A couple of nuns have recently been sprung from jail. Their crimes? Breaking into the Minuteman III nuclear missile site in Colorado a few years ago and bleeding on it. Sister Carol Gilbert served 30 months, and Sister Ardeth Platte served 41 months.

The nuns’ protest at the missile site was not an off-the-cuff act. They are members of Plowshares, a worldwide peace organization that calls attention to the dangers of militarism and seeks the dismantling of all nuclear weapons. The sisters’ hammers and wire cutters served as symbols of disarmament and referred to Isaiah 2:4 which reads: “They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.” This time I found the nuns truly inspiring and courageous.

This editorial goes on to describe how the author grew to appreciate the wisdom of the social justice movement and the inanity of American foreign and domestic policy. Along the way she traveled to Central America, South America and the former Soviet Union.

These experiences changed me. I learned not to trust political leaders’ motives, especially when they decided to stomp into a country “to save it from evil dictators.” I also came to understand that our government cared more about corporate profits than people, including the American people. This was the same message that Sisters Ardeth and Carol had delivered 27 years before and they, together with Sister Jackie Hudson, subsequently put their lives on the line for that message.

Of course, she encountered the familiar resistance and upside-down thinking which permeates our society and has for years.

The Nuclear Weapons Freeze of the 1980s came from Americans’ response to the Reagan administration’s decision to escalate the country’s weapons of mass destruction stockpile. As I helped circulate petitions on the street corners of my city, an old man yelled at me: “You people don’t know what you’re doing,” he said. “We have to keep the U.S. safe with these weapons.”

Someone made a film to document the Sisters’ experience.

Most people have not had the opportunities I did to learn these lessons about social justice. Somehow, those of us who have been enlightened must find ways to share the truth with those who are not exposed to it.

One way to start is to view the new film about the Sisters Ardeth, Carol and Jackie Hudson titled “Conviction” by Brenda Truelson Fox of Boulder, CO. It illustrates the sisters’ commitment to disarmament and the price they paid as a result. Former president of the U.S. National Association of Evangelists Ted Haggard and anti-nuclear weapons advocate Helen Caldicott, MD, are featured. Copies of the 43-minute film are available through the website Zero to Sixty Productions: www.ztsp.org.

Click through to the Plowshares site to read the gory details of the nuns’ trial. It seems that the judge desired to turn the screws. Charming.