Protest Brings Back The `60s, (1988)

Protest Brings Back The `60s

Antiwar Activists Rally At Nevada Nuclear Test Ground

March 20, 1988|By James Coates, Chicago Tribune.

MERCURY, NEV. — World War II veteran Bob Barns was wearing a baseball cap from his Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Santa Cruz, Calif., when officers arrested him and more than 1,800 other antiwar activists last week.

Federal officials say they believe the weeklong series of arrests of people like Barns on the edge of the Department of Energy`s Nevada Nuclear Test Site here is the largest roundup of antigovernment demonstrators since the Vietnam and civil rights protests.

More than 1,200 people were arrested March 12, and about 100 more have been handcuffed and taken away each subsequent day. The protest is to end Sunday with a rally.

It has been street theater out of the past for some of the middle-aged demonstrators, a return to the heady days of ardent rhetoric and the world-beating zeal of young adulthood.

For the forces of law and order, whom both protesters and test site officials praised for their restraint, it was a reminder that civil disobedience can pose a vexing array of troubles.

One veteran demonstrator flashed a sign paraphrasing Mohandas Gandhi, the Hindu civil disobedience leader who wrote, ``First they laugh at you. Then they harass you. Then they persecute you. Then you win.``

For others it was all new.

``I didn`t have time to get involved while my kids were growing up,`` the wiry and gray-bearded Barns said before illegally stepping across the boundary into the supersecret installation just after dawn on Wednesday.

As many as 5,000 people have gathered at the nuclear proving grounds in a single day as part of a well-orchestrated demonstration designed to provoke arrests and win sympathy for the call to end all nuclear testing as a first step toward world disarmament.

Billed as the American Peace Test and coordinated by seasoned political organizers from the Nuclear Freeze/SANE group, the weeklong ``actions`` at the test site have involved people of all ages from throughout the country.

Sometimes singly, sometimes in pairs and more often in clusters of 6 to 12-which they called ``affinity groups``-the protesters courted arrest by such acts as blocking buses carrying test-site workers, slipping through the fences that ring the Rhode Island-sized facility and disrobing before police cameras. Between ``actions`` they slept at a ``peace camp`` of about 100 tents pitched on public land across the highway from the test-site entrance at Mercury.

Stanley Belvin of Eugene, Ore., marked his 91st birthday by forcing officers to arrest him. Others detained were younger than 17, considered minors in Nevada.

Sandy Berliant, a 52-year-old grandmother from Wilmette, Ill., who said that stopping the tests is the only way her grandchildren can survive, also was among those taken into custody.

``Our only chance for the future depends upon stopping what goes on on the other side of that gate,`` said Berliant.

TV disc jockey Casey Kasem, who arrived at the test site in a chauffeured, gray stretch limo, emceed a short entertainment program before being arrested March 12.

Others arrested that day included actress Teri Garr, who told the crowd:

``If I have an image of being conservative, I want all of you people to listen up. We are in a big mess.``

Nearly all the protesters were handcuffed without a struggle, herded into buses and driven to the Nye County courthouse in Tonopah, Nev., 150 miles north of Las Vegas.

Most of the demonstrators were released without being charged, but were not given rides back to the test site.

More than a dozen people who penetrated areas of the test site deemed dangerous or secret were charged with such crimes as criminal tresspass and defacing federal property, officials said. They face fines and jail terms of up to six months.

With a population of only 14,000, the county can`t afford to jail the hundreds of activist lawbreakers, said Barbara Yoerg, spokesman for the Nevada Department of Energy office, which is coordinating the arrests.

``I think a lot of us share these protesters` wishes that they spend some time in jail,`` Yoerg added with a smile. ``It`s too bad the taxpayers can`t afford to put them up for awhile.``

Taxpayers will foot a bill likely to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for bringing in private guards from as far away as South Carolina and Florida, as well as overtime expenses for state and local police.

A fleet of 50 buses-leased at about $400 per day apiece-stands by to transport arrestees from the test site to Tonopah, Yoerg said, and live video coverage of the siege is beamed via satellite to the department`s headquarters in Washington.

In addition, authorities stockpiled 10,000 pairs of disposable white plastic handcuffs and spent $33,000 building a 100-by-220 foot chain link and barbed wire corral to hold the arrested protesters, Yoerg said.

The protesters have been almost as well-prepared. Jessie Cocks, cofounder of the American Peace Test, acknowledged the group has an annual budget of about $500,000, and spent $160,000 on direct mail and phone appeals to bring the protesters to the desert to face arrest.