Audio By Carbonatix
Father Carl Kabat, the 67-year-old Catholic priest and longtime protestor of nuclear weapons, is scheduled to be sentenced on July 12 for his latest act: an August 6, 2000, “action” in which Kabat and another man climbed the fence surrounding the N-7 Minuteman missile silo near Raymer, Colorado, placed unconsecrated bread and wine on the silo along with a small hammer and then proclaimed: “We are fools and clowns for God and humanity’s sake.” The quote was appropriate, because Kabat was wearing his signature red-and-white clown suit, the same one he’d worn for other protests.
If convicted, Kabat will spend a year in prison. Even if he’s not, he may be headed back to the slammer for violating his probation on a previous crime (“Send in the Clown,” November 16, 2000). But Kabat is no stranger to a cell.
In 1980, he and several other members of his Plowshares international peace movement broke into a General Electric plant in Pennsylvania, poured human blood on blueprints and tools, and beat on the nose cones of two Mark 12 warheads. Kabat served three years in prison. In 1984, he and four others destroyed radar devices and electronic mechanisms that controlled access to a missile silo in Missouri. For that, Kabat served seven years. And in 1994, he donned his clown suit for the first time and climbed the fence surrounding a missile silo in North Dakota, then beat its concrete covering with a sledgehammer. For that, he served another four years in prison.
Kabat won’t be alone at his sentencing, however — at least not in spirit. Protestors plan to make their opinions felt outside the federal courthouse in Denver. “We feel he didn’t get a fair trial,” says Bill Strabala, one of Kabat’s supporters. “He will probably get a year’s sentence, which is the maximum, for doing something that is in line with freedom of speech and which didn’t do any damage to any of the equipment or things at the site.”
