William Sloane Coffin

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

William Sloane Coffin
Coffin circa 1980
Church	United Church of Christ
Other posts	Riverside Church
Orders
Ordination	Presbyterian church
Personal details
Birth name	William Sloane Coffin Jr.
Born	June 1, 1924
Died	April 12, 2006 (aged 81)
Nationality	American
Denomination	Presbyterian, United Church of Christ
Spouse	Eva Rubinstein, Harriet Gibney, Virginia Randolph Wilson
Education	Yale College, Union Theological Seminary
Alma mater	Yale Divinity School

William Sloane Coffin Jr. (June 1, 1924 – April 12, 2006) was an American Christian clergyman and long-time peace activist. He was ordained in the Presbyterian Church, and later received ministerial standing in the United Church of Christ. In his younger days he was an athlete, a talented pianist, a CIA officer, and later chaplain of Yale University, where the influence of H. Richard Niebuhr's social philosophy led him to become a leader in the Civil Rights Movement and peace movements of the 1960s and 1970s. He also was a member of the secret society Skull and Bones. He went on to serve as Senior Minister at the Riverside Church in New York City and President of SANE/Freeze (now Peace Action), the nation's largest peace and social justice group, and prominently opposed United States military interventions in conflicts, from the Vietnam War to the Iraq War. He was also an ardent supporter of gay rights.

Biography

Childhood

William Sloane Coffin Jr. was born into the wealthy elite of New York City. His paternal great-grandfather William Sloane was a Scottish immigrant and co-owner of the very successful W. & J. Sloane Company. His uncle was Henry Sloane Coffin, president of Union Theological Seminary and one of the most famous ministers in the United States. His father, William Sloane Coffin, Sr. was president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and an executive in the family business.

His mother, Catherine Butterfield, had grown up in the Midwest, and as a young woman spent time in France during World War I providing relief to soldiers, and met her future husband there, where he was also engaged in charitable activities. Their three children grew up fluent in French by being taught by their nanny, and attended private schools in New York. 

William Sr.'s father, Edmund Coffin, was a prominent lawyer, real estate developer, and reformer who owned a property investment and management firm that renovated and rented low-income housing in New York. Upon Edmund's death in 1928, it went to his sons William and Henry, with William managing the firm. When the Great Depression hit in 1929, William allowed tenants to stay whether or not they could pay the rent, quickly draining his own funds, and at a time when the family's substantial W. & J. Sloane stock was not paying dividends.

William Sloane Coffin, Sr. died at home on his oldest son Edmund's eleventh birthday in 1933 from a heart attack he suffered returning from work. After this, his wife Catherine decided to move the family to Carmel, California, to make life more affordable, but was able to do this only with financial support from her brother-in-law Henry. After years spent in the most exclusive private schools in Manhattan, the three Coffin children were educated in Carmel's public schools, where William had his first sense that there was injustice—sometimes very great—in the world.

A talented musician, he became devoted to the piano and planned a career as a concert pianist. At the urging of his uncle Henry (who was still contributing to the family's finances), his mother enrolled him in Deerfield Academy in 1938. 

The following year (when Edmund left for Yale University), William moved with his mother to Paris at the age of 15 to receive personal instruction in the piano and was taught by some of the best music teachers of the 20th century, including Nadia Boulanger. The Coffins moved to Geneva, Switzerland, when World War II came to France in 1940, and then back to the United States, where he enrolled in Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.

Early adulthood

Having graduated from high school in 1942, William enrolled at Yale College and studied in the School of Music. While continuing his pursuit of the piano, he was also excited by the prospect of fighting to stop fascism and became very focused on joining the war effort. He applied to work as a spy with the Office of Strategic Services in 1943, but was turned down for not having sufficiently "Gallic features" to be effective. He then left school, enlisted in the Army, and was quickly tapped to become an officer. After training, he was assigned to work as liaison to the French and Russian armies in connection with the Army's military intelligence unit, and where he heard first-hand stories of life in Stalin's USSR.

After the war, Coffin returned to Yale, where he would later become President of the Yale Glee Club. Coffin had been a friend of George H. W. Bush since his youth, as they both attended Phillips Academy (1942). In Coffin's senior year, Bush brought Coffin into the exclusive Skull and Bones secret society at the university. 

Upon graduating in 1949, Coffin entered the Union Theological Seminary, where he remained for a year, until the outbreak of the Korean War reignited his interest in fighting against communism. He joined the CIA as a case officer in 1950 (his brother-in-law Franklin Lindsay had been head of the Office of Policy Coordination at the OSS, one of the predecessors of the CIA) spending three years in West Germany recruiting anti-Soviet Russian refugees and training them how to undermine Stalin's regime.^[1] Coffin grew increasingly disillusioned with the role of the CIA and the United States due to events including the CIA's involvement in overthrowing Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh of Iran in 1953, followed by the CIA's orchestration of the coup that removed President Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala in 1954.

Ministry and political activism

After leaving the CIA, Coffin enrolled at Yale Divinity School and earned his Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1956, the same year he was ordained a Presbyterian minister. This same year he married Eva Rubinstein, the daughter of pianist Arthur Rubinstein, and became chaplain at Williams College. Soon, he accepted the position as Chaplain of Yale University, where he remained from 1958 until 1975. Gifted with a rich bass-baritone voice, he was an active member of the Yale Russian Chorus during the late 1950s and 1960s. 

With his CIA background, he was dismayed when he learned in 1964 of the history of French and American involvement in South Vietnam. He felt the United States should have honored the French agreement to hold a national referendum in Vietnam about unification. He was in early opposition to the Vietnam War and became famous for his anti-war activities and his civil rights activism. Along with others, he was a founder in the early 1960s of the Clergy and Laity Concerned About Vietnam, organized to resist President Lyndon Johnson's escalation of the war.

Coffin had a prominent role in the Freedom Rides challenging segregation and the oppression of black people. As chaplain at Yale in the early 1960s, Coffin organized busloads of Freedom Riders to challenge segregation laws in the South. Through his efforts, hundreds of students at Yale University and elsewhere were recruited into civil rights and anti-war activity. He was jailed many times, but his first conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court.

