December 4, 2024

Bulletin 353: Ways to help support our work & volunteer opportunities; help us prevent nuclear war and halt the nuclear arms race in its tracks (lightly edited from original)

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Previously: Bulletin 352: Please help support the Study Group!, Nov 20, 2024.

Dear friends and colleagues --

I am writing with good news. It's not good news in the conventional sense exactly, but we in the Los Alamos Study Group see quite a few opportunities in the present dangers of which there are plenty, we know.

Not just we at the Study Group, but all of us have a chance to show our quality in this situation. It matters that we do so. It matters for each of us, and it matters for the world. As the (quite true) saying goes, we were born for this. Let none of us say we are helpless, because none of us are.

Sure it's a dangerous time, but we are dangerous too [, all of us in fact] -- dangerous to nuclear weapons. Study Group work has in the past set U.S. nuclear weapons plans on their ears, as we explain from time to time. (LANL: ""The US strategy for plutonium must be reworked...The US stockpile modernization strategy...relied on availability of new pits...Deferral of the CMRR Nuclear Facility has impacted this LEP [warhead life extension program] strategy...[and] erased a decade of Integrated Nuclear Planning virtually overnight."*)

It is unclear as to whether the U.S. warhead business will ever fully recover.

We hope you will work with us, in one way or another. If we fail to connect with you via this email we will keep on trying. You'll see our work, if you look.

Actually, here's one example right now: three of us in DC at the National Press Club in November. Here we see Greg debating pit production with NNSA Administrator Jill Hruby, GAO's Allison Bawden, Robert Peters from the Heritage Foundation, and moderator Dan Leone from ExchangeMonitor Publications. Lydia Clark's video of the event is here.

Last time we explained in some detail why we thought our work was worthy of your support. We didn't link to our corporate history but here it is, in a nutshell. You can see some of what we've done over the past year here, here, and here, summarized and linked in our Bulletins, press releases, and activist letters. 

We cannot write about nuclear weapons without pointing out that U.S. and U.K. soldiers are actually lobbing missiles into historic Russia. This is as dangerous, or even more dangerous, than the Cuban missile crisis. Scott Ritter: "Today Americans from all walks of life are confronted with the real threat of nuclear war — many experts, me included, believe that there is a greater danger today that at any time in the nuclear era for a nuclear war — greater than during the Cuban Missile Crisis." 

Yes, the world may be one or two ill-considered ATACMS strikes from an irreversible slide toward nuclear war. It's hard to tell, and that's not good.

To address this head-on, we aim to leverage our experience and contacts with the almost uncanny latent power that comes from our location in New Mexico, where some 38% of all U.S. nuclear warhead funds are spent.

As mentioned last time, we will be talking about U.S.-Russian relations with knowledgeable Russians in a form of citizen diplomacy, via virtual fora in Los Alamos. We will organize these fora as quickly as we can.

We will also be working to end the present nuclear arms race, working in Washington, New Mexico, and South Carolina in ways that keep up with the times. We need your help to do this, especially if we litigate.

We also need your help with outreach -- so easy and fun (for some of us), yet so time-consuming.

I don't want to harp on this too much, but we hope you understand that even a "small" nuclear war may not be survivable for most people in the U.S., depending on what is targeted and how. Many of us believe a fatal strike to the U.S. could consist of just one to ten nuclear weapons, if total destruction was the goal. Our fragile, tightly-interconnected life-support systems -- not least our electrical grid and the power plants which supply it -- are just not made to survive nuclear war. 

We also hope you understand that the U.S. does not now have, and will never have, any defensive system capable of stopping a nuclear attack from a sophisticated adversary like Russia or China, for fundamental physical reasons.

Meanwhile none of our social justice goals, our climate goals, our economic development goals, our environmental goals, or any other humane goals we might have will be realized under conditions of a new Cold War and arms race. War -- cold or hot or in-between -- doesn't just require much of the available money, it also affects how government, the media, and we the citizenry think. It takes over. 

As A. J. Muste said so memorably, "There is no way to peace; peace is the way." That's what we are doing here, step by step. We hope you will join us, in whatever ways you can.

