Please join Godfrey Reggio, Gilbert Sanchez, Carol Miller, Marita Prandoni, and others Monday, Aug 6, in Los Alamos for the "Beyond Hiroshima" panel discussion at 6 pm in Fuller Lodge, plus direct engagement activities in Los Alamos on the same day from 3 -5 pm

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August 2, 2018

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

First, a heartfelt thanks to Robin Collier of Cultural Energy in Taos for a wonderful evening's discussion on July 30 (audio), about the latest developments in LANL's ever-growing nuclear ambitions and our congressional delegation's role in furthering those. We had a full house. Thank you everybody, it was a great evening.

It almost goes without saying for those of you on this list: Cultural Energy is an enormously valuable resource for northern New Mexico, worthy of all possible support.

Please join us Monday, August 6, in Los Alamos for the "Beyond Hiroshima" panel discussion at 6 pm in Fuller Lodge (map), plus conversations with Los Alamos officials, same day, 3 -5 pm

We are planning events in the afternoon as well as the evening. If you have to pick one or the other, come in the evening. We've got an excellent lineup of speakers and believe it will be a memorable event. A full house would help, politically speaking.

These are not one-off events. They are the last northern events in our "Atomic Summer" series and the first in an increasing campaign of resistance and constructive action.

Monday will be the 73rd anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, the first use of nuclear weapons in war.

The cry of "Never again!", has deep and particular meaning for us in New Mexico, on this and every Hiroshima and Nagasaki anniversary. This history isn't past.

Yesterday a reporter called Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) "the beating heart not only of today’s nuclear deterrent, but of tomorrow’s." Perhaps he had been reading Mary Shelley.

Many different parties and forces want to build a plutonium pit (atom bomb core) factory at LANL as soon as possible. On Wednesday, STRATCOM Commander Hyten (recent photo, in LANL's pit production facility) said the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) must resolve its pit production impasse by year’s end.

“By about next spring, we have to be on a path to building them [pits],” he said.

Let's make sure that doesn't happen. Citizens have beat back pit production plans again and again, for 29 years. We can do it again.

We really need to say, with many voices, that enough is enough. We see Monday's events as the kick-off for a new wave of permanent and much more trenchant opposition not just to pit production but to the overall nuclear weapons mission of LANL -- an effort quite consciously in solidarity with our broader collective efforts to rise to the full range of converging crises we face. An old saying is apt: "One cut, and all is cut."

Lately we have been looking at the expanding LANL mission with fresh eyes. Perhaps the effort to build a pit factory is an extension of the Indian Wars. Or the Mexican War. It certainly is "incompatible with the peace we seek for the 21st century," as the Vatican said 20 years ago. By "peace" we now mean human survival and the survival of species we love, and the green and living earth.

The afternoon, 3:00 to 5:00 pm, Los Alamos Visitor Center and elsewhere

We will meet up in Los Alamos at 3:00 pm outside the Los Alamos Visitor Center, 109 Central Park Square (map; this is one block west of the Bradbury Science Museum and two blocks east of Fuller Lodge, on Central Ave.).

We will walk and/or drive from there. Our purpose: to visibly engage local officialdom; the precise plan for which will depend in part on how many of us there are. In any case we will be thoroughly nonviolent, legal, tasteful, clear, and firm. We are not just going to hold signs.

If you are interested in participating in the afternoon events please write Trish or call 505-265-1200.

Our conversations and direct interactions will no doubt take many forms in the coming months and years. This is a start -- or rather, re-start.

We do need your help. Thanks in no small part to our congressional delegation, the Los Alamos community and its leaders have convinced themselves that their financial interests are identical with the needs of the rest of New Mexico, because a little of the enormous taxpayer-provided wealth showered on Los Alamos trickles down the Hill.

Our delegation tells Congress and NNSA that NM is dying for this mission. Dying from this mission is closer to the truth.

On Monday and afterwards we must find ways to impress upon audiences near and far that northern New Mexico will not passively accept or welcome a pit production plant to make weapons of mass destruction for Donald Trump or any of his successors.

It's not personal in any way; it's just that this is no longer a legitimate activity. And it certainly will hurt, not help, this state.

The evening, 6:00 pm, Fuller Lodge: "Beyond Hiroshima"

Please join us at 6 pm at Fuller Lodge, 2132 Central Avenue, Los Alamos (map) for a panel discussion on this theme.

As of this afternoon our panel of speakers includes: filmmaker Godfrey Reggio; San Ildefonso Pueblo leader Gilbert Sanchez; public health expert and activist Carol Miller; writer, educator and mother Marita Prandoni; and me, Greg Mello.

As we said in our last letter, it's very important for people outside Los Alamos to come to this event. Los Alamosans tend to be both passive and frightened, as the few with the temerity to come to our events on the Hill have told us -- though we may see belligerence as well. LANL has sometime sent photographers to document who comes to our events, and in today's neo-McCarthyite atmosphere we are sure the security situation is worse than ever. We want to fill the hall to overflowing with disarmament-oriented people who "remember their humanity," in the words of Rotblat, Einstein, and Russell.

Your solidarity is very important to us at this time. We know it is a drive for most of you, but inconvenience brings with it a bit of moral force. Showing up when it's inconvenient means something.

Thank you all,

Greg & Trish, for the Study Group