In 1962, he joined SANE: The Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy, an organization he would later lead.

Approached by Sargent Shriver in 1961 to run the first training programs for the Peace Corps, Coffin took up the task and took a temporary leave from Yale, working to develop a rigorous training program modeled on Outward Bound and supervising the building of a training camp in Puerto Rico. He used his pulpit as a platform for like-minded crusaders, hosting the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Nelson Mandela, among others. Fellow Yale graduate Garry Trudeau has immortalized Coffin (combined with Coffin's protege Rev. Scotty McLennan) as "the Rev. Scot Sloan" in the comic strip Doonesbury. During the Vietnam War years, Coffin and his friend Howard Zinn often spoke from the same anti-war platform. An inspiring speaker, Coffin was known for optimism and humor: "Remember, young people, even if you win the rat race, you're still a rat."

By 1967, Coffin concentrated increasingly on preaching civil disobedience and supported the young men who turned in their draft cards. He was, however, uncomfortable with draft-card burning, worried that it looked "unnecessarily hostile". Coffin was one of several persons who signed an open letter entitled "A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority", which was printed in several newspapers in October 1967. In that same month, he also raised the possibility of declaring Battell Chapel at Yale a sanctuary for resisters, or possibly as the site of a large demonstration of civil disobedience. School administration barred the use of the church as a sanctuary. Coffin later wrote, "I accused them of behaving more like 'true Blues than true Christians'. They squirmed but weren't about to change their minds.... I realized I was licked."

And so on January 5, 1968, Coffin, Dr. Benjamin Spock (the pediatrician and baby book author who was also a Phillips Academy alumnus), Marcus Raskin, and Mitchell Goodman (all signers of "A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority" and members of the anti-war collective RESIST) were indicted by a Federal grand jury for "conspiracy to counsel, aid and abet draft resistance". All but Raskin were convicted that June, but in 1970 an appeals court overturned the verdict. Coffin remained chaplain of Yale until December 1975.

In 1977, he became senior minister at the Riverside Church—an interdenominational congregation affiliated with both the United Church of Christ and American Baptist Churches—and one of the most prominent congregations in New York City. He was a controversial, yet inspirational leader at Riverside. He openly and vocally supported gay rights when many liberals still were uncomfortable with homosexuality. Some of the congregation's socially conservative members openly disagreed with his position on sexuality.

Nuclear disarmament

Coffin started a strong nuclear disarmament program at Riverside, and hired Cora Weiss (a secular Jew he had worked with during the Vietnam War and had traveled with to North Vietnam in 1972 to accompany three released U.S. prisoners of war), an action which was uncomfortable for some parishioners. Broadening his reach to an international audience, he met with numerous world leaders and traveled abroad. His visits included going to Iran to perform Christmas services for hostages being held in the U.S. embassy during the Iran hostage crisis in 1979 and to Nicaragua to protest U.S. military intervention there.

In 1987, he resigned from Riverside Church to pursue disarmament activism full-time, saying then that there was no issue more important for a man of faith. He became president of SANE/FREEZE (now Peace Action), the largest peace and justice organization in the United States. He retired with the title president emeritus in the early 1990s, and then taught and lectured across the United States and overseas. Coffin also wrote several books. He cautioned that we are all living in "the shadow of Doomsday", and urged that people turn away from isolationism and become more globally aware. Shortly before his death, Coffin founded Faithful Security, a coalition for people of faith committed to working for a world free of nuclear weapons.

Personal life

Coffin was married three times. His first two marriages, to Eva Rubinstein and Harriet Gibney, ended in divorce. He was survived by his third wife, Virginia Randolph Wilson (called "Randy"). Eva Rubinstein, his first wife and the mother of his children, was a daughter of pianist Arthur Rubinstein. The loss of their son Alexander in a car accident in 1983 inspired one of Coffin's most requested sermons.

He was given only six months to live in early 2004 due to a weakened heart. Coffin and his wife lived in the small town of Strafford, Vermont, a few houses away from his brother Ned, until his death nearly two years later at age 81.

Military awards

• American Campaign Medal
• European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal
• World War II Victory Medal
• Army of Occupation Medal with "Germany" clasp

Books

By Coffin

• Letters to a Young Doubter, Westminster John Knox Press, July 2005, ISBN 0-664-22929-8
• Credo, Westminster John Knox Press, December 2003, ISBN 0-664-22707-4
• The Heart Is a Little to the Left: Essays on Public Morality, Dartmouth College, 1st edition, October 1999, ISBN 0-87451-958-6
• The Courage to Love, sermons, Harper & Row, 1982, ISBN 0-06-061508-7
• Once to Every Man: A Memoir, autobiography, Athenaeum Press, 1977, ISBN 0-689-10811-7

About Coffin

• William Sloane Coffin, Jr.: A Holy Impatience, by Warren Goldstein, Yale University Press, March 2004, ISBN 0-300-10221-6
• The Trial of Dr. Spock, William Sloane Coffin, Michael Ferber, Mitchell Goodman, and Marcus Raskin, by Jessica Mitford, New York, Knopf, 1969 ISBN 0-394-44952-5

In popular culture

The Doonesbury character Reverend Scot Sloan is named (in part) for William Sloane Coffin.

Daniel Berrigan

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

The Reverend Daniel Berrigan SJ
Berrigan in 2008
Born	Daniel Joseph Berrigan May 9, 1921 Virginia, Minnesota, United States
Died	April 30, 2016 (aged 94) The Bronx, New York City, U.S.
Occupation	Jesuit priest, peace activist, university educator
Known for	Anti-Vietnam War activism Anti-nuclear activism
Relatives	Philip Berrigan (brother)

Daniel Joseph Berrigan SJ (May 9, 1921 – April 30, 2016) was an American Jesuit priest, anti-war activist, Christian pacifist, playwright, poet, and author.

