ACTIVIST NEWS
Doomsday Cargo
Florida activists are mobilizing to stop NASA's planned Oct. 6 launch of 72.3 pounds of plutonium aboard the Cassini space probe.Sixty-seven people from all over the state held a vigil June 14 at the main gate of the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station as part of a summer-long protest against the planned launch. NASA is "jeopardizing the public and ... not telling the public about safety hazards," said Alan Kohn, former NASA official who was the Emergency Preparedness Operations Officer for the Galileo and Ulysses plutonium missions in 1989 and 1990.
The Cassini probe will use the plutonium to power its electrical instruments during its voyage to explore the planet Saturn. NASA's own studies show that if there were a plutonium accident over Florida, vast portions of the state would have to be evacuated and all the affected topsoil removed, but Cassini opponents insist the risk is even greater. Plutonium, says Dr. Helen Caldicott, founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, "is so toxic that less than one-millionth of a gram, an invisible particle, is a carcinogenic dose. One pound, if uniformly distributed, could hypothetically induce lung cancer in every person on Earth."
If the launch is held with the plutonium aboard, there will be two extremely dangerous possibilities:
$ If the Titan IV rocket carrying the probe explodes on the launch pad or in the atmosphere,as the space shuttle Challenger did in 1986,the lethal plutonium could spread across wide areas of Florida.
$ If the launch succeeds, the Cassini probe will be sent into space toward Venus and then, after two swings around Venus, it will hurtle back toward Earth, to use the Earth's gravity to increase the probe's velocity so that it can pass by Jupiter and reach Saturn. Cassini will pass just 312 miles above Earth in what NASA calls a "slingshot maneuver" or "flyby." But too deep a descent could cause Cassini to disintegrate in the Earth's 75-mile-high atmosphere; then, according to City University of New York nuclear physics professor Dr. Michio Kaku, the plutonium would "shower down with a tremendous tragedy for the people of the Earth to result."
Plans for the campaign against the plutonium launch include a "Cancel Cassini Camp" scheduled for July 20-26 and other demonstrations and protests, culminating in a massive demonstration Oct. 4, two days before the scheduled launch. The Florida Coalition for Peace and Justice is also circulating a "Cancel Cassini" petition opposing plutonium in space.
For more information, contact the Florida Coalition for Peace and Justice, PO Box 90035, Gainesville, FL 32607; (352)468-3295; website: www.afn.org/~fcpj/space.
-Florida Coalition for Peace and Justice
Police Batter Eugene
"Eugene police employed the repeated use of pain, in a non-emergency situation, to change behavior," said eyewitness David Oaks in testimony to the Eugene City Council June 2. "That, Mayor Torrey, is the definition of torture."Extensively documented torture of nonviolent activists, supporters and bystanders by Eugene police at a downtown tree-cutting protest the previous day first shocked, then galvanized the Eugene community.
The City of Eugene had provided a $12,000,000 subsidy for a corporation to knock down Broadway Grove, an impressive stand of historic 50-foot sweetgum, maple and black walnut trees, to build a parking garage and apartments. Eleven Cascadia Forest Defenders trained in and committed to nonviolence peacefully perched themselves in the trees, without harnesses or platforms, in an attempt to save the trees at least until the next day's City Council meeting.
Videotapes of the action reveal police officers risking activists' lives by evicting them from the trees-without safety nets-through repeated, several-second saturations of their eyes, feet and hands with pepper mace. The video shows cops pulling Jim Flynn, the last tree sitter, by his hair, cinching his belt, slugging him with batons and using a pruning hook to rip his pants to spray him as he dangled precariously by his hands with his feet swinging.
The police also rioted against onlookers. Videos show officers pulling a supporter from his bike and pummeling him on the concrete, shoving and pepper-sprayng people who were complying with police orders. Tear gas was also repeatedly hurled at demonstrators peacefully standing vigil on the designated sidewalk. In the Department of Public Safety's own videotape, Incident Commander Lt. Becky Hansen can clearly be heard ordering one of her 30 riot-geared officers to "Initiate the M.P.G. [tear gas] for the 'We Speak for the Trees' sign."
