Biography
Ellen Barfield is a U.S. Army veteran (she served as a military police officer at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey and at U.S. Army Garrison Yongsan in South Korea) who left the Army and became one of the most consistently arrested anti-war activists in the United States. A founding member of Veterans for Peace and a War Resisters League organizer, she has been arrested approximately 50 times for civil disobedience, particularly SOA Watch line-crossings at Fort Benning, where she has served multiple short federal sentences.
The contemporary report documents a separate custody episode: Overnight detention; released after arraignment.
Barfield’s first-person account describes four days in jail before bail after a Pantex anti-nuclear protest. She says the later trial ended with a fine and probation.
The reproduced December 2009 report identifies Superior Court Judge Lynne Leibovitz as the judge who sentenced Barfield after the Senate-hearing protest.
Ken Mayers identified Barfield among those released at dawn after overnight custody following the September 15, 2007 Capitol antiwar protest.
The biographical introduction individually reports Barfield stood trial in February2002 and was jailed for civil resistance against the Afghanistan war at the Maryland Air National Guard base. This is distinct from her undated Pantex four-day detention, already structured, and her later2007–09 cases. The actual custody YEAR2002 is recorded without assuming that trial month was admission month or inventing an exact trial/sentence/release day or served duration.
The Nuclear Resister individually names Ellen Barfield among eighteen people arrested on November 30, 2023 after blocking entrances to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in New York, demanding U.S. signature of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The report states that the eighteen were charged with disorderly conduct, processed within a couple of hours and released with a December 20 court date. The court date was prospective; no subsequent outcome, jail admission or complete day of imprisonment is inferred. The Nuclear Resister, December 1, 2023.
The April 27 and April 29, 2019 reports individually name Ellen Barfield among 25 people arrested outside Bath Iron Works during the christening of the USS Lyndon B. Johnson. They were charged with obstructing a public way and taken for police booking. The account reports bail but gives no measured jail stay or exact physical discharge day. The June 18 court appearance was prospective; the statutory maximum is not recorded as an imposed or served sentence. This April event was distinct from the June 22 Bath arrests.
The Times Record and Bangor Daily News reports reproduced by The Nuclear Resister, April 2019.
In her October 9, 2014 account, Ellen Barfield describes her trial that day with Marilyn Carlisle and Manijeh Saba in U.S. District Court in Baltimore over their NSA drone-targeting protest at Fort Meade. Magistrate Judge Timothy Sullivan acquitted the women on an attempted-entry charge while convicting them of failure to comply and disorderly conduct. The report gives respective $25 and $5 fines, with processing fees bringing the reported total to $100; it supplies no arrest, jail-admission or physical-release date or completed custody duration. Sullivan permitted their protest arguments but excluded proposed witness testimony from Ann Wright and Medea Benjamin. Malachy Kilbride participated as an activist colleague, not one of the three reported defendants. The Nuclear Resister, October 9, 2014.
In her Winter 2010 Veterans For Peace account, Barfield describes representing herself at the October trial with Ann Wilcox as Attorney Advisor; Wilcox also visited her during imprisonment. She reports immediate remand on December 14, 2009 and release from D.C. Jail at 7:30 a.m. on January 5, 2010, her twenty-third calendar day in custody. That inclusive description is consistent with the twenty-two elapsed days between the existing endpoints. Barfield describes a seventy-five-day sentence suspended to twenty-five, a $500 fine and one year of supervised probation. Her account of release two or three days early differs from the twenty-five completed days in the Nuclear Resister account already cited, and her stated probation length differs from its eighteen months; both contemporary accounts remain attributed here. Spending the Holidays In DC Jail, pages 4, 23 and 27.
The CODEPINK account individually names Ellen Barfield among three Veterans for Peace members arrested after speaking out at Steven Bradbury’s Senate confirmation hearing on June 28, 2017. The source records police removing or handcuffing the protesters but gives no individual charge, jail admission, physical release, disposition or completed custody duration. Contemporary report, The Nuclear Resister.
The contemporary report individually names this participant among those arrested at Hancock Air Base on April 28, 2013 after the anti-drone funeral procession. Its follow-up specifically includes this person in the twenty-one-person arraignment list. The report names Benack, Gideon and Jokl collectively as the judges and gives a range of bail amounts; it does not assign one judge or bail amount to each listed individual. Contemporary source.
The May 3, 2014 Fort Meade report individually names Ellen Barfield among three people arrested by NSA police and charged with failure to obey a lawful order, entering protected property and disorderly conduct. It gives no jail-admission or physical-release endpoint. Janice Sevré-Duszynska and Dick Ochs are described as performers rather than members of the three-person arrest roster.
Sources: The Nuclear Resister report 564.
