NC man protested a danger to humanity. Now he may pay for it in prison

The death of George Floyd in May sparked what is likely the largest protest movement ever. It’s estimated that as many as 26 million people have participated in hundreds of demonstrations against police brutality nationwide.

Among the protesters in Raleigh was Patrick O’Neill, a Catholic activist and an occasional contributor to these pages. The presence of so many young protesters – Black, white and brown – heartened him. “This is the most significant movement since the Vietnam War,” he said. “This has a chance to be sustained.”

For most of the protesters, taking to the streets out of moral outrage was a bracing and fulfilling new experience. For O’Neill, it is a way of life.

A co-founder of the Fr. Charlie Mulholland Catholic Worker House in Garner, O’Neill has been protesting against nuclear weapons, the death penalty, abortion, immigration rights and other social issues for decades, sometimes in a throng of protesters but more often in a small knot of them. He has been arrested more than 25 times, including seven times during anti-war protests at the Pentagon. “I kneel and say the Lord’s Prayer and the cops pick me up before I’m finished,” he said.

Few in the Floyd protests were arrested, despite confrontations with police and property damage in some cities. But O’Neill’s story is different.

On April 4, 2018, the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., O’Neill and six other members of an anti-nuclear movement known as “The Plowshares” cut a lock and slipped past security at Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay in southeast Georgia, home to six nuclear-armed Trident submarines. The protesters, ranging in age from 56 to 80, consisted of four men, including a Jesuit priest, and three women. They spray painted antiwar slogans on a walkway and took hammers to statues of weapons of mass destruction. After several hours inside, they were detected and surrendered to security officers.

All seven were convicted of three felonies and a misdemeanor after their group was tried together. One has been sentenced to probation after 18 months in jail. The other six are scheduled to be sentenced in mid-October. O’Neill, who has spent more than two years under house arrest and curfew in Garner, expects to be sentenced to one to two years in federal prison.

O’Neill’s voice carries a trace of his upbringing in New York City, though he has lived in North Carolina since the late 1970s. The father of eight children, all of whom have followed him into social activism, he has been in partnership with his wife Mary Rider, a co-founder of the Catholic Worker House and a social worker, who has also been jailed in connection with protests.

Now, at 64, O’Neill may be going to a federal prison for his civil disobedience. He said the message is worth the cost.

“A lot of people disagree with my tactics, but I think it was important to do it. I think drama has a place,” he said. “I don’t have any regrets about it.”

When he was interviewed on a radio show about the protest, a caller challenged his destruction of government property. He replied with a question: “Why does vandalism outrage you like this and weapons that could destroy the world, you have no opinion about?”

For O’Neill, his group’s action was no different than the Boston Tea Party. But he acknowledges other views: “I’ve told every magistrate and judge: ‘I’m not saying I’m right. I’m saying I did what I thought was right.’ ”

The law condemns deliberate property damage, but morality compels acts of conscience. Sometimes the two collide and consequences follow, but a cause is served, a message is sent and the sacrifice is not in vain.

This story was originally published September 10, 2020 at 9:38 AM.