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July 25, 2011
Bulletin
#122: Work session tomorrow evening in Santa Fe (Tuesday, July 26th)
re the proposed plutonium warhead factory at Los Alamos
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Dear friends and colleagues --
1.
Tomorrow our discussion series will turn to the very practical as
regards the proposal to build a large warhead factory at Los Alamos
National Laboratory (LANL). Come if you want to help and to
act. We will help you.
For some months now we have been holding weekly talks and
discussions each Tuesday evening in Santa Fe, open to all. Last
week that discussion took place in Los Alamos, where we had a lovely
panel discussion involving Willem Malten, Carol Miller, Gilbert
Sanchez, and myself. (Sooner or later we may clean up and post
the Powerpoint presentation I (Greg) made last week.)
To date our emphasis in these meetings has been primarily on
mutual education and secondarily on effective citizen action.
We are about to reverse that.
Tomorrow evening's
meeting, from 7 - 9 pm at St. John's United Methodist Church, 1200
Old Pecos Trail in Santa Fe, Room 116, will be a workshop on
effective democratic engagement regarding the Chemistry and
Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility (CMRR-NF).
This is not a workshop about effective engagement in the
abstract. It's an opportunity to get specific questions
answered in the context of work you are doing, or want to do.
Those of us who are already actively engaged, or who want to be, will
vet ideas and share information. We started this process in
greater earnest than before two weeks ago and will continue it
tomorrow.
If you have not attended before, do not be
discouraged -- newcomers are very welcome! If you are new to
the subject we recommend however that you peruse some of the
background material available on our CMRR-NF
web page.
If you have a draft op ed written, and
want to check facts, bring it.
If you have a
draft letter to your friends asking them to a house meeting, or a
letter to an interfaith group or your church, or any idea
whether partially realized or just imagined, an idea that seems right
for you, bring it.
If you want to
volunteer with us, just come, get in the swim. We have
work to do.
Many of our past bulletins have included
suggestions in response to the perennial question, "What can I
do?" The times are changing very quickly, and we must
change too.
Most (but not all) of our regular
meetings henceforth will be work meetings. If there is
insufficient interest we will meet less frequently. Your time
is precious; so is ours.
2. Two new legal filings are posted in our appeal to the
Tenth Circuit.
Thanks much to our legal team: Thomas Hnasko, Dulcinea
Hanuschak, and Lindsay Lovejoy!
3. Want some quick and easy "bullet points" for
your own CMRR-NF writings? (It's a common question.)
Use the headings in this: Reasons
Not to Build, or to Delay CMRR-NF, May 22, 2011. The links
and references provided will take you deeper into most aspects of the
CMRR-NF, if you wish.
4. Obama Administration proposes national park for Manhattan
Project sites.
For U.S. nuclear weapons propaganda there is no shortage
of funds, apparently, no fiscal crisis. We have written on
this subject in past years to no avail, but the issue is now a live
one.
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Anti-nuke
groups to fight Manhattan Project parks, Associated Press, July 18, 2011
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Anti-Nuke
Group Fights "Manhattan Project" National Park Plan...
Because It "Glorifies Bombs,"Seattle Weekly, July 19, 2011
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Anti-Nuclear
Groups Protest Proposed Manhattan Project Park, New York
Times/Greenwire, July 19, 2011
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A
National Park for Nukes? Counterpunch, BondGraham, July
20, 2011
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Manhattan
Project park should be shelved, The New Mexican editorial, July 24, 2011
We strongly urge you to contact your senators and
congresspeople, in whatever state and district you live and ask them
to spike this project, for the reasons mentioned in the above
articles and others you will readily think of.
We
have been joined
in opposition by our colleagues at the Nuclear
Information Resource Service (NIRS) -- a fine organization that
works mostly on nuclear power issues whose group letters we
frequently join. Get
on their mailing list and get informed!
We hope to provide more background on this topic in the
coming days. We have been very busy!
Please
understand that funds to administer these parks would go to the
Department of Energy (DOE) and from thence to the management
contractors. At LANL, these funds would be yet another income
stream to the Bechtel-led consortium that manages LANL.
5. Now is the time to speak to your friends about
helping the Study Group financially.
To all of you who have made our work possible, thank
you. It is a privilege to be sitting here, even if it
is at the end of yet another very long day, contemplating another
week-long trip to meet with decisionmakers in Washington, planning
yet another public meeting (we have held hundreds of public meetings
over the past 21 years), and telling you about our legal appeal, part
of a multifaceted process of engagement that has helped keep DOE at
least partly honest regarding CMRR-NF and its predecessor projects.
It is too early to even speculate how the current budget
negotiations -- so terrible for U.S. democracy -- will affect
CMRR-NF.
If you aren't helping support our work,
please do so. It's easy,
and it's important. We work for peanuts, but without peanuts we
cannot work.
So many people ask, "What can I do?"
Most of us have few resources, but we all have friends who do.
Think about it. We want you to talk to those friends.
It's one of the most powerful things you could do. I can sit
down for hours with dozens of government officials in Washington, DC,
briefing them. It doesn't cost much but it costs something.
Litigation costs money too, a surprisingly lot of money even with
generous lawyers. We really need you -- and your
friends.
Sincerely,
Greg Mello and Trish Williams-Mello, for the
Los Alamos Study Group
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