Jeff Leys and Kathy Kelly, of Voices in the Wilderness, speak of civil disobedience and the closing of the Extremely Low Frequency Systems (ELF) site at Clam Lake, Wisconsin.

By ANDREW BROMAN
The Daily Press
Monday, May 02nd

Jeff Leys knew he’d probably spend time in prison if he tried to cut down a section of antenna at the Project ELF site.

He was no stranger to civil disobedience, but the stakes are higher when it comes to damaging federal property. You don’t simply wake up one morning and decide to saw into a pole holding the antenna that sends signals to U.S. submarines armed with nuclear weapons deep in the ocean.

“I was at a point of being able to risk a felony charge, but it was something that had evolved over a three, four, five year process,” Leys said.

On Aug. 14, 1985, Leys sawed two notches into a pole at the Extremely Low Frequency Systems site at Clam Lake, but did not cut it down because he didn’t want to risk electrocuting anybody, he said.

He read a statement that day: “I act today in accordance with the teachings of Gandhi, Christ and the Indians, and in accordance with the basic underpinnings of humanity, as expressed in various world religions and international law.”

Then, Leys turned himself in and spent most of the next two years behind bars.

He and many others sacrificed some comfort in their lives to oppose what they considered the inhumane practice of threatening other countries and their inhabitants with annihilation through nuclear weapons.

And next Saturday, May 7, they will reunite at the Sigurd Olson Institute at Northland College to celebrate ELF’s closing last year. The public is invited to attend. The event, from 7 to 10 p.m., will feature live bands, comic awards and speakers, including Kathy Kelly, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee.

Kelly led a march from Chicago to the ELF site in 1995, walking 12 to 20 miles each day for more than a month until the group reached Clam Lake. The idea for it emerged after a judge threatened to revoke some protesters’ driving licenses during a trespassing case.

Some of the defendants joked that they’d have to walk to the ELF site, and so Kelly decided to do it. The walk was an opportunity to educate people in rural Wisconsin about nuclear weapons, and it commemorated the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Over the years, Kelly was arrested three times at Project ELF, and she’s been arrested more than 60 times during her life, she said. Civil disobedience is most effective when legal mechanisms fail to redress grievances, she said.

In practicing civil disobedience, Kelly appeals to a “higher command, a love command.” “If you do it, do it lovingly,” she said.

Kelly learned about the importance of persistence from leaders of the civil rights movement. “What they would do is communicate very clearly to the arresting officers that once were freed, they weren’t going to go away. They’d come back again,” she said.

Persistent describes many opponents of Project ELF. Since 1991, 58 demonstrations occurred at the site. Police gave out 639 citations and more than 40 people went to jail for refusing to pay the fines, according to John LaForge, of the Luck-based Nukewatch.

Navy officials have said the protests played no role in the facility’s closing and that ELF’s technology had become obsolete.

Regardless, opponents of ELF say the closing is worth celebrating. At the same time, they acknowledge the proliferation of nuclear weapons is troubling. LaForge said the U.S. government’s development of mini-nukes, so-called bunker busters, and depleted uranium are two of his biggest concerns.

In December, Nukewatch won two criminal trespasses cases in Hennepin County District Court in Minnesota. Charged with trespassing on the property of a maker of depleted uranium, four defendants from Luck, including LaForge, argued their actions were justified on grounds that depleted uranium’s production and use violated U.S. treaties and international law.

The judge in the case, Jack Nordby, allowed the jury to consider these arguments, and the jury returned non-guilty verdicts, according to Nukewatch’s press release. The trial received almost no coverage from the media, LaForge said.

“Almost all of you answered that corporations and the government should be held to a legal standard as high or higher than private citizens,” LaForge said to a jury during his closing arguments. “We, the defendants have put this principle into action, nonviolently. In your deliberations, please remember the warning given to the world at Nuremberg, that some war planning and preparation is illegal.”

Of course, not every court allows defendants to argue international law, and often a jury returns guilty verdicts for civil disobedience.

There are a few things people can do to prepare themselves for the consequences, Jeff Leys said.

For one thing, it’s important to be surrounded by supportive people during the arrest process, he said.

Leys first considered breaking the law in 1980 when the government reinstated draft registration, he said. In the end, he registered.

“I was living in a smaller community (Watertown, Wis.) without any support for refusing to register, and so I ultimately wound up walking to the Post Office to register for the draft, and it was almost as if I was in a daze or a haze, walking there knowing that it wasn’t the right thing to do but that it was what I needed to do at that particular point in time,” he said.

Leys, who lives in Chicago and works with Kathy Kelly for Voices in the Wilderness, remains passionate in fighting for justice. This month, Leys, Kelly and two others were arrested after refusing to leave Sen. Richard Durbin’s office in Chicago.

They were protesting a bill to spend $80 billion to continue the war against Iraq, and they were reading the names of U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians killed in Iraq when the senator’s security arrested them, according to a news release from Voices in the Wilderness.

Civil disobedience should be a part of greater strategy to inspire social change, he said, and legal tactics should be pursued at the same time.

Know your limits, he said.

“That’s a philosophy that I come back to a lot in my life is what makes sense? What am I able to risk at a particular point in time without taking the risk that’s so far out of the context of my life that I end up doing significant damage to myself,” he said.