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Bulletin #134: Public talk and Q&A Wednesday, November 16, 7 pm, Santa Fe

November 13, 2011

Dear friends –

1. We will have a public talk and Q&A session this coming Wednesday, November 16, at Cloud Cliff at 1805 Second Street in Santa Fe, starting at 7 pm, regarding the current status of nuclear weapons issues in the Obama Administration, particularly the proposed CMRR-NF (Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility) at Los Alamos.  We have been in Washington, DC for two weeks in these past two months, working with colleagues on and off the Hill, and have much to report.  If you want to join our efforts and meet members of the group, Wednesday’s meeting in Santa Fe would be a good place to start.

2. Please consider becoming a Sustaining Donor (pdf – print and mail to us here), even at the smallest level if necessary.  Of those receiving this email, only 1% are monthly donors.

3. To our donors and volunteers over these past years – thank you so much.  The tide is slowing turning against expanding the plutonium complex in Los Alamos.  Turning, but not as yet turned.  Much remains to be done, without which construction is likely to begin as early as January.  We are at a crucial stage.

4. For folks not in New Mexico: please write, get your organizations to write, and if you can, get your congressperson and senators to write the leaders of the appropriations committees to 1) cut funds for, and 2) stop the additional plutonium facility in Los Alamos.  (See, for example, this recent précis of the issues.)  Write:

5. Our two lawsuits regarding CMRR are very active.  Our first suit has delayed the project for a year and a quarter so far – at considerable cost to us.  We will provide a status report on Wednesday.

6. None of New Mexico’s news media have provided in-depth coverage of this massive, unprecedented project.  Since it is already a fiasco, accurate, in-depth reporting would feel like “bias” against the poor, defenseless federal government and its multi-billion-dollar contractors.  As a result we must rely on word of mouth – yours.  Like the little Dutch boy, we (and many of you, directly and indirectly) have been holding our thumbs in the dike.  The primary action we need is better outreach among friends.  It can be surprising fruitful, but it takes courage.

More to follow this week, and I hope to see many of you on Wednesday,

Greg Mello, for the Los Alamos Study Group