Like many others during the 1960s, Berrigan's active protest against the Vietnam War earned him both scorn and admiration, but it was his participation in the Catonsville Nine that made him famous. It also landed him on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's "most wanted list" (the first-ever priest on the list), on the cover of Time magazine, and in prison. His own particular form of militancy and radical spirituality in the service of social and political justice was significant enough, at that time, to "shape the tactics of resistance to the Vietnam War" in the United States.

For the rest of his life, Berrigan remained one of the United States' leading anti-war activists. In 1980, he founded the Plowshares movement, an anti-nuclear protest group, that put him back into the national spotlight. He was also an award-winning and prolific author of some 50 books, a teacher, and a university educator. He, along with his activist brother Philip Berrigan, was nominated in 1998 for the Nobel Peace Prize by 1976 laureate Mairead Maguire.

Early life

Berrigan was born in Virginia, Minnesota, the son of Frieda Berrigan (née Fromhart), who was of German descent, and Thomas Berrigan, a second-generation Irish Catholic and active trade union member. He was the fifth of six sons. His youngest brother was fellow peace activist Philip Berrigan.

At age 5, Berrigan's family moved to Syracuse, New York. In 1946, Berrigan earned a bachelor's degree from St. Andrew-on-Hudson, a Jesuit seminary in Hyde Park, New York. In 1952 he received a master's degree from Woodstock College in Baltimore, Maryland.

Berrigan was devoted to the Catholic Church throughout his youth. He joined the Jesuits directly out of high school in 1939 and was ordained to the priesthood on June 19, 1952.

Career

Berrigan taught at St. Peter's Preparatory School in Jersey City from 1946 to 1949.

In 1954, Berrigan was assigned to teach French and theology at the Jesuit Brooklyn Preparatory School. In 1957 he was appointed professor of New Testament studies at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York. The same year, he won the Lamont Prize for his book of poems, Time Without Number. He developed a reputation as a religious radical, working actively against poverty and on changing the relationship between priests and lay people. While at Le Moyne, he founded its International House.

While on a sabbatical from Le Moyne in 1963, Berrigan traveled to Paris and met French Jesuits who criticized the social and political conditions in Indochina. Taking inspiration from this, he and his brother Philip founded the Catholic Peace Fellowship, a group that organized protests against the war in Vietnam.

On October 28, 1965, Berrigan, along with the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, founded an organization known as Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam (CALCAV). The organization, founded at the Church Center for the United Nations, was joined by the likes of Dr. Hans Morgenthau, Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr, Rev. William Sloane Coffin, and the Rev. Philip Berrigan, among many others. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who delivered his 1967 speech Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence under sponsorship from CALCAV, served as the national co-chairman of the organization. 

From 1966 to 1970, Berrigan was the assistant director of the Cornell University United Religious Work (CURW), the umbrella organization for all religious groups on campus, including the Cornell Newman Club (later the Cornell Catholic Community), eventually becoming the group's pastor.

Berrigan at one time or another held faculty positions or ran programs at Union Theological Seminary, Loyola University New Orleans, Columbia, Cornell, and Yale. His longest tenure was at Fordham (a Jesuit university located in the Bronx), where for a brief time he also served as poet-in-residence.

Berrigan appeared briefly in the 1986 Warner Bros. film The Mission, playing a Jesuit priest. He also served as a consultant on the film.

Activism

Vietnam War era

But how shall we educate men to goodness, to a sense of one another, to a love of the truth? And more urgently, how shall we do this in a bad time?

— Berrigan, quoted on the cover of TIME (Jan. 25, 1971)

Berrigan, his brother and Josephite priest Philip Berrigan, and Trappist monk Thomas Merton founded an interfaith coalition against the Vietnam War and wrote letters to major newspapers arguing for an end to the war. In 1967, Berrigan witnessed the public outcry that followed from the arrest of his brother Philip, for pouring blood on draft records as part of the Baltimore Four. Philip was sentenced to six years in prison for defacing government property. The fallout he had to endure from these many interventions, including his support for prisoners of war and, in 1968, seeing firsthand the conditions on the ground in Vietnam, further radicalized Berrigan, or at least strengthened his determination to resist American military imperialism.

Berrigan traveled to Hanoi with Howard Zinn during the Tet Offensive in January 1968 to "receive" three American airmen, the first American prisoners of war released by the North Vietnamese since the U.S. bombing of that nation had begun.

In 1968, he signed the Writers and Editors War Tax Protest pledge, vowing to refuse to make tax payments in protest of the Vietnam War. In the same year, he was interviewed in the anti-Vietnam War documentary film In the Year of the Pig, and later that year became involved in radical non-violent protest.

Catonsville Nine

The short fuse of the American left is typical of the highs and lows of American emotional life. It is very rare to sustain a movement in recognizable form without a spiritual base.

Daniel Berrigan, on the 40th anniversary of the Catonsville Nine (2008) 

Daniel Berrigan and his brother Philip, along with seven other Catholic protesters, used homemade napalm to destroy 378 draft files in the parking lot of the Catonsville, Maryland, draft board on May 17, 1968. This group, which came to be known as the Catonsville Nine, issued a statement after the incident:

We confront the Roman Catholic Church, other Christian bodies, and the synagogues of America with their silence and cowardice in the face of our country's crimes. We are convinced that the religious bureaucracy in this country is racist, is an accomplice in this war, and is hostile to the poor.

Berrigan was arrested and sentenced to three years in prison, but went into hiding with the help of fellow radicals prior to imprisonment. While on the run, Berrigan was interviewed for Lee Lockwood's documentary The Holy Outlaw. The Federal Bureau of Investigation apprehended him on August 11, 1970 at the home of William Stringfellow and Anthony Towne. Berrigan was then imprisoned at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut until his release on February 24, 1972.

In retrospect, the trial of the Catonsville Nine was significant, because it "altered resistance to the Vietnam War, moving activists from street protests to repeated acts of civil disobedience, including the burning of draft cards." As The New York Times noted in its obituary, Berrigan's actions helped "shape the tactics of opposition to the Vietnam War."

