Thursday, November 6, 2014

Peace Camp Nevada

Originally Published by Indian Voices
(Author not cited. If you know let em know and I will correct this!)

The Peace Camp Nevada was formed, so that the Small Group of Folks, who lived across from the
Nevada Test Site & Formed a group of dedicated Activists.(Could communicate about the Actions in Which we empowered & help hundreds of Folks, commit acts of Civil Nonviolent Disobedience. It was formed from the Actions of

Art Casey of the Nevada Desert Experience.

It was formed during the period of time, in which American Peace Test was doing Civil Disobedience.

It was a separate entity, completed.

American Peace Test often used our daily vigils & Civil Disobedience, for their fundraising. But there was no connection, between the two groups. We all were friends, but did not received any funds they raised, using our name.

The actions of peace camp reached the people of the Russians. Through the Action of a Russia Activist. Who was often on Russian TV, as a Respectively National Poet & Artist. One day he announced the actions of a small dedicated group of about 20 people, who were daily committing civil disobedience at the

Nevada Test Site. He raised the country's moral belief, that nuclear disarmament was an available option.

The Russia people formed a group of 40,000+ people, who incorporated the name of Nevada into their name. Because of the actions of dedicated actions of the Ongoing Nevada Peace Group ( This was the true name, of the Nevada Peace Camp)

40,000 Russian People, committed a massive act of civil disobedience, which shocked the Russian authority. Who responded by closing one of the eight nuclear test sites, which they had established? More information of Art Casey & his actions, which lead to the formation of the Nevada Peace Camp, at his blog.

These are the memories of a 67-year original member (who has PTSD) all errors in the above statement, are my fault.

Other original members of the original Ongoing Nevada Peace Camp are encouraged to provide
corrected details.

Corbin Harney the Western Shoshone Spirituality Leader ( RIP 2007) who is often cited as one of the founding members, actual was brought to the Nevada Peace Camp by Bill Rosse, the Western Shoshone Environmental Director, after the passing of his wife. The Ongoing Peace Camp was established prior to his arrival.

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Political Protest and Cultural Revolution: Nonviolent Direct Action in the 1970s and 1980s (Google eBook)

By Barbara Epstein

Kindle EditionAuto-delivered wirelessly

$18.71

From her perspective as both participant and observer, Barbara Epstein examines the nonviolent direct action movement which, inspired by the civil rights movement, flourished in the United States from the mid-seventies to the mid-eighties. Disenchanted with the politics of both the mainstream and the organized left, and deeply committed to forging communities based on shared values, activists in this movement developed a fresh, philosophy and style of politics that shaped the thinking of a new generation of activists. Driven by a vision of an ecologically balanced, nonviolent, egalitarian society, they engaged in political action through affinity groups, made decisions by consensus, and practiced mass civil disobedience. The nonviolent direct action movement galvanized originally in opposition to nuclear power, with the Clamshell Alliance in New England and then the Abalone Alliance in California leading the way. Its influence soon spread to other activist movements for peace, non-intervention, ecological preservation, feminism, and gay and lesbian rights. Epstein joined the San Francisco Bay Area's Livermore Action Group to protest the arms race and found herself in jail along with a thousand other activists for blocking the road in front of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. She argues that to gain a real understanding of the direct action movement it is necessary to view it from the inside. For with its aim to base society as a whole on principles of egalitarianism and nonviolence, the movement sought to turn political protest into cultural revolution.

