Home » Posts tagged 'Plowshares Eight'

  • The Trial of the Avco Plowshares

    The Trial of the Avco Plowshares

    In July 1983, seven United States citizens entered AVCO Systems Division, a manufacturing plant for MX and Pershing II missiles in Wilmington, Massachusetts. They threw blood on blueprints and computers to protest the buildup of nuclear arms. AVCO PLOWSHARES documents the ensuring trial, which includes dramatic testimony on civil disobedience and the question if a greater moral imperative exists beyond the letter of the law. Acting on their own behalf, the defendants argued “the justification defense” to claim their duty as citizens to warn of impending nuclear threats. Jean Hollady, a nurse and mother of four, asks those in the courtroom to picture the threat of one MX missile, containing ten warheads, representing “the equivalent of 260 Hiroshimas.” Frank Panopoulos, an anti-poverty worker, explains, “we were there so these weapons will not be made.” John Schuchardt, a former Marine and an attorney, ask the jury, “in light of weapons with the (equivalent power) of 335,000 pickup trucks full of TNT… please tell me what I could have done.” Expert witnesses and commentators from retired Rear Admiral Gene LaRocque, Daniel Berrigan, and George Wald concur that because of anti-Soviet weapons in Europe, nuclear war could be “eight minutes away.” Howard Zinn says in defense, “creative, inventive, dedicated action is needed by Americans in this courtroom and everywhere else to prevent that risk to the world.”

    Despite permission to film this trial for broadcast, the presiding judge, Edward M. Viola, restricted distribution to educational venues after screening the work-in-progress.

  • The Pursuit of Happiness

    The Pursuit of Happiness

    A video exploration of the Declaration of Independence’s most ambiguous “self-evident truth” through portraits of six people whose paths intersect at a maximum security prison in Pittsburgh, PA. Molly Rush is a mother of six and a member of the Plowshares Eight who faces jail for damaging nuclear missiles at a GE plant. Rush doesn’t “pursue happiness,” but finds meaning in acting against the threat of total annihilation. Her husband, Bill, an engineer and family man struggles to understand her apocalyptic fears and worries about their children. Molly visits a fellow activist in jail, Warden George Petsock, who opposes breaking the law for any reason. At home, Petsock dreams of retiring and purchasing a mobile home. His wife Ida May ponders the happiness she sacrificed in thirty years of supporting George’s career. Finally, two “lifers,” Ron Grimm, a Vietnam veteran, and Walter Henderson, an African American who works in the prison garden, contemplate the paradox of pursuing happiness while incarcerated and if that right was really meant for everybody.

 
 
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