Plowshares movement

Daniel Berrigan is arrested for civil disobedience outside the U.S. Mission to the U.N. in 2006

On September 9, 1980, Berrigan, his brother Philip, and six others (the "Plowshares Eight") began the Plowshares movement. They trespassed onto the General Electric nuclear missile facility in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, where they damaged nuclear warhead nose cones and poured blood onto documents and files. They were arrested and charged with over ten different felony and misdemeanor counts. On April 10, 1990, after ten years of appeals, Berrigan's group was re-sentenced and paroled for up to 23¹/₂ months in consideration of time already served in prison. Their legal battle was re-created in Emile de Antonio's 1982 film In the King of Prussia, which starred Martin Sheen and featured appearances by the Plowshares Eight as themselves.

Consistent life ethic

I see an 'interlocking directorate' of death that binds the whole culture. That is, an unspoken agreement that we will solve our problems by killing people in various ways; a declaration that certain people are expendable, outside the pale. A decent society should no more have an abortion clinic than The Pentagon." — interview by Lucien Miller, Reflections, vol. 2, no. 4 (Fall 1979)

Berrigan endorsed a consistent life ethic, a morality based on a holistic reverence for life. As a member of the Rochester, New York-area consistent life ethic advocacy group Faith and Resistance Community, he protested via civil disobedience against abortion at a new Planned Parenthood clinic in 1991.

AIDS activism

Berrigan said of pastoral care to AIDS patients:

We deal with very many gay Catholics who have felt terribly hurt and misused by the church. There are some people who want to be reconciled with the church and there are others who have great bitterness. So I try to perform whatever human or religious work that seems called for.

Berrigan published Sorrow Built a Bridge: Friendship and AIDS reflecting on his experiences ministering to AIDS patients through the Supportive Care Program at St. Vincent's Hospital and Medical Center in 1989. The Religious Studies Review wrote, "the strength of this volume lies in its capacity to portray sensitively the impact of AIDS on human lives." Speaking about AIDS patients, many of whom were gay, The Charlotte Observer quoted Berrigan saying in 1991, "Both the church and the state are finding ways to kill people with AIDS, and one of the ways is ostracism that pushes people between the cracks of respectability or acceptability and leaves them there to make of life what they will or what they cannot."

Other activism

Berrigan and his niece, Frida Berrigan, at the Witness Against Torture event held in NYC's Lower East Side on December 18, 2008

 

Although much of his later work was devoted to assisting AIDS patients in New York City, Berrigan still held to his activist roots throughout his life. He maintained his opposition to American interventions abroad, from Central America in the 1980s, through the Gulf War in 1991, the Kosovo War, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He was also an opponent of capital punishment, a contributing editor of Sojourners, and a supporter of the Occupy movement.

Berrigan has been considered by many to be a Christian anarchist.

In media

• Dar Williams' song "I Had No Right" from her album The Green World is about Berrigan and his trial.
• January 25, 1971: Featured on the cover of TIME along with his brother Philip.
• Adrienne Rich's poem "The Burning of Paper Instead of Children" makes numerous references to the Catonsville Nine and includes an epigraph from Daniel Berrigan during the trial ("I was in danger of verbalizing my moral impulses out of existence").
• It is frequently claimed that "the radical priest" in Paul Simon's song "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" refers to or was inspired by Berrigan
• Lynne Sachs's documentary film Investigation of a Flame is about the Berrigan brothers and the Catonsville Nine.
• Berrigan was interviewed about his life and activism for: Kisseloff, Jeff (2006). Generation on Fire: Voices of Protest from the 1960s, an Oral History. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0-8131-2416-6..
• Berrigan appeared briefly in the 1986 Roland Joffé film The Mission, which starred Robert De Niro and Jeremy Irons.
• Berrigan is named in a list of famous persons in a dialogue between Jack Lemmon and Laurie Heineman in the 1973 film Save the Tiger.
• Berrigan's play The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (1970) premiered at the Lyceum Theatre in New York City on June 2, 1971. The original cast featured the talents of Biff McGuire, Michael Moriarty, Josef Sommer, Sam Waterston, and James Woods, among others. Gordon Davidson received a 1972 Tony Award nomination for his direction of the play.
• The Trial of the Catonsville Nine was adapted in a 1972 film of the same name, produced by Gregory Peck and starring Ed Flanders as Berrigan.
• Berrigan is interviewed in Emile de Antonio's 1968 Vietnam War documentary In the Year of the Pig.
• Berrigan is featured in Emile de Antonio's 1983 film In the King of Prussia, also starring fellow activist Martin Sheen.
• Berrigan's involvement with the Catonsville Nine is explored in the 2013 documentary Hit & Stay.
• The character of Father Corrigan in the novel Let The Great World Spin (2009, by Colum McCann), was inspired by the life of Berrigan.
• Berrigan was interviewed for a television documentary called, "The Holy Outlaw," by National Educational Television aired September 1970.
• The Berrigan brothers were referenced in the novel The Man Without a Shadow (2016, by Joyce Carol Oates)pp. 140–141.
• Daniel and Philip Berrigan were noted among other social justice activists on a section on Fasting for Peace and Justice, "Exploring a Great Spiritual Practice: Fasting" by Carole Garibaldi Rogers (2004), p. 155.

Death

On 30 April 2016, forty-one years after the conclusion of the Vietnam War, Berrigan died in The Bronx, New York City, at Murray-Weigel Hall, the Jesuit infirmary at Fordham University. For many years, since 1975, he had lived on the Upper West Side at the West Side Jesuit Community.

Awards and recognition

• 1956: Lamont Poetry Selection
• 1974: War Resisters League Peace Award
• 1974: Gandhi Peace Award (accepted then resigned)
• 1988: Thomas Merton Award
• 1989: Pax Christi USA Pope Paul VI Teacher of Peace Award
• 1992: The Peace Abbey Foundation Courage of Conscience Award
• 1993: Pacem in Terris Award
• 2008: Honorary Degree from The College of Wooster
• 2017: Daniel Berrigan Center at Benincasa Community, 133 W. 70th Street, New York, NY 10023

Plowshares movement

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

On September 9, 1980, Daniel Berrigan (above), his brother Philip, and six others (the "Plowshares Eight") began the Plowshares Movement. They illegally trespassed onto the General Electric Nuclear Missile facility in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, where they damaged nuclear warhead nose cones and poured blood onto documents and files. They were arrested and charged with over ten different felony and misdemeanor counts.