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Polite Protesters: The American Peace Movement of the 1980s By John Lofland

Syracuse University Press, 1993 - History - 321 pages - $18.00 on Amazon

In the early 1980s sociologist John Lofland became actively involved in the American peace movement. He took part in numerous peace campaigns for nuclear disarmament, the test ban, and SANE/Freeze in Europe and the United States. He has served on a variety of organizing boards and was arrested for civil resistance activities. In his latest book Lofland puts this experience to excellent use. Polite Protesters blends a unique personal perspective with his professional ability to assess the importance, and, long-lasting effect of the American peace movement of the 1980s and to present it in a cogent and compelling manner. Lofland brings his wealth of knowledge about social movements and collective behavior to this sociological study. His analyses reveal a peace movement with organization, culture, and tactics quite different from those of the 1960s and 1970s. The radicals of the 1980s were "polite protesters, " more likely to turn to the politics of interest groups and lobbyists than to that of involved demonstrations and flag burnings. Telling how this movement was both similar to and different from other movements, Lofland explores the dynamics of its dramatic surge and decline, why it both grew and withered with great rapidity. But Polite Protesters is not simply about the American peace movement as genteel protesters. The detailed analysis Lofland offers is developed with a strong concern for the comparative study of social movements and conceived with that aim in mind. In learning about the peace movement, the reader also learns a great deal about all movements, especially those that practice civil protest, a pattern that is becoming more common among the movements of our time.

Series: Syracuse Studies on Peace and Conflict Resolution
Paperback: 321 pages
Publisher: Syracuse Univ Pr (Sd) (March 1994)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0815626053
ISBN-13: 978-0815626053
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

Monday, November 3, 2014

Putting it on the Line, from the John E Mack Institute

Putting it on the Line

by Cathy Cevoli

Test site arrests reach new high

John Mack, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Harvard psychiatrist, was the first member of his family to hear of the Nevada Test Site demonstration. After consulting with his wife, Sally, the couple called their three sons – Ken, Dan and Tony, all in their 20s – and following discussions that lasted “every night for two weeks,” decided to head west from Massachusetts together. “We thought it was important to take a stand as a family,” explained Sally, a social worker. They also knew their joint appearance would make good media copy.

But it was the boys who first decided to get arrested. Introducing themselves to their affinity group on the eve of the June 2 civil disobedience (CD) action at the test site, both parents paused and said they were there “for support” only.

Mack admitted that one reason for his indecision was professional. Author of one of the first surveys of children’s fears of nuclear war, Mack is academic director of Cambridge Hospital’s Nuclear Psychology Program. “There is a danger of getting identified as too much of an advocate, one of those people who gets arrested,” Mack said. “It could make me seem subjective or isolate me from people I work with.”

Sally Mack faced a different struggle. “I realize that my fear of thinking about the nuclear threat is behind my fear of civil disobedience, “ she explained. For Sally, doing CD would mean admitting once and for all that nuclear war was really possible, a psychological seep that seemed more frightening than getting arrested.

FIRST-TIME OFFENDERS

Held from May 31 to June 2, the action was the first national event organized by the American Peace Test (APT) since its formation in January. Saturday’s event, a demonstration held at the test site, was co-sponsored by the national Freeze Campaign (APT’s founders were formerly Freeze Campaign organizers). Staffers of the fledgling group hope to spark a nationwide CD campaign, one that will attract new participants from “mainstream” peace groups. Economist Lester Thurow, who donated $2000 to APT last year to help it get started, has written a direct-mail appeal calling on others to help him raise $50,000 for the group.

Almost everyone at the action seemed to have both political and personal reasons for coming. Many activists mentioned the imperative of the Soviet testing moratorium, and the conviction that CD needed to start playing as large a role in the test ban fight as it did in the civil rights movement. “We need to be more militant,” said teacher and Freeze volunteer Russell Storll, who spent two-and-a-half days on a bus en route to Nevada. ‘‘I’m so damn tired of feeling I’m not doing enough. “ Like Storll, many in the largely middle class crowd, which ranged greatly in age and included several parents with grown children, had never been involved in CD before.

“I’m sick of yelling at the TV,” said television writer and producer Annie Druyan. “I’ve been studying this issue for five years, and I haven’t done enough to stop what I think is evil.” Druyan was arrested for the first rime, with her husband Carl Sagan, who did not get arrested, accompanying her as a support person. (The couple spent their wedding anniversary on the site.)

