Originally Published: http://dkeenan.com/NvT/16/16.9.txt
Jack and Felice Cohen-Joppa
the Nuclear Resister, January 19, 1990.
Record Number of Arrests in 1989 for Anti-Nuclear Protest
The latest statistics, compiled annually by the Nuclear Resister, reveal that
the 5,500 arrests for anti-nuclear protests in the United States and Canada in
1989 exceed the number reported for any previous year.
"Reports of the death of the anti-nuclear movement were greatly exaggerated in
the second half of the 1980's," notes Felice Cohen-Joppa, co-editor of the
Nuclear Resister newsletter. "The numbers testify to the vitality of a
nonviolent movement that made the 1980's a decade of unprecedented
anti-nuclear civil resistance, resulting in more than 37,000 arrests in North
America."
The annual statistics show that 5,010 such arrests were made in the United
States, and nearly 500 in Canada, during almost 150 protests at more than
seventy nuclear power and weapons plants, test sites, along transportation
routes and at military bases, government offices and proposed nuclear waste
dumps.
As a result of these anti-nuclear arrests, in 1989 alone more than ninety
people served or are serving from two weeks to seventeen years in prison,
while hundreds more served lesser sentences.
The Nuclear Resister, published since 1980, is a comprehensive chronicle of
anti-nuclear civil disobedience and peace prisoner support. It is recognized
within the peace and justice movement as THE source for information, referals
and networking about nonviolent direct action for disarmament and safe energy.
In June, federal officials of the Bureau of Land Management evicted the Test
Site Peace Camp, arresting three. Resolute peace campers have nonetheless
sustained the three-year old continuous vigil by re-locating their camp on the
public rally site adjacent to the main gate. This proximity enabled peace
campers in July to hastily blockade the entrance road, and for the first time
actually stop a truck convoy likely bringing nuclear weapons to the test site.
Also in June, federal and state agents arrested four Arizona residents in an
alleged conspiracy to topple electrical transmission lines leading from the
Palo Verde (Arizona) and Diablo Canyon (California) nuclear power plants, and
the Rocky Flats (Colorado) nuclear weapons plant. The four are all active in
the radical environmental movement, Earth First! The arrests exposed a major
undercover operation against Earth First! involving infiltrators and wiretaps
in at least seven western states. Three of the four were jailed for two
months before bond was set. In December, a fifth Arizonan was also indicted on
related charges. Ironically, Earth First! has never focused their attention
on nuclear issues.
In an apparent effort to discredit both the anti-nuclear and radical
environmental movements, prosecutors branded the original four as
"terrorists." FBI anti-terrorist agent David Small justified that claim with
the sweeping assertion that terrorism "includes any individual committing
criminal acts under federal, state or local laws in furtherance with (sic)
their political or social goals." No firm trial date has been set, as defense
attorneys review hundreds of hours of wiretap transcripts and recorded
conversations.
While the government has escalated its response to direct action movements,
nonviolent activists are also exploring different ways to advance their
resistance. While each year scores of resisters refuse to pay fines or
cooperate with terms of probation or parole, in 1989 activists charged in
Michigan, Georgia, Ohio, Missouri and Pennsylvania actions refused even to
answer summons or appear voluntarily in court. This refusal upheld the claim
of many who do go willingly to court that nonviolent resistance to U.S.
nuclear policies is no crime. The recalcitrant activists carried on instead
with their peace and justice vocations. In the case of two people arrested at
missile silos during the 1988 Missouri Peace Planting actions, federal
authorities in 1989 resorted to intimidating the activists' friends and
relatives until the resisters surrendered.
