Journal from an Encampment – Guest Post by Joanne Forman, 3 August 1985

September 9, 2016September 27, 2016

(Joanne Forman graciously allowed us to share her journal from her encampment outside the Pantex Nuclear Weapons Plant from August 1985. It’s very interesting. Thank you Joanne!)

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About this blog

Trish and I began this blog as a kind of experiment, to see if we could efficiently share information and commentary with a wider group of people. We do so with trepidation because sharing information and opinions is hardly important unless it draws us closer to you and inspires you to take actions and find words you could not, or did not, take or find before. We hope you in turn will inspire and amaze us. Our electronic media separate as well as connect us. We can hardly communicate without them, but they also seductively draw people away from the world we must build and the person-to-person interactions we most need to do that. We prefer the first and second grammatical persons to the third. There's always a tension between quantity, promptness, and quality, and it is difficult to know how to strike the right balance or if that is possible. So we will make all sorts of mistakes. We want to be as clear as possible, which at times will mean being firm, but we hope not to lose our humility thereby. For a time this blog was called "Enraging Desert," not so much for the fine image of the lion roaring at the enraging desert in Wallace Stevens' poem but for the political and psychological use which James Hillman made of it. (http://lasg.org/wordpress/2013/03/20/re-enraging-desert/) "Forget the rest" refers of course to the Einstein-Russell Manifesto of 1955 (http://www.pugwash.org/about/manifesto.htm) against nuclear armaments and war. The admonition to "[r]emember your humanity" is more commonly recalled, but too many people who promote weapons of mass destruction think they are doing that already. "Forget the rest" points to a much larger cultural challenge, one that is inescapable at this historical moment when two centuries of economic growth are ending. It is also a challenge each of us faces in the course of our lives when we are forced to choose, as we must. "All that's inane / Be swept away as vain." (Goethe, Faust)

We Call for Sanity, Not Nuclear Production

This call is not a petition. It is a visible and public league of solidarity. After endorsing this Call, we encourage businesses and organizations to make their voices heard by calling or writing your elected officials and in other ways. Write letters to editors and guest editorials. Recruit other businesses and organizations to join and do the same.

For individuals, we encourage you to endorse the Call as well, then recruit businesses and organizations to join you in endorsing this Call.

Nearly all our elected officials either support expanded nuclear weapons or are passive. They won’t change until politically forced to do so.