Steve Kelly SJ
Biography
Father Steve Kelly SJ is an American Jesuit priest and one of the most prolific Plowshares activists in U.S. history. He was a member of the Prince of Peace Plowshares affinity group that boarded the USS The Sullivans at the Bath Iron Works in Maine on February 12, 1997 and hammered on the Tomahawk cruise missile launching system. Kelly was sentenced to ~28 months in federal prison and served at LSCI Allenwood, Pennsylvania, released in June 1999. He has participated in additional Plowshares actions including the November 2, 2009 Disarm Now Plowshares at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor and the April 4, 2018 Kings Bay Plowshares 7 action at the Trident submarine base in Georgia.
On February 12, 1997, four Plowshares activists — Susan Crane, Steve Kelly SJ, Tom Lewis, and Steve Baggarly — boarded the USS The Sullivans, a guided-missile destroyer being outfitted with the Tomahawk cruise launching system at the Bath Iron Works shipyard in Maine, and hammered on and poured blood over the missile launchers. The action took the name Prince of Peace Plowshares. Steve (Stephen) Kelly, S.J. is an American Jesuit priest and peace activist associated with the Plowshares movement. He has spent much of the past decade in prison for participating in nonviolent actions against U.S. nuclear weapons, including protests that involved hammering on D-5 Trident missile components.
Kelly was one of the seven members of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7, who on April 4, 2018 entered the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in Georgia as a symbolic act of disarmament against nuclear weapons. A federal court convicted the group on felony and misdemeanor charges. For his role, Kelly was sentenced in 2020 to 33 months’ imprisonment plus probation and restitution, with credit for time already served awaiting trial. Stephen Michael Kelly, age 69, was one of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 (KBP7) Catholic anti-nuclear activists who broke into Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in St. Marys GA on April 4-5, 2018 to protest Trident-class nuclear weapons. Convicted on all four counts; 33 months federal prison.
From a second record of the same person, merged here so nothing is lost:
Jesuit priest and one of the most-imprisoned Plowshares activists. Per public record (these actions are title-only on the chronology page) he took part in the 1995 Jubilee Plowshares West (Lockheed-Martin, Sunnyvale, CA), the 1996 Weep for the Children Plowshares (New London, CT), the 1997 Prince of Peace Plowshares (Bath Iron Works, ME), the 1999 Plowshares vs. Depleted Uranium (Middle River, MD), the 2009 Disarm Now Plowshares (Bangor, WA) and the 2018 Kings Bay Plowshares 7 (Kings Bay, GA).
