Protests Mon & Tues in Albuquerque, teach-in Tues at UNM -- update, change of venue: PLEASE COME PROTEST THE DOOMSDAY FORUM!

June 19, 2016

(Letter to local members only; tell us if you want off this closed list. Feel free to forward. If you are getting this via forwarding and want to join this list, let us know.)

1. Update on next week's events
2. Last week's teach-ins and report-back sessions
3. Greg will speak at the 350.org meeting on June 27 at 6:30 pm at the Albuquerque Peace and Justice Center

Dear friends --

1. Update on next week's important events -- please come!

Organizers of the Strategic Deterrence Coalition Symposium (aka "Doomsday Forum," June 20-21, Monday and Tuesday of this coming week) have abandoned their planned venue at the University of New Mexico (UNM), quite possibly because of the organizing efforts being undertaken by organizations here in Albuquerque and the ensuing bad publicity and latent security issues. Their new agenda and speaker list is here.

Background on the forum can be found in Bulletin 219 (but see updated location below).

Apart from tomorrow's "welcome reception" at 6:30 pm at the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History (there will be a demonstration at 6:30 pm there -- it is better to be early), the Symposium will now take place entirely at the Crowne Plaza Hotel (map). A demonstration is planned for the Crowne Plaza at 1:30 pm.

The Tuesday, June 21 teach-in being organized by the UNM Peace and Justice Studies program and Los Alamos Study Group is proceeding as planned in the UNM Student Union Building (SUB) (map) from 8:30 am to 12:30 pm upstairs, in Lobo A&B.

These events are summarized on our calendar as well as on the frequently-updated Doomsday Forum Facebook page organized by Stop the War Machine.

There will be news media present, and what they write about these events and demonstrations and will be communicated to hundreds of key actors in the industry, on Capitol Hill, and elsewhere via nuclear news aggregators, the trade press, and so on. We'll have a "media megaphone" on Monday and Tuesday. We need your help to use it.

There are several Albuquerque organizations involved in organizing these protests. There will be fresh faces, and different styles. The key thing we are asking our members to do right now is to show up at these protests and the teach-in at UNM.

These events received some good publicity yesterday thanks to the Santa Fe New Mexican ("Nuke forum set for Duke City"). Their article included our poster (or use this link if you if you can't access the New Mexican).

2. Last week's teach-ins and report-back sessions

We were generally pleased with last week's teach-ins in Albuquerque and Santa Fe and with the report-back sessions and receptions in the evenings. Thanks much to those who came. I want to go into greater depth about those events and some of the key messages we brought, but wish to do so to our main listserve rather than to the present much smaller one.

We aimed to share enough knowledge to support letters to the editor and guest editorials by our members. I think we did that. We also succeeded in educating the journalists who came. We had a pretty good time as well. In Santa Fe we had a guest speaker (Carol Miller of Peaceful Skies Coalition), and we had live music in the evening by Lydia Clark.

If you want to be more involved, talk to us!

3. Greg will speak at the monthly 350.org speakers series meeting on June 27, at 6:30 pm at the Albuquerque Peace and Justice Center, on "The Need for Full-Scale Mobilization for Climate."

Thank you for your attention and see you soon!

Greg and Trish