Another first-time offender was Harvard psychiatrist Lester Grinspoon, a leading writer on nuclear psychology. Since getting arrested to stop the arms race hasn’t acquired the legitimacy that it has for issues like apartheid, many newcomers were taking a giant step. “My colleagues will probably say I’m acting out again,” Grinspoon said, half-joking.

“People in the past have viewed CD as a radical step that only the fringe of any movement takes,” said APT national coordinator Jessie Cocks. “But more people are realizing that we can’t achieve our goals without it. Lots of people came here who’d been afraid of getting arrested, or who said ‘I never thought it would have to come to this.’”

These first-timers joined such CD veterans as Daniel Ellsberg, Harvard psychiatrist Margaret Brenman-Gibson – who had encouraged her colleagues Mack and Grinspoon to join the action – and 77-year-old Lawrence Scott, one of 11 people arrested at the first test site action in 1957.

Since the demonstration site is 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, not the least of APT’s accomplishments was attracting so many to a remote location in the middle of the desert. Over 700 people from 35 states (and six countries) attended Saturday’s demonstration, and 149 were arrested on Monday, setting a test site CD record.

Saturday’s crowd gathered on Camp Desert Rock, the place where soldiers involved in above-ground rests were once rained on with radiation, and heard speeches by Ellsberg, Sagan, and Freeze Executive Director Jane Gruenebaum, among others. Oregon Representative Jim Weaver seemed to impress the crowd with his almost religious condemnation of nuclear tests – as well as for facing the 100° weather in a suit.

After the rally, while a third of the group stayed to camp just outside the sire, the rest faced the culture shock of returning to hotels in the capital of psychic numbing. But Mae Gautier of New York City was delighted to find that the paper crane she had given her hotel clerk after her first arrest was still pinned co the hotel’s bulletin board a year later.

CROSSING THE LINE

For much of Sunday, during an all-day strategy session in preparation for civil disobedience, debate centered on what form the action should take. Most activists wanted to cross the DOE’s arbitrary white line and surrender peacefully to the authorities, but others favored options that would make the demonstration more difficult for the police and/or allow people to venture further onto the site. After several hours of overtime discussion, consensus was finally reached on the first, more cooperative action.

Despite – or because of – this ordeal, a growing sense of unity and purpose was palpable on Monday morning. After a long early-morning drive, the group of about 300 activists (both those intending to do CD and their “support people”) gathered along Highway 95 at 6:00a.m. to “vigil” arriving test site workers.

For many activists, the real meaning of the location of this action had been hard to grasp. While everyone knew what goes on at the site, it nonetheless looked eerily benign. “The beauty of the desert gives you a sense of serenity,” said Helga Moore, a New York activist, “but then there’s the horror and the hell underneath.” Less than two months earlier a faulty test in an underground tunnel had vented radiation, causing millions of dollars in damage and contaminating three workers. The recognition of hidden menace seemed to hit home as the activists – many clearly emotional – approached the white line.

Holding hands, small groups of protesters crossed the painted line and were led away, sometimes amid the cheers of friends, to waiting busses to be “processed.” (Nye County Court Judge William Sullivan, popular among activists for his temperate demeanor, has stiffened his sentences in the last two years, due to – APT suspects – federal pressure and his own frustration at dealing with escalating arrests.) First-time offenders faced six days in jail or a $150 fine.

RIPPLE EFFECTS

Since APT organizers view the event as only the beginning of a long-term campaign, they are reluctant to gauge its effectiveness. Locally, the events received good media coverage, due perhaps to growing antinuclear sentiment in Nevada, where stories of waste-dump selection have helped create what APT feels is a growing dislike of the DOE. But with the exception of USA Today, the Chicago Tribune and a small blurb hidden in the Boston Globe, the national media ignored the event. Still, it’s difficult to ignore the number of people who came to Nevada because of someone else’s example. “This has an effect on people’s lives,” said Ed McClain of Corvallis, Oregon, who was warmly welcomed back by workers he’d met doing community service for his last arrest.

