Nevada Peace Camp Encouraged By Soviets' Visit To Nuclear Site

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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.

Reclaim the Test Site, 1988

The Nevada Test Site has often been a target of anti nuclear protests. Most of these were conducted by the American Peace Test (APT) and Nevada Desert Experience (NDE). 

In March 1988, APT organized a ten day long "Reclaim the Test Site" event which was attended by more than 8,800 people. Nearly 2,067 of these people were arrested, including 1,200 who were taken into custody in one day. This set a record for most civil disobedience arrests in a single protest.

Here are some great pictures: 

http://digital.library.unlv.edu/cdm4/results.php?CISOOP1=any&CISOFIELD1=CISOSEARCHALL&CISOROOT=/pho&CISOBOX1=demonstrations 

Anti-nuclear protests in the United States (not complete, but interesting)

http://www.nuclear-heritage.net/index.php/Anti-nuclear_protests_in_the_United_States 

Anti-nuclear protests in the United States

This is a list of notable anti-nuclear protests in the United States. Many anti-nuclear campaigns captured national public attention in the 1970s and 1980s, including those at Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant, Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant and those following the 1979 Three Mile Island accident.^[1]

The largest anti-nuclear demonstration to date was held in New York City on September 23, 1979 when almost 200,000 people attended. The New York rally was held in conjunction with a series of nightly “No Nukes” concerts given at Madison Square Garden from September 19 through 23.

Anti-nuclear protests preceded the shutdown of the Shoreham, Yankee Rowe, Millstone I, Rancho Seco, Maine Yankee, and about a dozen other nuclear power plants.^[2]

Nevada Test Site

From 1986 through 1994, two years after the United States put a hold on full-scale nuclear weapons testing, 536 demonstrations were held at the Nevada Test Site involving 37,488 participants and 15,740 arrests, according to government records.^[64] These are just a few details:

• January, 1987: The actor Martin Sheen and 71 other anti-nuclear protesters were arrested at the Nevada Test Site in a demonstration marking the 36th anniversary of the first nuclear test there.^[65]
• February 6, 1987: More than 400 people were arrested, when they tried to enter the nation's nuclear proving grounds after nearly 2,000 demonstrators, including six members of Congress, held a rally to protest nuclear weapons testing.^[66][67]
• September 30, 1987: 110 demonstrators, including seven pediatricians, were arrested for civil disobedience; charges were later dropped.^[68]
• March 20, 1989: 75 protesters, including Louis Vitale, were arrested for trespassing in a peaceful Palm Sunday demonstration.^[69]
• April 20, 1992: 493 anti-nuclear protesters were arrested on misdemeanor charges, as demonstrators clashed with guards at an annual Easter demonstration against weapons testing at the remote desert site.^[70]
• August 6, 1995: 500 people gathered to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima.^[71]
• 1997: Over 2,000 people turned out for a demonstration and 700 were arrested.^[72]
• August 2005: About 200 peace activists, including actor Martin Sheen, gathered for a nonviolent demonstration outside the gates; dozens were given citations and released after crossing police lines.^[73]
• May 2006: 200 activists protested the Divine Strake explosives test, and 40 were arrested.^[74]
• April 2007: Nevada Desert Experience protest, where 39 people were cited by police.^[75]

Waging Peace: Lessons in the Desert (2012)

Lessons in the desert

• Ken Butigan
 
• April 19, 2012  http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/lessons-in-the-desert/ 
• • 
    

