It was a lovefest — warm embraces, beaming smiles, raspy renditions of old-timey peace songs and nonstop visits to military bases and nuclear weapons sites. Fifteen years to the day after they succeeded in getting themselves arrested at a Minuteman III site in Weld County, Ardeth Platte and Carol Gilbert were back, performing in a reunion tour across Colorado.
This time they didn’t end up in the slammer. Quite the contrary, in many of the places they visited this month, they were given a hero’s welcome.
Well, not at the mayor’s office in Colorado Springs. They stopped by for a friendly visit — Catholic-to-Catholic — with John Suthers, who had prosecuted them for sabotage and destruction of federal property back when he was U.S. Attorney.
He wasn’t, um, available, so they left him a note saying their visit was “an act of love.”
In the years since they served their sentences in federal prison, the Dominican sisters, hardly deterred by the threat of future incarceration, have become pop culture icons.
A character on “Orange is the New Black” is based on Platte, who practiced yoga at Danbury Federal Correctional Institution with Piper Kerman, author of the book on which the series is based.
Gilbert had her own brush with celebrity. She struck up a friendship with Martha Stewart when they served their sentences at Alderson Federal Prison.
The women are the subject of a documentary called “Conviction,” and The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post and numerous international publications have told their story.
Another Dominican sister, Jackie Hudson, who participated in the Weld County demonstration and also served time in federal prison, died of cancer in 2011.
“She’s with us here in spirit,” said Platte.
They wish she could have been here to share the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, which was announced on Oct. 6 while they were visiting Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming.
The prize was awarded to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, or ICAN, which succeeded in getting 69 nations to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The sisters spent weeks at the U.N. working with ICAN, meeting with world leaders from Ireland, Sweden, Cuba and other countries, and lobbying foreign ministers to get the treaty enacted.
The United States was not among the signers. U.S. diplomats boycotted the U.N. conference along with foreign ministers from the other nuclear nations.
Gilbert and Platte were not surprised by the boycott, and they flatly refuse to be discouraged. They remain fiercely determined to see the treaty ratified and, to get the word out, they are delivering copies to military commanders across the country. They even thoughtfully left one for Suthers in his absence.
“This is an urgent time for us,” said Platte, who advertises her cause on a shirt that proclaims “I’m already against the next war.”
With the Trump administration threatening to “totally destroy North Korea” and Kim Jong-un responding by calling Trump a “dotard” and ordering more ballistic missile tests, Gilbert and Platte said nuclear anxiety has helped generate overwhelming support for their work, especially on college campuses.
“The young people want to live in a nuclear-free world, a world without war,”
Gilbert said. “Everywhere we went, we felt such hope for the future because of the young people.”
Young people were with them when the sisters returned to the missile site, opened the gates and left a copy of the treaty not far from the spot where they were arrested in 2002.
“That was a highlight for me, having all those people with us,” said Platte. “That was touching.”
After decades of anti-nuke activism, marches, die-ins, prayer vigils, fasts, acts of civil disobedience and countless arrests, Platte, 81, and Gilbert, 69, admit it was nice to feel the love.
Because, after all, that’s the whole point.
No matter how craven the politics, how divided the country, how hateful the speeches and tweets become, these sisters of resilience and resistance fight their battles with messages of peace.
“This is our vow,” said Gilbert. “It’s why we keep on keeping on. We will never give up.”
Platte nodded in agreement.
“I refuse to have an enemy,” said the gentle convicted felon, her face suddenly breaking into a beatific smile.
“I simply won’t.”
Diane Carman is a communications consultant and a regular columnist for The Denver Post.
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