All Day Conference to Commemorate 60th Anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Bombings

Editor's Note: DFNM is an endorsing organization for this event and we hope that many of our members and others around the state will volunteer to help the Los Alamos Study Group, donate funds and attend the main and related events. If you're a member of other progressive groups, encourage them to endorse this program. You can also sign up as an individual endorser at the Los Alamos Study Group website (see below).

August 6th: DAY OF REMEMBRANCE AND ACTION
It Started Here – Let’s Stop It Here!

On Saturday, August 6, 2005, the Los Alamos Study Group and endorsing organizations will commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings with an all-day conference and teach-in at Ashley Pond Park in Los Alamos.

The day’s events will begin at 10:00 AM and continue all day at Ashley Pond Park and in adjacent public buildings.   You may want to come earlier for the Pax Christi calendar demonstration; check the for this and other related events occurring in the same time frame.

In the morning there will be welcomes, introductions of participating groups, speakers and musicians, and the first of our main speakers. At noon we will all take part in a symbolic pageant with thousands of sunflowers, the international emblem of nuclear disarmament. (Sunflowers became the symbol of disarmament after they were ritually sown into the earth at a Russian missile silo destroyed after the Cold War.) We’ll have lunch in the park and at local restaurants. After lunch there will be more music and two solid workshops on nuclear history and on positive economic and social alternatives for New Mexico. These will be indoors; we have reserved seating for about 600 people for these two workshops, which will repeat so everyone can attend both. We’ll break for dinner, then return to the park to set hundreds of candle lanterns a float on the pond.

For more information please visit our website or call us at (505) 265-1200. Click to download a brochure.

In Solidarity,
Claire Long
Outreach Coordinator
Los Alamos Study Group
2901 Summit Place NE
Albuquerque, NM 87106
(505)265-1200
(505)265-1207 (fax)
clong@lasg.org
www.lasg.org

LEAD UP EVENTS
Prior to August 6 we and allied organizations will host a series of educational, artistic, and community-building public events, announced by email and at our calendar, including the weekend of, July 16th, which marks the 60th anniversary of the world’s first nuclear explosion at the Trinity Site in New Mexico.

(Click through to continuation page for more information on events and endorsing groups and businesses.)

On July 15th and 16th, the Los Alamos Study Group will host two literary events in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, “Mightier Than the Sword: Writers Address the Nuclear Age.”  Make sure you give us your email address or check our web site often!  Let us know if you want to help with these very important events. 

July 15: Mightier Than the Sword: Writers Address the Nuclear Age (60th  Anniversary of Trinity Test Explosion)
Where: James A. Little Theater, Santa Fe
When: 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Who: Judyth Hill, William Witherup, Karen Jones Meadows, John Bradley and Elaine Maria Upton.

July 16: Mightier Than the Sword: Writers Address the Nuclear Age (60th  Anniversary of Trinity Test Explosion)
Where: Lobo Theater, Albuquerque
When: 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Who: William Witherup, Karen Jones Meadows, John Bradley, Mary Oishi and Maisha Baton.

July 29 – 31: Seminar on Nuclear Weapons Law and Policy
Where: University of New Mexico Law School Room 2405
When: Friday 7/29, 5:30 pm to Sunday 7/31, Noon
More: Authoratative short course in the legal status of nuclear weapons for activists, students, journalists, and laboratory personnel. Modest tuition; continuing legal education credit may be possible.

WHY LOS ALAMOS?   WHY NOW?
Los Alamos designed and assembled the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Sixty years later, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is the largest facility for so-called weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the world in dollar terms. Sandia National Laboratories, just 60 miles away, is next in size. These institutions are anything but static; in the past decade, LANL's nuclear weapons budget more than tripled over average Cold War levels, after correcting for inflation. Almost half (49%) of U.S. nuclear weapons spending now occurs in New Mexico, where WMD are the second largest source of income (after oil and gas extraction). More actual nuclear weapons are kept here (in Albuquerque, about 2,500) than any other single place in the world. New Mexico arguably has the most influential (Pete Domenici) and most enthusiastic (Heather Wilson) proponents of nuclear weapons in Congress, and lobbyists from this state's two labs carry their self-promoting nuclear agenda into every nook and cranny of government. For all these reasons, New Mexico is without question the world capital for nuclear weapons.