The U.S. Supreme Court was presented in 1989 with the opportunity for the
first time to hear a major nuclear resistance case. The appeal of the
Plowshares Eight, Catholic peace activists who in 1980 first employed hand
tools to damage nuclear weapons parts, claimed that they were denied a fair
trial in Pennyslvania state court because their defense of justification and
the supporting testimony of various experts had not been allowed. On October
2, the US Supreme Court declined without comment to hear the case. In an
earlier appeal, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court had invalidated their original
sentences of 1.5 to 10 years. The Eight, Rev. Daniel Berrigan, Philip
Berrigan, Dean Hammer, Fr. Carl Kabat, Elmer Maas, Sr. Anne Montgomery, Molly
Rush and John Schuchardt - now await resentencing in early 1990.
Civil resistance has also played a major role in the Canadian movement in
1989. A major nonviolent resistance campaign is being led by the Innu, native
people of Northern Quebec and Labrador. The Canadian government is giving
favorable consideration to a NATO proposal for expanded low-level training
flights of nuclear and conventional NATO warplanes over traditional Innu
hunting ranges, from an airbase at Goose Bay, Labrador. Innu families have
repeatedly occupied the base runway and camped on the bombing ranges in
protest, facing arrest and jail, while their supporters have engaged in a
series of civil disodedience actions at government offices in Ottawa and
Toronto. The struggle continues, with over 300 related arrests in 1989.
In the next year, a major challenge facing anti-nuclear activists will be to
expose the illusion of a diminished nuclear threat. Image-makers in the Bush
administration will strive to finally silence nuclear critics by offering
"cosmetic disarmament", in the form of an "arms reduction" treaty to eliminate
up to half of the strategic nuclear arsenal.
Yet the weapons most likely to be disarmed under the terms of a potential
treaty - the land-based force of 1,000 Minuteman nuclear missiles in silos
throughout the heartland of the United States - are in fact the least
threatening. While offering to sacrifice silo-based missiles to public demand
for nuclear weapons cuts, the Pentagon has clearly stated its intent to
continue production of the more modern, less vulnerable weapons which are
suitable to first-strike strategies; weapons such as Trident submarines, air-
and sea-launched cruise missiles, the Stealth bomber and mobile, land-based
missiles (the MX rail-garrison and/or Midgetman).
While direct actionists have opposed all of these systems to varying degrees,
it is the Trident nuclear submarine and its highly-accurate D-5 missile which
are being most vigorously opposed. At the Trident's east coast homeport at
Kings Bay, Georgia, the Metanoia Community has supported an increasing level
of nonviolent resistance over the last three years. Arrests (105 in 1989) and
jail terms have increased as the base comes into full operation. Across the
southern states, communities of resistance are preparing to protest and
blockade the "nuclear train," expected to return to the tracks in early 1990
to transport warheads to Kings Bay from the Pantex assembly plant near
Amarillo, Texas. Trident resistance will also continue at sites in California
and Utah, where the D-5 missile is designed, tested and assembled; at the west
coast homeport at Bangor, Washington; and in Groton, Connecticut, where
Trident submarines are built.
In the spring of 1990, civil resisters at the Nevada test site will
demonstrate in concert with nuclear testing opponents in Kazakhstan, the
Soviet Union, who call theirs the "Nevada Movement", in solidarity with direct
actionists in the United States.
In this next decade, anti-nuclear resisters will be joined by citizens groups
concerned with the environmental hazards of weapons production and nuclear
waste disposal. Nuclear weapons plants remain closed in several states as the
secret poisoning of surrounding communities over the last forty years has come
to light. Activists are preparing direct action campaigns to "Stop the
Restart" of these facilities, and prevent replacement factories from being
built. And at the end of the nuclear fuel cycle, nuclear waste dumps nearly
completed in New Mexico and under consideration in New York and Nevada are
facing nonviolent opposition at the dump sites and along transportation
routes.
If the l99O's are truly to be the "Decade of the Environment", nonviolent
direct action and civil disobedience will play a significant role in making
the environment of the third millenium a non-nuclear one, as well.
Jack and Felice Cohen-Joppa
the Nuclear Resister, January 19, 1990.
PO Box 43383
Tucson
AZ 85733
(602)323-8697