There are many ways to support our work financially.

Our work costs money, no matter how much we economize. That said, no contribution is too small to make a difference. The thought does count, for all of us here.

One of the simplest ways to contribute is to mail a check to our office at: Los Alamos Study Group, 2901 Summit Place NE, Albuquerque, NM, 87106.

Another way is to contribute by credit card through our PayPal Giving Fund (PPGF) here. PPGF covers all fees.

You can donate stock (thus avoiding capital gains and the associated taxes). To do this, call the office (505-265-1200) or write Trish.

If you are age 70½ or older and want to make a contribution directly from your traditional or Roth IRA to a qualified charity, you can donate up to $100,000 without it being a taxed distribution.

You can remember the Study Group in your will and/or estate plans; memorial gifts, or life insurance. Call us (505-265-1200) or write Trish.

You can donate cars, boats, or real estate.

Some employers will match an employee's contributions; you might investigate this.

If you live in their service area, you can ask Positive Energy Solar to install a photovoltaic system at your home or business, or ask a friend or associate to do so. When the installation is complete Positive Energy will donate $500 to the Study Group. You must mention our referral when you contract with them.

You, our loyal friends and members, are the only ones who can reach out to your personal connections, email lists, and social media contacts. Please do share this email and our work generally with your contacts and friends.

You can offer to match donations within a specified timeframe, up to any amount you specify. This is a valuable encouragement for others. Again, contact us if you want to do this.

Become a sustaining donor!

You can become a sustaining donor to the Study Group, contributing a specified amount each month. We have both small and large donors who do this, and it’s very important to us. Being able to partially predict donations each month gives organizations such as ours a big measure of stability. If it is more convenient you can also set up a recurring donation through PayPal for a small fee.

Volunteer opportunities with the Study Group, to prevent nuclear war and halt the nuclear arms race in its tracks!

The Study Group also provides a number of ways to join our work directly. Here are some of them:

• You can volunteer to host house meetings and get-togethers, which can be in-person or on-line. You have friends and associates we don't. Connecting with them in the context of our work is valuable in multiple ways -- perhaps very valuable.

The value and power of such meetings cannot be predicted. New things happen because of them. Every single relationship in the Study Group, including those instrumental to our successes to date, has begun in a meeting. As Hannah Arendt remarks, all political power comes from people getting together. There is also absolute value in people simply getting together to speak with each other. Doing so is fundamentally affirmative and respectful. Call the office (505-265-1200) if you are interested in working with us in this way.

• You can volunteer to recruit endorsers to The Call for Sanity. Businesses, organizations, and religious communities are particularly important. We can connect you with others working on this. Again, call the office (505-265-1200) to get started.
  

• If you have particular skills or personal connections you think might be helpful for us, please call, or write Trish. If you have particular information based on your personal experience that you think might be helpful -- again, please call the office or write Trish

• Ask your friends and associates to subscribe to our main listserve (to do so, send a blank email here). They can also subscribe to our New Mexico listserve (send a blank email here), which gets a little more material and is a subset of the main listserve. 

• If volunteering is daunting, consider making a fixed-term, part-time commitment as a volunteer with us, working either in our office or from your home. That commitment, however short-term or part-time it may be, helps us work most effectively with you. One step at a time!

• Writing letters to editors (generally 150 words or less) remains effective, and hones our skills. Writing guest editorials (generally 600 words or less) is even better. See "Thousands of Hearts and Minds", by Ed Kinane.
  

• You can host a Study Group speaker at an event in your group, organization, or religious community.
  

• You can be on a call-up list of key volunteers that can help at events and meetings. Generally this presupposes prior involvement in one or more of the ways above. We provide daily news summaries to a few of our key volunteers, although this is not really systematized at this point.
  

• We anticipate hosting visiting activists and interns during some periods in 2025. In the past, volunteers with extra space in their homes have hosted some of these visitors.
  

Thank you for your attention, and best wishes,

Greg Mello, for the Study Group

* From LA-CP-12-01506, "Plutonium Strategy: Executing an interim strategy while pursuing an enduring capability," Nov 29, 2012, obtained by FOIA, redacted. Study Group files.