Boeing Seven Trial

international | anti-war / imperialism | news report Thursday September 30, 2004 16:55 by Justin Morahan - Peace People

Peace People presence in Chicago

Mairead Corrigan Maguire will give witness at the trial of the Boieng Seven in Chicago next week

Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate and President of the Peace People, has said Yes to the request of "the Boeing Seven" to give witness at their forthcoming trial in the USA. Both she and Kevin Cassidy of the Peace People Executive will fly out tomorrow 2 October to be present at the trial in Chicago.

The seven have been charged as a result of their non-violent sit-in in the headquarters lobby of the Boeing Corporation in Chicago, a few days before the unleashing of George Bush's Shock and Awe war against Iraq. Boeing is one of the biggest weapons manufacturers in the US.

The defendants are: Anthony Nicotera, a Chaplain at De Paul College, Dave Corcoran, a retired Chaplain at Loyola hospital’s cancer ward, his wife Barbara, Amelia Baxter, Angela Garcia, Ceylon Mooney, and Joe Ferrara.
They have pleaded "necessity" - in other words their act of non-violent resistance was the only way they could have affected their leaders' decision to take the nation into war.

Judge Colleen F Sheehan has rejected this defence but her judgement is being challenged by the seven.

Fr Dan Berrigan SJ has written a statement on behalf of the defendants. He is a leading member of the Catonsville 9 who poured napalm on draft files in 1968 for which he was sentenced to six years of imprisonment.
"Individuals in this world are not powerless", he said, "but each of us may make a difference". Fr Berrigan added that the seven formed another link in a chain of gold, "ancient as the nonviolence of Jesus, and recent as the spirit and politics of Gandhi and Dr Martin Luther King".

Spokesperson Kevin Cassidy said that the Peace People support the seeds of non-violence wherever they are sown.

He said that the defendants were doing nothing less than attempting to save lives and bring about a world free from weapons of mass destruction. Their peaceful sit-in was a symbolic act to highlight the increasing militarism of the United States which is exacerbating violence and terrorism throughout the world. He said that the seven were trying to bring about a more just and non-violent world. He called on the United States to show the international community how truly democratic they were.

The trial begins next week