In making completely new nuclear weapons, fabricating the plutonium cores (pits) is the most difficult step. LANL is the only site in the U.S. that does this, a role slated to greatly expand over the next decade or more years. We want to make this mission impossible.

LANL also has the largest active nuclear disposal site in the Southwest, where millions of drums and boxes of nuclear waste are to be permanently disposed over the coming decades. There is no permit involved or external regulation of any kind.   

Politically and demographically speaking, New Mexico is a small state. Here far more than in, say, Washington, DC the voices of citizens, experts, and moral authorities count for a great deal. On-the-ground organizing efforts, continuing public and media education, and respected policy analysis will multiply the value of your August 6 investment.

This nation is now engaged in a bloody war of occupation which had caused the deaths of at least 100,000 people by September 2004 and possibly twice this number, according to a careful Johns Hopkins study. U.S. military units are now operating in and above Iran as well in preparation for possible attacks. All this and more is being done in the name of counter-proliferation. Yet right here in New Mexico, nuclear weapons are almost a way of life for thousands of people. New Mexico's nuclear labs provide a uniquely persuasive platform from which to condemn the hypocritical folly of U.S. security policy.

It is important to speak out now because this year is a pivotal, make-or-break year for controlling nuclear nonproliferation.  The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) is under tremendous pressure from several fronts, with U.S. intransigence undercutting most fruitful dialogue. U.S. noncompliance is deeper and more systemic than can be blamed any single administration, party, or iteration of doctrine, and LANL is its most physically symbolic manifestation. The NPT signatories met in May in New York for formal review of the treaty, to very little effect, which makes our job all the more important!

Although the outcome of these efforts is not in our hands, we do need, and we are working in several ways to create, a political breakthrough this year on nuclear disarmament, leading toward a sane security policy.

PROMOTING A POLITICAL CULTURE BASED ON THE DIGNITY OF THE HUMAN PERSON
At this event we will commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. We also seek to make visible a portion of the very strong support which polls show is now present in the United States and around the world for nuclear disarmament ( 84% in one large recent poll). We want to bridge issues; regionally, we hope to build bridges between organizations as well. In this we aim to assist in the gradual emergence of a political culture based on the dignity of the human person, as opposed to an ever more pervasive politics of fear, hate, greed, and war.

Any such political movement and platform must include from the outset the vigorous rejection of weapons of mass destruction as instruments of state power.   

The public purposes of this event as well as the organizing effort involved in it are intimately tied to The Call for Nuclear Disarmament. We are just beginning "The Call" campaign but it has already been endorsed by some 200 regional businesses, organizations, and political leaders. We will soon publicly link this small but growing groundswell with what are literally dozens of related international efforts, in effect globalizing resistance in New Mexico.   

In "The Call" we ask for new security priorities: affordable health care for everyone, better education, renewable energy, and economic opportunity for those who have none. We call for investment in people and families, in our economy and environment, instead of in preparation for war -- especially nuclear war. Please join us. 

WORLDWIDE SOLIDARITY
We are working in solidarity with organizations hosting similar and parallel events at other U.S. nuclear weapons facilities, including Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, the Nevada Test Site, the Y-12 Plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the Pantex nuclear weapons plant in Amarillo, Texas. We are also working very closely with a worldwide network of scholars, activists, and civic leaders who are mobilizing this year to stop nuclear proliferation and restart the stalled disarmament process.

Click to see lists of endorsing local organizations, businesses and national and international organizations.

THE TONE OF THE AUGUST 6 EVENT
In this event, we will be firm on the basic questions of nuclear weapons and disarmament, which are moral and legal in nature as well as matters of policy. We will develop and present positive alternatives to current (in)security policies and positive alternatives for economic and social development in New Mexico. We will not be personally confrontational and we will be nonviolent in both word and deed. We ask that all participating and endorsing organizations agree to this core principle of nonviolence and to the broad policy goals of the event as stated in "The Call."  We also hope the event will be physically beautiful and are already working to that end.   

Humanity now faces an unprecedented combination of challenges involving climate, security, poverty, environment, energy, and health. We understand that we need a breakthrough -- that we need new thinking, inspired career choices, and a deeper personal commitment to be part of the solution. If our social and political commitment to nuclear weapons and all they imply remains intact, no breakthrough will be possible, and the torch of humanity may dim or even fall. Especially in New Mexico, we will regress unless and until we are able to free ourselves from the stranglehold of militarization and embrace policies which are just, humane, secure, and sustainable.