COVID, Prison, and Another Pandemic
Clare Grady Made Me Remember
BY SUSIE DAY
Clare Grady is going to prison. On
February 10, this nice Irish Catholic
lady of 62, who lives with her family
in upstate Ithaca, will enter Alderson
Prison in West Virginia, to begin a one-yearand
one-day sentence. That’s because on April
4, 2018, Clare and six cohorts, also white and
Catholic, broke into the world’s largest nuclear
submarine base at Kings Bay, Georgia, and defaced
government property to call attention to
the increasing danger of nuclear war.
Because the group — Plowshares 7 — believes
that nuclear weapons aren’t created in isolation
from a system that also creates climate change,
murders people like George Floyd, and brutally
detains immigrants, the group read out a statement,
repenting of the sin of white supremacy.
They condemned “racism, militarism, and extreme
materialism,” the triple evils of the US
profi t imperative once called out by Martin Luther
King, Jr.
Unsurprisingly, Clare and her comrades were
arrested, charged with federal crimes, and convicted
on all counts. By now, all but one have been
sentenced to terms similar in length to Clare’s,
which, compared to those served by most people
convicted of felonies, seem almost tiny.
As a journalist, I recently interviewed Clare
about her case. Since then, Clare and I have
been emailing, Zooming, talking about people
➤ CHANGE, from p.10
of work in the trenches, it is time to make way
for newer and younger voices. Institutions and
communities make a mistake when their leadership
resists orderly and timely transitions to
fresh blood. The generations that have come of
age in the years since I was young have different
perspectives on the challenges facing our community
and even on what it means to be queer
in American society. Those perspectives demand
to be heard.
Fortunately, the newspaper will be in excellent
hands under its new leadership. Matt
Tracy, the new editor-in-chief who is an Ithaca
College graduate, joined Gay City News more
than two years ago, and in the time since has
proved to be a dogged and passionate reporter,
inventive in uncovering stories the newspaper
should shed light on and unafraid to challenge
powerful institutions and public fi gures. In his
fi rst year on staff, his work was recognized with
several honors from the New York Press Association.
Working with him as my colleague has
been an unparalleled pleasure.
COURTESY OF CLARE GRADY
Clare Grady begins a one-year sentence to a federal penitentiary
on February 10 for her 2018 activism against a nuclear submarine
facility in Georgia.
we know in common, her kids, the puppets
she’s making for some peace project. She is becoming
my friend. So what you’re reading isn’t
anything like a balanced, unbiased hunk of
journalism. I am an unprofessional.
See, over the past decades, I’ve come to know
many people imprisoned for unlawful acts, protesting
some or all of Dr. King’s “evil triplets.”
I know that people in prison suffer physically,
Joining Matt is our new digital editor and
reporter, Tat Bellamy-Walker. Tat earned his
master’s in journalism from CUNY in 2019 and
has built a strong set of professional credentials,
including work for The Daily Beast, CNN,
NBC, Inc. Magazine, Business Insider, and New
Hampshire Public Radio. Tat impressed both
Matt and me from our fi rst interview with him,
and he came to us with the highest professional
and academic recommendations.
Looking back over my time with Gay City
News and LGNY, I have many people to
thank, including the newspaper’s publishers
— since 2018, Victoria Schneps-Yunis and
Josh Schneps, who helped us broaden our
platforms to include webinars and a podcast;
Jennifer and Les Goodstein, who brought us
into a more diversifi ed media company between
2012 and 2018; and John Sutter, who
provided LGNY founder Troy Masters and me
with the resources to launch Gay City News
in 2002.
I’ve also had the pleasure of working with excellent
editor colleagues, including Beth Stroud,
Liz Tracey, Aaron Krach, Mick Meenan, and
P E R S P E C T I V E : S n i d e L i n e s
psychologically. Sometimes they die.
And now, the COVID-19 pandemic has invaded
the crowded, unsanitary cages where people —
“political” or not — are afforded little or no protection.
Reportedly, COVID-19 infections are 5.5
times — and counting — higher in US prisons
than out. Seeing Clare Grady and her friends incarcerated
would have been hard without COVID.
It’s way harder now. They’re in their 60s, 70s;
many battling underlying health concerns.
To try and help them, I’ve thought about
reporting on the scourge of COVID-19 behind
bars: the high infection rates inside; the vulnerability
of elders; how hardly anyone gets
out. But knowing Clare has helped me remember,
from deep in the 20th century folds of my
brain, something even worse than this pandemic.
I remember what nuclear weapons can
do.
In 1945, as everybody knows, the US dropped
atom bombs on two Japanese cities, killing
hundreds of thousands of people, poisoning the
ecosystem, and beginning a global arms race
that brought us weapons of increasing devastation,
capable of obliterating planetary life many
times over. Like billions, I grew up in a world
where “mutually assured destruction” was the
only way to “peace.”
Fortunately, there was pushback. Some people
wrote books like E.P. Thompson and Dan
➤ SNIDE LINES, continued on p.12
Brian McCormick.
But Gay City News could never have made
the impact it did without the tireless commitment
of talented freelancers, including Duncan
Osborne, Donna Aceto, Andy Humm, Arthur S.
Leonard, Kathleen Warnock, Michael Luongo,
Susie Day, Kelly Cogswell, Sam Oglesby, Nathan
Riley, Ed Sikov, Donna Minkowitz, Yoav
Sivan, Benjamin Weinthal, Dr. Lawrence D.
Mass, David Kennerley, Christopher Byrne, Michael
Shirey, Steve Erickson, Gary M. Kramer,
David Shengold, Eli Jacobson, James Jorden,
David Noh, Christopher Murray, Nicholas Boston,
Dubbs Weinblatt, Eileen McDermott, Court
Stroud, the late Doug Ireland, and the late Dean
Wrzeszcz. I could never thank any of these individuals
enough.
On a personal note, it would have been impossible
for me to do this work without the undying
love and support of my husband, Bert
Vaccari.
Wishing you the very best in 2021, we should
all move forward into a new year and a new
presidential administration with hope and resolve.
GayCityNews.com | December 31, 2020 - January 13, 2021 11
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