US Peace Activist Jailed in German Prison
Wins WBW “War Abolisher” Award
World BEYOND War
(July 15, 2024) — World BEYOND War has given the 2024 David Hartsough Lifetime Individual War Abolisher Award to Susan Crane.
The presentation of the award to Susan Crane at an online public award ceremony on July 22, 2024, was made by World BEYOND War Advisory Board Member Maria Santelli and World BEYOND War Technology Director Marc Eliot Stein. The presentation was pre-recorded because Crane is currently incarcerated in Germany as a result of her participation in a nonviolent protest at a German military base where the US military keeps nuclear weapons in violation of the Nonproliferation Treaty, human decency, and basic common sense.
Crane is in jail for a 7-month sentence after having refused to pay a fine.
Susan Crane, who has lived in Catholic Worker communities, has done peace education and peace activism, including ploughshares actions and war tax resistance, for decades, and has repeatedly gone to jail for justice. She tells her story in a video posted on the War Abolisher Awards website.
The David Hartsough Lifetime Individual War Abolisher Award is named for World BEYOND War co-founder David Hartsough who interviewed Susan Crane earlier this year.
Susan Crane Named World BEYOND War
2024 “War Abolisher” Lifetime Award
Prison Reflections: Vigil Behind Bars
Susan Crane and Susan van der Hijden
KOBLENZ Prison, Germany (July 30, 2024) — Greetings from the “open prison” of Koblenz. Since July 30th, we have exchanged the Rohrbach prison desert — where most women are locked up alone or in pairs for 21 hours or more a day — for the relative freedom of a so-called “open prison.”
Did the devil tempt these activists in their desert, you may wonder? True enough, we did not apply to move but were offered it by a person with power in Rohrbach prison. “And all power is given by the devil,” the bible says. (Luke 4:6)
It was not an easy decision to accept this offer and it might have been a mistake that we will have to rectify in the future. However, this offer also seems an attempt from the German justice system to rectify their mistake in finding us guilty. What kind of peacemakers would we be if we denied this gesture, even if they are not fully aware of making it?
We gratefully accept the offer from the German justice system to give us a few months of food and lodging while allowing us to work with the people who suffer the most from money going towards war preparations instead of education, health care or social housing. And holding regular vigils and talks about nuclear disarmament. Who are we to refuse this attempt of redemption? Perhaps it is a first step to recognizing the value of war resistance and more positive court verdicts?
Soon it will be the 79th anniversary of the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We intend to use those dates, August 6-9, to start our peace work in Koblenz, either behind bars or on the streets. We hope many of you will join either alone or with a local group (of which there are many!). Fold cranes, hang up a banner, join a vigil, but most importantly talk to your neighbours, express your fears for war and longing for peace and build community!
We too shall use the month of August to speak about the horrors of war, the cancers and birth defects still caused by depleted uranium in Iraq (1), the cancer-causing pollution of the Mississippi River in the USA by tritium (2), the huge increase in CO2 emission by the arms upscaling of NATO (3), the hunger in Sudan, the return of polio in Gaza because of the destruction of health care and sanitation (4), the 10,000s of amputees in Ukraine (5).
Let us work together for a world with more peace, justice and freedom!
Footnotes
(1) NIH 2012
(2) Nukewatch Summer 2024 “NRC apologizes, admits: Monticello’s leaked tritium reached the Mississippi River”
(3) Climate Crossfire: How NATO’s 2% military spending targets contribute to climate breakdown” Report Oct 2023
(4) TAZ 23/7/2024
(5) TAZ 17.07.2024
Contact the Protesters
Susan Crane is serving a 229-day sentence, and Susan van der Hijden a 115-day sentence, for their nonviolent nuclear disarmament actions at Büchel air base. You can write cards and letters to them, individually addressed to each at JVA Koblenz – Offener Vollzug, Simmerner Str. 14a, 56075 Koblenz, Germany. Updates can be found at https://noelhuis.nl/acties/kernwapensweg/ and http://www.nukeresister.org/2024/06/04/three-more-to-prison-for-nonviolent-anti-nuclear-actions-at-germanys-buchel-airbase/
