bunch of other fi rst-generation
Irish people whose mothers were
very connected to the resistance
in Ireland. Like, never lose your
roots?
The Monster Won’t Decapitate
Itself
We moved to Ithaca when I was
going into 10th grade. While it was
breathtakingly beautiful, this Cayuga
land where I lived, I was feeling
the lack of the Bronx. I was in
high school here three years, then
I went back to New York City and
joined the United Farm Workers. I
was waitressing, taking classes at
Hunter College, living on the Lower
East Side. Then in 1980, Plowshares
8 happened an action at
the General Electric Nuclear Missile
Re-entry Division in King of
Prussia, Pennsylvania.
When I heard about that, I
thought: “Trying to get the United
States government to disarm is
➤ CLARE GRADY, continued on p.11
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