 

The Plowshares movement is an anti-nuclear weapons and Christian pacifist movement that advocates active resistance to war. The group often practices a form of symbolic protest that involves the damaging of weapons and military property. The movement gained notoriety in the early 1980s when several members damaged nuclear warhead nose cones and were subsequently convicted. The name refers to the text of prophet Isaiah who said that weapons shall be beaten into plowshares.

History

The U.S. Plowshares group was deeply influenced by Roman Catholicism and, in particular, the Catholic left movement of the late 1960's and the Catholic Worker Movement. The Plowshares movement takes its name from the idea of beating swords to ploughshares in the Book of Isaiah:

And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

— KJV

On September 9, 1980, Daniel Berrigan, his brother Philip Berrigan, and six others (the "Plowshares Eight") began the Plowshares Movement under the premise of beating swords to ploughshares. They trespassed onto the General Electric Re-entry Division in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, where Mark 12A reentry vehicles for the Minuteman III missile were made. They hammered on two reentry vehicles, poured blood on documents, and offered prayers for peace. They were arrested and charged with more than ten different felony and misdemeanor counts. On April 10, 1990, after 10 years of appeals, the Berrigans' group was re-sentenced and paroled for up to 23 and 1/2 months in consideration of time already served in prison. Their legal battle was re-created in Emile de Antonio's 1982 film In the King of Prussia, which starred Martin Sheen and featured appearances by the Plowshares Eight as themselves.

Actions

Other actions followed. As of 2000, some 71 such actions happened on several continents.

There have been several more such actions since 2000. The vast majority end in prison time for the actors, the longest of which were those meted out to the 1984 group, the "Silo Pruning Hooks" (after the Biblical verse admonishing people to turn spears into pruning hooks), two of which were sentenced to 18 years in federal prison for entering a Minuteman II missile silo.

Pouring of blood

Pouring of blood is a controversial symbolic act that has been traditionally conducted by Plowshares activists.

Recent actions

On April 30, 2008, three Plowshares activists entered the GCSB Waihopai base near Blenheim, New Zealand and punctured an inflated radome used in the ECHELON signal interception program, causing $1.2 million in damages. In March 2010 the three men stood trial by jury at the District Court in Wellington and were acquitted. The New Zealand Attorney-General then lodged a civil claim, on behalf of the GCSB, for $1.2 million. This claim was dropped in February 2014.

On November 2, 2009, a Plowshares action took place in the U.S. at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, where Trident nuclear weapons are stored or deployed on Trident submarines. These weapons constitute the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the US.

On July 28, 2012, three Plowshares activists, Sister Megan Rice, 82, Greg Boertje-Obed, 57, and Michael Walli, 63, who compose the Transform Now Plowshares movement, breached security at the U.S. Department of Energy's Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, causing the government to temporarily shut down the weapons facility. Once inside a "secure" area, the activists hung protest banners on a uranium storage site, poured human blood and spray-painted the walls with anti-war slogans. Following a controversial trial, the three activists were convicted in early May 2013 on the charges of damaging property in violation of 18 US Code 1363, damaging federal property in excess of $1000 in violation of 18 US Code 1361, and intending to injure, interfere with, or obstruct the national defense of the United States and willful damage of national security premises in violation of 18 US Code 2155. Megan Rice was sentenced to 35 months, or just under three years. The other two protesters, Greg Boertje-Obed and Michael Walli, both were sentenced to 62 months, or a little more than five years.

The National Nuclear Security Administration has acknowledged the seriousness of the 2012 Plowshares action, which involved the protesters walking into a high-security zone of the plant, calling the security breach "unprecedented." Independent security contractor, WSI, has since had a weeklong "security stand-down," a halt to weapons production, and mandatory refresher training for all security staff.

Non-proliferation policy experts are concerned about the relative ease with which these unarmed, unsophisticated protesters could cut through a fence and walk into the center of the facility. This is further evidence that nuclear security—the securing of highly enriched uranium and plutonium—should be a top priority to prevent terrorist groups from acquiring nuclear bomb-making material. These experts have questioned "the use of private contractors to provide security at facilities that manufacture and store the government's most dangerous military material".

On April 4, 2018, seven Plowshares activists calling themselves "Kings Bay Plowshares" were arrested at the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base. They stated that the action had been planned to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The activists were arrested, handed over to local authorities, and taken to the county jail. The Kings Bay spokesman, Scott Bennett, said that no one had been threatened and no military personnel or assets were endangered. The base houses 8 Ohio-class submarines, 6 of which carry ballistic missiles and are described by the Navy as "designed specifically for stealth and the precise delivery of nuclear warheads."

Linear no-threshold model

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Different assumptions on the extrapolation of the cancer risk vs. radiation dose to low-dose levels, given a known risk at a high dose:
(A) supra-linearity, (B) linear
(C) linear-quadratic, (D) hormesis

 

The linear no-threshold model (LNT) is a dose-response model used in radiation protection to estimate stochastic health effects such as radiation-induced cancer, genetic mutations and teratogenic effects on the human body due to exposure to ionizing radiation. 

Stochastic health effects are those that occur by chance, and whose probability is proportional to the dose, but whose severity is independent of the dose. The LNT model assumes there is no lower threshold at which stochastic effects start, and assumes a linear relationship between dose and the stochastic health risk. In other words, LNT assumes that radiation has the potential to cause harm at any dose level, and the sum of several very small exposures is just as likely to cause a stochastic health effect as a single larger exposure of equal dose value. In contrast, deterministic health effects are radiation-induced effects such as acute radiation syndrome, which are caused by tissue damage. Deterministic effects reliably occur above a threshold dose and their severity increases with dose. Because of the inherent differences, LNT is not a model for deterministic effects, which are instead characterized by other types of dose-response relationships. 

