February 24, 2020

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This letter: Please come to Santa Fe City Council Wednesday 2/26/20 6:30 pm at Southside Library, 6599 Jaguar Dr (map); ALSO mark your calendars: demonstration in Santa Fe, noon 3/4/20 at Sen. Udall's office (map); ALSO discussion and workshop same day (3/4/20) at 6 pm, First Christian Church, 645 Webber St., Santa Fe (map)

Dear New Mexico friends –

As you will have seen from last night's press alert ("Administration seeks 49% increase in Los Alamos nuclear weapons activities, 33% plus-up for LANL overall"), the Santa Fe area is poised to fall under a nuclear cloud far darker than anything seen thus far.

Of course, this won't happen if we effectively object.

Whatever you do, please don't think the threat to the world, the US, New Mexico, and to northern New Mexico from an emergency "surge" in US nuclear warhead production is not very, very real.

Because northern New Mexico has been kept poor and vulnerable by long-running failures by New Mexico's political leadership, and because Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is the only place available for the next 10 or so years to produce new plutonium cores for atomic bombs (the first explosive stage in every US nuclear weapon), the nuclear hammer is falling most heavily on northern New Mexico.

The impacts are political, social, economic, and environmental and they have already begun. Their most prominent symptom is passivity. "LANL brings economic development, which trickles down, so we need not come to grips with our lack of a viable social contract." Etc.

As we said in last night's press alert, LANL probably cannot succeed in its huge expansion plans without expanding into Santa Fe:

The lab has outgrown the buildable areas on its site, its nearby housing market, the regional road capacity, its electrical supply, its nuclear waste handling and shipping capacity, and the nearby labor force. The entire region has outgrown its water supply. Apparently, LANL must expand off-site to succeed.  as a new 'Rocky Flats South.'

"Whither Santa Fe?" has become a very pertinent question -- and a powerful one, even on the whole world's stage.

The "Royal City of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis" now has to choose between two prayers. One is that of Saint Francis -- "Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace" -- and the other, "Government, make me an instrument of your wars."

If we don't choose -- and not just in our private opinion, but powerfully in the public sphere -- the choice will be made for us.

We have a lot of political power in this matter. What Arundhati Roy called "the power of proximity." We should use it. Those who are silent in the face of this metastasis are effectively assenting.

Nobody is coming to Santa Fe's rescue, by the way. This particular challenge is ours.

• Please come to the Santa Fe City Council meeting this Wednesday, February 26, at the Southside Library, 6599 Jaguar Dr (map). We will meet at 6:30 pm, prior to the evening session at 7:00 pm.

Our issue at this meeting is the role of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and LANL in Santa Fe's Midtown project, about which more below.

At this meeting we should each be able to speak for approximately 3 minutes under Item F on the evening agenda, "Petitions from the Floor."

Our basic message to the Council is that we do not want, and the Council should formally bar, participation by NNSA and its instrumentalities, such as LANL, in the Midtown development.

It is perfectly legal for the City to prohibit activities in this project that do not meet the City's criteria. That is why the City has criteria, and that is why the City is having this process in the first place.

For its part, NNSA has no First Amendment rights, or any other civil rights, as it is not a person or even corporate person. (For what it may be worth, the Study Group established in FOIA litigation that LANL is a federal, not a private or corporate, entity.)

The City's criteria are evolving, as a careful reading of the latest missives from the City will show, and which the original Request for Expressions of Interest (RFEI) made clear as well. This is a very fluid process.

Remember, NNSA and its LANL contractor are nuclear weapons institutions. They want to be in Santa Fe to further their nuclear weapons activities, and for no other purpose. That is not just our opinion. That's the law. NNSA cannot do work it is not funded to do. NNSA funds LANL to do nuclear weapons work, primarily. Eighty-five percent of LANL's proposed budget for FY21 is nuclear weapons activities, and most of the rest supports or derives from that mission. By helping NNSA and LANL, the City would be helping the Trump Administration's outrageous, unprecedented nuclear weapons buildup. 

Neither we, nor the press, nor the City Council know what NNSA and LANL are proposing to do with or on this rather huge, centrally-located chunk of what is now City land. That is really outrageous, don't you think?

The City is hiding behind secrecy provisions it has voluntarily adopted, as the Albuquerque Journal pointed out ("Keeping campus proposals secret was the city’s own choice," Albuquerque Journal Editorial, Feb 9, 2020).

Nevertheless the City can take, and is taking, whatever ideas and work products are submitted and give them to other offerors. Only the public and Council are locked out.

More talking points are available in recent Study Group letters and press releases.

• Contest! If you have ideas for a new name that would be applicable to a nuclearized "City Formerly Known as Santa Fe," please send them to us by this Wednesday at 5 pm or bring them to the City Council meeting! The top five entries will each receive a tasteful cloisonne lapel pin featuring a peace symbol and broken bomb.
  

Feel free to suggest them to the Council as well, or put them on a sign. No sticks please.

• On March 4 we will have two events: a demonstration in Santa Fe, at noon at Senator Udall's office, 120 South Federal Place (map -- this is the downtown Post Office), and then a discussion and workshop at 6 pm at the First Christian Church, 645 Webber St., Santa Fe (map)

We will be asking Senator Udall to request a new Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement (SWEIS) for LANL. When we have concluded our business with Senator Udall, we hope to walk from there over to Senator Heinrich's office on Marcy Street, assuming enough of those who attend have time.

• Finally, if you can help us organize please, please call Lydia Clark in Santa Fe at 505-501-2606 or Trish at 505-577-3366.

See you Wednesday, and the following Wednesday!

Greg, Trish, Lydia, and Michelle for the Study Group