Biography
Acting alone (Michigan ELF Disarmament Action) on May 28, 1985, he sawed down a pole carrying the Navy's ELF submarine-communication antenna in Michigan's upper peninsula, then planted a corn circle and turned himself in.
Tom Hastings, born 1950, began peace and justice activism in 1968; his youth, early activism, and college took place in Wisconsin. He is a two-time Plowshares resister, founding member of two Catholic Worker communities, and worked for years to defend Anishinabe treaty rights. He is now Professor and Coordinator of the Conflict Resolution program at Portland State University, Director of PeaceVoice, co-founder of the Portland Peace Team, faculty with the James Lawson Institute, on the Academic Advisory Council of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, and the author of more than 500 articles and several books on nonviolence.
In 1996 Tom and Donna Howard-Hastings carried out the Laurentian Shield pole-cutting action at Project ELF. Their contemporary update describes a three-year intensive-sanctions term, including a one-year state-prison sentence followed by electronically monitored home confinement. It reports Tom’s move from state prison to home confinement on March 6, 1997. That transition ended the prison phase, not all custody; final discharge from intensive sanctions remains unverified.
The Winter 1996 Nukewatch Pathfinder reports sentencing on December 3 after the September Laurentian Shield trial. Tom and Donna were acquitted of sabotage and convicted of criminal damage to property. Judge Robert Eaton imposed one year in prison and three years intensive-sanctions probation on Tom, referring to his 1985 Michigan ELF action. Both received credit for 114 actual days already served following the April 22, 1996 action. This is a documented earlier component, not complete service of the nominal year or all later sanctions. The January 27 restitution hearing remained prospective; the report does not establish the eventual restitution order or exact prison discharge. Source: https://www.laka.org/docu/magazines/nukewatch_pathfinder/1996-4-winter.pdf#page=2
1985 ELF custody reconstructed from separate stages
The action was May 28, 1985, but the firsthand account in The Nuclear Resister 32 says Hastings surrendered to the sheriff the following morning: May 29. Laffin reports 48 hours in custody before release on personal recognizance, placing that initial release on May 31. This two-day stay is distinct from the later fifteen-day sentence, and corrects the older May 27/28 arrest dates.
Sentencing was September 27, not September 26. A letter dated October 5 from Marquette County Jail, published in issue 35, establishes later custody; its editor says Hastings was out by publication on October 24. A separate later record therefore uses October 1985 release precision, bounded October 5–24, without fabricating an exact admission or release date. October 1 is a storage placeholder only. The earlier parallel case is retained with corrected arrest/sentence dates but no duplicate custody spans. Sentence length is not assumed to equal actual time served.
Sources: The Nuclear Resister 32, July 10, 1985, printed pages 1 and 3 (PDF pages 2 and 4), firsthand account; issue 35, October 24, 1985, printed page 2 (PDF page 3), letter and editor note; Art Laffin chronology, Michigan ELF Disarmament Action. Relevant complete original pages visually checked. Actual admission and exact release for the later stay remain unresolved.
Missing 1996–97 state-prison episode and ongoing house arrest
The Summer 1997 update reports Tom’s prison-to-home-confinement transition as March 6, 1997, after the mandatory state-prison portion of the Laurentian Shield sentence. This 1996–97 episode appears in the biography but not in the current case set, which contains only the separately reconstructed 1985 stays. The source identifies three years of intensive sanctions and a one-year state-prison sentence, not three years in federal prison. It establishes actual prison before transfer, but no exact admission day, complete jail total or final release from electronic monitoring. No endpoint is calculated from sentence length and no 1985 field is altered. A separate case records the 1996–97 prison phase; continuing home confinement is documented here without adding home-confinement days to a prison counter.
Nukewatch Pathfinder, Summer 1997, original PDF page 2, printed page 1. Original complete article and all five issue pages visually reviewed.
Hastings’s signed recollection reports forty actual days in a Wisconsin jail during ELF resistance in 1987.
