January 13, 2020

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This letter: Reminder: please come and recruit your friends to the press conference and demonstration outside Santa Fe City Hall at noon on Wednesday Jan. 15 (map); more

Dear New Mexico friends –

    1. Please help us recruit for Wednesday's press conference and demonstration

As we explained in yesterday's letter and previous ones, on Wednesday the City of Santa Fe will announce the finalists for "Master Developer" of the former College of Santa Fe site and possibly some surrounding lands.

While it seems absurd that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) could be a possible "master developer," we can't be sure what this City Administration wants. NNSA and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) are apparently present in some (not all) other proposals as tenant(s).

Getting people there on Wednesday is the most important thing we can recommend to do in our immediate region right now for the sake of nuclear disarmament and future of the region.

    2. Leading Democrats seem to love plutonium pits more than environmental knowledge, protection, and impact mitigation

Our two senators, Congressman Ben Ray Lujan, and Governor Michele Grisham had nothing to say when asked by the Associated Press if they support further environmental analysis prior to expanding pit production at LANL. They are waiting for NNSA talking points later this week. We are glad their environmental hypocrisy is finally getting some attention.

    3. Workshops next month

We are scheduling in-depth workshops on NNSA's and LANL's efforts to build a pit production facility in Los Alamos while greatly expanding LANL for the sake of designing and now building new nuclear weapons. LANL has not seen such a huge proposed expansion, involving thousands (net) of new staff and some $13 billion in capital improvements and new buildings, since the early 1950s. So far:

• In Jemez Springs, Sunday, February 2, 1-4 pm, Jemez Springs Public Library, 30 Jemez Springs Plaza (map).
  
• In Taos, February 4, time and place TBD.

    4. Last week's Santa Fe City Hall action

It was an excellent event, one where -- as is always the case -- reality was illuminated by each speaker in a unique way. Some who didn't speak quietly held signs, making a total presence of a dozen or so.

LANL was the only issue brought up in public comments.

We thought the City Council paid respectful attention, though the Mayor seemed annoyed.

As mentioned last time, the Midtown Campus decision process is open-ended, fluid, and uncertain -- and for now closed to formal public input. With your help we are creating democratic opportunities. We are just beginning.

We see the Midtown process as part and parcel of building a wider culture of peace -- and very closely linked with halting construction and operation of a new plutonium pit factory in Los Alamos. We think that for the nuclear weapons enterprise, trying to set up shop in Santa Fe will be a bridge too far.

The Santa Fe Reporter ("Opposition to LANL’s Midtown bid grows," Jan 8, 2020) filed a supportive story.

    5. What are these pits for?

In a nutshell, and to correct some recent NNSA statements, plutonium pits are needed in the 2030s solely to field all-new warheads of a (new) type and (increased) number (several hundred) that will enable future breakout from current deployment levels should a future administration desire to do so -- say, to signal "resolve" in tensions with Russia. (Resolve for what? Omnicide?)

Got that? These pits are "needed" solely for new nuclear weapons and to allow, if desired, uploading of more warheads than are deployed right now.

They are not needed to increase "safety." They are not needed because of "pit aging." We have enough modern warheads of the exact right kind to take care of those problems, which aren't really serious anyway.

Of course, retiring all silo-based missiles would be the simplest and best solution.

As it happens -- just coincidentally of course -- "surging" with round-the-clock pit production at LANL to make these new pits starting in 2023 and then ramping up quickly also makes possible --

• this new warhead (cost: >$15 B);
• a new missile system (cost: ~$85-140 B);
• the whole package helps sustain two nuclear weapons physics labs, the "clean lab" (in CA) and one the "dirty lab" (in NM); as well as
• one engineering lab (in NM); as well as
• five other testing and production sites; plus
• federal administration.

It adds up to "real money." Think of what that would buy for this country.

Without these pits, the U.S. warhead complex would have very little to do in the 2030s. The Navy has already said it does not want any new warheads. Nevertheless NNSA is planning to hire an extra 20,000 workers over the coming 5 years, on top of the existing 41,000 -- a mad flurry of activity.

    6. Talking points

Lydia prepared these talking points for our Jan. 2 workshop in Santa Fe. You can use them in your letters to officials. (For now, let's concentrate on getting as many people there at noon on Wednesday as possible. We need to concentrate our efforts!)

We will devote the next letter to more.

In the meantime we have to ask -- what will our story be?

Because those of you who spoke last Wednesday touched upon, in different ways, the momentous choice involved as the City of Santa Fe contemplates reversing 400 years of identification with Saint Francis as well as 25 years of formal City resolutions to, for the first time, possibly support nuclear weapons and weave them into the fabric and identity of Santa Fe. It is an enormously consequential decision not just for Santa Fe, up to now a City of Peace, but for the world.

In this decision, two worlds contend -- two stories, two worldviews, two normative orders, two identities, two ways of ordering society.

    7. Two worlds in collision -- what will our story be?

We might call it, "St. Francis vs. Plutopia." Which will it be for Santa Fe? What do we value?

One way or another, this collision was what concerned several speakers at City Hall last Wednesday.

This was what Ohkay Owingeh elder Herman Agoyo, with whom we frequently met in those years, questioned in a 1993 talk, entitled "Who Here Will Begin This Story?" I would like to quote him at length:

When I was a young boy my grandfather told me, "That place in the mountains is a blessing." I was very familiar with "The Hill" as it was known in those early years, because my aunt and uncle lived and worked there. They frequently arranged "passes" for family members to visit "The Hill." I interpreted grandpa's statement to mean "The Hill" meant jobs, education, and new opportunities.

It has been nearly fifty years, and as my grandfather and the years have passed, as Los Alamos National Laboratory has carved its place into the people and the land of New Mexico, a different understanding grips us. What shall I tell my grandson?

