Dear friends -- 

Good evening! 

On this coming Thursday evening, August 6, we would like to invite those of you who have the endorsed the "Call for Sanity, Not Nuclear Production" at StopTheBomb.org to a meeting in central Santa Fe at 6 pm. The venue is still TBD at this point. (We will write again tomorrow when we have that nailed down, but tonight we wanted to get the date and time to you ASAP.) 

As you know, this will is the 81st anniversary of the mass murder in Hiroshima, which we are commemorating with our firm resistance to preparations for nuclear war. The local form of that resistance is what we will be discussing. 

As part of that resistance, we are bringing a proposal to the Santa Fe City Council to oppose production of plutonium warhead cores ("pits"), and we need your help. Now is the time when your voices are needed. 

We are meeting with some city councilors as we kick this process off. So far, those meetings are going reasonably well, but there are pitfalls ahead, the main one being the inherent tendency of some councilors to make things complicated and drawn out, which will also introduce controversy and then paralysis. In the (now somewhat distant) past, firm City resolutions against pit production specifically and nuclear weapons in general were not controversial and took little deliberation. Most were passed quickly and unanimously. 

Cutting to the chase -- as we want the Council to do and you to help them do it -- we are asking the City's Governing Body to: 

1. Formally oppose preparations for plutonium warhead core (“pit”) production at LANL, a well as actual production itself;

2. Formally oppose the Trump Administration’s new requirement for LANL to produce at least 60 pits per year;

3. Formally request that the Administration prioritize the removal and disposal of legacy plutonium waste from LANL over the production of additional waste from LANL weapons activities;

4. Formally request that the New Mexico congressional delegation do its best to:

• Remove the current statutory pit production requirements and prevent passage of further production requirements;
• Oppose the production of new or additional nuclear weapons;
• Decrease federal spending on nuclear weapons; and

5. Oppose additional LANL satellite campuses in or near Santa Fe. 

Some of the background can be found in this recent advertisement.

As you know, the House of Representatives recently passed a bill that would vastly increase pit production requirements (" House passes requirement to build more than 200 plutonium nuclear warhead cores annually by 2050...", Jul 23, 2026). The whole situation is rapidly changing, mostly for the worse. At the same time, the objective problems of making LANL into a nuclear production center are beginning to be appreciated even in Los Alamos, by unlikely people. That's a very good sign. 

We will have some simple talking points ready and will be ready to answer your questions. 

The City resolution isn't the only iron in the fire either. 

In the meantime, please do reach out to your friends and ask them to endorse the Call at StopTheBomb.org. 

In 1945, almost nobody in New Mexico outside the fencelines of Los Alamos and the Trinity Site knew what awful preparations were being made. Today we know, and we can act. Our concerted, successful action is what the victims at Hiroshima and Nagasaki are asking from us. We have known many hibakusha. They certainly never wanted us to get stuck feeling sorry for them. 

Thank you all and we hope to see many of you on Thursday. As I said we will write again with more details tomorrow. 

Greg Mello

Permalink for this letter (tomorrow); prior activist letters.