THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, September 13, 1995 TAG: 9509130419
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KAREN JOLLY DAVIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NEWPORT NEWS LENGTH: Long : 119 lines
. . . 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.
Isaiah 2:4 \ Brown-eyed Rachel Obed pressed her baby fingers against the glass in the visitors booth of the Newport News jail. Her mother, Michelle Naar-Obed, pressed her own hand to the other side of the glass.
Their separation was part of the price Michelle - one of three peace activists in jail here - chose to pay in her personal struggle against war and hunger.
``She's doing better without me than I am without her,'' said Naar-Obed, 39. She has refused to put up a $6,500 bond, and has been in custody since Aug. 7 for breaking into Newport News Shipbuilding and hammering on a new $1.5 billion submarine.
``There are principles of love and justice that need to be kept alive,'' she said of her motives for the protest. She would rather see defense money used to buy food for poor children. ``If we didn't continue to say these things, no one would.''
``Jubilee Plowshares,'' the name the activists gave the protest, was unnervingly successful. Naar-Obed said she and three others broke into the shipyard, and - using name tags that originally read: ``Hello, my name is . . submarine.
No one stopped them as they beat on the sub's missile-launching tubes with hammers, she said in a recent jailhouse interview.
In a final symbolic gesture, Naar-Obed said, the protesters took out baby bottles filled with their own blood and poured them down the tubes.
It's the second time in two years that Naar-Obed and friends have breached shipyard security to hammer on subs being built. Both times they cut through a fence, posed as shipyard workers and walked unhindered aboard the vessels.
``Anyone could do this. If someone really wanted to do some damage, they could, '' said Naar-Obed. ``I want to emphasize how wrong it is to put our faith in the security of these weapons. They can't be protected.''
Naar-Obed and her husband, Greg Boertje-Obed, live at Jonah House, a Catholic community in Baltimore. When they married, both kept their surnames and added Obed, which means ``servant or handmaiden of the Lord.'' Jonah House residents think of themselves as a faith-based resistance group, dedicated to making a living statement against war.
Jonah House is allied with more than 200 peace activists in the mid-Atlantic area who risk arrest - in fact, choose arrest - as part of their protest. ``Some people call it divine obedience instead of civil disobedience,'' said Boertje-Obed.
At Jonah House, they prayed for nine months before embarking on Jubilee Plowshares, reflecting on the causes and effects of military spending. Naar-Obed said they decided to focus the action on America's nuclear weapons.
As a target, they chose the Greeneville, a sub that is capable of launching conventional and nuclear warheads.
The activists are big into symbolism. Even the name of the protest has a deeper meaning. In the Bible, a jubilee happens once every 50 years. It is a time to free slaves, forgive debts and return lost land to its original owners. Naar-Obed said the Aug. 7 action was, in part, a memorial to the victims of atomic-bomb blasts in Japan 50 years ago.
``Basically, we're beating the swords of our times into plowshares,'' she said.
Just before dawn on Aug. 7, Naar-Obed, Amy Moose of New York City; and Rick Sieber and his son, Erin, of Philadelphia, used a bolt cutter to cut through the shipyard fence behind a nursing home near 51st Street. ``You just cut through a regular old chainlink fence, go down the hill, and you're in the yard,'' said Naar-Obed. The protesters wore jeans, sweat shirts and hard hats, she said, so they looked like shipyard workers.
``We got all the materials we needed to make the badge from Kmart,'' she said. They put their real names on the ID badges with press-on letters. And in the place reserved for job title, they listed ``Disarmer.''
``We said who we were and what we'd come to do,'' said Naar-Obed.
After climbing through the fence, the protesters walked nearly a mile - from 51st to 38th Street - looking for the sub. They recognized it from pictures they had seen in a library book.
Naar-Obed said they mingled with shipyard workers, walked down a pier, and through a security checkpoint.
Each of the protesters carried hammers engraved with Biblical phrases such as ``Love your enemies,'' and ``Thou shalt not kill.'' She said they leaned down into the missile tubes and pounded on the steel rims. They unsuccessfully tried to rip out a rubber gasket.
After hammering - unnoticed - for a few minutes, Naar-Obed said, the four protesters pulled out 8-ounce baby bottles filled with their own blood. They poured the blood down the missile chutes, held hands, prayed and taped pictures of atom-bomb victims at Nagasaki and Hiroshima to the sub.
``Then we went to look for someone to tell them what we did,'' said Naar-Obed. They presented themselves to an employee who remembered the Plowshares action in 1993. He called security, who in turn called the city police. They were charged with trespassing and destruction of property.
From there they went to jail, where three of the four activists have remained. Rick Sieber decided to post bond. They will be brought before a magistrate on Sept. 19 for the misdemeanor trespassing charge. A court date for the felony vandalism charge has not been set.
Newport News Shipbuilding would not discuss its security or personnel, said spokeswoman Jerri Fuller Dickseski, but steps are being taken to prevent similar incidents.
Dickseski said the launch tubes were dented and needed minor welding repair, but the damage has been corrected and the sub is on schedule to be delivered to the Navy in February.
``As far as we are concerned, the event is over,'' said Dickseski.
But for Michelle Naar-Obed, her husband and other peace activists, the real event - the day they pray for, when nations no longer prepare for war - has yet to come.
``It's a lifelong commitment, the path we're on,'' said Boertje-Obed, who is caring for his daughter while his wife is in jail. ``We don't see the system changing any time soon.''
KEYWORDS: ARREST VANDALISM PROTEST NUCLEAR
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