Biography
Elmer Maas was a musician, music teacher, and Catholic peace activist who joined the Plowshares Eight at the GE plant in King of Prussia in September 1980 and remained part of the Plowshares movement for the rest of his life, participating in additional actions and supporting prisoners of conscience. He died in December 2002 at age 67.
On September 9, 1980, eight Catholic peace activists — Daniel Berrigan, Philip Berrigan, Carl Kabat, Anne Montgomery RSCJ, Molly Rush, Elmer Maas, John Schuchardt, and Dean Hammer — entered the General Electric Re-entry Systems Division plant in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, where Mark 12A nuclear warhead nose cones were manufactured. They hammered on two of the nose cones and poured their own blood on documents, in a literal enactment of the prophet Isaiah's image of beating swords into plowshares (Isaiah 2:4). They were arrested at the scene and went to trial in Norristown the following year. Convicted of burglary, conspiracy, and criminal mischief, they were sentenced in 1981 to terms of 3 to 10 years; the case was on appeal for ten years before they were resentenced in 1990 to time served (just over a year). The action launched the modern Plowshares movement, which has carried out more than 100 symbolic disarmament actions worldwide since.
