Megan Rice

Fr. Louis Vitale, Sister Megan Rice and Jim Haber protest US policy on torture at Ft. Huachuca, Arizona where interrogation methods are taught to US military forces Megan Gillespie Rice S.H.C.J. (Society of the Holy Child Jesus) (January 31, 1930 – October 10, 2021) was an American nuclear disarmament activist, Catholic nun, and former missionary. She was notable for illegally entering the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, at the age of 82, with two fellow activists of the Transform Now Plowshares group. The action was a nuclear disarmament protest referred to as "the biggest security breach in the history of the nation's atomic complex." thumb

Rice was sentenced to almost three years in prison. In May 2015, the conviction for sabotage was vacated by a federal appeals court. The appeals court ruled that the prosecution failed to prove that Rice and the two others had the intention of causing injury to the national defense system. The lesser charge of injuring government property was upheld by the court but Rice was released within a week as the two years she had already served would be more than the re-sentencing for the upheld conviction.

Her father, Frederick W. Rice, was an obstetrician-gynecologist who taught at New York University and treated patients at several New York City hospitals. Her mother, Madeleine Newman Hooke Rice, was a Barnard College graduate who undertook graduate studies at Columbia University while her children were growing up, obtaining a doctorate in history and writing a dissertation on Catholic views about slavery. She was trained as an elementary school teacher and taught in the early grades in Mount Vernon, New York. Through part-time study at Fordham and Villanova Universities, she earned a bachelor's degree in biology from Villanova in 1957, then studied cellular biology at Boston College, where she received a master's degree. She then served various stints as a teacher in Nigeria and Ghana from 1962 to 2004. She participated in protests against a variety of American military actions, military sites, and nuclear weapons installations. in Las Vegas at the Nevada Test Site now known as the Nevada National Security Site, Rice participated in numerous antinuclear actions, and also participated in anti-drone warfare protests. On January 27, 2011, Rice was convicted of trespassing as the result of a protest against weaponized drones at Creech Air Force Base.

School of the Americas (SOA) Rice was arrested in the 1990s at protests against torture at the US Army School of the Americas She served two six-month prison sentences resulting from trespasses during protests against the US Army School of the Americas in 1997–99. thumb Members of Desert Lenten Experience hold a prayer vigil during the Easter period of 1982 at the entrance to the Nevada Test Site.

Y-12 Oak Ridge National Security Complex Oak Ridge Tennessee

On July 28, 2012, Rice (age 82), and two fellow activists (Michael R. Walli (age 63) and Gregory I. Boertje-Obed (age 57)), entered the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, spray-painted antiwar slogans, and splashed blood on the outside of the heavily guarded Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility. i.e., convert weapons into peaceful tools. Justifying their infiltration of the Oak Ridge facility, the trio cited both Biblical verses calling for world peace and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons as justifications. When they refused to plead guilty to those charges they were instead charged with violating the peacetime provision of the Sabotage Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2155(a), which Congress enacted during World War II, The Sabotage Act applies only if they acted "with intent to injure, interfere with, or obstruct the national defense," and authorizes a sentence of up to 20 years. They were also charged with causing more than $1,000 damage to government property, carrying up to 10 years in prison.

On May 9, 2013, the three were convicted. In her testimony Sister Rice said "I regret I didn't do this 70 years ago." Her sentencing was originally scheduled for January 28, 2014, but was postponed to February 18, 2014, due to a snow storm.

Although many news organizations called it a break-in, the team, including their lawyers, are clear that they walked in. Security failures and contractor ineptitude, not criminal know-how, put them next to the nation's uranium for its nuclear warheads.

Appeal On May 8, 2015, a 2–1 decision in the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit found that the trio lacked the necessary intent for the sabotage conviction and overturned it for all three of them. Part of the court ruling read "But vague platitudes about a facility's 'crucial role in the national defense' are not enough to convict a defendant of sabotage."

Megan Rice was released from prison May 2015. She knew Sister Rice personally through the Catholic Worker circle when she helped the RSCJ open Anne Montgomery House. At Sister Rice's request she expanded the book to include Gregory Boertje-Obed, Michael Walli, and Plowshares more fully. It will be available by advance order in late 2021, with a copyright date of early 2022. (To clarify any confusion, this book was originally announced in 2014 with a different author and title, focusing on Sister Rice only.) Activist: Portraits of Courage (2019). This book by KK Ottesen contains profiles of over forty activists from Sister Megan Rice to Senator Bernie Sanders and Grover Norquist to Dolores Huerta, and recounts the experiences that began their journeys.