Sam Day's Example
Memo from the Editor Sam Day's Example Samuel H. Day Jr. is, at this writing, incarcerated in the Lafayette County Jail in Lexington, Missouri, but by the time this issue reaches subscribers,...
...Buried beneath it is an intercontinental ballistic missile armed with a nuclear warhead 100 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima...
...I entered Site K8 to call attention to the missile underneath and the danger it poses...
...He promises to send out copies of his letter...
...My purpose was also to register personal opposition—as a matter of conscience—to the governmental policy it expresses...
...With your help and with God's help, we will overcome...
...Box 2658, Madison, WI53701, will be forwarded...
...I entered K8 in the full knowledge that the law upholds the Government's right to be free of interference while preparing to blow up the world...
...Together, and in all humility, we hope to give you and your colleagues in the Western District of Missouri many more opportunities to reconsider your responsibilities as judges and citizens...
...Within the Western Judicial District of Missouri there are 150 such launch sites...
...I wonder what Senator Owens thinks of that...
...Like Bonnie Urfer, whose article, "Prisoner of Conscience," was the cover story of last month's issue, Sam Day is a former member of The Progressive's staff...
...How wonderful it is to have time once again to read books—about eight in the last month...
...Sam Day is eager to hear from friends— and that includes all readers of The Progressive...
...And like Bonnie, he has been convicted of trespassing on a missile-silo site in protest against the lunacy of the nuclear arms race...
...In finding me guilty of trespass, Judge Stevens, you rejected such notions...
...Bill Owens, the Colorado state senator who found sinister significance in the fact that The Progressive mails its circulation-promotion materials to readers of Soviet Life ("Caught Red-Handed," Editor's Memo, May issue), wants me and subscribers who read about him here to know that his inquiry was not conducted at state expense...
...It was my intention to give a court the opportunity to strip away legal protection from nuclear genocide in the same way that courts in earlier times have struck down slavery, racial segregation, and similar practices once accepted but now repugnant to civilized people...
...I was prepared for that judgment...
...Just as I have been moved by the example of others, so I hope and believe that I will serve as an example to others...
...So be it...
...In challenging that policy I have also confronted the laws—and the courts—which sanction it...
...That policy goes by the name of nuclear deterrence but is in truth a policy of global intimidation aimed at maintaining a privileged life for some at the expense of others...
...And readers who wish to correspond with Bonnie Urfer (whose prison number is 04970-045) may write to her at Box A, Cottage C-4, Alderson, WV 24910...
...is, at this writing, incarcerated in the Lafayette County Jail in Lexington, Missouri, but by the time this issue reaches subscribers, he'll probably have been transferred to a Federal penitentiary...
...It is aimed at people on the other side of the Earth...
...Motor-Columbus AG, a Swiss-owned telecommunications and cable television company, has bought (for $56 million) the private-line service of ITT World Communications, which operates the hot line that links the Pentagon and the Kremlin...
...This is not the first chapter in the history of nonviolent resistance to laws sanctioning nuclear annihilation...
...Like Bonnie, he is affiliated with Nukewatch...
...Nor will it be the last...
...As Philip Berrigan has said, the law is the immaculate guardian of the nuclear terrorism waged by our Government...
...Mail addressed to him at Nukewatch, P.O...
...Judge Stevens's response was to impose a six-month prison sentence...
...But I also know that such laws are subject to judicial review...
...he was managing editor from 1978 to 1980...
...I shall wear your judgment and your sentence like a badge of honor, accepting them as the price of conscience...
...Meanwhile, he writes, "I have become disgustingly well adjusted to jail life...
...And I am prepared now for your sentence, whatever it may be...
...He has lots more to say in his latest letter to me, but since I've already devoted too much space to his foolishness, anyone interested will have to write to him (State Capitol, Denver, CO 80203...
...Together they contain enough deadly force to kill hundreds of millions...
...When he appeared for sentencing in April before Federal District Judge Joseph E. Stevens of Kansas City, Sam Day addressed this statement to the court: "The property on which I trespassed is no ordinary plot of land...
Vol. 53 • June 1989 • No. 6
