Sacrifice of Anti-Nuclear Protesters in Georgia Jail Will Not Be Forgotten

Following is a letter published in the Baltimore Sun on September 10, 2019. Reprinted with the permission of the author.

It has been a long time since Elizabeth McAlister and six other Catholic activists were arrested on April 4, 2018 while engaging in a disarmament action aimed at educating the populace that we are on the eve of nuclear destruction. So it was wonderful to read about her in her hometown newspaper (“Activist with Baltimore roots languishes in Georgia jail,” Sept. 6).

As the author Patrick O’Neill, one of the Kings Bay Plowshares, suggested, many of the younger readers will not be aware of the remarkable work of Ms. McAlister and her husband Philip Berrigan. And that is all the more reason to publish this commentary. Despite the circumstances, being incarcerated in “a miserable Southern jail” since the arrest, Elizabeth, I’m sure, is mentoring the other prisoners.

Moreover, like so many jails across this country, the Glynn County Jail is largely populated by “poor people, the mentally ill and those with addictions.” And rehabilitation is a foreign word.

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