The day some peace activists sank the Air Force's pontoon boat.

I'm feeling bored at the moment, so I figured I'd tell a true story, as told to me by one of the participants. I may have told this story before, but I'm pretty sure it's been more than a couple of years. The person who told me this was one of my principal mentors when I became involved in nonviolent civil disobedience. And he was one of the main organizers of the event.

There has long been civil disobedience at Offutt Air Force Base, but it is mostly very low key: Local peace activists inform the military authorities of their intention to "cross the line" at a given day and time. They gather outside the same gate every time, line up just outside base property, make statements against nuclear weapons, and take one step forward onto the air base. Air Force personnel arrest them for trespass, take them to a waiting bus, and thence to a building where they are given "ban and bar" letters, forbidding them from coming onto the base for a year, and they are released. The whole thing takes a few hours. Sometimes the base authorities ask the peace activists to re-schedule their protest to a different day, and the activists generally comply. It's all very friendly. Activists who repeat the protest before the expiration of their ban and bar letter may face criminal charges and many have spent six months in federal prison for it.

I participated in one of these highly-choreographed protests once. I found it rather dull.

My friend and some of his friends also found these protests rather dull, and wanted to do something more creative, so they were inspired when an Air Force enlisted man who was sympathetic with the anti-nuclear bent of the protesters gave them a plat map of the air base.

Offutt AFB is a huge compound, 4.3 square miles in area, and it contains a recreational artificial lake with an island in the middle of it. It was this lake and island that caught my friend's attention. "What if we were to liberate that island and declare it a nuclear-free zone?" So the planning began. The activists got hold of an inflatable raft, assembled picnic supplies, and made a banner declaring the island nuclear-free. I think it was a year, maybe more, from inception to execution of the plan.

It's always surprising how easy it is to get into military facilities. Over and over, "plowshares" activists have entered military bases and armaments factories to hammer on weapons, following the Biblical prophesies that "... they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks." These activists take these prophesies as injunctions, and they symbolically do what they view as god's work. My friends are not plowshares activists and had no intention of damaging anything. I mention this to explain that it was not all that surprising that on arriving at the base they were able to drive right in. With the help of their map they drove to the edge of the lake.

I don't remember from my friend's telling if they had to climb over a fence at the lake, or if it was open to the road.

They knew they might be stopped, so once there they acted as fast as possible, getting out of the car, getting the raft into the water, and since it was a small raft, they just put their supplies in it and they swam out to the island pushing the raft in the water. As soon as they went into the lake, there were people shouting at them to stop, but they were dressed for swimming, and the Air Force people were not.

The commander of the base had a pontoon boat on the lake. So the Air Force people got it out and sailed over to the island to arrest the peace activists, who by this time had erected their banner declaring the island liberated, and a nuclear-free zone. They invited the Air Force people to join them, but they were determined to arrest them rather than joining them, so upon reaching the island in the pontoon boat, the Air Force arrested the peace activists.

The peace movement includes many former members of the military, many of these with active service. Being in a war often turns people against war. That should be no surprise. And there was a former Navy man, as well as an old Louisiana river rat among the activists.

The river man had a great deal of experience of boats of all types, of course, and the pontoon boat was small, so when they were ordered to get on the boat, he told the Air Force man in charge that the boat could not carry them all, and suggested they be transported in two trips, but the officer insisted, and the activists stepped onto the boat, and it began to sail away from the island. I should mention at this point that when dealing with peace activists, military personnel like to dress up in their full battle gear. I've seen this myself in my several protests at the missile silos of North Dakota, where I used to live. In this case, the Air Force men were dressed with their heavy boots and their packs, and probably their guns (I don't remember if my friend was specific on that point). So, no surprise to the activists, the pontoon boat started to tilt, and one side began to go underwater, all in very slow motion.

The officer in charge told his men to get off the pontoon boat, and my friend said to the officer, "We're already wet, and we're dressed for the water, and your men are fully dressed. We'll get off, so they can stay dry. Respect and consideration is an important part of nonviolence, in the tradition of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, both of whom are strong influences in the nonviolent anti-nuclear movement. But the officer said to the peace activists, "You stay on the boat!" And he repeated to several of his men, "You get off." So the poor men, fully-clothed, stepped off the boat, into the waist-deep water of the lake.

But it was too little, too late. The pontoon boat was by then too unstable, and continued to go down, and as it sank, everyone remaining on it stepped off, and into the water.

As the ex-Navy man stepped off the boat, he turned to the officer and said, "If this had been the Navy, this never would have happened."

The entire proceedings, from start to finish, were videotaped by other Air Force people from a separate raft, or from shore (another detail I do not remember if my friend was specific about) and the activists fully expected to be charged with trespass, and were looking forward to getting a copy of the video, under court disclosure rules (the prosecution has to give the defense copies of all evidence).

But in the end, to their surprise, they were released and were never charged with anything. Perhaps the Air Force was too embarrassed by the sinking of their pontoon boat. I suppose the Navy never would have let them hear then end of it.

I first met these folks when some of them put on civil disobedience in North Dakota, where I lived at the time. They had a banner which read: "U.S. AIR FORCE: GOOD PEOPLE, BAD PRODUCT" It was this respect they showed for the people they were protesting against that really drew me to them; the essence of nonviolence being respect for the people whose actions you would like to change. I often protested under this banner during the next five years or so, until all the peace activists had moved elsewhere, and I turned my efforts away from protesting and towards the study of Spanish, which eventually took me to Mexico and Spain, though not before I had been in jail several times and served six months in federal prison at Yankton, SD, El Reno, OK, Oxford, WI, and Sandstone, MN.

So that's the story of how a small group of peace activists (unintentionally) sank the Air Force's pontoon boat.

... If it had been the Navy, it never would have happened...

A true story. :wave: