Stop the Drones?

Ellen Grady, a member of the Catholic Worker from Ithaca, N.Y., does not like the idea that war has come home to her backyard. The war, in this case, is the country’s war on terror. The place where it is being waged is the Hancock Field Air National Guard Base near Syracuse, a little more than an hour north of where Grady lives. Hancock is one of several U.S. bases where drone operators pilot unmanned aircraft in their search for suspected Muslim militants halfway around the world. For the third time in two years, Grady, 50, was arrested for protesting the drones during a nonviolent act of witness on Ash Wednesday to mark the beginning of the season of Lent. She was one of nine people arrested after refusing to leave base property. The group held signs calling for the end of drone warfare in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. A statement released by the nine said they came to Hancock “to remember the victims of our drone strikes and to ask God’s forgiveness for the killing of other human beings, most especially children.”