On the weekend of May 16-17, 200-300 people gathered near Red Butte, or Wii’i Gdwiisa, birthplace of the Havasupai people, to protest the Pinyon Plain Mine, a uranium mine owned by Energy Fuels Resources, Inc. The highly radioactive uranium is hauled in open trucks across the Navajo Nation by Hammon Trucking.
During a rally on Sunday afternoon, May 17, protesters blockaded a uranium hauling truck headed toward the mine to be filled with uranium on Monday morning. They blockaded the truck for nearly an hour, piling rocks and logs under it, disabling its tires and damaging it so badly that it later needed to be towed away. The crowd retreated before enough police responded to remove them, so there were no arrests.
The rally was part of a campaign called Stop Them, which demands the immediate end to uranium mining, hauling and milling.
Red Butte is just south of the Grand Canyon along AZ Route 64.
