Activists Make Statement at Nuke Base: Our Children Deserve Better!

Activists briefly blockaded the entrance to a West Coast nuclear weapons base in a statement against U.S. Nuclear modernization efforts on the eve of Mothers Day.

On Saturday, April 9, 2015 anti-nuclear weapons activists gathered at the main entrance gate to Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, Silverdale, Washington, home to eight of the nation's fourteen OHIO Class (Trident) ballistic missile submarines. Carrying signs saying “Our children deserve better”, five protesters walked into the roadway and blocked traffic entering the base. Washington State Patrol officers moved in and escorted the protesters off the roadway.

Anthony DeLorenzo, Seattle, WA; Tom Karlin, Tacoma, WA; Mona Lee, Seattle, WA; Brenda McMillan, Port Townsend, WA; and Alice Zillah, Olympia, WA were cited for being in the roadway illegally, released and escorted back to the designated protest zone where others were protesting. Other activists on the overpass over the entrance road held a large banner that read: "Abolish Nuclear Weapons."

The Mothers Day eve protest and nonviolent direct action was an annual event held by Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action at the Bangor Trident base. This year's event was held at a time when the U.S. Government continues to modernize its nuclear weapons, their delivery systems and the infrastructure that builds and maintains them at a cost estimated at roughly a trillion dollars over the next three decades. At the same time nations are meeting at the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference in New York.

Brenda McMillan being escorted off the roadway

As Leonard Eiger, spokesperson for the NO To NEW TRIDENT Campaign put it, “We can't have it both ways. The rhetoric coming out of The White House is simply not in accord with good faith negotiations towards total nuclear disarmament as required by the NPT. Our nation's actions, rather than slowing nuclear proliferation, are driving it and creating a new nuclear arms race.”

Alice Zillah (left) and Anthony Delorenzo awaiting their citations

Eiger points out that the U.S. Navy's plans for a new fleet of ballistic missile submarines, costing nearly $100 billion in construction, is at the center of the rapidly developing submarine nuclear arms race. “The U.S. has deployed Trident at near Cold War levels since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Do we seriously think that other nations have not taken notice of this?”

In a statement announcing the Mothers Day eve action event organizer Mona Lee said that, “The world's children deserve better than to struggle to live under the threat of a renewed nuclear arms race. Increasing militarization steals resources desparately needed to mitigate global warming and improve living conditions worldwide.”

Event co-organizer Mona Lee

Ground Zero Center calls on the U.S. government to change course on Trident and its overall nuclear posture, and begin to live up to its obligations as a member of the United Nations and as a signatory to the NPT. Anything less is a theft of our children's future.

The Trident submarine base at Bangor, just 20 miles from Seattle, contains the largest concentration of operational nuclear weapons in the US arsenal. Each of the 8 Trident submarines at Bangor carries up to 24 Trident II (D-5) missiles, each capable of being armed with as many as 8 independently targetable thermonuclear warheads. Each nuclear warhead has an explosive force of between 100 and 475 kilotons (up to 30 times the force of the Hiroshima bomb). It has been estimated that by the time the new generation of ballistic missile submarines are put into service, they will represent 70 percent of the nation's deployed nuclear warheads.

Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action is currently engaged in legal actions in Federal court to halt the Navy’s construction of an unnecessary Second Explosives Handling Wharf at Bangor. Ground Zero's NO To NEW TRIDENT Campaign (notnt.org) is working with other organizations to de-fund the Navy’s plans for the next generation ballistic missile submarine, also known as the OHIO Class Replacement or SSBN(X).

For over thirty-seven years Ground Zero has engaged in education, training in nonviolence, community building, resistance against Trident, and action toward a world without nuclear weapons.

Contact: Leonard Eiger, Media and Outreach
Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action
www.gzcenter.org
subversivepeacemaking@gmail.com
(425)445-2190

Shadows and Ashes: Remembering Dorothy Day

"They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation. Neither shall they learn war any more." Isaiah 2:4

I'm at the Isaiah Wall that is directly across the street from the United Nations building. It is 8:30 AM, and across the street delegates to the NPT Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference are entering the building as it begins its second day.

Police vans are pulling and making their preparations for the expected onslaught of nuclear abolitionists who will soon arrive for the 9:30 vigil here and the subsequent nonviolent direct action at the US Mission to the United Nations just down the block.

The sun is shining and the tree in front of the Isaiah Wall is bursting with the beauty of Spring. In an instant all this could disappear in a blinding flash and, quite ironically, Isaiah's words just might remain while every living thing around it would be vaporized or incinerated, the shadows created from their ash etched into the stone surface.

The letters etched into the stone of the wall are a relatively permanent reminder of the words of the prophet Isaiah who, like most prophets, have been ignored through the centuries by leaders of so many nations and those who follow them blindly into the madness of war.

Yet many people have resisted and called humanity to something better. As I walked up the steps circling up by the wall I saw, at the top of the stairs, an icon of the Cold War - the days of duck and cover, of bomb shelters and mutually Assured Destruction. It was a rusting fallout shelter sign over a nondescript door.

It was a stark reminder of my childhood, when students at my elementary school would walk from the school roughly a mile or two to the nearest official fallout shelter during the many Civil Defense drills held in those days.

It was also a reminder of Dorothy Day and other resisters who, during the Cold War, refused to enter the fallout shelters in New York during the drills, and were arrested for doing so. 