Cocks believes that nonviolent CD needs to be more integrated, along with lobbying and other tactics, into movement strategy. Already, the ongoing actions at the test site have raised the visibility of the test ban issue as a critical time in congressional deliberations, according to one key Capitol Hill aide. And, Cocks added, “each of these people will go back to their communities and organize with that much more passion. I have incredible faith in the experience. It can’t not work.”

In the end, it “worked” for John and Sally Mack, who finally decided on Sunday night to get arrested on Monday. “I’m not sure I’m doing the right thing,” Mack admitted an hour before he crossed the line. “I may regret it. But there just don’t seem to be any considerations more important.” Besides, he added, “it just seems the height of parental irresponsibility to watch my sons get arrested and wave at them from the other side of the line.” The Macks were arrested – and later faced Judge Suillivan – en famille.

One week later, John Mack described the process as liberating. “I feel like I’ve crossed an important line within myself,” Mack reported. Since returning from Nevada he has written an article on CD and read a lot of Thoreau. “We have a barrier about breaking the law which seems formidable,” said Mack. “But when times become desperate, it’s essential that people say ‘no’. I wouldn’t just recommend this to my colleagues,” he added. “I’d tell them it’s absolutely critical to take every opportunity to do this.”

© 1986 Cathy Cevoli
Nuclear Times, July/Aug 1986 pp.36-37

Related:

Original Press Release

Date of original publication (may be approx.) July 1, 1986 • Subject Area: Political Worldviews

Sunday, November 2, 2014

Protest, Dissent, and Witness at the Nevada Test Site

http://www.onlinenevada.org/articles/protest-dissent-and-witness-nevada-test-site#sthash.C44Nx8Hz.dpuf

Since the late 1950s, the Nevada Test Site has been the subject of criticism, protest, and civil disobedience. Organized protest actions have ranged in size from fewer than ten people to groups of thousands during the large demonstrations of the 1980s. Individuals have observed private desert witness as they pray for world peace. In spite of the nuclear testing moratorium that has been in place since 1992, protest continues at the site. In recent years, three major annual events have been observed: Holy Week, Mother’s Day weekend, and the August 6–9 anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II.

It is easy to characterize these demonstrations as being specific to the Nevada Test Site (NTS). However, since the dawn of the nuclear age, dissent has taken place within the larger context of national and global debates about the danger, necessity, and morality of nuclear weapons. Nuclear fission was discovered in 1938–39. By 1942, the achievement of the first manmade nuclear chain reaction meant that powerful explosions releasing the vast energies stored in the atomic nucleus were possible. The World War II Allies’ top secret Manhattan Project made that possibility a reality with the atomic bombs tested in New Mexico and used on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. During the war, scientists and statesmen who knew of these world-changing developments were deeply troubled and sometimes divided about whether research should focus on a weapon of such unprecedented destructive power. The decision to create and use the atomic bomb during World War II remains a subject of public and historical controversy.

Post-World War II, debate continued among American scientists and statesmen regarding international control of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. However, failing to reach arms control agreements with the Soviet Union meant that the nuclear arms race would accelerate. In the 1950s, as thermonuclear weapons or “super” hydrogen bombs were invented and tested, concern grew that the world could become involved in all-out nuclear war with weapons of unlimited power and the potential to destroy civilization.

For the first protesters at the Nevada Test Site, memories of the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were still fresh. In 1957, a group of Quakers, Mennonites, and other pacifists traveled from out-of-state to commemorate the twelfth anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6. Their protest coincided with the detonation of the Stokes device at the NTS on August 7. Stokes—the test of a multi-purpose warhead—was detonated from a balloon over Yucca Flat. It was one of twenty-nine tests in the Plumbbob series carried out between May 28 and October 7, 1957. The Hood test of July 5, 1957, had yielded seventy-four kilotons—the largest of all atmospheric tests at the NTS. Stokes, at nineteen kilotons, approximated the yields of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. Protesters set up camp close to the test site boundary and held a prayer vigil during the actual test. Those who crossed into the test site at the guard station were arrested.

