In Colorado, three Dominican nuns stand trial today for staging a peaceful protest at a Minuteman III missile silo. The cut through a fence at the site used their own blood to paint a cross on the side of the silo and hammered away at the military structure.

The women, Ardeth Platte, 66, Carol Gilbert, 55, and Jackie Hudson, 68, could face 50 years in prison.

The nuns, jailed since their Oct. 6 protest near Greeley, maintain they were a “Citizens Weapons Inspections Team” that was symbolically disarming the United States.

About 50 peace advocates are expected to attend the trial, including Elizabeth McAlister, the widow of longtime peace activist Philip Berrigan, and their daughter, Frida Berrigan who joins us on the phone.

Gilbert and Platte both lived at Jonah House, the communal residence Berrigan founded in Baltimore. Hudson belongs to a similar group in Poulsbo, Washington.

• Frida Berrigan, speaking to us from Colorado before the trial begins.