Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 19. januar 1990 / Time Line January 19, 1990
Version 3.518. Januar 1990, 20. Januar 1990
01/19/1990
Record Number of Arrests in 1989 for Anti-Nuclear
Protest
By: Jack and Felice Cohen-Joppa
the Nuclear Resister, January 19, 1990.
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.
PO Box 43383
Tucson
AZ 85733
(602)323-8697
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