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Catholic activists arrested at Kansas City nuclear weapons facility

published Wednesday, August 25, 2010

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"Catholic activists arrested at Kansas City nuclear weapons facility"

By Joshua J. McElwee - NCR staff writer jmcelwee@ncronline.org

http://ncronline.org/news/peace/catholic-activists-arrested-kansas-city-nuclear-weapons-facility

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Singing choruses of “we shall not be moved” while
scattering sunflower seeds, 14 activists were arrested here Aug. 16
after blocking an earth moving vehicle on the site of a proposed
nuclear weapons manufacturing facility.

The acts of civil disobedience came at the end of a three-day
conference which drew peace activists here from around the nation. The
efforts were aimed at building awareness of and resistance to the
construction of the weapons plant, which will replace an existing
plant here.

The new plant, which will make non-nuclear parts for nuclear weapons,
is set to be the nation’s first new major nuclear weapons production
facility in 32 years.

Before their arrest the protestors walked onto a soybean field being
plowed by several earth moving vehicles as part of the plant building
preparation effort. The group, walking in a single file, held hands;
some carried large signs. They approached and surrounded one of the
vehicles, forcing the driver to stop her work, and eventually leading
20 other vehicles to halt theirs as well.

After about a 45 minute shut down, police arrived, announcing the
protesters had two minutes to leave the privately-owned grounds. The
flurry of activity stopped all work at the site for over an hour.

In a statement to the press before they began their action, the
activists called the new facility a “crime against peace” and a “crime
against humanity.”

This is the second time that people have been arrested for civil
disobedience to the plant in two months. On Aug. 6 a local activist,
Jane Stoever, was sentenced to eight hours of community service for
having blocked the entrance to the current facility, known simply as
the Kansas City Plant. Her action took place in June.

Currently a part of the Bannister Federal Complex, located about 13
miles south of the city’s downtown area, the Kansas City Plant is
responsible for the production and assembly of approximately 85
percent of the non-nuclear components for the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
The plant is due to be relocated in 2012 to the “more modern
facility.”

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), a division of the
U.S. Department of Energy, has said the new facility will carry an
estimated price tag of $673 million for construction and $1.2 billion
over the next 20 years

Coming from 15 states and three countries by bus, train, airplane, and
caravan, anti-nuclear activists gathered here to attend the weekend
conference leading up to the civil disobedience in a local Methodist
church.

Recalling her 30 years working at the current site of the nuclear
weapons facility, Barbara Rice told those in attendance that she had
lost count of how many of her colleagues had died of cancer after 110
passed away from various kinds of the illnesses.

While she said she couldn’t prove that the deaths were related to
chemical exposure at the current facility, Rice remembered one
instance when a pipe burst at the plant and her supervisors told her
to “go home immediately and destroy her clothes.”

At the same event, Jay Coghlan, executive director of the watchdog
group Nuclear Watch New Mexico, said the new plant in Kansas City is
only one of several projects underway to increase U.S. nuclear weapons
production capability.

Coghlan said that while the international community thinks the U.S. is
working towards nuclear disarmament, "the reality is that we’re
building 3 new sites: one to process uranium, one to process
plutonium, and one to create the non-nuclear parts of the weapons such
as triggers and fuses.”

The three sites Coghlan referred to are the Oak Ridge National
Laboratory in Tennessee, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New
Mexico and the new Kansas City Plant.

While the new facility in Kansas City is expected to continue
production of non-nuclear parts for nuclear weapons, the Chemistry and
Metallurgy Research Replacement Project at Los Alamos plans to
increase U.S. capability to produce plutonium pits, the core of a
nuclear weapon, according to Coghlan. Meanwhile, the facility at Oak
Ridge plans to reinvest in its capability to produce uranium
components for the weapons.

In the original proposal for the Kansas City project, CenterPoint
Zimmer LLC — the company which won the bidding process to design and
build the plant for the NNSA — said the new facility would simply
modernize operations for nuclear weapons parts production while
ensuring the continued employment of “a minimum of 2,100 workers at
the campus in good ‘quality jobs.’ ”

The day before the arrests the activists visited the two Kansas City
Plant sites for prayer and reflection.

After walking with the rest of the activists on the side of a busy
street where the current plant is located, Japanese native-born
Mercedarian Sr. Filo Hirota told those gathered that she envisioned a
new world order in which the “principle of nonviolence is translated
into the way how the world is organized.”

Hirota, who is the international relations officer for the Catholic
Council for Justice and Peace of the Episcopal Conference of Japan,
asked in a prayer following her brief talk for an economy “that
creates communion in equal and just relationships.”

Arriving in a caravan at the field where the new facility for the
nuclear weapons plant is under construction, activists came together
there near idle bulldozers where they blessed the land and asked
forgiveness in view of its future use.

Tom Kascoli, a Native American of Apache and Navajo background,
blessed each of the assembled, waving an eagle’s feather over a
burning sage stick while chanting a prayer in his native tongue.

Editor's Note: For more photographs from the event Aug. 16 take a look
at the slideshow in below link:
http://picasaweb.google.com/joshua.mac/KansasCityPlantConferenceWeekend?feat=flashalbum#5506406936781327026

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