Pacific Life Community - Resisting At Bangor

Friends,

This weekend, members of the Pacific Life Community (PLC) held their annual retreat here in the Northwest, and commemorated the 55th anniversary of the US “Bravo” nuclear bomb detonation at Bikini Atoll on Sunday, March 1 with a vigil and non-violent resistance action at the gates of Bangor Trident Submarine Base in Kitsap County. Participants came from as far away as Michigan, Arizona, Nevada and California.

Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action (GZ) hosted the event, and members of both PLC and GZ participated. Six members of PLC were arrested by Federal authorities after crossing the blue line onto the base and blocking the entrance, and five members of GZ were arrested by the County Sheriff after blocking the roadway, holding a banner about the deaths attributed to the Bravo test 55 years ago.

You can watch a slide show of the day's events below; click on the photo to view the full screen version:



Resisters read the following statement before they made their way onto the roadway.

CITIZEN ACTION STATEMENT AT SUB BASE BANGOR ON OCCASION OF 55TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIKINI ATOLL NUCLEAR TEST

March 1, 2009

On March 1st, 1955, 55 years ago, the U.S. nuclear test, Castle Bravo, was conducted in the Marshall Islands, Bikini Atoll. At 15 megatons it was the largest nuclear explosion ever perpetrated by the United States, creating a crater 1.2 miles in diameter. The explosion of dry-fuel thermonuclear fuel exceeded the expectations of the scientists and has been labeled an exercise of “human fallibility.”

The test affected U.S. service personnel on ships, natives of Rongelap Island, 100 miles from the test, and Utrick Island, 300 miles distant; and fishermen on a Japanese vessel. Victims ensued among all these entities. Ten years later one death of an islander and 90% of the population experienced thyroid tumors. How many more have died since from nuclear radiation cancers? Compensation is still denied to Islanders. The environment cannot be compensated.

This March 1, 2009 citizen’s intervention of Trident Bangor Sub Base remembers all the victims of nuclear weapons testing: their uprooting, sufferings, and deaths. Our action also stands on the side of International Law and human morality that all nuclear weapons must be abolished.

The creative human energy and the natural resources used for Trident must be converted to creating a viable human and living species environment.

The Pacific Life Community is "committed to ending nuclear weapons and war-making through nonviolent direct action along the Pacific Rim in collaboration with the global peace movement." Ground Zero Center is dedicated to abolishing Trident and all nuclear weapons through nonviolent resistance. Click on the following links for more information on the Pacific Life Community and Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action.

Peace,

Leonard