By Brian Terrell

“We still hold that nonviolent resistance is the only sane solution,” Dorothy Day wrote in 1940, in a time of war much like our own, minus the daily escalating threat of nuclear annihilation that we face today. “We have to continue to make our voice heard until we are finally silenced — and even then, in jail, or concentration camp, to express ourselves.” In that spirit, Catholic Workers and other activists in Kansas City will be hosting the annual Spring Midwest Catholic Worker Resistance Retreat there April 12-15.

Each spring for more than 20 years, Catholic Workers and their fellow travelers have left their homes, houses of hospitality, and farms to lend support for a local campaign of nonviolent resistance somewhere in the Midwest.

The Kansas City “National Security Campus,” (KCNSC) “creating technology roadmaps to ensure we’re at the forefront of national security innovation” — along with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Nevada National Security Site, the Pantex Plant, the Sandia National Laboratories, and the Y-12 National Security Complex — is a facility of the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). With some 7,000 employees, the Kansas City “campus” produces more than 80% of the non-nuclear components in U.S. nuclear weapons.

In January 2022, officials at KCNSC announced the completion of the B61-12 “Life Extension Program’s” first production unit (FPU): “It is with great pride and excitement that we see the B61-12 achieve FPU,” said Eric Wollerman, president of Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies which manages and operates the “campus” complex, formerly known as the Kansas City Plant.

The new B61-12 H-bombs are on their way to replace the old B61 freefall gravity bombs at bases in five NATO countries as part of “nuclear sharing” arrangements. These new, “more flexible” thermonuclear bombs — with adjustable tail assemblies that allow them to be guided, and a built-in option to dial up to 50 kilotons (three times the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb) or down to less than one kiloton — are the nuclear weapons closest to the borders of Russia. If or when the order is given, they will be “delivered” to their target areas by their host countries’ air forces.

New technologies like the B61-12 have inspired optimism in U.S. war planners that a nuclear war, once started, can be controlled and brought to decisive victory. Open talk about “using nuclear weapons could create conditions for decisive results and the restoration of strategic stability,” in the words of a June 2019 report by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, “and create conditions that affect how commanders will prevail in conflict ” has become commonplace. On Oct. 12, 2023, the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States published its report on the unsubstantiated dangers posed by China and Russia, suggesting that “the United States and its Allies and partners must be ready to deter and defeat both adversaries simultaneously.”

Responding to “the demands of a rapidly evolving security environment,” on October 27 the [Pentagon] announced that “a modern variant of the B61 nuclear gravity bomb, designated the B61-13” would be produced. [According to the Arms Control Association, the B61-13 would have a maximum explosive force of around 360-kilotons, “a massive increase when compared to the most recent 50-kiloton B61-12.”] The B61-13 “would be deliverable by modern aircraft … providing the president with additional options against certain harder and large-area military targets,” the Pentagon said. The doctrine of “mutually assured destruction” (MAD) — that a nuclear war could have no winners and would annihilate the combatant parties leaving much of the planet lifeless — was never a good plan for lasting peace. The existential fear that gripped the planet in the cold war years was “not a way of life at all, in any true sense,” President Eisenhower said in 1953, but “humanity hanging from a cross of iron.” MAD didn’t prevent endless conflicts and wars of proxy, but somehow, by sheer luck some say, a final nuclear weapons exchange did not happen in those years.

In the 1990s, there was some real progress toward disarmament and even now, the nations of the world are uniting in support of a total prohibition of nuclear weapons. Over the past three administrations, however, the United States has led the other nuclear powers in a new arms race. For elected officials and policy makers, talk of arms reduction has been replaced by “stockpile stewardship,” ensuring the nuclear threat for future generations. While quality of life declines globally and the world faces imminent climate collapse, the U.S. Department of Energy commits trillions of dollars for “life extension” of the B61-12 and other nuclear weapons systems.

Last August, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres warned, “This year, we face an alarming rise in global mistrust and division. At a time in which nearly 13,000 nuclear weapons are stockpiled around the world — and countries are working to improve their accuracy, reach, and destructive power — this is a recipe for annihilation.”
This will be the second such retreat and action by Catholic Workers at the Kansas City National Security Campus. The first one in 2011 drew some 150 participants and culminated in fifty-three arrests on May 2 for blocking the construction of what was to become the nation’s first nuclear weapons production factory built in 33 years. Since then, Catholic Workers have regularly organized protests and resistance there, as they have at the weapons plant that preceded it, sponsored by PeaceWorks Kansas City.

Last August, Catholic Workers and others from around Europe and the U.S. joined protests hosted by the Jeanette Noel Catholic Worker in Amsterdam at Volkel air base in the Netherlands. The group participated in a series of other protests sponsored by the German coalition “Büchel is Everywhere!” at Germany’s Büchel air base. Both bases host U.S. air force squadrons that maintain their B61 bombs, ready to be loaded onto Dutch and German fighter jets at a moment’s notice.

“Fill the Jails!” was Dorothy Day’s urgent advice to Catholic Workers during the war on Vietnam. The Earth has not seen such perilous times as the “rapidly evolving security environment” that we are living through today. This spring’s retreat in Kansas City is a weekend of education, prayer, reflection, community-building, and training, followed on Monday, April 15, with nonviolent direct action to disrupt the deadly business as usual at the KCNS nuclear weapons factory. For more information contact Ann Suellentrop, 913-271-7925, annsuellen@gmail.com.

— Brian Terrell is a peace activist who has spent time in prison for protesting assassinations at U.S. military drone bases and lives at Strangers and Guests Catholic Worker farm in Maloy, Iowa.