By Marc Eliot Stein, World BEYOND War, February 21, 2025
A worldwide protest against the growing scourge of foreign military bases escalating threats of war and harming human beings all over the world will take place on Sunday, February 23, 2025. World BEYOND War and other organizations who helped plan this Global Day of Action to Close Bases are hoping to raise awareness of the need to end this gathering storm of imperialism before humanity’s descent into World War Three becomes inevitable.
As this day of protest approaches, I was honored to speak to the peace activist Brian Terrell who is about to be imprisoned in Germany for cutting a fence at the Buechel Air Base in order to protest USA’s nuclear weapons hosted there. Brian Terrell is a longtime friend of every antiwar movement and a part of the Catholic Worker Movement.
Brian found time in his busy travels to have a vigorous conversation with me before catching a plane at the Des Moines International Airport, and despite the slightly noisy atmosphere his passionate convictions rang clear and true. We spoke about how he learned peace activism directly from the great Dorothy Day at the Catholic Worker House in New York City.
“When I met Dorothy Day I was like 19 and she was 78. But I didn’t feel that much of a generation gap.”
Our free-flowing conversation quickly wandered onto the topic of books Dorothy Day had recommended to the younger Brian, including Dostoevsky and “Bread and Wine” by Ignazio Silone.
We also spoke about Susan Crane, Daniel Ellsberg, Phil Berrigan, Angela Davis, Scott Nearing, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Iris Murdoch and St. Francis of Assisi.
“There’s no room for despair,” Brian told me as he prepared for the familiar routine of going to jail for his beliefs and his supposedly free speech. “Optimism is despair in its most dangerous form”.
Here’s a glimpse of Buechel Air Base from World BEYOND War’s Military Empires: A Visual Guide to Foreign Bases:
The title of this episode is inspired by the song “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” by Fiona Apple.
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