Mich. nun celebrates prison release

December 23, 2005

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Midway through breakfast, Sister Ardeth Platte burst into a Danbury, Conn., diner, singing and looking more like a grandmother arriving for Christmas than a felon returning from prison.

"This is the day the Lord has made!" she sang to the applause of friends.

Platte, 69, a member of the Dominican Sisters Order in Grand Rapids, is fresh from the Danbury Federal Correctional Institution, where she has lived for more than two years.

She was arrested in 2002 for breaking into a Colorado missile silo and defacing it with her own blood -- the latest bit of civil disobedience on a rap sheet that includes more than 10 convictions and stints in more than two dozen jails.

Platte and sisters Jackie Hudson and Carol Gilbert, also of the Dominican Order, were convicted in 2003 of obstructing national defense and damaging government property.

They said their protest was prompted by imminent war with Iraq because the United State has never disavowed nuclear weapons.

They cut a chain link fence surrounding a Minuteman III silo in northern Colorado, then used baby bottles to draw a sign of the cross in their own blood. Because of her long record, Platte got the longest sentence and was the last to be released.

The site held weapons that could be launched within 15 minutes of a presidential order, court documents said.

"The charges remain bogus," she said. "It was, 'If you're not with us, you're against us.' And be assured, I would never stand with this government in any kind of killing."

Platte insists that she will not pay the government any restitution, as ordered, because she says too much of every dollar is spent on war and defense. A federal judge criticized the nuns. Colorado Gov. Bill Owens, a Catholic, said the sentences were fair because nobody is above the law.

After a breakfast of wheat toast with jelly, Platte left for Baltimore and the Jonah House, a Catholic organization dedicated to nonviolence and social and political resistance, where she will stay for the time being.

She must serve three years' probation.

A low-security facility with an adjacent minimum-security prison camp, Danbury is home to 1,300 women. Platte lived in the camp, where she said she worked as a chapel clerk and ministered to women of many faiths. She received as many as 30 letters a day, she said, from people offering support and describing their protests.

Mary Novak, an activist from Voluntown, exchanged letters with Platte. She said Platte's long history of protests inspires others to follow similar paths and to be strong during the difficult times.