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No matter how craven the politics, how divided the country, how hateful the speeches and tweets become, these sisters of resilience and resistance fight their battles with messages of peace.

“This is our vow,” said [Carol] Gilbert. “It’s why we keep on keeping on. We will never give up.” [Ardeth] Platte nodded in agreement.

“I refuse to have an enemy,” said the gentle convicted felon, her face suddenly breaking into a beatific smile. “I simply won’t.”

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The [2017 Nobel Peace Prize, which was announced on Oct. 6] prize was awarded to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, or ICAN, which succeeded in getting 69 nations to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The sisters spent weeks at the U.N. working with ICAN, meeting with world leaders from Ireland, Sweden, Cuba and other countries, and lobbying foreign ministers to get the treaty enacted.The United States was not among the signers. U.S. diplomats boycotted the U.N. conference along with foreign ministers from the other nuclear nations.

Gilbert and Platte were not surprised by the boycott, and they flatly refuse to be discouraged. They remain fiercely determined to see the treaty ratified and, to get the word out, they are delivering copies to military commanders across the country. They even thoughtfully left one for Suthers in his absence.

“This is an urgent time for us,” said Platte, who advertises her cause on a shirt that proclaims “I’m already against the next war.”

With the Trump administration threatening to “totally destroy North Korea” and Kim Jong-un responding by calling Trump a “dotard” and ordering more ballistic missile tests, Gilbert and Platte said nuclear anxiety has helped generate overwhelming support for their work, especially on college campuses.

“The young people want to live in a nuclear-free world, a world without war,”

Read more of Denver Post Reporter’s Diane Carman article Anti-nuke nuns return to crime scene with a treaty and a Nobel Prize

Read a related story by reporter Debbie Kelley
https://www.denverpost.com/2017/10/08/anti-war-nuns-nuclear-disarmament-colorado-springs/

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