Greenham Lecture
What do you know about nuclear weapons?
Why are nuclear weapons and nuclear power problematic?
* Genocide- an indiscriminant weapon created to be used on civilian populations.
* Radiation released from every stage in the production cycle spreads.
Radiation is a verb, an action word, because it causes mutations that spread genetically into the future. Radiation also causes cancer, immune system destruction, birth defects, and it stays radioactive for 250,000 years. There is no way to dispose of it, and no safe way to store it.
Mining- Plutonium requires the mining of Uranium. thousands of tons of radioactive waste is created for every ton of uranium that is taken from deep in the earth. There’s continual contamination of indigenous and tribal lands in North America, Australia, Africa, Asia from the mining of uranium.
Enrichment- Then it must be enriched, so we can use it in nuclear weapons, which creates much more waste
Weapons of Mass Destruction- There are 60,000 warheads worldwide, ready to launch on hair trigger alert. We think there are that many, but there may be more. There have been many accidents—we don't know how many because most have been covered up. What would a nuclear accident mean?
Testing- There have been over 2,000 nuclear explosions since World War Two in testing weapons alone. This has caused global fallout. There’ve been over 740 underground explosions at The Nevada Test Site alone. Small Pacific Islands have been evacuated forever because they were used for testing and became too contaminated with radioactivity for life to survive on them.
Missing- thousands of pounds of radioactive weapons-grade plutonium world-wide.
Contamination- At Pueblo Army Depot, hundreds of Pershing missiles were burned in the open air. At Rocky Flats, plutonium contaminated waste was burned, buried, and sprayed for 40 years, all illegally. The FBI raided Rocky Flats in 1989
2001, the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge joined the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge as ironic and insane reminders of terrible idea and policy.
Read "The Ambushed Grand Jury" by John Lipsky; "Full Body Burden", by Kristin Iverson
Rocky Flats produced 2,000 plutonium pits a year, triggers for every nuclear bomb in the US stockpile of 25,000 bombs.
Also, there is nuclear power—Three Mile Island, Chernobly, Fukushima- all these were core meltdowns. The radiation from Fukishima became measurable on the west coast of the U.S. In 2011. Officials have long since stopped measuring in Japan.
What do you know about Civil Disobedience?
What do you know about the history of the anti-war movement?
To understand political movements, it’s helpful to ask these questions—
1. What is the problem you’re trying to solve?
2. Who are the people involved who you want to organize or fight against?
3. What is the foundation of this movement?
4. How has the movement, or the problem, changed over time?
5. What has been/ will be the backlash?
The problem, the people, the foundation, how it's changed over time, the backlash.
So, tell me— what is the purpose of the law?
What is the purpose the military?
Why is it good to break the law?
What is international law?
Dissent is patriotic.
"A patriot is one who fights for the soul of her country." (A.Rich)
* What is the foundation the anti-war movement is built upon?
The Suffragettes, Ghandi, Thoreau, King, Lysistrata, union movements, May Day 1916 in Seattle, Anti-war protests—"no conscription for WW1, Vietnam protests, the womyn's movement and feminism, the civil rights struggle.
Greenham Common was for womyn-only. Why do you imagine that would be?
How would that make this movement more successful?
Greenham RESISTANCE —SYMBOLISM and OCCUPATION
The Imagery of Polarities, of a choice of war and to patriarchy, or community, nature, women—the webs, the music, the collectivity —"Pain experienced in public is no longer pain, but communion" (Joanna Macy). Womyn sharing and living communally, operating on a different level than the 'rational discourse' of defense. We had a creative, emotionally driven logic. We practiced communal sharing of all camp resources, and had no leaders. And, of course, the unavoidable gendered propaganda of womyn as nurturers, womyn protecting future generations, life givers vs death givers and all that, and our connection to nature, on the 'womyn-side' of the fence.
What We Did
Defying physical boundaries (the fence)
Defying female social roles. Womyn filling spaces they'd never fill if men were there.
Reclaiming The Commons.
Creating a spectacle that stops the spectacle of war as 'business as usual.'
Disobeying the notion of place— In theories of movements and radical social change-making, academics talk about "formal territories". And "claiming space to describe boundaries and rules. It’s all made very physical. When we look at the physical spaces of both Greenham Common Womyn's Peace Camp, and Occupy Wall St, it turns out that a nuclear air force base is a formal institution, a public space where behavior is usually "normally" strictly controlled. Like Wall St, a nuclear base is heavily symbolic of the landscape of Patriarchy.
Transgress means to break the rules. Greenham is an example of a radical feminist transgression, where womyn commandeered a patriarchal landscape, and commanded an occupation— where we claimed space and claimed voice in a political landscape of a culture that doesn't usually imagine womyn having space and voice, politically.
From my essay: "Greenham was the first Occupy, which created a spectacle that stopped the daily spectacle of cultural madness. The public spaces they claimed were both deeply symbolic spaces where behavior had been strictly controlled. Both spaces are formal institutions, stabilized by Certainty. Nuclear weapons are seen as the ultimate solution to conflict. Bankers are seen as the sole arbiters of wealth and of debt. Governments are seen as democratic, responding to the sovereign will of the people. If enough of us can gather together, passionately and creatively, and withhold our consent, if we refuse to agree to these orderly hierarchical scenarios, then we reveal the naked emperor for all to see. And the more people pointing the better."
Explain
"Politics" and "Power"— Power means what you are able to do. Politics is the study of Power— the interrogation of what you are, and are not, allowed to do or have, and WHY.
Nonviolent Direct Action— vs. NO action— Sometimes symbolic, always creative, a refusal to cooperate, often there are fines, injuries, and jail time.
Womyn Only— in my previous experienced in mixed groups, men took up all the political space and left housekeeping and other menial tasks to womyn. Issues of male dominance were always present.
Womyn learned power and their own fearlessness. A constant questioning that changed everything.
Here's a question: Would womyn create "The Rocky Mountain Arsenal Wildlife Refuge"? Would we make fracking, Monsanto, wars?
Are there "feminine attributes", or are there just qualities that male supremacy has attributed to us for their own use? Maybe womyn value care and are defined as 'caring' because men have valued US according to the care we give to them, and because we could probably use some ourselves. Maybe womyn think in relational terms because our existence has defined, for thousands of years, in relation to men— daughter, wife, mother. Furthermore, when you are powerless, you don't just speak differently, lots of times you just don't speak. We spoke loudly from our peace camp.
Beba Kidron "Your Greenham Common"
Show chapters—
March to Greenham
A day in the Life
Politics at Greenham
The Fabric of Greenham
Blockading the Base
Bringing the Fence Down
* Zapping-- Electromagnetic weapons that hit the target's central nervous system and cause physical pain, disorientation, feelings of dread, vivid frightening dreams, confusion, and sunburnt skin.
Evictions Cruise-watch, CND
Cruise Convoy--Could never 'melt into the countryside'; it didn't work, because of us. Womyn brought every nuclear exercise, for 11 years, to a close. They never had a successful deployment, ever.
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