Biography
Sister Ardeth Platte OP was a Dominican nun of the Grand Rapids Dominicans whose six decades of social-justice organizing began in Saginaw, Michigan, where she helped organize against urban poverty and educational inequity, and culminated in her years as one of the most arrested anti-nuclear activists in the United States. She lived in community at Jonah House in Baltimore for the last twenty-five years of her life with longtime partners-in-action Carol Gilbert and the late Philip Berrigan.
On October 6, 2002, with Sister Carol Gilbert and Sister Jackie Hudson, she cut through perimeter fencing and walked onto the launching pad of an N-8 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile silo near New Raymer, Colorado, splashed her own blood on the silo cover in the shape of a cross, and hammered on the silo with household hammers — an act intended as a literal beating of swords into plowshares, in the symbolic tradition of the Plowshares movement co-founded by Philip Berrigan in 1980. The action, called the Sacred Earth and Space Plowshares II, took place three weeks before the Bush administration's congressional vote on Iraq. The three were arrested at the silo and charged with sabotage and depredation of property.
A federal jury in Denver convicted them in April 2003. On July 25, 2003, U.S. District Judge Robert E. Blackburn sentenced Sister Ardeth — then 67 years old — to 41 months in federal prison, the longest sentence given to any of the three. She served at FCI Danbury in Connecticut, where she was housed alongside, and later widely identified as the inspiration for, the character Sister Jane Ingalls in the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black. She was released in November 2005 and continued anti-nuclear organizing until her death in her sleep at Jonah House on September 30, 2020.
The Winter 1998–99 Nukewatch Pathfinder names Kathy Shields Boylan, Carol Gilbert, Ardeth Platte, Frank Cordaro and Larry Morlan as the Gods of Metal Plowshares participants who hammered and poured blood on a B-52 at an Air Force weapons display in May 1998. Their Maryland trial began September 22. The report explicitly states that all five were convicted and jailed before sentencing. January 4 was the announced future sentencing date, and a possible year in prison was exposure rather than completed service. Source: https://www.laka.org/docu/magazines/nukewatch_pathfinder/1998-4-winter.pdf#page=5
Separate March 4, 2018 brief Nevada detention and same-day release
The April 2018 Ground Zero newsletter, original page 6, individually names Ardeth Platte among twenty-four Pacific Life Community participants arrested at the Nevada National Security Site on March 4, 2018. Felice Cohen-Joppa’s report says the participants crossed the site boundary, were escorted to a nearby pen, briefly held, processed and released. This is a same-day temporary detention and release, not an overnight prison stay, a served-day sentence, or continuous custody beginning that day. No imprisonment counter or new discrete prison episode is added, and other case dates remain unchanged.
Separate documented 1986 Wurtsmith imprisonment
The December 12, 1986 report and its current-prisoner directory individually identify Ardeth Platte as actually imprisoned for repeated peace leafleting at Wurtsmith Air Force Base. The printed nominal term is twenty-eight-week, and the historical place is Fort Worth, Texas. This is a distinct Wurtsmith sentence-service episode, not the later sabotage/property-damage case already stored. No exact initial arrest, sentence-admission or discharge day is supplied. Directory estimates in February or April 1987 are not verified releases, and the nominal term is not converted to an actual completed total. The report says Platte began a prison fast November 28; a fast-start date is not a jail-admission date.
The Nuclear Resister No.43, December 12, 1986: Original PDF page 2 (printed page 1); Original PDF page 4 (printed page 3).
Additional original custody evidence
The Wurtsmith update individually names Ardeth Platte among five people arrested August 6, 1985 for re-entry trespass. It expressly reports that this individual actually served 5 days in jail. This completed 1985 episode is distinct from later Williams International proceedings or the 1986 Wurtsmith imprisonment. The exact later admission, sentence and discharge days are not printed; August 6 is recorded only as arrest, not assumed continuous custody until an unknown end.
The Nuclear Resister No.35, October 24, 1985: PDF page 7.
The Wurtsmith report individually says Ardeth Platte actually served five days in 1984. This predates both the separately recorded August 1985 five days and the 1986 leafleting imprisonment.
The report dates this Wurtsmith sentence to September 24, 1986. October 15 was a surrender order, not verified intake.
