Once in a while there's an event that emboldens your spirit and validates you in your fight for a better world. It could be the image of a Chinese dissident stopping a column of tanks in Tiananmen Square. Or it could be a small victory, like a published "letter to the editor" or a successfully organized demonstration. For me, it came during what I had planned to be a quiet vacation.

On May 17, I escaped Seattle to tramp across the U.K. and drop in on my older brother, Tim, in London. The plan was to stay in his flat overlooking Hyde Park. I coerced Lynn Fredriksson and her beau (my other brother), Erik Gustafson, to join me. Lynn, who alone handles most of the work of the East Timor Action Network (ETAN) in DC, seriously deserved a vacation after a successful year lobbying Congress against the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. Erik, who founded the Education for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC) last year, had been educating Congress on a shoestring, and could also use a little R&R.

So what happens when two full time activists and one part time rabble-rouser tour the U.K.? We find some actions and, in a couple of instances, the actions find us. On our first day, visible from Tim's flat were 20,000 people protesting in Hyde Park against the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. Lynn inserted Liverpool into our itinerary, where we would hook up with Savio and other ETAN activists (many of them East Timorese). Erik committed to a trip further north to Preston where he would give a talk against Iraq sanctions. Many activists had also descended on Preston, site of the "Bread Not Bombs" Ploughshares trial and an ongoing vigil outside the Lancashire Crown Courthouse. I, however, had been feeling disenfranchised lately--more in need of shutting out the world while communing with T.S. Elliot and E.M. Forester at a street side caf, eating crumpets and sipping tea. This feeling quickly passed.

The human drama in Preston began on Sept. 13, 1998, when three Swedish peace activists--Annika Spalde, Stellan Vinthagen, and Ann-Britt Sternfeldt--entered the Barrow-in-Furness shipyards where Britain's 4th Trident nuclear submarine, HMS Vengeance, was under construction. Following the 3,000 year old prophecy of Isaiah to "beat swords into ploughshares," the three were arrested while beginning to disarm Trident-related equipment. After six months, they were finally being brought to trial.

On Day 7 of the trial, just before we arrived, Stellan had explained to the jury his conviction that blind obedience was the real enemy in these "terrifying times." A Ploughshares press release from that day adds: "the worst horrors in history--the Nazi death camps, the Soviet gulags, the capitalist slavery of colonialism--were not sudden things, but were planned by governments and carried out by ordinary citizens in blind obedience. And here it happens again, in an undeclared war of the absolutely rich against the absolutely poor, with nuclear weapons playing a central role in the crime."

It was the defense's good fortune to have Vera Baird representing them. Ms. Baird represented the six Irishmen who were brutally coerced to falsely confess to the 1974 IRA bombing of a Birmingham pub. They were known as the Birmingham Six, and Vera helped win their freedom in 1991. She had also successfully defended Ploughshares activists before. In Jan. 1996 three women used ordinary household hammers to disarm a Hawk air-to-ground attack helicopter destined for use in occupied East Timor. Six months later, in a ringing indictment of British arms manufacturers, a Liverpool jury acquitted them of causing 1.5 million (British) of criminal damage.

The judge on this current case, however, was the prosecution's good fortune. He was the epitome of lofty arrogance. Erik and I, with Lynn--herself having served over a year in prison for a Ploughshares action--watched as Vera diplomatically pushed the judge to reverse his ruling censoring any discussion that the possession (and deployment) of nuclear weapons was a "threat" and thereby illegal in accordance with the ICJ ruling.

This argument was crucial to the defense, which laid out its argument as follows:

In the question of whether the three defendants were guilty of "conspiracy to cause criminal damage," English Law accepts that governments are not above the law and have used unjust laws in the past to perpetrate a crime (i.e., as in England's "legal" commerce in slaves until 1808). Legal precedents further uphold that it is right and just to break such unjust laws. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that the use of nuclear weapons to threaten other nations is against international law, so the deployment of a submarine, filled with armed, ready-to-fire nuclear missiles into international waters is a threat to the world.

Just as in the case of "a loaded gun being used in a bank robbery, the weapon does not need not to be fired to be used effectively in systematic theft," possession, thereby, is tantamount to a threat. In conclusion, this Ploughshares action was an act of last resort to prevent a criminal act and was "conspiracy" to prevent a crime, not commit one.

Unfortunately, the judge took particular pains to refute the argument that possession and deployment of nuclear weapons was tantamount to a threat, and disallowed any discussion of this in the presence of the jury. This denied the testimony of the defendants and witnesses who could bolster this defense. Vera Baird's response was to question this ruling every step of the way, often resulting in the jury's dismissal while the legal argument continued.

A week later, back in the States, I got the good news. After two days, the jury could not reach a majority (either 11-1 or 10-2) verdict. After seven hours of deliberation, the judge declared a mistrial. Peace and humanity 1, Trident 0.

So now I have a permanent grin on my face and a light spring in my step. I have renewed faith that humanism will eventually overcome militarism.

On May 21, my optimism remained strong when I heard that the British Government had decided to retry the three activists. In deciding on a retrial, the Government runs the risk of yet another "not guilty" vote in a Ploughshares trial. Furthermore, they risk another legal precedent if the ICJ ruling "that it is unlawful to threaten to use nuclear weapons" is used for the first time in English law. The three Swedes welcome this opportunity to retry Trident. The trial will commence on Oct. 11 at Preston Crown Courts. In the meantime, the defendants have returned to Sweden where media and public interest remain high in the case.

Occasionally you meet heroic people whom history will some day offer up as examples of moral courage in the face of injustice. Ploughshares activists are such people. By putting their lives on the line and nonviolently sacrificing their well being for peace, they set an example for us all. If they can sacrifice a year, two years, ten years, in prison, what can we offer to further the cause? As Stellan said, the worst crime is inaction. I envy the confidence that allows these people to make this stand. It bolsters my own confidence that peace on earth is possible and will prevail.