LNT is a common model to calculate the probability of radiation-induced cancer both at high doses where epidemiology studies support its application but, controversially, also at low doses, which is a dose region that has a lower predictive statistical confidence. Nonetheless, regulatory bodies commonly use LNT as a basis for regulatory dose limits to protect against stochastic health effects, as found in many public health policies. There are three active (as of 2016) challenges to the LNT model currently being considered by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. One was filed by Nuclear Medicine Professor Carol Marcus of UCLA, who calls the LNT model scientific "baloney".

Whether the model describes the reality for small-dose exposures is disputed. It opposes two competing schools of thought: the threshold model, which assumes that very small exposures are harmless, and the radiation hormesis model, which claims that radiation at very small doses can be beneficial. Because the current data are inconclusive, scientists disagree on which model should be used. Pending any definitive answer to these questions and the precautionary principle, the model is sometimes used to quantify the cancerous effect of collective doses of low-level radioactive contaminations, even though it estimates a positive number of excess deaths at levels that would have had zero deaths, or saved lives, in the two other models. Such practice has been condemned by the International Commission on Radiological Protection.

One of the organizations for establishing recommendations on radiation protection guidelines internationally, the UNSCEAR, recommended policies in 2014 that do not agree with the LNT model at exposure levels below background levels. The recommendation states "the Scientific Committee does not recommend multiplying very low doses by large numbers of individuals to estimate numbers of radiation-induced health effects within a population exposed to incremental doses at levels equivalent to or lower than natural background levels." This is a reversal from previous recommendations by the same organization.

The LNT model is sometimes applied to other cancer hazards such as polychlorinated biphenyls in drinking water.

Origins

Increased Risk of Solid Cancer with Dose for A-bomb survivors, from BEIR report. Notably this exposure pathway occurred from essentially a massive spike or pulse of radiation, a result of the brief instant that the bomb exploded, which while somewhat similar to the environment of a CT scan, it is wholly unlike the low dose rate of living in a contaminated area such as Chernobyl, were the dose rate is orders of magnitude smaller. However LNT does not consider dose rate and is an unsubstantiated one size fits all approach based solely on total absorbed dose. When the two environments and cell effects are vastly different. Likewise, it has also been pointed out that bomb survivors inhaled carcinogenic benzopyrene from the burning cities, yet this is not factored in.

 

The association of exposure to radiation with cancer had been observed as early as 1902, six years after the discovery of X-ray by Wilhelm Röntgen and radioactivity by Henri Becquerel. In 1927, Hermann Muller demonstrated that radiation may cause genetic mutation. He also suggested mutation as a cause of cancer. Muller, who received a Nobel Prize for his work on the mutagenic effect of radiation in 1946, asserted in his Nobel Lecture, "The Production of Mutation", that mutation frequency is "directly and simply proportional to the dose of irradiation applied" and that there is "no threshold dose".

The early studies were based on relatively high levels of radiation that made it hard to establish the safety of low level of radiation, and many scientists at that time believed that there may be a tolerance level, and that low doses of radiation may not be harmful. A later study in 1955 on mice exposed to low dose of radiation suggest that they may outlive control animals. The interest in the effect of radiation intensified after the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and studies were conducted on the survivors. Although compelling evidence on the effect of low dosage of radiation was hard to come by, by the late 1940s, the idea of LNT became more popular due to its mathematical simplicity. In 1954, the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP) introduced the concept of maximum permissible dose. In 1958, United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) assessed the LNT model and a threshold model, but noted the difficulty in acquiring "reliable information about the correlation between small doses and their effects either in individuals or in large populations". The United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (JCAE) similarly could not establish if there is a threshold or "safe" level for exposure, nevertheless it introduced the concept of "As Low As Reasonably Achievable" (ALARA). ALARA would become a fundamental principle in radiation protection policy that implicitly accepts the validity of LNT. In 1959, United States Federal Radiation Council (FRC) supported the concept of the LNT extrapolation down to the low dose region in its first report.

By the 1970s, the LNT model had become accepted as the standard in radiation protection practice by a number of bodies. In 1972, the first report of National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR), an expert panel who reviewed available peer reviewed literature, supported the LNT model on pragmatic grounds, noting that while "dose-effect relationship for x rays and gamma rays may not be a linear function", the "use of linear extrapolation . . . may be justified on pragmatic grounds as a basis for risk estimation." In its seventh report of 2006, NAS BEIR VII writes, "the committee concludes that the preponderance of information indicates that there will be some risk, even at low doses".

Radiation precautions and public policy

Radiation precautions have led to sunlight being listed as a carcinogen at all sun exposure rates, due to the ultraviolet component of sunlight, with no safe level of sunlight exposure being suggested, following the precautionary LNT model. According to a 2007 study submitted by the University of Ottawa to the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C., there is not enough information to determine a safe level of sun exposure at this time.

If a particular dose of radiation is found to produce one extra case of a type of cancer in every thousand people exposed, LNT projects that one thousandth of this dose will produce one extra case in every million people so exposed, and that one millionth of the original dose will produce one extra case in every billion people exposed. The conclusion is that any given dose equivalent of radiation will produce the same number of cancers, no matter how thinly it is spread. This allows the summation by dosimeters of all radiation exposure, without taking into consideration dose levels or dose rates.

The model is simple to apply: a quantity of radiation can be translated into a number of deaths without any adjustment for the distribution of exposure, including the distribution of exposure within a single exposed individual. For example, a hot particle embedded in an organ (such as lung) results in a very high dose in the cells directly adjacent to the hot particle, but a much lower whole-organ and whole-body dose. Thus, even if a safe low dose threshold was found to exist at cellular level for radiation-induced mutagenesis, the threshold would not exist for environmental pollution with hot particles, and could not be safely assumed to exist when the distribution of dose is unknown. 