    The "Dog" nuclear test during Operation Buster-Jangle at the Nevada Test Site on November 1, 1951. It was the first U.S. nuclear field exercise conducted on land; troops shown are a mere 6 miles from the blast.
    It remains the most bombed real estate on the planet. The Nevada Test Site — recently renamed the Nevada National Security Site — is 1,360 square miles of sprawling desert north of Las Vegas. A nuclear weapon was detonated there on average every eighteen days from 1951 through 1992. In the 1980s the spiritually-rooted Nevada Desert Experience (NDE) launched a campaign with the audacious goal of ending this practice. For the next decade its effort gained traction, with thousands of people from across the U.S. and around the world converging on the site’s southern gate to protest, pray and engage in nonviolent civil disobedience. Other organizations, including the American Peace Test (APT) and Greenpeace, joined NDE in this struggle. In 1988, three thousand people were arrested in a ten-day action organized by APT at the Nevada Test Site.
    Against all odds, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) was established in 1992. NDE and many other organizations had built a global movement that mobilized people-power on every continent to create the conditions for an end to nuclear testing. One hundred eighty-two nations became signatories. Though Bill Clinton signed the treaty in 1996, the U.S. Senate has yet to ratify it. (Just today Physicians for Social Responsibility called on the Senate to take this up again.) Nevertheless, the United States has maintained a moratorium on full-blown nuclear tests for almost twenty years. While the nuclear threat is as alive as ever, the world is no longer subject to the numbing horror of this dress rehearsal for Armageddon and its environmental, political and moral fallout.
    NDE just celebrated its 30th anniversary. Since the promulgation of the CTBT, people within the organization have periodically wondered if it should declare victory and close up shop. The answer has been a resounding “No.” NDE has stayed put, with a focus on the nuclear and non-nuclear projects that continue at the test site and the dramatic surge in drone warfare coordination at nearby Creech Air Force Base. At the same time, it continues to vigorously support the Western Shoshone nation in its struggle with the U.S. government, which violated the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley by confiscating Western Shoshone and Southern Paiute land to build the site. In addition to a weekly vigil, NDE organizes a “Sacred Peace Walk” from Las Vegas to the test site every spring, and an annual commemoration of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August.
    From the vantage point of three decades, there are a couple of lessons that may shed light on the challenges and opportunities of building movements for change today.
    First, this movement did not begin with a clear strategy. It was founded by a handful of people who ventured into the desert to bear witness to present and potentially future nuclear destruction. Franciscan sisters, brothers and lay people seeking a way to mark the 800th birthday of St. Francis of Assisi followed their hearts to the test site, where for 40 days they maintained a presence during the Christian season of Lent. Their witness culminated in nonviolent civil disobedience as 19 people crossed onto this top-secret nuclear facility and were arrested.
    Several years ago, I published a book about this movement, and a recurring perception among the organizers I interviewed was that NDE lacked a strategy, and that this had hurt the effort. What I began to appreciate, however, was that a different kind of strategic thinking had been at work. This was one not based on a SWOT analysis or models of community organizing, but on relentless persistence: ongoing presence, action and occupation. (For example, a Peace Camp was established outside the gates of the facility where people would stay for long stretches of time, including a former defense worker, Art Casey, who spent two years there.)
    This continuity established a growing legitimacy and visibility, which attracted people to this largely invisible site at a time when the emerging anti-nuclear weapons movement, stoked by the Reagan administration’s military buildup, was looking for tangible and concrete focus. Once people woke up to the fact that the government was still exploding nuclear weapons in the western part of the United States — and had not stopped in 1962 when the tests went below ground — people wanted to get involved, and a growing number of them thought about going out to the desert for themselves.
    What helped translate this longing into making the long drive, boarding a plane or hitchhiking from the nearest interstate on-ramp was the peaceful atmosphere that NDE sought to create from the beginning. Nuclear weapons symbolize and embody mega-violence. What is needed, the founders reasoned, is not more violence but mega-nonviolence. This involved engaging in a Gandhian experiment with truth, which for them meant striking a balance between resistance and openness in their relationship with test site personnel and the local sheriffs.
    They didn’t think of this strategically — in fact, they thought of this as a spiritual discipline — but in a strange way it turned out to be hyper-strategic. Over months and then years, an insistence on transforming “us versus them” thought and action established relationships at the test site that reduced the likelihood of violent interactions with employees and law enforcement. This, in turn, created a climate that attracted many more people to the campaign than a violent one likely would have. This relatively peaceful atmosphere, created at the edge of a nuclear firing range, emboldened a growing number of people to risk arrest and to face the consequences.
    This atmosphere was not inevitable. It could have gone very differently, depending on the predilections of either side. The protesters had asked for a meeting with the director of the test site beforehand, which had turned out to be a powerful encounter. And from the very first day they took action at the site, they were scrupulous about maintaining the spirit of nonviolence. At the same time, the head sheriff who dealt with them was fairly new to police work and made it clear, through his words and actions, that he would respect the right of people to protest.
    NDE had no illusions about the evil that the test site, and the larger nuclear weapons system, represented. At the same time, it held to what the late feminist writer Barbara Deming called the two hands of nonviolence: noncooperation with violence and steadfast regard for the opponent as a human being.
    For the first year or two, the local county court meted out punishments in the range of a few weeks to several months, but as the numbers increased, the county threw up its hands. It did not have the resources to prosecute and jail an increasingly steady stream of anti-nuclear advocates. It announced that, except under highly unusual circumstances, it would issue citations but not act on them. This opened the floodgates. Soon, large numbers of people were making pilgrimage to the test site and engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience.
    For some, this meant that risking arrest at NTS had little value. Anne Symens-Bucher, an NDE organizer, saw it differently. For her, NDE actions became a kind of school or training ground for civil disobedience. The peaceful atmosphere that NDE fostered became a place where many people risked arrest for the first time. It prepared them to work for an end to nuclear testing back in their own communities, including taking nonviolent action there.
    A few years after this movement began, Symens-Bucher described the vision of NDE’s experiment in truth:

