The Nuclear Resister

Photo by Cindy Stahler. At the police station after their release pending a July 19 court appearance in Brattleboro’s Windham County Court.

Fifteen women, the largest ever contingent of the Shut It Down Affinity Group to date, were arrested Thursday afternoon, June 30, at the Entergy Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.  The women were charged with trespass after advocating for replacing nuclear power with solar power.

Shut-It-Downers included three women in their nineties: Valerie Mullen, 90, of Vershire, Vermont; Frances Crowe, 92, of Northampton, Massachusetts, and Lea Wood, 94, of Montpelier, Vermont.

Press Release from Witness Against Torture

June 23, 2011, Washington, DC –

While the U.S. House of Representatives chamber filled for a vote today at 4:40pm, Representatives’ eyes and ears turned toward the Chamber’s gallery as a group of activists interrupted proceedings to call for the closure of Guantanamo Bay prison and denounce provisions in the Defense Appropriations Bill concerning detention policy.

Fifteen people from the group Witness Against Torture stood in the gallery to read the following statement:

“Today the House of Representative is in the process of contemplating not the passage of a bill but the commission of a crime. Provisions in the proposed Defense Appropriations Bill grant the United States powers over the lives of detained men fitting of a totalitarian state that uses the law itself as an instrument of tyranny. The law would make the prison at Guantanamo permanent by denying funds for the transfer of men to the United States, even for prosecution in civilian courts.

The LANL Fathers Day Five, ready for a prayer-action.

At the conclusion of a 24-hour prayer vigil outside the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), five peaceful demonstrators were arrested on June 20 outside the construction site of the new Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement (CMRR) facility, a critical part of new U.S. nuclear weapons production.
Trinity Nuclear Abolition (TNA) held the vigil with members of Veterans for Peace, Pax Christi New Mexico, Pax Christi Holy Family, Trinity House Catholic Worker, and Citizens for Alternatives to Radioactive Dumping in honor of Fathers’ Day and Holy Trinity Sunday.

A PORTRAIT OF CREATIVITY AND NONVIOLENCE:  RESISTANCE IN KANSAS CITY

by Marcy Haugh

I’ve always wanted to learn the Thriller dance.  Coordinated dances with others always seem like such a fun concept!  However, I never imagined in a million years that the first time I danced to this Michael Jackson song as part of a coordinated group would be at an action protesting the building of a plant for nuclear weapons parts.  But there I was – fully decked out in a zombie mask and costume – counting down the song’s measures for my cue to creep out zombie-style from behind the “church” where “the bomb” was worshipped.  As the cue came, we began our performance – dancing and acting for a world that chose transformation over annihilation.  This particular action was our way of responding with creative nonviolence to the threat of destruction embodied by the plant’s existence.

June 6, 2011

Dear friends,

From our perspective editing and publishing the Nuclear Resister for more than 30 years now, we take heart in the fact that today there are more people in prison for anti-nuclear actions than there have been for more than a decade.

Of course, we’d rather there be no reason to risk arrest and endure imprisonment. But that’s not the case.

Those of us who are paying attention are not lulled by Obama’s nuclear arms rhetoric.  We’re fully aware of the $100 billion pledged to renew the U.S. nuclear weapons production and delivery capability.  And we heard him loud and clear, under the plume of the greatest nuclear power catastrophe in history at Fukushima, when he assured the American people (and the nuclear industry) that his administration will move forward with a new generation of U.S. nuclear power plants.

But in the face of this reality, we see signs of hope.