Nuclear Resistance: Attention Turns To Persian Gulf War Civil disobedience arrests of anti-nuclear activists dropped off sharply during the last four and one-half months of 1990, as many advocates of nonviolent direct action turned their attention in late summer to the impending Persian Gulf War. According to statistics compiled by the Nuclear Resister newsletter, of the 3,000 anti-nuclear arrests reported during the year, less than 10% occurred after Nagasaki Day, August 9. "Following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, and the offensive U.S.-led military response, activists across the continent turned skills and determination honed during more than a decade of anti-nuclear direct action to the immediate task at hand: trying to prevent a war which, in many respects, goes to the heart of concerns often voiced by safe energy and nuclear disarmament activists," observed Nuclear Resister co-editor Jack Cohen-Joppa. "Notable among these concerns are the absence of a coherent U.S. energy policy and the added temptation for more reliance on nuclear power in the wake of the war; the potential irradiation of large areas of Iraq and beyond due to bombing of Iraqi reactors; and nuclear nonproliferation - not only Iraq's nuclear potential and Israel's proven possession, but also U.S. hypocrisy in deploying nuclear weapons to the battle theatre, refusing to forswear first use and rejecting a comprehensive test ban, three policies which provide justification for lesser powers seeking membership in the nuclear club." In the last months of 1990, actions opposing U.S. military moves in the Persian Gulf region occurred across the country, resulting in scores of arrests. Some actions specifically linked anti-nuclear sentiment to this opposition. Due to these developments, the Nuclear Resister has begun to chronicle these anti-war arrests, which erupted into the thousands when U.S. bombing of Iraq began. Continuing its focus on support for imprisoned resisters, the Nuclear Resister will also keep track of and encourage support for people imprisoned as a result of their war resistance actions. Nuclear Resistance Arrests, U.S. and Canada, 1983-1990 1990 1989 1988 1987 1986 1985 1984 1983 Total arrests: 3,000 5,530 4,470 5,300 3,200 3,300 3,010 5,300 of sites: 41 75 65 70 75 120 85 60 of actions: 85 150 160 180 165 170 160 140 A majority of the 1990 anti-nuclear arrests (57%) occurred at the Nevada nuclear weapons test site, where a culture of both faith- based and secular civil resistance has been nurtured by several groups over the past decade. Mass actions at the test site continued on the first weekend of 1991, when more than 750 people were arrested, and more major demonstrations are planned for March, April, June, and August. The determination to sustain nonviolent direct action at the remote test site reflects the priority anti-nuclear activists place on achieving a comprehensive nuclear test ban. While most test site arrests were not prosecuted, five people served up to seven months in federal prisons or half-way houses in 1990 for test site arrests from the previous year. Infiltrating the Test Site in November, three British women and their American guide forced a two-hour delay of a British weapons test. The activists were discovered at ground zero just minutes before the scheduled detonation time. The four were convicted of trespass in federal court and fined in January, 1991. Two civil disobedience campaigns claimed at least partial victories. In Canada, the native people of Labrador, the Innu, have repeatedly blocked runways of the Canadian Air Force Base at Goose Bay, a training centre for NATO low-level nuclear and conventional bombers. Last May, NATO planners shelved plans to locate a new Tactical Fighter and Weapons Training Centre at Goose Bay, eliminating the greatest threat of increasing flights over the Innu's traditional migratory hunting grounds. Still, the militarisation of their homeland continues, as does nonviolent resistance. 118 people, including several Innu, were arrested November 13 as they shut down the Department of National Defense headquarters in Ottawa. And in December, five Innu were convicted of "illegal possession of Caribou Meat", the spoils of hunting on traditional grounds now declared off-limits by the encroachment of an increasingly militarised Canadian state. In rural upstate New York, the sustained opposition of citizens in two counties forced the retreat of state officials responsible for examining sites for a potential low-level radioactive waste dump. Last April, in the latest of many nonviolent civil resistance actions, New York state police arrested six Allegany county elders who had handcuffed themselves across a bridge to prevent Siting Commissioners from reaching their destination. A column of state troopers then advanced on the crowd behind the elders, clearing away barricades of farm equipment, hay bales and giant snowballs. When the troopers made their final thrust to break through the anti-dump residents, two