Biography
Daniel Sicken is described as an anti-nuclear activist whose direct action centered on U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile infrastructure. In August 1998, he and a co-defendant entered a missile-site area in Colorado as a symbolic act of “disarmament,” using tools and blood imagery to protest the existence and planned use of nuclear weapons. They remained on site and were arrested, treating detention as an expected outcome of the action.
Federal prosecutors pursued serious felony charges that framed the protest as sabotage and destruction of government property. Sicken was convicted and sentenced to a multi-year federal prison term, with the case later discussed in legal and policy debates about how broadly “sabotage” statutes can be applied to nonviolent protest actions at military facilities. On August 6, 1998 (Hiroshima Day) Daniel Sicken and Oliver Sachio Coe entered Minuteman III nuclear missile silo "N-9" near Concrete, North Dakota, and hammered on its silo lid as the "Minuteman III Plowshares" disarmament action. They were prosecuted in federal court (D. North Dakota).