Eugene Mayor Jim Torrey, who watched for six hours from his car, subsequently stated that the police actions had been proper. Police and public safety officials who had not been present went on record as exonerating the field force unit even before viewing witnesses' videotapes and photos.
But-though the trees have been lost-the June 1 incident forged a broad coalition of radical and nonviolent activists, mainstream neighborhood associations, liberals, homeless people, police-watchers and communities of color. Coalition members including members of Eugene Peace Works, the Eugene WRL local, have proposed an external review board of police misconduct and suggested the expansion of public input in municipal affairs. Police watchers and peacekeepers have met with the police chief, head of public safety and city manager. The city has agreed to demands that the auditor of the June 1 incident be an expert unaffiliated with the city, and the city and the police are reconsidering policies regarding use of pepper spray in response to civil disobedience. The police response to the actin will almost certainly result in lawsuits against the city. Perhaps most surprising, a spontaneous campaign has arisen to recall Torrey.
For more information, contact Ellen Klowden of Eugene PeaceWorks, (541)484-4390, e-mail: psu02368@odin.cc.pdx.edu.
-Ellen Klowden
Motown Rallies 100,000
It was "the biggest labor demonstration in Detroit in a generation," said one participant in the weekend long "Action-Motown '97" in which 100,000 union members and labor supporters converged on Detroit June 21-22 to support almost 2,000 locked-out newspaper workers.The action turned into a celebration when, in a stunning-and perfectly timed-victory for embattled employees of the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News, the National Labor Relations Board ruled in their favor on the eve of the massive mobilization.
The June events were the culmination of a two-year dispute between the newspapers and six unions representing newspaper workers. The unions originally went on strike in July of 1995; 18 months later, in February of this year, they offered to return to work. The newspapers accepted the offer but then failed to take the majority of the workers back.
The unions filed an action with the NLRB and, along with a broad coalition of other AFL-CIO unions and social justice activists, many of them faith-based, called for two days of teach-ins and direct actions. One hundred thousand people responded, pouring into Detroit June 20 and 21, just in time to hear that the NLRB had declared the newspapers guilty of unfair labor practices. The decision triggers back-pay claims of up to $80 million against the newspapers for failing to reinstate the strikers, according to a June 20 statement by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
"People were hugging in the streets," said driver Shawn Ellis, co-spokesperson for the Metropolitan Council of Newspaper Unions and "a proud member of Teamster Local 372."
Workfare Unfair, Says Justice Center
"New York City is growing dependent on welfare recipients," says Peter Laarman of New York's Judson Memorial Church-"dependent upon its workfare participants to do work which formerly provided employees with living wages and basic workers' rights."In response to new legislation concerning the placement of welfare recipients into workfare programs, the New York-based Urban Justice Center is urging non-profit and religious organizations to pledge themselves not to hire workfare staff.
Workfare, points out the UJC, is supposed to provide welfare recipients with training skills and lead to paid employment as an eventual path away from public assistance. But New York City's workfare initiative, the Work Experience Program, which Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has declared will be the largest workfare program in the United States, not only violates many basic rights of welfare recipients, but affects the entire job market as well. The program forces welfare recipients to work without pay and without the possibility of full-time employment or educational opportunities. It drives down wages, increases competition for limited openings between welfare recipients and current paid employees and weakens unions for all workers.
"We ... morally oppose and reject the existence and continuation of [the Work Experience Program] in its current form," declares the UJC Pledge of Resistance. "We will not allow our organization/congregation to become a WEP site, nor will we use WEP workers to perform agency business."
For more information, or to sign the Pledge of Resistance, contact Heidi Dorow, Urban Justice Center, 666 Broadway, 10th Floor, New York, NY 10012; (212)533-0540, ext. 318.
-Urban Justice Center
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