November 9, 2020

The election; Upcoming local government meetings -- please virtually attend!

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Please endorse the Call for Sanity not Nuclear Production!
Previous letter, 10/28/20: Upcoming local government meetings, background as to why these are important, report on our citizens hearing at the Capitol
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Dear New Mexico activist leaders --

Well, finally the voting is (mostly) over (except in Georgia, which awaits a runoff). Counting, proclaiming, and litigating continue, so the spectacle goes on.

Since Trump was elected, many of us have seen him more as a symptom than a cause of the country's problems. One advisor aptly likened the election of Trump to ripping off a band-aid and seeing the wound. Thomas Frank was among many who cogently analyzed what went wrong and how to fix it. A recent Chris Hedges jeremiad is insightful if harsh.

Today Glenn Greenwald, after concluding (correctly in our view) that nothing Trump has done remotely compares to the damage done by the Bush-Cheney administration, offers this insight as we all move forward in this crepuscular period:

It is not an exaggeration to say that much of the division on the center-left over the past four years has been shaped by whether one sees Trump as a symptom of American pathologies or as its primary cause, of whether one views the return of pre-Trump “normalcy” as something to loathe or something to crave, of whether one views the Bush/Cheney years and War on Terror abuses (to say nothing of the horrors of the Cold War) as at least as bad as anything Trump has ushered in or whether one sees those pre-Trump evils as somehow more benign and less ignoble.

What now?

First a reality check. The Joe Biden-Kamala Harris team, should their election be confirmed, is and will be very hawkish, as many observers have noted (random recent selection: Moon of Alabama, Caitlin Johnstone here and here, Aaron Mehta at Defense News). Joe Biden pretty much "IS the swamp," as Ilargi notes. The present vastly-increased power of three-letter agencies is not at all something in which to rejoice, and it is difficult to see how that power can be lessened.

Jonathan Cook writes of the terrific risk of falling asleep:

The globe-spanning U.S. empire faces the rapid emergence of all these threats on a planetary scale. Its endless wars against phantom enemies have left the U.S. burdened with astounding debt. Its technologies, from nuclear weapons to AI, mean there can be no possible escape from a major miscalculation. And the U.S. empire’s insatiable greed and determination to colonise every last inch of the planet, if only with our waste products, is gradually killing the life-systems we depend on.

If Biden becomes president, his victory will be a temporary win for torpor, for complacency. But a new Trump will emerge soon enough to potentise – and misdirect – the fury steadily building beneath the surface. If we let it, the pendulum will swing back and forth, between ineffectual lethargy and ineffectual rage, until it is too late. Unless we actively fight back, the stagnation will suffocate us all.

What looks like torpor from 40,000 feet might be seen as a process of successive political a) distractions and b) abstractions down here on the ground. It is very easy to be effectively tranquilized by trivia, which play the same political role as feints do in sports -- or more seriously, in war. There are plenty of red herrings on the menu.

Abstractions are just as enticing. Oh yes, we're all against (pick a favorite "ism" to attack, red or blue, or some grand and distant goal). We can all talk about these "until," as is said, "the cows come home."

Meanwhile, serious adversaries concretely advance their plans. ("Adversaries," not "enemies," please note. Most of them are fine people and some carry truths we do not yet see. They may yet be helpful.)

There are important local government meetings this week, starting in Taos today. See this public calendar with links to agendas and for how to take part.

As we have previously explained, we want as many people as possible to attend these meetings and participate in the public comment portions. See below for what we believe will be unifying themes and talking points.

These are:

• Monday, Nov. 9

• Taos, Town Council: 4pm – 6pm. For more information go to: https://www.taosgov.com; agendas are listed at:https://www.taosgov.com/478/Agendas-Minutes; agendas are posted 72-hours prior to meeting

• Tuesday, Nov. 10

• Santa Fe, County Commission: 2pm – 3pm
• Santa Fe, City Council: 6pm – 10pm
• Los Alamos, County Council: 6pm – 10pm
• Angel Fire, Village Council: 5:30pm – 7:30pm
• Questa, Village Council: 6pm – 8pm

Regarding these meetings, our Outreach Director Lydia Clark, notes:

• In most instances, participating by Zoom (or other web-based program) is required or submitting written commentary prior to the meeting.


• Possible themes and talking points:
• Ask for a resolution against pit production at LANL (our draft from earlier this year is now passe; the wider "we" can update and build on prior successful resolutions here);
• Oppose membership in the corruptRegional Coalition of LANL Communities(RCLC) Counties and cities in Northern New Mexico are part of this coalition;
• Demand transparency regarding LANL's $14 billion plutonium pit plan (slide 29);
• Support for emergency responses to our cascading, simultaneous crises of environmental, economy, and society;
• Request public officials consider the true costs of nuclear weapons and pit production; and
• Request public hearings with opportunities to question LANL representatives.

• Santa Fe has been engaged in development which includes the possibility of LANL having a presence in or near the City of Santa Fe - under the guise of an "office" not associated with the nuclear mission (the Midtown project - which is on the agenda for the 11/10/20 meeting - and other potential locations). LANL is a nuclear weapons laboratory, first and foremost, and any new campus or facility will primarily serve that purpose. Their primary new mission is plutonium pit production, and much that they are doing is focused on expansion of the workforce for this mission. This includes recruitment of our youth, expanding into our communities (they need housing), and promoting technology/jobs related to this mission - pit production jobs, as well as jobs in construction/infrastructure. The recruitment of our youth is now being targeted beginning as early as kindergarten through high school, and into our colleges and universities. It also means increase in resource use - water, land, and utilities. Where will all of this come from?

• We must speak up, publicly, to stop this kind of expansion, and instead promote work benefiting our communities. Nuclear weapons benefit no one. We want to offer positive alternatives to a nuclear colony. Be creative - speak from your heart and encourage others to participate in these meetings as well. As Hannah Arendt stated, "public political purpose is POWER. . . collective engagement. . . not coercion, but consent and rational persuasion." We can change and create the future we want and need for all humanity.

Please continue to write letters to editors and if you can, opinion pieces. These are very important, affecting news decisions as well as public and leadership opinions. Here is an excellent recent example from Suzie Schwartz and Jean Nichols, which received national distribution today.

We hope you will endorse the Call for Sanity, Not Nuclear Production and ask others to do so as well.

We seldom ask for donations but this is now the season when it is important to do so. Please contribute!

We hope that if you have a special connection with an elected official, that you will talk to them. For most people however, writing private missives to elected officials, especially to ones with large constituencies, is an exercise in futility. It may even be counterproductive, as it shows a degree of naivete that can safely be ignored.

Stay safe, help each other,

Greg, Trish, Lydia