The promise of jobs and development has not truly benefited us. Yes, people weren't as hungry as before, some were able to buy cars and trucks, but for the most part, the poor people, Indians, and Spanish were and still are at the bottom of the work ladder where advanced science and the highest technology positions are rewarded for the very few. The vision of "education" has also been an elusive entitlement. Approximately 30 percent of our young people do not finish high school and the majority who do graduate end up with an 8th grade level education, and consequently they are derailed in so many preventable and cruel ways from the best technical and leadership opportunities. Worse, our children are never systematically taught the most important and complex truths about the world they live in, truths that are needed to instill a sense of clear purpose and decision-making confidence in our human society.

The "opportunities" have also turned to ashes. We have slowly realized that this work which started out to harness an unimaginable power has in fact harmed human beings and the planet beyond any calculation. It has harmed us all by the sickness, death, and destruction that has been the ultimate product of this work. It has harmed us by the nightmare fear instilled in the hearts and minds of all the world's peoples about nuclear war and radiation "accidents." It has violated and harmed us by the awful problems of pollution and defilement caused in handling and disposing of the radioactive materials dumped onto and into Mother Earth.

The most important truth about Los Alamos National Laboratory is that it has always been and still is a secret; a center whose work has always been kept utterly shrouded from the view of the world; a place with no public memory. What do our children know of the Laboratory and what do they care? And if they do not know and do not care because it's just another "adult problem," that is the more reason for them to be indifferent and reject our ways. Then who is left to understand and care?

...

What moves me today is the deep belief that we are entering a new time, a new century, and a new understanding.The epoch of modern war and the national security state is moving into its late, late afternoon. The world's people will no longer tolerate, nor can we afford, the costs of war and rampant inhumanity. Let us not delude ourselves by thinking that the fall of mighty Russia was the result of star wars or our military and scientific superiority. Russia fell because the people were fed up with their form of government, and mind you, modern Russia collapsed without an all-out bloody revolution. We must open our eyes to a way to find a refreshing and energetic solution. This evening, I ask you to look at an opportunity that can bring us all together through our children.

If we turn to our children as the source of memory, the repository of what we know as the truth, as the sources of how we are to gather together to cleanse Mother Earth and join to transcend the experience of the last fifty years, I believe we will have a way to transform ourselves. The old way will be hard to break, change will come slowly. A new generation will have to be taught a new way of harmony, mutual respect, common interest, and love for each other and the planet.

Let us make a commitment here, this weekend, to mount a sharing of all stories, first to the youth in our communities, and then increase the circle of participation among all the children in our state and country. If the children understand what we have done here, if the children hear our passionate plea for their active participation in all aspects of how we are to move forward together with this land that belongs to their children's children's children, we will have begun the most important miracle of all. Memory and meaning go hand in hand.

Who here will begin this storytelling with the Indian tribes? Let us call together our best storytellers, our most passionate teachers, and our most creative media artists to this sustained work as the beginning of the true cleansing that we must perform.

My grandson and my grandfather count on me. Yours count on you. Let us form the circle together.

St. Francis prayed, "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace." Some in Santa Fe and our senators' offices are praying, "Government, make me an instrument of your wars."

And with that, civilization comes to an end -- even before the third bomb is dropped. As would the social, economic, and cultural development of Santa Fe, if we let that be our story. 

We have to choose. Now that NNSA wants to build a plutonium factory in our midst, we can't kick The Bomb down the road any longer.

The choices for a Santa Fe "meta-narrative" in a time of ecological emergency boil down to life vs. death, biophilia vs. the death cult. Compare the Canticle of the Sun to Oppenheimer's self-identification, "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." (video).

Generation vs. genocide.

Sustainability and resilience vs. instability and the threat of extinction. 

Politically, administration vs. democracy. 

Russell Hoban's fine post-apocalyptic novel Riddley Walker features a central story that is canonical to the characters in the novel, called "The Eusa Story." The Story concludes with the "Littl Man" -- who is the "Addom" Eusa split after killing the "Hart of the Wud" -- questioning Eusa, whose lust for power has caused the death of millions, including his own wife and children. 

The Littl Man sed, Eusa wut is the idear uv yu? Eusa cudn say enne thing. The Littl Man sed, Yu doan hav tu say wut it is. Jus say if it is. Eusa stil cudn say enne thing.

Eusa has no communicable story -- no "public memory," in Herman Agoyo's terms. No purpose.

Eusa sought "Chaynjis" but got more than he bargained for, with no end in sight for this pitiful shell of a man.

Eusa sed, How menne Chaynjis ar thayr? The Littl Man sed, Yu mus no aul abowt that I seen yu rite thay Nos. down in the hart uv the wud. Eusa sed, That riting is long gon & aul thay Nos. hav gon owt uv my myn I doan remember nuthing uv them. Woan yu pleas tel me how menne Chaynjis thayr ar? The Littl Man sed, As menne as reqwyrd. Eusa sed, Reqwyrd by wut? The Littl Man sed, Reqwyrd by the idear uv yu. Eusa sed, Wut is the idear uv me? The Littl Man sed, That we doan no til yuv gon thru aul yur Chaynjis.

In the absence of an heroic story, one true to the reality of our situation on this planet and to our common humanity, Santa Fe and the region will be as rudderless and pathetic as Eusa.

However with such a story, and the political commitment that goes with it, people can pull together toward something worthwhile. Everyone can have a job. Agoyo: "A new generation will have to be taught a new way of harmony, mutual respect, common interest, and love for each other and the planet....Memory and meaning go hand in hand.";

Santa Fe already has such a story. It should not be thrown away.

Thank you for your attention and --

Please help us recruit attendees for Wednesday!

Greg Mello