    I have become wholly convinced that something is happening at the Test Site which is difficult – if not impossible – to articulate. It is, however, experienced. I have witnessed time and again, people participating in the vigil and going home changed. Something is happening at the Test Site, and it is happening not because we are organizationally efficient, but in spite of the fact that we are not. People of faith and goodwill are being drawn together in the Nevada desert and together they are bringing life and goodness and re-creation to a place of evil, death, and destruction. The location is perfect: the vastness of the desert, the desert in all its stark beauty. It is a beauty which is appreciated slowly, over a period of time … It is conducive to prayer, meditation, soul-searching, purification. It is as if people are able, in the setting of the desert, to reach down into their depths and discover what is good and what is the gift in themselves and in each other. This goodness, this gift, this power, this life-force collectively brought-forth, becomes tangible. Bonds are formed. Community happens. Love is made real. And out of this love, we are able to confront the evil in the desert. Out of this love we are able to heal ourselves, each other and the earth upon which we stand. Because of this love, nuclear weapons testing will end.

    And end it did. NDE’s commitment to ongoing action, in season and out, contributed to a political groundswell, which, as I have traced elsewhere, was key to the establishment to the CBTB and a U.S. moratorium on testing. This shift was the result of many important clear and defined strategies, which are crucial to the success of all movements. But it was also the result NDE’s nonviolent “unstrategic strategy.”
    —

Interview with David Buer, 2008

Interview with David Buer can be found here:  http://digital.library.unlv.edu/objects/nts/1177 

Table of Contents
1 - Introduction: family background, birth (San Antonio, TX), raised with sense of social justice, sympathy toward the antiwar movement, education
3 - Beginning of spiritual journey: travel to California and back to St. Louis (1975), becomes active in Roman Catholic Church
5 - Work in Franciscan community in Chicago, IL involvement with Franciscan antinuclear movement, founding of NDE
6 - Awareness of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and testing at the NTS
9 - First visit to NTS and shutdown of Peace Camp (1989)
12 - Trial of Father Louis Vitale and other NTS protesters
13 - Participation in APT and NDE actions at the NTS (1990)
15 - Importance of Franciscan presence in developing peaceful protest at NTS, and relationship of NDE to other antinuclear and peace groups
17 - Work on staff of NDE (ca. 1994-1999) in organizing events, personal meanings surrounding protest actions, interactions with NTS security
21 - Family feelings re: increased involvement with antinuclear activities
22 - Work and dedication NDE mission over the years, and current involvement in migrant and homeless work (San Javier Mission, Tucson, AZ)
23 - People who have worked with NDE over the years
24 - Vision of NDE currently and in its continuing role in affecting people’s lives
25 - Role of the desert itself in the antinuclear mission
27 - Reasons for longevity of NDE
28 - Reflections on work with NDE, relations with NTS security, and benefit of NDE’s continued presence at the NTS
31 - Conclusion: final thoughts on working toward a nuclear-free world