horses and one of their riders, a young farmer, were beaten and thirty-eight more people arrested. Observed 87-year old Alexandra Landis, one of the elders arrested, "We're becoming hypocrites, trying to help other countries get more democratic but letting the siting commissioners act like dictators." The melee accented overwhelming local opposition to the dump plans, forcing Governor Cuomo to suspend on-site inspections and the Siting Commission to reconsider just where to dispose of the steadily increasing volume of low-level reactor waste. In the courts, at least two groups of anti-nuclear defendants won acquittals after presenting their case to juries. In January, a Utah judge instructed four jurors hearing a case of trespass at a Trident missile motor factory that "treaties of the United States prevent the indiscriminate killing of civilians." Expert testimony about International Law and the "magnitude of the destructive forces we are employing" on the submarine-launched missiles deeply impressed the jurors, according to foreman Wayne Wetzel. A Massachusetts jury heard lengthy testimony in June from three people arrested the previous year at the Rowe nuclear power plant. Although the judge did not allow formal use of the necessity defense, the jurors themselves nonetheless weighed evidence of the plant's dangers and the defendants' motivations and determined that no crime had been committed. A Vermont jury was permitted to consider the necessity defense at the November trial of two men charged with occupying the low-level radiation emissions stack of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. A hung jury was eventually declared when some jurors insisted on acquittal. For those with courts unwilling to consider their claims of conscience in the balance of justice, noncooperation continued to be the option chosen by many resisters. People arrested in at least eight states (New York, Ohio, Michigan, Colorado, Washington, Vermont, Illinois, and Tennessee) and the District of Columbia refused to return to court after their initial release, while in many more venues activists refused to pay fines or comply with probation demands to bind their conscience. Innu resisters in Canada expressed their opposition by refusing to speak other than their native tongue in court. In the harshest prison sentence of the year, Jennifer Haines was sentenced to a maximum two years in federal prison, simply for praying inside the gate of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant near Denver. Due to her absolute noncooperation with the legal system, Haines was convicted not only of trespass but on a bogus charge of failure to appear. 1990 brought the release from prison of more than a dozen Plowshares activists, disarmament advocates who have taken hand tools to the task of dismantling the machinery of the nuclear arms race. Some had served more than four years for their acts, and others, by their conscientious noncooperation with parole restrictions, were returned to prison to complete their original sentences. The Plowshares movement, which has grown to be international, takes its name from Isaiah's exhortation to "beat swords into plowshares." The Plowshares Eight, who in 1980 carried out the first such action when they damaged nuclear warhead shrouds at a Pennsylvania weapons plant, were resentenced in April, after almost a decade of appeals that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Specially appointed state judge James Buckingham came away impressed by the pre-sentencing testimony of the defendants and four expert witnesses, three of whom had been barred from the original trial. After listening to the defendants, three of whom were brought to court from imprisonment for subsequent disarmament actions, and professional comments on International Law, the relationship of civil disobedience to social change in American history, and the psychological effects of living under the threat of the mushroom cloud, Buckingham pronounced a sentence of probation minus time already served. One new Plowshares action occurred in the United States in 1990, when community activist Susan B. Rodriguez broke into the San Leandro, California offices of Physics International in April. Once inside, she used her small sledgehammer to damage fifty-five computers that simulate nuclear explosions for the purpose of guaranteeing that nuclear warheads, missiles and electronics can function in the environment of a nuclear war. Convicted in state court of felony vandalism and burglary, Rodriguez is scheduled to be sentenced on February 27, 1991. With the Persian Gulf war casting many real and potential nuclear shadows, anti-nuclear resistance actions in the coming year take on added meaning, guaranteeing that the movements for safe energy and nuclear disarmament will continue to be significant forces for progressive social change. the Nuclear Resister, P.O. Box 43383, Tucson AZ 85733 Ph. (602)323-8697 First Class subscriptions US$18 for ten issues, US$21 in Canada, US$28 overseas.