Yes, this actually is a photo (taken with an ancient iPhone) I took
 this morning above a doorway overlooking the Isaiah Wall.

 Some of the participants in today's action will engage in active resistance to the nuclear weapons policies of the US, and in the spirit of Dorothy Day and so many others, blocking the entrances to the US Mission to the United Nations, risking arrest for their actions. The name of today's action is "SHADOWS AND ASHES: Direct Action for Nuclear Disarmament."

We go forward together this morning in the spirit of nonviolence, with Isaiah's words etched on our hearts. May those words reach those gathered at the UN, and may we beat our swords into plowshares, and may we make war no more!

To Abolish Trident, End the Arms Race!!!

As we begin the campaign to stop production of a new generation of U.S. ballistic missile submarines that will replace the current OHIO Class (Trident) fleet, we fully realize that this effort does not, and absolutely cannot, exist in a vacuum.  The push to develop new nuclear weapons systems such as new Trident is part of a broader desire of the U.S. to continue the global projection of military power.  Through this endless projection of power, which now is becoming blatantly manifest in the Asia-Pacific Pivot, the U.S. has abrogated its responsibilities under legally binding treaty obligations, including the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Lawrence Wittner, historian and expert on the movement to abolish nuclear weapons (Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement), has written a concise essay that provides some sobering perspective on where we are in the continuing "Endless Arms Race" and why.  Most importantly, Wittner is clear that we can only end this "Arms Race" by ending the "rhetoric" and replacing it with sincere "action" toward disarmament. Only then will the government be prepared to give up Trident.

May we choose to take that leap of faith.

*****************

The Endless Arms Race

 By Lawrence Wittner, Originally published in History News Network on January 20, 2014

It’s heartening to see that an agreement has been reached to ensure that Iran honors its commitment, made when it signed the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to forgo developing nuclear weapons.

But what about the other key part of the NPT, Article VI, which commits nuclear-armed nations to “cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament,” as well as to “a treaty on general and complete disarmament”? Here we find that, 44 years after the NPT went into force, the United States and other nuclear powers continue to pursue their nuclear weapons buildups, with no end in sight.

On January 8, 2014, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced what Reuters termed “ambitious plans to upgrade [U.S.] nuclear weapons systems by modernizing weapons and building new submarines, missiles and bombers to deliver them.” The Pentagon intends to build a dozen new ballistic missile submarines, a new fleet of long-range nuclear bombers, and new intercontinental ballistic missiles. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in late December that implementing the plans would cost $355 billion over the next decade, while an analysis by the independent Center for Nonproliferation Studies reported that this upgrade of U.S. nuclear forces would cost $1 trillion over the next 30 years. If the higher estimate proves correct, the submarines alone would cost over $29 billion each.

Of course, the United States already has a massive nuclear weapons capability -- approximately 7,700 nuclear weapons, with more than enough explosive power to destroy the world. Together with Russia, it possesses about 95 percent of the more than 17,000 nuclear weapons that comprise the global nuclear arsenal.

Nor is the United States the only nation with grand nuclear ambitions. Although China currently has only about 250 nuclear weapons, including 75 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), it recently flight-tested a hypersonic nuclear missile delivery vehicle capable of penetrating any existing defense system. The weapon, dubbed the Wu-14 by U.S. officials, was detected flying at ten times the speed of sound during a test flight over China during early January 2014. According to Chinese scientists, their government had put an “enormous investment” into the project, with more than a hundred teams from leading research institutes and universities working on it. Professor Wang Yuhui, a researcher on hypersonic flight control at Nanjing University, stated that “many more tests will be carried out” to solve the remaining technical problems. “It’s just the beginning.” Ni Lexiong, a Shanghai-based naval expert, commented approvingly that “missiles will play a dominant role in warfare, and China has a very clear idea of what is important.”

Other nations are engaged in this arms race, as well. Russia, the other dominant nuclear power, seems determined to keep pace with the United States through modernization of its nuclear forces. The development of new, updated Russian ICBMs is proceeding rapidly, while new nuclear submarines are already being produced. Also, the Russian government has started work on a new strategic bomber, known as the PAK DA, which reportedly will become operational in 2025. Both Russia and India are known to be working on their own versions of a hypersonic nuclear missile carrier. But, thus far, these two nuclear nations lag behind the United States and China in its development. Israel is also proceeding with modernization of its nuclear weapons, and apparently played the key role in scuttling the proposed U.N. conference on a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East in 2012.

This nuclear weapons buildup certainly contradicts the official rhetoric. On April 5, 2009, in his first major foreign policy address, President Barack Obama proclaimed “America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” That fall, the UN Security Council -- including Russia, China, Britain, France, and the United States, all of them nuclear powers -- unanimously passed Resolution 1887, which reiterated the point that the NPT required the “disarmament of countries currently possessing nuclear weapons.” But rhetoric, it seems, is one thing and action quite another.

Thus, although the Iranian government’s willingness to forgo the development of nuclear weapons is cause for encouragement, the failure of the nuclear nations to fulfill their own NPT obligations is appalling. Given these nations’ enhanced preparations for nuclear war -- a war that would be nothing short of catastrophic -- their evasion of responsibility should be condemned by everyone seeking a safer, saner world.

Lawrence S. Wittner (http://lawrenceswittner.com) is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany. His latest book is a satirical novel about university corporatization, What’s Going On at UAardvark? 

Source URL for Wittner's essay: http://hnn.us/article/154488