***Especially if we haven't heard from you recently, we'd love to hear from you!***

Dear friends -- 

To those of you who came to the Santa Fe City Council a week ago (9/9/26) -- thank you. Once again we predominated in the "petitions from the floor" portion of the meeting. This is now a frequent occurrence. I think nine people spoke from our own and other organizations. Others came in silent support. Video of the meeting. 

Here is the draft resolution given to the Council in August ("A Resolution Objecting to the Expansion of Nuclear Weapons Work and the Production of Plutonium Warhead Cores at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), and Opposing Additional LANL Facilities in Santa Fe"). We included the references also given to the Council, making this a handy educational tool for everybody. Wider background -- the "Pit Chronicles" as it were -- is here. 

This is the resolution we hope you will help us get through the Council. We and the Council have done this before several times as we note in the resolution, but this Council -- like the town of Santa Fe itself -- has moved to what amounts to the de facto political right, and is unduly fearful. 

We believe we have some votes on the Council. Some, but not enough. We need one or two more councilors on board before we are likely to see the draft resolution above, or anything like it, appear on an agenda. That's where you come in!

Your voice can be heard: 

• At the Quality of Life Committee meeting on the 23rd of this month in the regular Council chambers (City Hall, 200 Lincoln Ave, map), at 5 pm, with an opportunity for public comment, and then 
• At the City Council, which meets again in the same place on the 30th, with public comment at 7 pm. 

We will let you know about any further developments in the meantime.  

Please come if you can to at least the Governing Body meeting on the 30th. You can bring your own signs; we will also have some. You will have two minutes to speak. In the case of the Council meeting on the 30th (but not the Quality of Life Committee meeting) you can attend virtually (see the agenda that will be posted 72 hours before), but in-person attendance is much better. 

City Council contact information is here. Write them if you can. 

Why are we asking you to do this? Why does this matter?

Local governments obviously have no direct, explicit jurisdiction over nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons programs. In the case of Santa Fe however, geographic proximity, size, and cultural appeal give the City and County tremendous indirect influence that can be exerted culturally, socially, and economically, in any number of quite concrete ways. 

Simply put, NNSA fears rejection by local communities. Through its LANL contractor, NNSA devotes millions of dollars every year to make sure that does not happen. As Trish says, from her own experience in successfully fighting off a pit factory in Texas in the early 1990s with her neighbors, "They don't go where they aren't wanted." They just can't. It's not because their feelings are hurt or anything like that. LANL just can't succeed without moral and material support from key elements of the communities surrounding it -- and passive acquiescence from the rest of us. "They" just cannot recruit, train, and retain staff, or otherwise function, in the face of community approbation. 

This is not a performative struggle. If LANL does not succeed in its pit mission, the U.S. plan for new warheads will not come to pass. This already happened in 2012, when opposition from this organization ended what one bipartisan commission called the nation's most urgent piece of nuclear warhead infrastructure (pp. 49-51). NNSA's CMRR-NF failure "erased a decade of Integrated Nuclear Planning virtually overnight" and resulted in decade-scale delays and/or outright cancellation of multiple planned warhead programs (LANL, LA-CP-12-01506, Nov. 2012, redacted, pp. 23-24, obtained by FOIA). 

The present struggle against building a pit factory at LANL concerns the fifth time LANL has attempted this mission. This time, safety and security rules have been slackened, and cost is so far apparently no object. This is a new situation that calls for fresh thinking and bold action. 

LANL is not just some random high-tech R&D site that happens to work on nuclear weapons. LANL's work is nearly all directed toward an aggressive version of "national security" based on weapons of mass destruction, one which now plainly calls for global nuclear domination. LANL is the historic fountainhead of the U.S. nuclear weapons industry, the most lavishly funded nuclear warhead site in the entire world. In its new role as would-be industrial producer of plutonium pits, LANL is an essential enabler of a new nuclear arms race, a race which has been kicked into overdrive -- including LANL's role -- by our current president. 

Let us not forget that the "good servants" at LANL have been among the principal agents of more than a half million deaths since 1943, including the bombings in Japan as well as the fallout from atmospheric testing. (The link goes to a popular review of what we believe to be a methodologically sound study by Keith Meyers, since updated.) 

The sooner there is strong opposition to pit production and nuclear weapons in Santa Fe, the sooner LANL's growth vector will reverse. It is not a linear or predictable process, and it involves the usual set of actors in Washington, DC and elsewhere, as well as larger political and fiscal events. 

In the case of pit manufacturing, a new pit factory is being built in South Carolina. The Los Alamos factory is not even "needed" -- as if any nuclear weapons were "needed." For its part, the LANL factory is supposed to produce extra warheads (of a brand new kind) for the new U.S. ICBM, the "Sentinel," while the larger South Carolina factory is under construction. 

And there is more. This is about us, about what kind of people we are, with what kind of character. It is about our ability to govern ourselves. About our willingness to foster and defend life instead of death. It's about our gumption in the face of an agenda that seeks to write the future of New Mexico in nuclear, military, and artificial "intelligence" terms. We've had enough. This state is last in about everything important. It's time we stood up for ourselves, don't you think? The struggle will be political, it will be cultural, it will be spiritual, and it will be economic. We can't avoid it so we might as well embrace it -- and each other in the process. 

The spirit of Ypsilanti

In Michigan, LANL is currently trying to build a $1.2 billion hyperscale data center in cooperation with the University of Michigan, in Ypsilanti Township. (Fiscally, that project is about 4% of what LANL's pit factory would cost.) 

Not everybody is on board -- far from it (‘We Did Not Invite You.’ Citizens Rage at Town Hall Over Proposed Nuclear AI Data Center, Matthew Gault, Sept. 11, 2026, 404media). From the article:

“We don’t want Los Alamos here, they’re one of the biggest villains of the 20th century,” he [Corey] said. “We want them far far away from us and everyone else.”

...“This is our home. We said loudly and clearly that we do not want you here. We did not invite you,” she [Shalina Nicohl Rankin] said. “I was taught leaders and best [a reference to the University’s motto]. Leaders and best, but you crawl into bed with Los Alamos, one of the most despicable companies on the face of the Earth. Who is known for giving people cancer and developing nuclear bombs and you bring it into our backyard.”

So what do you think? Are these people wrong? Or have we fallen somewhat asleep? 

Thank you, 

Greg

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