Greg Boertje-Obed

Greg Boertje-Obed is a Catholic pacifist and anti-nuclear activist best known for the 2012 “Transform Now Plowshares” breach of the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge. Alongside Sr. Megan Rice and Michael Walli, he cut through fences, reached a highly secured uranium-related facility, painted messages, and splashed human blood as a symbolic indictment of nuclear weapons production. The group waited to be arrested, explicitly treating prosecution as part of the act’s moral logic.

He was convicted on serious felony counts, including sabotage, and received a 62-month federal sentence. A federal appeals court later overturned the sabotage convictions, leading to his release and resentencing on lesser property-damage convictions—an outcome that became a high-profile example of courts narrowing the application of sabotage law to nonviolent protest at defense sites.

Catholic Worker, peace activist and U.S. Army veteran. With Sister Megan Rice and Michael R. Walli, breached the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee on July 28, 2012 — cutting fences and crossing into the heart of the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility, hanging banners reading 'Swords into Plowshares: Spears into Pruning Hooks' and splashing baby bottles of human blood on the walls. Convicted May 2013 of sabotaging the national defense and damaging federal property; sentenced February 2014 to just over five years in federal prison. The sabotage conviction was vacated on appeal in May 2015 and he was resentenced to time served.