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Martha Hennessy (born July 11, 1955) is an American Catholic peace activist and member of the Catholic Worker Movement co-founded by her grandmother, Dorothy Day. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
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Martha Hennessy (born July 11, 1955) is an American Catholic peace activist and member of the Catholic Worker Movement co-founded by her grandmother, Dorothy Day. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
Hennessy grew up Weathersfield, Vermont. She is the seventh child of David Hennessy and Tamar Day Hennessy, the only child of Dorothy Day. Her sister is the author Kate Hennessy.
She worked for 30 years as an occupational therapist, including time at the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center, White River Junction Healthcare System in White River Junction.[ citation needed ]
Hennessy is active in the Catholic Worker Movement. In 1979, Hennessy was arrested with many other demonstrators while attempting to occupy the Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant under construction in Seabrook, New Hampshire. [6]
Since then, she has been arrested while demonstrating against the prison at Guantanamo Bay, the United States government's use of drones in war, and the use of starvation as a weapon of war in Yemen.
In 2020 Hennessy was interviewed [7] about her life, anti-war activism, and grandmother, Dorothy Day, who co-founded the Catholic Worker Movement with Peter Maurin in 1933.
On April 4, 2018, Hennessy took part in the Kings Bay Plowshares action, breaking into Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in Georgia to protest its stockpile of nuclear weapons. [8] She was arrested and later placed under house arrest in late May 2018 with an electronic monitoring bracelet strapped to her left ankle. [6] On November 13, 2020, she was sentenced to 10 months in prison. [9] [10] [11]
Hennessy is married to Steven Melanson, a carpenter and photographer. They have been married for 40 years. She is a grandmother of eight. [6] She lives on her family farm in Vermont and at Maryhouse Catholic Worker in New York City. [6]
The Plowshares movement is an anti-nuclear weapons and Christian pacifist movement that advocates active resistance to war. The group often practices a form of protest that involves the damaging of weapons and military property. The movement gained notoriety in the early 1980s when several members damaged nuclear warhead nose cones and were subsequently convicted. The name refers to the text of prophet Isaiah who said that swords shall be beaten into plowshares.
The Saint Patrick's Day Four are four American peace activists of Irish Catholic heritage who poured their own blood on the walls, posters, windows, and a US flag at a military recruiting center to protest the United States' impending invasion of Iraq. Peter De Mott, Daniel Burns, Teresa Grady, and Clare Grady each were members of the Ithaca Catholic Worker community, which teaches that Christians should practice non-violence and devote their lives to service of others. They each served between four and six months in federal prison for their action on Saint Patrick's Day, March 17, 2003, in Lansing, New York, near Ithaca where they reside.
Frances Crowe was an American peace activist and pacifist from the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts.
Clare Grady is an American peace activist and a member of the Catholic Worker and the Plowshares movements. She advocated against use of cruise missiles for first-strike capability in the 1983 Griffiss Plowshares action. In the process of the protest, military equipment was damaged and splattered with blood. In 2003, she and three others made up The Saint Patrick's Day Four, who conducted a protest action at a military recruiting center in Lansing, New York against the impending Iraq War. She participated in the Kings Bay Plowshares action on April 4, 2018, which resulted in a conviction and sentence of one year and a day.
Gwen Hennessey, O.S.F., is a Roman Catholic Franciscan Sister and peace activist, most widely known for her protests against the School of the Americas.
Thomas P. Lewis was an artist and peace activist, primarily noted for his participation with the Baltimore Four and the Catonsville Nine.
Carl K. Kabat was an American priest of the Catholic religious order Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, best known for his eccentric, nonviolent protests against nuclear weapons. He served more than 17 years total in prison over his lifetime.
Elizabeth McAlister, also known as Liz McAlister, is an American peace activist and former nun of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary. She married Philip Berrigan and was excommunicated from the Catholic Church. McAlister served prison time for nonviolent acts of civil disobedience.
Carmen Trotta is a pacifist and a member of the Catholic Worker Movement, Trotta has been an opponent of the war in Iraq. He has been an associate editor of the Catholic Worker, and has served on the executive committee of the War Resisters League.
Jacqueline Marie "Jackie" Hudson, was an American Dominican sister and anti-nuclear activist. She spent the first 29 years of her working career as a music teacher. After her retirement from education, she dedicated her life to anti-war activism, during the course of which her actions led her to be arrested several times. In 2011, after a decline in her health in prison, Hudson died from multiple myeloma at the age of 76.
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Megan Gillespie Rice S.H.C.J. 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."
Ardeth Platte, O.P., was an American Dominican religious sister and anti-nuclear activist. She was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 1999.
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The Kings Bay Plowshares are a group of seven Catholic peace activists who broke into the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base and carried out a symbolic act of protest against nuclear weapons. The name of the action and the wider anti-nuclear Plowshares movement comes from the prophet Isaiah’s command to "beat swords into plowshares."
Stephen Michael Kelly is an American Jesuit priest and peace activist. He spent six years in prison for hammering on D-5 Trident missiles and other Plowshares movement actions. He has spent at least a decade behind bars, with six of those years in solitary confinement.
Kate Hennessy is an American writer.
Mark Colville is an American social justice activist and Catholic worker. He is the founder of the Amistad Catholic Worker community in New Haven, Connecticut.
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Susan Crane is a peace activist, a member of the California Catholic Worker movement and a participant in the Plowshares movement. After decades of civil disobedience related to campaigns against nuclear war, she was sentenced to jail time in Germany in 2024.