"Atomic summer" events moving to Taos (this Monday, 30 July, 6 pm), Los Alamos (Aug 6, afternoon and evening); no Santa Fe discussion on 30th; ongoing betrayal by Dems, more

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July 26, 2018

Dear friends on our New Mexico "short list" --

Taos: Monday, July 30, 6 pm

We are moving the public discussion previously planned for the 30th to Taos, where we will meet in the Cultural Energy studios and conference room, 112 Civic Plaza Drive (map).

There will be four topics.

The first is the shocking betrayal of the public interest in favor of nuclear weapons and the military by the New Mexico Democrats. Specifically we need to provide a brief summary of the current situation vis-a-vis plutonium pit production (and the industrial processing of ~26 tons of waste plutonium from other sites) at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). We are really in the hot soup now, and no mistake.

The second is the failure, in whole cloth, of New Mexico politics to address our state's serious problems more generally, or more precisely the de facto denial of this failure by progressives, most environmentalists, and many others. Tonight we are hosting a potluck in Albuquerque to discuss this (and the next topic as well). We put it this way, in our invitation:

There is a strange disconnect between the "business as usual" politics we see in New Mexico and our actual situation. We here do not think the fall election can, or will, enable sufficient social, environmental, or political improvement to halt or reverse New Mexico's decline, in any way. Large historical and environmental factors are at work, which seem very poorly (if at all) understood by mainstream candidates. Denial is not only rampant, it is nearly total. What sort of responses can citizens have, other than (or in parallel with) working for one or another of the "slightly lesser evil" parties or candidates? Even to raise these questions can help all of us overcome isolation and get our creative juices flowing.

The third topic is the firehose of bullshit now coming from mainstream US media on major existential issues, and the concomitant transformation of the Democratic Party into an enthusiastic instrument of the military-industrial-intelligence-federal police complex -- and now, arguably, the dominant War Party in the U.S. As we put it on our potluck invitation:

Our national media and politics, long stuffed with unsupported narratives, have become hysterical and bizarre. At the Study Group, we see a long-running, quite open attempt at coup d'etat, or short of that control of the President, being conducted by the national security community and others with the same techniques US intelligence agencies have used for regime change in other countries since the 1940s. We don't like Trump of course, but we grew to dislike Obama as well once we saw how he was governing. At the same time (and for many of the same reasons), incivility has grown to massive proportions. We need to talk about this, and find ways to act. We are not just being sheep-dipped in propaganda any more, we are being drowned. And it's for a reason.

The fourth is an evolving "short list" of nonviolent campaign elements which we believe have particular promise vis-a-vis LANL. I am not going to describe those further here but will do so in a forthcoming bulletin, sent to a wider (state, national, and international) list. 

Los Alamos: Monday, Aug 6, afternoon and 6 pm: "Beyond Hiroshima"

1. The afternoon

Please join us in Los Alamos in the afternoon and evening of August 6.

What we do there in the afternoon is still under discussion and depends in part on how many people can come. We can tell you it will be thoroughly nonviolent, legal, tasteful, clear, and firm. We mean to impress upon audiences near and far to the best of our ability, on August 6 and in continuing trenchant opposition and protest afterwards, that northern New Mexico will not passively accept or welcome a pit production plant to make new nuclear weapons for Donald Trump or any of his successors.

The (so far unspecified) events will start at 3 pm. Please a) write Trish if you think you can come at 3 pm and b) please start recruiting as many others as you can. Please reach out to your friends and families, personal email lists, and social media contacts.

You will hear a lot more about this in the coming week. Your early RSVP will help us. Please let us know if you can help in organizing -- we can very much use the help!

2. The evening

Please join us at 6 pm at Fuller Lodge, 2132 Central Avenue, Los Alamos (map) for a panel discussion, "Beyond Hiroshima." It's very important for people outside Los Alamos to come to this event. Los Alamosans are both passive and frightened, as the few with the temerity to come to our events on the Hill have told us. LANL has sometime sent photographers to document who comes to our events, and in today's neo-McCarthyite atmosphere we are sure the security situation is worse than ever. We want to fill the hall to overflowing with disarmament-oriented people who "remember their humanity," in the words of Rotblat, Einstein, and Russell. 

Please write Trish if you think you can come. We will get the word out more widely but your solidarity is very important to us not just in general but in these Los Alamos events in particular right now.

We promise to have some quite different and complementary voices on that panel.

Please help us make the events of August 6 enough of a success that we can put the subsequent press accounts on the desks of key government actors in the days to follow. We see this as the kick-off for a new wave of permanent and much more trenchant opposition not just to pit production but to the overall nuclear weapons mission of LANL -- and this, quite consciously, in solidarity with our collective broader efforts to rise to the converging crises we face.

Want to know what the pits are for? The planned successor to this weapon system (5:43 video). (You can start 2 minutes in.)

Thank you all,

Greg & Trish, for the Study Group