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Communities Re-Connect the Dots of the Nuclear Age

IMC-US, 11.08.2006

Over the past week, over 80 communities came together across 24 US states to remember the US bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in a new way.

Remembrances of the first and only two detonations of nuclear bombs as acts of war are a regular occurrence in cities across the US each August. This year, though, a coalition of anti-war groups including the War Resistor's League, Global Call Iraq, and United for Peace and Justice joined forces to take this remembrance to a new level. The “Stop Bechtel” campaign provided a web-based clearinghouse of resources for communities to organize under the banner, “From Hiroshima to Yucca Mountain to the Middle East: No Nukes! No Wars! End War Profiteering! Support Indigenous Rights!”

The coalition focused on the Bechtel Corporation – the world's #1 nuclear profiteer – because it "connects the dots" between the anti-war, anti-nuclear, environmental, and indigenous rights movements. Not only did Bechtel have a hand in developing the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and more than a hand in the mess that is behind US interests in the Middle East, but it receives billions of taxpayer dollars to both perpetuate the nuclear agenda through the development of test sites and production plants, and "manage" the radioactive waste its plants are generating. Both stages of this dubious enterprise are implemented at the expense and on the backs of the environment and indigenous populations – most notably a proposed disposal facility on Yucca Mountain in Nevada, on land designated to the Western Shoshone Nation by treaty.

Local events focused on highlighting these connections:
SF Bay Area IMC: Protests Mark 61st Anniversaries of Atomic Bombings | Santa Cruz IMC: Dismantling the Bomb and Constructing Peace | Pittsburgh IMC: Activists march on Bechtel-Bettis in West Mifflin | Binghamton IMC: Hiroshima/Nagasaki Day Remembrance Breakfast | Nevada Test Site | Los Alamos National Laboratory | Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Bechtel Corporate HQ (Bay Area) | Y12 National Security Complex (Oak Ridge, TN) | Pantex Plant (Panhandle, TX) | Bechtel Corporate Offices in NYC

Related: Indypendent: Peace Activists Take On War Profiteers | Alternet: Bechtel Takes a Hit for War Profiteering | Portland IMC: "I Didn't Want to Remember" -- Reflections on Nagasaki







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