Mission and Method

The Los Alamos Study Group seeks nuclear disarmament, environmental protection and enhancement, social justice, and economic sustainability – goals which are closely interrelated, mutually reinforcing, and essential to one another. These goals are very widely supported in American society and we construe them as essentially conservative, however revolutionary they would be in actual practice.

We aim not only to change public policy but also to prevent the implementation of bad policies. The latter is often easier to achieve; it comprises de facto policy change and often leads to de jure change.

The central ideal in these four goals can be stated approximately as respect for the human person in the living landscape. Such an ideal is as intellectually, morally, economically, and politically incompatible with nuclear weapons as it is necessary for economic, social, and spiritual renewal in this state and nationally.

Everything we do to achieve both our external and our internal goals falls into one of three program categories:

• Research, writing, and publication: activities primarily involving research, writing, publication, public speaking, and the education of news media, federal decisionmakers and legislators;
  
• Organizing and outreach: activities primarily involving building and evoking strong public commitment in New Mexico, the U.S., and the world to nuclear disarmament and related goals; and
  
• Sustaining the organization: activities primarily devoted to institutional development, maintenance, accountability, and sustainability.

In practice, all three kinds of programs work together, like the frame of a bicycle with its two wheels.