The linear no-threshold model is used to extrapolate the expected number of extra deaths caused by exposure to environmental radiation, and it therefore has a great impact on public policy. The model is used to translate any radiation release, like that from a "dirty bomb", into a number of lives lost, while any reduction in radiation exposure, for example as a consequence of radon detection, is translated into a number of lives saved. When the doses are very low, at natural background levels, in the absence of evidence, the model predicts via extrapolation, new cancers only in a very small fraction of the population, but for a large population, the number of lives is extrapolated into hundreds or thousands, and this can sway public policy.

A linear model has long been used in health physics to set maximum acceptable radiation exposures.

The United States-based National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP), a body commissioned by the United States Congress, recently released a report written by the national experts in the field which states that, radiation's effects should be considered to be proportional to the dose an individual receives, regardless of how small the dose is.

A 1958 analysis of two decades of research on the mutation rate of 1 million lab mice showed that six major hypotheses about ionizing radiation and gene mutation were not supported by data. Its data was used in 1972 by the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation I committee to support the LNT model. However, it has been claimed that the data contained a fundamental error that was not revealed to the committee, and would not support the LNT model on the issue of mutations and may suggest a threshold dose rate under which radiation does not produce any mutations. The acceptance of the LNT model has been challenged by a number of scientists, see controversy section below.

Fieldwork

The LNT model and the alternatives to it each have plausible mechanisms that could bring them about, but definitive conclusions are hard to make given the difficulty of doing longitudinal studies involving large cohorts over long periods.

A 2003 review of the various studies published in the authoritative Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concludes that "given our current state of knowledge, the most reasonable assumption is that the cancer risks from low doses of x- or gamma-rays decrease linearly with decreasing dose."

A 2005 study of Ramsar, Iran (a region with very high levels of natural background radiation) showed that lung cancer incidence was lower in the high-radiation area than in seven surrounding regions with lower levels of natural background radiation. A fuller epidemiological study of the same region showed no difference in mortality for males, and a statistically insignificant increase for females.

A 2009 study by researchers that looks at Swedish children exposed to fallout from Chernobyl while they were fetuses between 8 and 25 weeks gestation concluded that the reduction in IQ at very low doses was greater than expected, given a simple LNT model for radiation damage, indicating that the LNT model may be too conservative when it comes to neurological damage. However, in medical journals, studies detail that in Sweden in the year of the Chernobyl accident, the birth rate, both increased and shifted to those of "higher maternal age" in 1986. More advanced maternal age in Swedish mothers was linked with a reduction in offspring IQ, in a paper published in 2013. Neurological damage has a different biology than cancer. 

In a 2009 study cancer rates among UK radiation workers were found to increase with higher recorded occupational radiation doses. The doses examined varied between 0 and 500 mSv received over their working lives. These results exclude the possibilities of no increase in risk or that the risk is 2-3 times that for A-bomb survivors with a confidence level of 90%. The cancer risk for these radiation workers was still less than the average for persons in the UK due to the healthy worker effect. 

A 2009 study focusing on the naturally high background radiation region of Karunagappalli, India concluded: "our cancer incidence study, together with previously reported cancer mortality studies in the HBR area of Yangjiang, China, suggests it is unlikely that estimates of risk at low doses are substantially greater than currently believed." A 2011 meta-analysis further concluded that the "Total whole body radiation doses received over 70 years from the natural environment high background radiation areas in Kerala, India and Yanjiang, China are much smaller than [the non-tumour dose, "defined as the highest dose of radiation at which no statistically significant tumour increase was observed above the control level"] for the respective dose-rates in each district."

In 2011 an in vitro time-lapse study of the cellular response to low doses of radiation showed a strongly non-linear response of certain cellular repair mechanisms called radiation-induced foci (RIF). The study found that low doses of radiation prompted higher rates of RIF formation than high doses, and that after low-dose exposure RIF continued to form after the radiation had ended.

In 2012 a historical cohort study of >175 000 patients without previous cancer who were examined with CT head scans in UK between 1985 and 2002 was published. The study, which investigated leukaemia and brain cancer, indicated a linear dose response in the low dose region and had qualitative estimates of risk that were in agreement with the Life Span Study (Epidemiology data for low-linear energy transfer radiation). 

In 2013 a data linkage study of 11 million Australians with >680 000 people exposed to CT scans between 1985 and 2005 was published. The study confirmed the results of the 2012 UK study for leukaemia and brain cancer but also investigated other cancer types. The authors conclude that their results were generally consistent with the linear no threshold theory.

Controversy

The LNT model has been contested by a number of scientists. It is been claimed that the early proponent of the model Hermann Joseph Muller intentionally ignored an early study that did not support the LNT model when he gave his 1946 Nobel Prize address advocating the model.

It is also argued that LNT model had caused an irrational fear of radiation. In the wake of the 1986 Chernobyl accident in Ukraine, Europe-wide anxieties were fomented in pregnant mothers over the perception enforced by the LNT model that their children would be born with a higher rate of mutations. As far afield as the country of Denmark, hundreds of excess induced abortions were performed on the healthy unborn, out of this no-threshold fear. Following the accident however, studies of data sets approaching a million births in the EUROCAT database, divided into "exposed" and control groups were assessed in 1999. As no Chernobyl impacts were detected, the researchers conclude "in retrospect the widespread fear in the population about the possible effects of exposure on the unborn was not justified". Despite studies from Germany and Turkey, the only robust evidence of negative pregnancy outcomes that transpired after the accident were these elective abortion indirect effects, in Greece, Denmark, Italy etc., due to the anxieties created.

In very high dose radiation therapy, it was known at the time that radiation can cause a physiological increase in the rate of pregnancy anomalies, however, human exposure data and animal testing suggests that the "malformation of organs appears to be a deterministic effect with a threshold dose" below which, no rate increase is observed. A review in 1999 on the link between the Chernobyl accident and teratology (birth defects) concludes that "there is no substantive proof regarding radiation‐induced teratogenic effects from the Chernobyl accident". It is argued that the human body has defense mechanisms, such as DNA repair and programmed cell death, that would protect it against carcinogenesis due to low-dose exposures of carcinogens.

