My View
Step up against expansion of LANL's nuclear mission

By Lydia Clark
Jun 27, 2020

The U.S. Senate just approved a 20 percent increase for the fiscal year 2021 defense budget that could go into effect this October. For New Mexico, this is devastating. It gives Los Alamos National Laboratory approximately $837 million for nuclear weapons production.

The U.S. government has far too long ignored the oppression exerted from militaristic efforts to control its citizens and its effects worldwide. This “knee on the neck” of humanity must stop.

We have allowed our tax dollars to be spent in continued efforts to dominate the world. Instead of taking care of our citizens, we create weapons of mass destruction at great cost to all living things. This is not a knee, but an anvil around our necks.

Why is the New Mexico congressional delegation supporting and the leading the charge for nuclear weapons production at LANL? The benefits to Northern New Mexico and the state are minimal. New Mexico ranks in the bottom for education and health care, and near or at the top for poverty levels. We cannot afford to be the nuclear colony for the nation.

The current plan for 80 plutonium pits (the cores of nuclear weapons) per year at LANL will create another Rocky Flats, the last big plutonium pit factory in the U.S. Colorado is still paying the price environmentally for the Rocky Flats pit production factory. The devastation to workers’ lives from plutonium contamination will never be fully compensated. The contamination of the environment, workers and the public is what this pit factory at LANL creates, not security and safety for our nation.

LANL is not the “empire” or “savior” for New Mexico. The lab’s primary focus is nuclear weapons production — the ultimate destruction of the planet. This is not what I believe most New Mexicans want or choose.

We, the people, can say “no” to spending our tax dollars in this manner. There is still time to stop this insanity. As we see now and have seen in the past, together we can create change. Businesses and individuals must stand up and demand positive change. Oppose nuclear weapons production, oppose nuclear weapons use. Demand a Sitewide Environmental Impact Statement. It creates transparency. Only this statement will encompass all Northern New Mexico in the far-reaching impacts of a plutonium pit factory at LANL.

This quote from the late Congressman Stewart Udall is still as applicable now as it was in 1993: “There is nothing comparable in our history to the deceit and the lying that took place as a matter of official government policy in order to protect this [nuclear weapons] industry. Nothing was going to stop them and they were willing to kill our own people. ... The atomic weapons race and the secrecy surrounding it crushed American democracy. It induced us to conduct government according to lies. It distorted justice. It undermined American morality. Until the cold war, our country stood for something.” — New York Times, June 8, 1993.

I implore the citizens of Santa Fe, Northern New Mexico and the entire state to take action by opposing production of nuclear weapons at LANL, asking for a Sitewide Environmental Impact Statement and demanding sustainable benefits for our city, region and state.

Let us once more stand for something. Equality, social justice, real democracy and compassion. By definition, compassion means a sympathetic consciousness with a desire to alleviate it. Let us stand together in consciousness and show compassion for our environment, our humanity and our future.

Lydia Clark has lived in Santa Fe since 1967. She is a musician, filmmaker and the outreach director for the Los Alamos Study Group.