December 2013 Philadelphia Chapter of Pax Christi U.S.A.

It's Not Just About the Supreme Court

When Scott Fina told me that my case had every potential of ending up in the Supreme Court, I thought he was, if not delusional, at least overdramatic. And yet that, through a bizarre set of circumstances, is exactly what has happened. Scott had written all of my motions, briefs and petitions for my appeal of three convictions for trespassing at Vandenberg Air Force Base. When the case was accepted by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Scott petitioned for me to be assigned a pro bono attorney and I was given Erwin Chemerinsky, the Dean of the Law School at the University of California at Irvine and a nationally recognized Constitutional Lawyer. I now have nine attorneys and two research assistants working on my case which will be heard by the nine Justices of the Supreme Court during Oral Arguments at 11:00 A.M. on December 4, 2013. This is surreal.

All of this was generated by merely standing quietly with a sign on Highway 1 outside the Main Gate of Vandenberg. I and a small group of activists (including Scott) had been shining a light on the immorality of the mission of the Base. On one occasion, ten of us were arrested, including my wife Tensie, our community member Jorge, Scott and a number of friends who had come to join us. It all seemed like only harassment until the Government decided to prosecute. And this is the outcome.

But in all of the minutia of briefs and filings and hairsplitting and the hours upon hours of statutory research, what gets lost is the reason we stand at Vandenberg in the first place. The mission of the Base is so immoral, it begs dissent and this is ultimately the reason we are going through all of this. Vandenberg, among other projects, tests intercontinental ballistic missiles. In the process we spend countless millions of dollars which might otherwise be used for programs for the common good, pollute our pristine coast and continue what is now 68 years of ravaging the land and indigenous peoples of the Marshall Islands. Every time we fire a missile from Vandenberg (about 5 times per year) it travels the 4,200 miles to Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands in 20 minutes. The warhead lands either in the lagoon or on one of the islands, polluting the area with depleted uranium, a radioactive heavy metal with a half-life of 4.5 billion years (about the age of our sun). This after massive radioactive contamination in the Marshall Islands in the 1940's and 50's when we conducted 67 above-ground nuclear detonations, irradiating the native peoples and destroying their islands.

And what is the purpose of this horrific project? It is to demonstrate to the world that we, as a nation, have the capability to annihilate millions and millions of innocent people anywhere on the planet with the turn of a key. We have 450 identical I.C.B.M.s on alert in silos in North Dakota, Wyoming and Montana, each with active nuclear warheads capable of such devastation that they would make Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like they were pipe bombs by comparison. And to what end do we maintain such a system? So that in a nuclear exchange (which would undoubtedly eliminate life as we know it on the planet) we would have the comfort of knowing that our last act before we died would be to ensure that we incinerated millions of other human beings. What insanity!

So the Supreme Court will decide sometime after December 4th if we have the constitutional right to stand on a public highway outside the Main Gate of this installation with signs addressing this craziness. Will their decision have any bearing at all on the project itself or relieve the Marshallese people of the continued devastation of their

lands? Certainly not. Then what is the point? The point is that it seems to be the lot of people of faith to act, not to change the world, but so that the world doesn't change us. Beyond that, it's all up to the Spirit. But then who would have thought that the Spirit would lead us all the way to the Supreme Court?

Dennis Apel

Beatitude House Catholic Worker, Guadalupe CA

http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/united-states-v-apel/