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1. Emergency demonstration Thursday, 12 Apr, KAFB Abq, 5 pm: No attack on Syria! / 2. "Rocky Flats South" / 3. Letters to editors: effective, neglected If you have been forwarded this message and want to receive these local letters directly, write. Or if you want to be removed from this closed New Mexico list, let us know by return email. April 11, 2018
Dear friends -- We are pleased that the ANSWER coalition has taken the lead in organizing a demonstration against what would be a catastrophic increase in US belligerence in the Middle East. SWM has joined in and now so have we. If you live in the metro area we hope you will join us. If you do not, we hope you will consider some other form of visible action, such as at a congressional office (locations, contact information). All things being equal, we would prefer that demonstrations be at (or in) congressional offices (or another place of power and influence) but we need to work together and follow the leadership being provided in this case. Let's have a big presence if we can and work together from there! We and our colleagues have been tracking this evolving war and its context very closely for years now, using open-source intelligence from around the world. Now, we will organize, with others here and with experts in other states, Q&A and strategy sessions on this war in the coming week or two. You'll hear more about that later. Right now I want to say that in my reasonably well-informed opinion there is zero probability that the Assad government used poison gas in Duoma. Even if Assad did, US military strikes would still be 100% illegal, not to mention stupid and appallingly dangerous. We have to leave all the explanation for another time. Come on Thursday, for starters. I don't think we can afford to have idle talk, given the state of the world. Do you? A bipartisan letter being circulated by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Justin Amash (R-MI) calls on the President to consult Congress before ordering missile strikes. That's the minimum, of course, but something our congressional delegation ought to be able to sign. Apropos of this left-right coalition, you may enjoy this piece by the generally-outstanding Caitlin Johnson: "We All Need To Unite Against War In Syria, Regardless Of Ideology." There is a comparable letter in the Senate being circulated by (Sen. Tom Udall's cousin) Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA). We do not have the texts of these letters at this time. Trish just designed a yard billboard for our front yard on this theme. You could do that too! We need letters to editors, ASAP -- see 3. below. 2. "Rocky Flats South:" to be, or not to be? By May 11, Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, the new Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), will make her recommendation as to whether LANL, or another site (probably the Savannah River Site [SRS] in South Carolina), should be selected for the industrial-scale pit production mission. On her way to fulfilling a promise to lawmakers to visit every site, Ms. Gordon-Hagerty made a surprise visit to Los Alamos and presumably also Sandia late last week after dedicating a new administrative complex at the Pantex nuclear weapons plant near Amarillo. She has already been to SRS and thus has visited the two top contenders for the big pit mission. Given her impending decision (to be made with heavy input from DoD, the White House, and Congress) we have been mostly Washington-focused these past weeks. On Friday evening we got off a decision memorandum to her, key congressional staff, and others. We will expand and send that to a wider audience late this week or early next. Meanwhile some handy resources (for your letters to editors -- see below!) can be found at:
This past Sunday, the New Mexican ran an op-ed of Greg's: "Lawmakers, seek help for plutonium addiction." We commend it to you. Lately we have been struck by how consistent DOE, LANL, and NNSA have been, for almost 30 years now, in saying that LANL would never have an industrial pit facility. Small, basic, "pilot," "interim," "capability-based-capacity" -- sure. "Just an analytical lab." But not a mini-"Rocky Flats South." That is precisely what is now being proposed. Something has really changed. The corporate profiteers that are LANL, and our Democrats, want to break that 30-year promise to NM communities and tribes. There has been an implicit social contract, as we explained to Gordon-Hagerty, and New Mexico lawmakers are telling her to break it. The underlying problem is that too many people enable these lawmakers with their silence, their donations, their support, and their votes. "But they are the lesser evils!", we occasionally hear. "They are nice guys!" Oh, come on. Inverted priorities like theirs are ruining our world -- snuffing out the lamp of civilization. I am not kidding. Too many people are in denial about this. It is happening because too few people effectively rebel. 3. Letters to editors: effective, neglected
Ed Kinane at Voices for Creative Nonviolence has a great article ("Thousands of Hearts and Minds") on the overwhelming importance of letters to editors (LTEs), with great pointers on writing them and how to maximize their impact. Please read it! Please. Best wishes to all, |
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