Peace activist nun gets out of prison
Ardeth Platte said she "treasured" every "sacred day" in federal prison.

By James B. Meadow, Rocky Mountain News

December 23, 2005 After 41 months in a federal prison, Ardeth Platte walked to freedom Thursday still swathed in the belief that while she may have broken one law, she was upholding a higher one.

That conviction may have sustained her enough that although she was in prison, "Every moment in there was a blessed moment; every day was a sacred day. I treasured every one."

Platte, 69, the last of the three Dominican nuns still incarcerated over a 2002 war protest at a Colorado missile site, was released from the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Conn., and within six hours arrived at a Baltimore "faith- based resistance community," simultaneously weary and energized.

"I feel like I'm an ordinary person, deep into faith, devoting my life to waging peace with justice," she said over the phone.

The path from peace and justice to prison began for Platte, Jackie Hudson and Carol Gilbert more than three years ago.

On Oct. 6, 2002, they went to a nuclear missile silo in Weld County and cut open a chain-link fence. The trio then banged on a railing with a small hammer and spilled their own blood - collected in baby bottles - on the ground. That done, they prayed, sang and chanted for peace. That is what the authorities found them doing 45 minutes later when they arrested the women.

Though the nuns maintained that their actions were legal - it was nuclear weapons and war that were the true violations of life - a jury disagreed, convicting them in 2003 of injuring, interfering and obstructing national defense materials and premises, and of damaging government property.

They were handed varying sentences of 30, 33, and 41 months and sent to three federal prisons.

Hudson, 71, the first to be released, was let out of a California federal prison in March of this year and now lives in Washington. Gilbert, who left a West Virginia prison in May, lives at Jonah House, the nonviolent community in Baltimore that is now Platte's home as well.

But just because she's come home doesn't mean Platte feels liberated.

"I don't feel really free," she said. "I feel I've gone from one prison into the prison of a society where war is still being waged, where the Earth is still being devastated, where the poor are getting poorer, where torture is being done in our name."

On still another level, neither Platte, Gilbert nor Hudson are completely free. Under the terms of their sentences, their movement will be restricted by a supervised release program. That is, Hudson cannot leave Washington and Gilbert and Platte cannot leave Maryland. At least not until U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn decides otherwise.

And Blackburn might not be likely to do so in the face of the nuns' staunch commitment to the principles that landed them in jail.

The federal government is demanding that the three women pay $3,000 in restitution for damage to the site. However, the nuns contend that they have more than paid off the government with their lives of community service. Furthermore, according to Hudson, "We will not pay one penny to the support of this warmongering government."

They are also expressly forbidden from protesting on military property, an edict that they may not obey.

Though the nuns were not openly defiant of the ban, they couldn't promise unending compliance.

"I guess what I would say is, we will live our conscience," said Gilbert. "And we believe that someday history will prove what we did was legal."

But Platte doesn't have to wait for history to persuade her that the cause of peace is powerful.

While in prison, "I received thousands and thousands of letters from people in every continent, from people in cities I haven't heard of," she said in a soft voice. Not only were these letters "nourishment," they were a reminder that she and her two colleagues were not alone.

"I look at what we have done, and see it as a little piece of sand on the large seashore of a movement," she said, emphasizing that, "All of us make up the struggle for peace."

The struggle for health was also something Platte experienced in prison. Surgery in July for cataracts has proved unsuccessful, and she will likely need another operation. Additionally, an allergic reaction to medication left her with a severe rash - "It's very burdensome . . . like a sting in the flesh."

Nevertheless, she insists that "I feel strengthened."

And so, perhaps is the peace movement.

"Because of Ardeth, Jackie and Carol, there is a dialogue going on," said Bill Sulzman, a Colorado Springs peace activist who has known the three women for seven years. This dialogue, said Sulzman, centers on "what does Christian morality require one to do in this nuclear age? They helped put that question into play."

Dennis Apuan, of the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission in Colorado Springs, said, "Their public witness raised people's consciousness about nuclear war. It was an act of nonviolent conviction that generated a lot of debate."

Though Platte says she has no intention of slowing down, she did acknowledge that "waging peace takes an enormous effort. So I'm a bit weary."

As such, "I hope to take some respite time to evaluate and ponder the day by day of many hundreds of days in prison, and lift it up to God, and thank him for the grace to go through with it."

Does she intend to sample any personal comforts now that she's out of prison?

"Oh, we have a wonderful Mass at the (Jonah) House," she said. "Then we have a marvelous Christmas banquet where everyone fixes the most precious foods they can make. Then we take a long walk in some beautiful part of Baltimore."

No other guilty pleasures?

"Oh, for me that is a hilarious time," she said. "What more could I need?"

meadowj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-2606