Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action records, 1956-2013

The Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action was created in 1977 as part of an ongoing campaign of nonviolent resistance against the nuclear Trident submarines at the Bangor Naval Submarine Base in Kitsap County, Washington.

The nine founding members of Ground Zero were also members of the Pacific Life Community. The Pacific Life Community was a nonviolent group concerned about the nuclear arms race. It was formed in January 1975 during a conference of Washington State and Canadian pacifists, including members of the Seattle War Resisters League and Pacem in Terris House. The conference was held in response to questions raised by Robert Aldridge while visiting friends in the Washington State-British Columbia area. Aldridge became a vocal member of the peace movement after he resigned in 1973 from his position as a missile designer at Lockheed Martin. He had worked on the design of Trident missiles, and he had a crisis of conscience due to the missiles' devastating first-strike capability.

Pacific Life Community engaged in multiple forms of nonviolent action and civil disobedience against the Trident threat. In its first action, nine members walked through the Bangor Naval Submarine Base's main gate and planted a cross with an image of the globe nailed to it. Later actions at the Bangor base included cutting portions of the surrounding fence, digging a grave for a mock-up of the Trident submarine, planting a vegetable garden, and holding memorials on the anniversaries of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. They also sent a delegation to Fiji for the Conference for a Nuclear Free Pacific held in April 1975. In November 1975 the Vancouver, British Columbia, mayor declared Trident Concern Week as a time of city-wide education on nuclear issues. During the week, Pacific Life Community members introduced the 550-foot "Trident Monster," a long train of people carrying poles connected by black flags meant to symbolize the Trident submarine's 408 nuclear warheads. In August 1976, 72 people walked the "Trident Monster" onto the Bangor base through three openings cut into the fence.

In the summer of 1977, a Pacific Life Community group that was particularly interested in Kitsap County activity organized the Bangor Summer of 1977, during which workshops and civil disobedience actions were held on borrowed land in South Kitsap County. During the summer, the group developed plans to distribute leaflets to Bangor base workers and to establish a permanent presence in Kitsap County. In the fall of 1977, nine Pacific Life Community members purchased 3.8 acres of land adjoining the Bangor base and incorporated it as a nonprofit land trust. This became the future site of the Ground Zero Center, at 16159 Clear Creek Road NW in Poulsbo, Washington.

Following the Pacific Life Community, members of the Ground Zero Center, even when arrested, strove to infuse their protests with the spirit of nonviolence as a way of celebrating life and humanity while working against violence. Ground Zero's first major action occurred on May 22, 1978. Working with other Washington anti-war organizations, they organized a large-scale anti-nuclear protest. Protestors were invited to camp the night before on land owned by Dorothy and Gerry Petersen, a local couple who were fighting the state's attempt to take part of their farmland for use as a Bangor-area freeway. The next day, 3,000 people gathered for a rally, and 300 climbed the Bangor base's fence. They were arrested and bused to Tacoma, where they were released without being charged. The May 22 action was followed by another event on October 28, 1979.

Ground Zero members persisted in distributing leaflets weekly, usually on Thursday mornings, at the Bangor base. They held workshops on various topics relating to social justice, and provided training and education in nonviolence. Ground Zero also held annual memorials of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Martin Luther King Day and Mother's Day were also often celebrated with nonviolent actions and education surrounding the Bangor base. In 1982 the first Trident submarine, the USS Ohio, arrived at Bangor and was subsequently deployed. Ground Zero attempted to stop the submarine's arrival by attempting to blockade the Hood Canal. The Pacific Peacemaker, an Australian vessel dedicated to anti-nuclear protest, served as the mother ship for the blockade.

In 1982 the White Train arrived at the Bangor Naval Submarine Base. Also referred to as the Nuclear Train, the White Train was an armored railroad train, first painted white and later various colors, that carried nuclear missile shipments from across the nation. One of its routes was from the Pantex Corporation in Amarillo, Texas, to the Bangor base. The train shipments had gone unnoticed throughout the 1960s and 1970s. In 1983, however, the Agape Community was formed by members of Ground Zero to track the White Train's movements, as well as the transportation of non-nuclear missile parts, across the nation. Members watched for and logged the movement of the White Train. Protesters held vigils along the tracks, which often included sitting on the tracks and physically stopping the White Train until they were removed and arrested. The Agape Community encouraged cooperation with police officials to ensure the safety of protestors, especially after anti-war protestor S. Brian Willson was run down and almost killed by a train carrying weapons to Central America in 1987. The last White Train shipment to enter Bangor was in 1985. In February 1986 the last nuclear shipment was completed by railway. By April nuclear shipments had recommenced by truck. The Agape Community continued to protest truck shipments of nuclear missles and train shipments of missile parts into the late 1980s.

In the 1980s Ground Zero established close ties with Nipponzan Myohoji, a pacifist Buddhist order from Japan, who worked with the Ground Zero community to build a peace pagoda. Unfortunately, the peace pagoda was never completed due to repeated denials for a land-use permit from the Kitsap County Board of Commissioners. Members of the greater Kitsap community also voiced their rejection of the proposed building in local newspapers. In May 1982 a temporary geodesic dome, which had been used for the monks' religious ceremonies, was destroyed in an act of arson. A stupa was later erected on the grounds as a memorial.

By 1992 the core community of Ground Zero had dispersed. Jim and Shelley Douglass, core members for fourteen years, moved to Birmingham, Alabama, in 1989 to track trains transporting Trident missiles to Kings Bay, Georgia. The Douglasses, who had moved to Kitsap County, Washington, in the fall of 1978 from British Columbia, had a long history of social activism within the peace movement. Jim Douglass taught classes on theology and wrote four books on the theology of nonviolence, including his first, The Nonviolent Cross: A Theology of Revolution and Peace. Shelley Douglass studied theology at the Vancouver School of Theology and was active in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements. However, other important early members of Ground Zero, Glen Milner and Karol Schulkin, remained active. Glen Milner was an active participant in many civil disobedience actions and a proponent for anti-war education in Washington's public schools. He also pursued the disclosure of government information related to Ground Zero through requests granted by the Freedom of Information Act. Schulkin was a Protestant member of the Immaculate Heart of Mary community beginning in 1970, served as editor of Ground Zero's newsletter for many years, and protested for peace in the Middle East after her visit to Iraq in 1990. Nevertheless, after the Douglasses left, Ground Zero was in need of new full-time energy and leadership. Brian Watson and Elizabeth Roberts moved to Kitsap County in 1992 and became active members of Ground Zero. Another new member was Sister Jackie Hudson, a Dominican nun who exposed and symbolically disarmed a Minuteman III nuclear missile silo in northeastern Colorado and was sentenced in 2003 to 2 1/2 years in prison.

Ground Zero celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2002, having continued to engage in nonviolent anti-war action, including regular distribution of leaflets at the Bangor base.