Ramsar, located in Iran, is often quoted as being a counter example to LNT. Based on preliminary results, it was considered as having the highest natural background radiation levels on Earth, several times higher than the ICRP-recommended radiation dose limits for radiation workers, whilst the local population did not seem to suffer any ill effects. However, the population of the high-radiation districts is small (about 1800 inhabitants) and only receive an average of 6 millisieverts per year, so that cancer epidemiology data are too imprecise to draw any conclusions. On the other hand, there may be non-cancer effects from the background radiation such as chromosomal aberrations or female infertility.

A 2011 research of the cellular repair mechanisms support the evidence against the linear no-threshold model. According to its authors, this study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America "casts considerable doubt on the general assumption that risk to ionizing radiation is proportional to dose".

However, a 2011 review of studies addressing childhood leukaemia following exposure to ionizing radiation, including both diagnostic exposure and natural background exposure, concluded that existing risk factors, excess relative risk per Sv (ERR/Sv), is "broadly applicable" to low dose or low dose-rate exposure.

Several expert scientific panels have been convened on the accuracy of the LNT model at low dosage, and various organizations and bodies have stated their positions on this topic:

Support

• In 2004 the United States National Research Council (part of the National Academy of Sciences) supported the linear no threshold model and stated regarding Radiation hormesis:

  The assumption that any stimulatory hormetic effects from low doses of ionizing radiation will have a significant health benefit to humans that exceeds potential detrimental effects from the radiation exposure is unwarranted at this time.

• In 2005 the United States National Academies' National Research Council published its comprehensive meta-analysis of low-dose radiation research BEIR VII, Phase 2. In its press release the Academies stated:

The scientific research base shows that there is no threshold of exposure below which low levels of ionizing radiation can be demonstrated to be harmless or beneficial.

• The National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (a body commissioned by the United States Congress). endorsed the LNT model in a 2001 report that attempted to survey existing literature critical of the model.
• The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) wrote in its 2000 report.

  Until the [...] uncertainties on low-dose response are resolved, the Committee believes that an increase in the risk of tumour induction proportionate to the radiation dose is consistent with developing knowledge and that it remains, accordingly, the most scientifically defensible approximation of low-dose response. However, a strictly linear dose response should not be expected in all circumstances.

• the United States Environmental Protection Agency also endorses the LNT model in its 2011 report on radiogenic cancer risk:

  Underlying the risk models is a large body of epidemiological and radiobiological data. In general, results from both lines of research are consistent with a linear, no-threshold dose (LNT) response model in which the risk of inducing a cancer in an irradiated tissue by low doses of radiation is proportional to the dose to that tissue.

Oppose

A number of organisations disagree with using the Linear no-threshold model to estimate risk from environmental and occupational low-level radiation exposure:

• The French Academy of Sciences (Académie des Sciences) and the National Academy of Medicine (Académie Nationale de Médecine) published a report in 2005 (at the same time as BEIR VII report in the United States) that rejected the Linear no-threshold model in favor of a threshold dose response and a significantly reduced risk at low radiation exposure:

In conclusion, this report raises doubts on the validity of using LNT for evaluating the carcinogenic risk of low doses (< 100 mSv) and even more for very low doses (< 10 mSv). The LNT concept can be a useful pragmatic tool for assessing rules in radioprotection for doses above 10 mSv; however since it is not based on biological concepts of our current knowledge, it should not be used without precaution for assessing by extrapolation the risks associated with low and even more so, with very low doses (< 10 mSv), especially for benefit-risk assessments imposed on radiologists by the European directive 97-43.

• The Health Physics Society's position statement first adopted in January 1996, as revised in July 2010, states:

In accordance with current knowledge of radiation health risks, the Health Physics Society recommends against quantitative estimation of health risks below an individual dose of 5 rem (50 mSv) in one year or a lifetime dose of 10 rem (100 mSv) above that received from natural sources. Doses from natural background radiation in the United States average about 0.3 rem (3 mSv) per year. A dose of 5 rem (50 mSv) will be accumulated in the first 17 years of life and about 25 rem (250 mSv) in a lifetime of 80 years. Estimation of health risk associated with radiation doses that are of similar magnitude as those received from natural sources should be strictly qualitative and encompass a range of hypothetical health outcomes, including the possibility of no adverse health effects at such low levels.

• The American Nuclear Society recommended further research on the Linear No Threshold Hypothesis before making adjustments to current radiation protection guidelines, concurring with the Health Physics Society's position that:

  There is substantial and convincing scientific evidence for health risks at high dose. Below 10 rem or 100 mSv (which includes occupational and environmental exposures) risks of health effects are either too small to be observed or are non-existent.

Intermediate

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission takes the intermediate position that "accepts the LNT hypothesis as a conservative model for estimating radiation risk", but noting that "public health data do not absolutely establish the occurrence of cancer following exposure to low doses and dose rates — below about 10,000 mrem (100 mSv). Studies of occupational workers who are chronically exposed to low levels of radiation above normal background have shown no adverse biological effects."

Mental health effects

The consequences of low-level radiation are often more psychological than radiological. Because damage from very-low-level radiation cannot be detected, people exposed to it are left in anguished uncertainty about what will happen to them. Many believe they have been fundamentally contaminated for life and may refuse to have children for fear of birth defects. They may be shunned by others in their community who fear a sort of mysterious contagion.

Forced evacuation from a radiation or nuclear accident may lead to social isolation, anxiety, depression, psychosomatic medical problems, reckless behavior, even suicide. Such was the outcome of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Ukraine. A comprehensive 2005 study concluded that "the mental health impact of Chernobyl is the largest public health problem unleashed by the accident to date". Frank N. von Hippel, a U.S. scientist, commented on the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, saying that "fear of ionizing radiation could have long-term psychological effects on a large portion of the population in the contaminated areas".

Such great psychological danger does not accompany other materials that put people at risk of cancer and other deadly illness. Visceral fear is not widely aroused by, for example, the daily emissions from coal burning, although, as a National Academy of Sciences study found, this causes 10,000 premature deaths a year in the US. It is "only nuclear radiation that bears a huge psychological burden — for it carries a unique historical legacy".