For decades, peace activists in Connecticut have held a vigil on Good Friday at the naval submarine base in Groton, Connecticut — hailed as the submarine capital of the world — where submarines are equipped with nuclear warheads. Activists there read each of the 15 Stations of the Cross that commemorates Christ’s suffering and death, with additional material to bring the ritual up to date. This year, for example, one of the stations mentioned the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Then those participating in the vigil fasten drawings depicting each station to the fence that surrounds the submarine base.
As the war in Ukraine and Israel’s air and ground assault in Gaza raise international tensions increasing the threat of a global nuclear holocaust, both the U.S. and Russia are spending trillions of dollars to modernize their nuclear weapons arsenals.
Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Jackie Allen Doucot, co-founder with her husband Chris Doucot of the Hartford Catholic Worker, which organized the submarine base vigil. Here she talks about the history of their protest action calling attention to the danger of nuclear war.
[Web editor’s correction: The audio version of this interview has been edited to fit broadcast time constraints. Also, this transcript version corrects a reference to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock, which is 90 seconds to midnight.]
JACKIE ALLEN DOUCOT: We go to the naval submarine base in Groton, Connecticut every year because we feel like it’s a symbol in our state of the sort of opposite of what Christ’s message to us and the gospels were about loving your enemy and caring for each other. The submarine base has been a part of the nuclear navy since the end of World War II and we have tried to go there to speak about the unbelievable cost of the arms race and also about the waste of resources and the suffering that’s created in the human family because so much money is going to the military. In particular, we’re very mindful of the genocide happening in Gaza and submarines being sent to the Middle East to sort of enforce the genocide.
MELINDA TUHUS: And this has been going on for many decades. Have you had any interaction with any people on the base or do you ever initiate any kind of action or conversation or protest with the people there?
JACKIE ALLEN DOUCOT: We always have a conversation with the police beforehand. There’s only been a few times when we’d be able to have conversations with the people inside the base because they stay inside the fence. And if we’re doing civil disobedience, mainly it’s a matter of being able to block the entrance because you can’t get inside the fence or inside the gate. Or, a few times we’ve been arrested at the entrance to the Naval Underwater System Center, the Nautilus Museum. So it doesn’t give us a lot of opportunity for conversation.
Unfortunately, one of our members, Cal Robertson, has been vigilant for 40 years at the Subbase by himself and he’s had lots of opportunities to talk to folks and share with folks. So I feel like his witness really has been amazing. He’s a Vietnam vet, so when he came back and really suffered a lot from PTSD and a lot of health problems, he felt like it was important to his spiritual well-being to be able to go to the base every day and talk to young people that were there, just 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds that were trying to make money for college or help support their family.
So he felt like he really wanted to connect with those folks.
MELINDA TUHUS: So I know that Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has the Doomsday Clock and I believe that it’s closer now than maybe it’s ever been or been in a long time. What can you say about that?
JACKIE ALLEN DOUCOT: I think it’s 90 seconds to midnight and midnight is the time that nuclear weapons will probably be used. So I think because of so many tensions in the Middle East and the war with Ukraine and the fact that we have moved our cruise missiles to bases in the Netherlands, in Germany, it’s just in violation of international law for us to do that. But I think the tensions that that’s raised with Putin saying that he’s now gonna move his nuclear missiles closer, the scientists have decided things are worse now than they have ever been.
MELINDA TUHUS: What would you say to young people who maybe feel like, wow, things are really bad out there in the world and you know, that sometimes might feel hopeless?
JACKIE ALLEN DOUCOT: I think I would say things are bad, but really, I don’t think we can afford to be hopeless. When you look back at the history of civilization and colonialism and war and oppression, things were pretty bad in the Roman Empire, too. And we just have to resist what’s being done. I think it’s really, really hopeful to me that young people right now are kind of making the connections between capitalism, colonialism, and first-strike nuclear weapons and the fact that we’re starting to make sure we have wars because so many wealthy people, the 1 percent profits from them.
There was an article in the New London Day today about the Pentagon and the military are now gonna start training for war in China. I mean, it’s just endless. The military industrial complex does not have to be part of the Paris Accords. They don’t have to report any of the carbon footprint stuff or any of you know the damage being done.
And really in the United States military is probably the Number One criminal in climate change, in climate death. So unless we can reel in the military industrial complex and the people making tons of money off of that, I don’t think climate change is gonna stand much of a chance for climate justice to happen, unless we start organizing and work hard to change that. You know, you can’t just say, “Oh, it’s too late” and do nothing. You really have to just start doing what you can do and everyone can do something.
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