Reminder, addendum: Talk and discussion -- AT 6 PM -- in Santa Fe: "Nuclear elitism and atomic nostalgia vs. a real future for New Mexico's people and land"

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Dear friends -- I forgot to include the time in the message below! The talk and discussion begin at 6 pm! Thanks, Greg

July 16, 2018

Dear friends on our New Mexico "short list" --

This is a reminder about tomorrow's talk and discussion, which will concern itself with “Atomic Summer" as a whole, and how New Mexicans are being sheep-dipped in propaganda and set up for further nuclear corruption, contamination, and ruin.  The talk will be held at St. John's United Methodist Church, 1200 Old Pecos Trail (map).

Please come if you can.

We hope more and more people will resist the attempted hypernuclearization of New Mexico. This is a good chance to get more informed and make connections with like-minded friends. Learn more about the Obama-Trump nuclear weapons agenda for New Mexico as well as current plans for storing spent commercial nuclear fuel (SNF) near the WIPP site (the Holtec-ELEA plan). 

(Tomorrow, by the way, is the Trump-Putin summit, as well as the anniversary of the first nuclear explosion "Trinity" and the Church Rock spill. Relevant to the presidential summit, we hope none of you believe the propaganda about Russia interfering with the 2016 election. See today's piece by Caitlin Johnstone, and Friday's, to cite two of what must be thousands of cogent critiques by observers from all over the political spectrum. We prefer reason to political cults of any stripe.)

I (Greg) was in Washington last week, leading a successful plutonium pit workshop for academics, NGOs, and people in government. We had a few key government people in attendance, despite the crowded legislative calendar in the last weeks before August break.

I learned things not written in any public document. We now know that no matter what Congress decides this year, the Administration (and most Democrats) aim to push Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) into plutonium warhead core ("pit") production as fast as possible, and on as large a scale as possible, because of the wicked Russians (sarcasm). The Administration (and some Democrats -- ours) want LANL to go into double shift production as soon the equipment and people are in place and operating. Safety is obviously not going to be the highest priority. Production as fast as possible is instead the idea. THAT won't work. We aim to stop them. They have no idea what they are getting into.

On SNF, should it come to southeastern NM it is very unlikely to ever leave, for reasons I will explain if asked. Consolidated interim storage (CIS) of SNF is basically a "punt" on geologic storage -- and on responsibility by ratepayers and utilities.

Meanwhile, we had a great demonstration on Friday at the absurdly-named Tech in the West symposium. A quite decent article in the New Mexican followed, with pictures. A special, heartfelt thanks goes to the ANSWER Coalition folks who came up from Albuquerque and really "made" this event.

A few of us did a lot of leafleting at the Dr. Atomic opening last night. People were generally receptive (though not always); quite a number of people engaged with us positively about the issues and thanked us, offering food and wine, etc. There were however police, but no arrests.

If you haven't seen Tony Price's antinuclear art, check out this very complementary article here and, if you live in or near Santa Fe, get on down to Phil Space (1410 2nd St, map).

Look to our calendar for subsequent "Atomic Summer" events!

Best,

Greg Mello