Biography
Susan Crane is widely described as a long-running anti-nuclear resister whose activism has relied on civil disobedience at military and weapons-related facilities. A major episode in her arrest history centers on the 2009 “Disarm Now” action at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, where a small group cut fences, walked deep into the base toward a nuclear weapons storage area, performed prayers and symbolic gestures, and were arrested by military security.
The case led to felony convictions (including conspiracy, trespass, and property-damage counts) and a 15-month federal prison sentence imposed in 2011. Crane’s record is often discussed as part of a decades-long pattern of arrests for entering restricted spaces to challenge nuclear policy, with the Kitsap-Bangor prosecution serving as one of the clearest examples of the legal consequences imposed on Plowshares-style actions. Imprisoned February 2, 2001 for probation violation tied to the 'Plowshares vs Depleted Uranium' direct-disarmament action of December 19, 1999, in which Catholic Worker / Plowshares activists hammered on A-10 anti-tank warplanes (which fire depleted-uranium rounds) at the Maryland Air National Guard's Warfield ANG Base. The probation itself stemmed from the Prince of Peace Plowshares action of February 14, 1997, when six activists hammered and poured blood on a Tomahawk cruise-missile launching system aboard the USS The Sullivans at Bath Iron Works in Maine.
