The Nuclear Resister

by Joy First

Voices for Creative Nonviolence engaged with a number of Wisconsin peace groups to organize an 8-day 90-mile walk across southwest Wisconsin from August 18-25. The purpose of the walk was to call attention and make connections between the militarized police violence at home and the military using violence abroad through drone warfare and by other means. In both cases the victims are people of color, which forces us to reflect on the systemic racism of our society.

The walk began at the City/County/Jail complex in Madison on August 18. Dane County has one of the highest rates of racial disparity of any county in the country on many issues, including when it comes to incarceration – hence starting the walk at the jail. In fact, in order to make the prison population match the general population in Dane County, we would need to release 350 Black people. This is horrific, especially when we understand that so many people of color are in jail for nonviolent crimes and crimes of poverty that could better be solved by more positive interventions. It is up to all of us to stand up with our brothers and sisters and proclaim that “Black Lives Matter!”

Fr. John Dear

Bob Dylan and America’s 70-Year Nuclear Nightmare

from The World Post/Huffington Post

by John Dear

A few years ago, Bob Dylan gave a powerful interview to Rolling Stone. The editor asked about his recent music, but also about our political predicament and how we got into this global mess. Dylan seemed a bit cantankerous — forgive me, Bob! — and kept hemming and hawing.

“What gets in your blood?” the editor asked.

“The whole culture,” Dylan answered.

What do you mean? What are you saying? the editor asked. He kept pushing Dylan to explain where rock and roll came from.

Finally, when push came to shove, Bob Dylan gave the definitive answer.

Hiroshima.

from Jane Stoever

On August 9, at about 7 a.m., Fr. Carl Kabat splashed red paint on a National Security Campus sign at the new Kansas City nuclear weapons plant.

“The deed is done,” Kabat told lawyer Henry Stoever in a call at 7:19 a.m. “I came to the back gate—there was a car (a guard’s car) at the main gate. Two guards are coming.” Kabat said something about splashing paint on a sign and then hung up, reported Stoever. “He sounded happy,” added Stoever.

A Spanish anti-nuclear campaigner has been sent to prison for 17 weeks for refusing to pay €6,000 for what he called “energy and harmful pollutants” as a protest against the Almaraz nuclear power plant, located west of Madrid in the Spanish Extremadura.

“It’s the only option left to me,” said Máximo González García, president of the Association of People Affected by Nuclear Almaraz. He has been campaigning against the two-reactor plant for nearly 20 years. His son, now an amputee, is the only survivor among up to nine people in the immediate Jaraiz de la Vera region diagnosed with Ewing’s Sarcoma, a rare bone cancer, following a 1988 radiation leak at the plant. Many other cases of birth defects and rare cancers are reported from the area since the first Almaraz reactor opened in 1981.

Cape Downwinders amped up their campaign to shut down the aging Pilgrim nuclear power plant with a Mad As Hell Mother’s Day Rumble on May 10. “Bring food, noisemakers and all your frustrations – We will make racket” announced the flyer for the event, which began with a picnic and rally at White Horse Beach on the western shore of Cape Cod Bay, next to the 42-year-old reactor. There was song, drumming, three original poems about Pilgrim by Cape resident Marge Piercy, and an update on the shut-down effort in the wake of two reactor shutdowns last winter due to storm threats and damage, including one emergency scram.