July 28, 2021

From the ANSWER coalition, us, and others: "Shut Down 'Q-Station' on Hiroshima/Nagasaki 76th Anniversary!" (2 of 2 letters today)

Permalink for this letter. Please forward as desired. Prior letters to this New-Mexico-oriented list.
Previously (07/28/21): Reminder: "Stop the plutonium pit factory, here and now:" update and outreach training Thursday 7/29, 6 pm in Santa Fe (1 of 2 letters today)Please endorse the Call for Sanity not Nuclear Production!
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Dear friends --

The ANSWER Coalition, Stop the War Machine, Veterans for Peace Albuquerque Chapter, Peaceful Skies Coalition and us (so far) are organizations co-sponsoring an event at the "Q-Station," one of the new "Space War" sites here in Albuquerque on August 6.

The alert is copied below.

It would be impossible in this small space and time to review even a fraction of what lies behind this major new push for space "dominance" and all the ways it is now being expressed right here in New Mexico. In our 7/23/21 letter we mentioned

[T]he enthusiastic political embrace of yet another high-tech war company in Albuquerque ("Blue Halo"), to be built at "Max Q," next door to a 2 million square foot surveillance satellite factory (the Orion Center, more here, part of Theia Group -- check out the promotional video).

"Q Station" is another piece of this ugly puzzle -- a storefront which happens to be very accessible to the University of New Mexico ("Hub for space, directed energy lands in Nob Hill," A. Journal 4/22/2021), with obvious benefits to all concerned (us too).

If you know of other organizations which might want to co-sponsor, please contact Chris Banks at ANSWER, Trish here, or Bob Anderson at Stop the War Machine.

We are not that "into" merely holding signs and protesting. We hope this action will grow and bear fruit both before and after Aug. 6.

If you can come, please do. To win hearts and minds we must be seen, which pretty much means being seen by the news media and then through the news media, which pretty much means the TV stations in this case. There will be implicit or explicit disagreement with Mayor Keller on this, which is newsworthy.

Over time, we want to actually shut down this operation and the bigger ones mentioned above by education and nonviolent (i.e. political) means, not merely protest them.

As regards activities surrounding the Hiroshima/Nagasaki anniversaries in general, we endorse them. We have organized many such events in Los Alamos, starting in 1981 and including a day-long demonstration in 2005 with workshops taught by speakers from around the country, attended by nearly 1,000 people. It is very important "not to forget" -- especially in Los Alamos.

Once, a DOE Area Manager, responsible for the entire laboratory, told me a few days before his official departure that Los Alamos was "haunted" by what had been done here in 1945, and as a result "nothing good will ever come from this place."

At the same time there is a tendency to lose focus on real current events and the real political commitments we need now in a sort of vague negative nostalgia about what was done in 1945. There can be too little intellectual and moral discrimination, too little speaking truth to power today, with sacrifices.

It's easy to decry the terrible things done in 1945 by people who are now dead, while tacitly or passively opening the door to a nuclear weapons factory in one's own back yard. It happens. And it is much harder to confront living politicians with real power today than it is to criticize dead ones. We here are acutely sensitive to the damage done by substituting what often turns out to be feel-good activism for the more trenchant work that will prevent future Hiroshimas, or worse.

Join the Picket: Shut Down "Q-Station" on Hiroshima/Nagasaki 76th Anniversary!

Friday, August 6, 4-6pm
Picket the "Q Station" at 3225 Central Ave NE

Sponsored by:
ANSWER Coalition, Los Alamos Study Group, Stop the War Machine, Veterans for Peace Albuquerque Chapter, Peaceful Skies Coalition

August 6 will mark the 76th anniversary of the U.S. genocidal nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. Three days later will be the anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki. Hundreds of thousands of civilians lost their lives without warning from bombs built and tested in New Mexico. Japanese survivors and their children suffered unspeakable health impacts for decades, as did Navajo uranium miners and their families, along with Southwest communities downwind from testing sites, all victimized during the terrible production of nuclear weapons.

On Friday, August 6 from 4-6pm, we will come together to remember the victims of these crimes against humanity and recommit ourselves to the struggle for peace. We will be holding a picket at the “Q Station,” a new military-driven storefront in Nob Hill designed to find startups to sell technology to the U.S. military for the purpose of fighting the next war. While marketing itself as hip and innovative, the “Q Station” is nothing more than a way to direct science and technology into building the war machine.

The threat of horrific U.S. nuclear acts repeating themselves poses a threat to us all as the United States is dramatically increasing its drive toward war and confrontation targeting China. The new military doctrine of the Pentagon prioritizes preparations for “major power conflict” in coming years.

Instead of urging peace and cooperation with China, state and local government officials want to place New Mexico at the center of a new destructive arms race. Plans to build hundreds of new nuclear bomb cores at Los Alamos will move forward unless they can be stopped. Kirtland is already playing a central role developing military-technologies to wage war from space.

And now, as a slap to the face of the people of Albuquerque, the military has shamelessly and brazenly helped open up a storefront -- the “Q Station” -- in Nob Hill along Route 66, where producers of weapons-related technologies can openly mingle with military war-planners!

The “Q Station” needs to be shut down!

Over and out, see some of you tomorrow,

Greg Mello, for the Study Group