Another important landmark in the history of test site dissent was the eight hundredth anniversary of the birth of St. Francis of Assisi in 1982. At that time, members of the Franciscan religious order in Las Vegas decided to hold peace vigils and desert witness at the NTS to honor their patron. These activities followed the precepts of nonviolent civil disobedience.

Over time, protests grew to encompass the interests of a wide range of individuals and organizations, some of which advocated more confrontational approaches, including resisting arrest. A peace camp was established across the highway from the test site where people still hold vigils, ceremonies, and religious services. From there, those who wish to “cross the line” can walk under the highway and step over the test site boundary, after which they are arrested. Individuals and small groups have also entered the test site from remote desert locations and have been able to evade security for many hours before being detected. In at least one case, their presence on the test site delayed the scheduled detonation of an underground test. Over the years, those arrested have been held in fenced areas at the test site, sent by bus to Tonopah and Beatty, Nevada, jailed, or sometimes handcuffed, ticketed, and released.

In addition to faith-based, pacifist desert witness, others journey to the NTS to express deeply held convictions about nuclear weapons. Hibakusha—survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—are important participants in international peace and anti-nuclear movements. “Downwinders” from Nevada, Utah, and Idaho come to bring attention to the illnesses they believe were caused by fallout from more than a decade of atmospheric testing at the NTS. Many downwinders consider themselves to be hibakusha, atomic bomb victims along with the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Pacific Islanders in whose traditional territories the Pacific nuclear tests were conducted. Atomic veterans—military personnel who were exposed to radiation during tests at the NTS and Pacific—also participate in protests. However, some atomic veterans consider it unpatriotic to demonstrate, seeing their illnesses as combat injuries of their military service. Environmental activists and citizens concerned about the safety of soil and ground water organize and attend rallies. During the cold war, elected officials demonstrated in support of policy changes such as a nuclear freeze and U.S. ratification of international test ban treaties.

The test site is located on the traditional lands of indigenous peoples, including the Western Shoshone and Southern Paiute. Ancestral and cultural resources are located within its boundaries. Some reservations as well as traditional hunting grounds were in the path of test site fallout. The Western Shoshone claim the test site as part of their homeland, Newe Sogobia, under the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley. During protests, tribal leaders issue passports granting permission to enter the test site. The Nevada-Semipalatinsk Movement brought together activists from the United States and Kazakhstan, location of the major Soviet test site. During the early 1990s, Kazakh and Native American leaders joined in ceremonies at the NTS.

During Holy Week, some groups walk from Las Vegas to the Peace Camp as part of their religious observances. They enact the “nuclear stations of the cross” and Catholic mass is held in the desert. During Mother’s Day weekend, tribal leaders run for miles across their traditional homelands to gather for ceremonies near the test site in honor of Mother Earth. During the August Desert Witness, Las Vegas faith-based organizations hold teach-ins on nonviolent action and rally with others at the test site to remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Over the years, test site administrators and security personnel, including the Nye County sheriff, have dealt with the demonstrations in a variety of ways. Some protesters and security people have become close friends, having gotten to know each other over decades of protest. For some test site workers, the protests represent a personal attack on their morality. Many believe that their cold war work assured nuclear deterrence and contained the Soviet threat to American values, including the right to protest. These arguments in Nevada embody the complex moral dilemmas that nuclear weapons have raised since they were first discovered.

- See more at: http://www.onlinenevada.org/articles/protest-dissent-and-witness-nevada-test-site#sthash.C44Nx8Hz.dpuf

Saturday, November 1, 2014

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.”
  
  —

Peace Camp, Nevada

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