International Week action camp outside Büchel air base in 2019. Photo by John LaForge.

Solitary nonviolent witness appears painfully ineffective in the age of state terrorism and vigilante shooting sprees. Yet Susan Crane of Redwood City, California, who will be released from prison in Koblenz, Germany Friday Jan. 17 after spending 7.5 months incarcerated over protest trespass convictions (and refusing to pay fines), has perhaps influenced thousands of people in Europe and the States with her example. Crane’s prison time stemmed from a string of bold protests against the U.S. nuclear weapons stationed at Germany’s Büchel air force base, southeast of Cologne, a deployment that isn’t even mentionable in mainstream press that can’t tolerate any skepticism over the NATO war in Ukraine.

On June 4, 2024, Crane began serving a 230-day sentence at the Wöllstein-Rohrbach prison, the longest term yet imposed in the decades-long campaign of protests demanding the ouster from Germany of the free-fall, U.S. gravity bombs known as B61s stationed at the base. Dutch peace activist Susan van der Hijden from Amsterdam........

© CounterPunch