Nevada Peace Camp Encouraged By Soviets' Visit To Nuclear Site
By Fawn Vrazo, Inquirer Staff Writer
POSTED: January 27, 1988
NYE COUNTY, Nev. — It has been cold here lately at the permanent peace camp located about a mile from America's nuclear bomb testing site. In the morning, camper Diana Hirschi finds frost on her sleeping bag; she can see her breath at night.
Sometimes, there are hundreds of peace demonstrators residing at the camp - a scraggly desert outpost covered with sharp rocks, low cactus bushes and wood benches supported by concrete blocks. Yesterday, though, there was only Hirschi - a 45-year-old mother and secretary from Salt Lake City - to stand in lonely vigil outside of the 800,000-acre site where U.S. scientists test bombs up to six times more powerful than the ones dropped on Japan during World War II.
For a change yesterday, Hirschi was quite pleased about something going on inside the test site fence.
This week marks the unprecedented visit of an exchange group of 20 Soviet scientists who are living in the Nevada Test Site's military-like dormitories while they inspect bomb testing equipment and study a new U.S. device that will likely be used by Americans to measure the Soviet Union's nuclear tests.
Local peace demonstrators like Hirschi regard the Soviet visit with something like joy, since it is seen as a definite step toward an eventual joint nuclear test-ban by both the United States and Soviet Union.
But the joy goes only so far. The demonstrators still believe it will be a long time before there are no more bombs detonated at the site, which is pocked with huge craters resulting from nuclear explosions rumbling far beneath the desert floor. And so, during the chilly desert winter and in the blazing summertime, on special occasions ranging from Mother's Day to the August anniversary of the bombing of Japan, the demonstrators plan to keep on protesting and giving the U.S. Department of Energy as much grief as they can.
In May 1986, a group of activists from the Rocky Mountain Peace Center in Boulder, Colo., trekked well into the test site's interior in hopes that Energy officials would be forced to delay a bomb test once their presence was discovered.
What the activists weren't counting on was the fact that they would not be discovered: at blast time, they found themselves in a desert canyon near Ground Zero. The ground swayed beneath them and large rocks started rolling around.
"They were pretty frightened and depressed," said Peace Center worker Larry Tasaday.
More often, protesters merely stand quietly at a cattle guard at the site entrance or step over it - only to be promptly handcuffed and arrested by sheriff's deputies waiting on the other side.
Last Mother's Day, 750 were arrested and booked. "That may be the largest arrest at one time in the state of Nevada," bragged Jim Merlino of the Nye County sheriff's department, who has been forced to make many adjustments to handle the growing protest arrest load. Those adjustments include the recent installation of a special booking trailer near the site.
Nye is one of the country's largest counties and also one of its most sparsely populated, with only 16,000-some residents. Last year, Merlino and his deputies arrested more than 3,300 test site demonstrators - or the equivalent of nearly one-quarter of all of the people who live in his county.
Local protest organizers praised Merlino for his gentle approach with demonstrators. "They're treated like ladies and gentlemen," Merlino said. In turn, he praises the organizers for making his job as easy as they can.
Before any "action" takes place at the site, local organizer Jesse Coxe of the American Peace Test organization in Las Vegas calls Merlino and tells him exactly how many protesters are expected and exactly how many plan to trespass at the site entrance.
Coxe and workers at another Las Vegas peace center, the Nevada Desert Experience, have organized test site protests with as much precision as a travel agent handling a tour group. When members of an out-of-town group call to say they want to demonstrate against the nuclear tests, the local organizers offer to prepare the site with portable potties and water, provide civil disobedience training, give advice on how to get arrested or not arrested, and provide local meals and a place to sleep. For all this, modest registration fees in the range of $5 to $25 are asked.
"I don't even know if the casinos can beat us on that," said Nevada Desert Experience staffer Denise Stephenson.
During their protests the demonstrators are in clear view of busload after busload of workers who arrive for jobs at the site each day. A total of 8,000 employees make their living in various bomb test jobs, and many are suspicious of demonstrators who would like to see the reason for those jobs be taken away.
The protesters, though, view the Nevada Test Site as the most important place in America to demonstrate against the arms race. "The nuclear arms spiral upward is closely linked to testing," said Tasaday. The fact that there is testing, he believes, encourages U.S. scientists to look for "ever more colorful, ever more interesting (bombs) to test."
Early today, 10 to 15 demonstrators were expected at the site to welcome the Soviets with a banner written in both Russian and English. Starting March 11, organizers plan their bigggest-ever protest at the site, with as many as 5,000 people expected here.
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