Peacemaker (1930–2021)
On July 28, 2012, Sr. Megan Rice (eighty-two at the time) and two fellow activists managed to cut through several fences at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, making their way to a concrete bunker that housed enough refined uranium to construct 10,000 nuclear bombs. Before being discovered and arrested, the protesters, calling themselves the “Transform Now Plowshares,” spray-painted antiwar slogans and poured blood to symbolize the deadly contents of this facility.
Rice, who grew up in New York City, was inspired by her parents’ connections to Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker. At eighteen, she joined the sisters of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus and following her studies taught for forty years in Africa. In the 1980s, however, as she heard more about the dangers of nuclear war, she was drawn to a life of peacemaking and nonviolent protest. Before her act of “civil obedience” at Oak Ridge, she had been arrested and jailed scores of times. But the consequences for Oak Ridge were more serious. Aside from destruction of property, the government charged the activists under the Sabotage Act for intending to “endanger national defense.” At her trial, Rice requested no leniency: “To remain in prison for the rest of my life would be the greatest honor for me.”
Eventually, on appeal, the Sabotage charge was dropped, and the three were released after serving two years. “I don’t feel like I’m free,” Sr. Megan said. “None of us is out of prison as long as one nuclear bomb exists.” She died on October 10, 2021.
“My guilt is that I waited seventy years to be able to speak what I knew in my conscience.” —Sister Megan Rice
