Plowshares Movement

The Plowshares movement is an anti-nuclear weapons and (mostly) Christian pacifist movement that advocates active resistance to war. The group often practices a form of symbolic protest that involves the damaging of weapons and military property. The movement gained notoriety in the early 1980s when several members damaged nuclear warhead nose cones and were subsequently convicted. The name "plowshares" refers to the text of prophet Isaiah who said that weapons shall be beaten into plowshares.

Roman Catholicism has deeply influenced the U.S. Plowshares group. The movement takes its name from the idea of beating swords to ploughshares in the Book of Isaiah:

And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. — KJV

On September 9, 1980, Daniel Berrigan, his brother Philip Berrigan, and six others (the "Plowshares Eight") began the Plowshares Movement under the premise of beating swords to ploughshares. They trespassed onto the General Electric Nuclear Missile facility in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, where they damaged MK12A nuclear warhead nose cones and poured blood onto documents and files. They were arrested and charged with more than ten different felony and misdemeanor counts. On April 10, 1990, after 10 years of appeals, the Berrigans' group was re-sentenced and paroled for up to 23 and 1/2 months in consideration of time already served in prison. Their legal battle was re-created in Emile de Antonio's 1982 film In the King of Prussia, which starred Martin Sheen and featured appearances by the Plowshares Eight as themselves.

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