July 10, 2023

July 22 event in Los Alamos: outreach help wanted and needed!

Friends,

Good afternoon. We hope you all are well, and enjoying the summer.

I am writing to ask you to help us with outreach for our July 22, 6:30 pm MDT presentation and discussion in Los Alamos, described in Bulletin 330, entitled:

"'The real purpose in making the bomb was to subdue the Soviets.' Now it's happening again, on a vast scale. WHY?"
            -- a conversation with acclaimed historian Peter Kuznick and Greg Mello in Los Alamos, July 22.

As we said in the recent Bulletin, in-person attendance is very important at this meeting. It is important at all meetings, of course, but in Los Alamos we cannot count on local attendance. Many people in Los Alamos have told us that they are afraid of being seen at an event which questions LANL programs or the rectitude of LANL's/"Site Y's" role in 1945, or today.

Many of you have asked, "what can I do?" We have usually provided a short menu of options. Right now, for the next 12 days, for those of you who know people within driving distance of Los Alamos, we are asking you to help mobilize those friends to travel up the Hill to Los Alamos for this event.

Everything valuable in our field requires some minimum level of commitment. No commitment = no value. We know there is always some resistance in our communities to going to Los Alamos, more than to business or recreational travel of equal inconvenience. That resistance is a measure of the value of making the trip -- witnessing in that small way; expressing our collective solidarity against the production of new (and additional) nuclear weapons. With others.

Bear in mind that this meeting will be in an historic building at the heart of the World War II Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, just a few feet from the house next door where General Groves confessed to his British friends that "[t]he real purpose in making the bomb was to subdue the Soviets."

That informal dinner-table comment expressed a world-dominating mentality, common in conservative, anti-New-Deal circles at that time, that was the beginning of an arms race that has impoverished this country, and installed a military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-academic-think-tank-media complex that largely rules our country, taking for itself the lion's share of discretionary federal funding every year.

For those who live far away, or as a last resort for those who can't drive up, we have provided this Zoom link, as the gathering will be livestreamed via that medium, subject to these limitations:

• You must register in advance.
• No questions or chat will be available to those who are not physically present.
• You must either have a computer camera or photo identification in order to take part remotely.

Here is the link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwtc-2trjsjHNOjGquQDeq020XeeaZBHZgf.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

We will put a short ad on our web site suitable for forwarding via social media. Feel free to make up your own!

Greg, Trish and the Study Group gang