Today I attended an event commemorating the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan seventy years ago, and on August 6th there had been an event commemorating the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. Both events were held at Ashley Pond in Los Alamos, New Mexico, the home of the design and building of the atomic bomb. In the early 1940’s a secret project, known as the Manhattan Project, (you can read more about it here) was begun high in the mountains of New Mexico where the ultimate “company town” was created with the intention of being the first nation to create an atomic weapon. This was not uninhabited land, in fact this area has been inhabited by the indigenous Tewa people since time immemorial. Needless to say, they were removed from their precious and sacred lands so that this project could be conducted in secret. To the present day the native people of these lands have never received reparations and they face continued pollution from the Los Alamos National Lab, aka LANL, that gives them cancer, causes miscarriages and a host of other health problems not to mention the economic injustice of a lack of employment opportunities in the area other than at LANL. Imagine needing to work for those who stole your land and continue to harm your people and pollute your land?
So that is a little bit of the history of the seemingly benign town of Los Alamos in the stunningly beautiful mountains of Northern New Mexico. Today we gathered as part of the national conference of Campaign Nonviolence to remember this injustice as well as the horror of a leading democratic power dropping, for the second time in a few days, an atomic bomb on a civilian population. The explosion unleashed the equivalent force of 22,000 tons of TNT. The … number killed is estimated at anywhere between 60,000 and 80,000 (exact figures are impossible, the blast having obliterated bodies and disintegrated records).
In my opinion those vaporized by the initial blast were probably the lucky ones, not having to live through the living hell that followed and continues to this day with genetic damage and cancer, not to mention the mental nightmare of having survived such a horror. I think that this is important for us to think about and remember lest we have to live through another nuclear explosion somewhere on the planet with far more destructive weapons than existed in 1945. There are 15,695 nuclear weapons stockpiled today and the US and Russia hold 93% of them. The US government is planning to spend $355 billion over the next decade and a trillion dollars over the next 30 years to modernize its stockpiles. A very dangerous and destabilizing, not to mention very expensive, project. This could easily trigger a new and costly (in many ways) arms race between the US and Russia as well as the other nuclear powers.
I believe that one of the reasons that this is even possible, especially in this era of budget cutbacks in education, health care, infrastructure and other ways that our government traditionally has helped its citizens, is that most of us have no idea that this is even being considered. We must become informed as citizens so that we can let our voices be heard. Right now we have an historic opportunity to sign a treaty with Iran and reduce tensions in the Middle East in a nonviolent manner, rather than going to war – what seems to have become our default mode of crises resolution. If we believe that nuclear weapons have to be eliminated to protect humanity then this is a golden opportunity to take that stand.
Nuclear weapons are not really considered polite dinner talk but we can no longer shove under the carpet issues that are difficult to discuss. Just as we have to face the blatant racism in our country as evidenced by the fact that if you are a black unarmed man you have a 40% greater chance of being shot by police than any other demographic. We also have to talk about the dangers that we all face collectively with nuclear weapons. In order to make any changes whether personally, as a community, as a nation or as a global citizenry we must look at the truth in front of us.
The truth of the matter is there is no reason for any civilized society to possess thousands of weapons of mass destruction. There is no reason for any country that claims it cares about its citizens to divert hundreds of billions of tax dollars to programs that lead to more and more dangerous weapons, especially when citizens are hungry and homeless, when education is out of reach for most and a civil society is crumbling before our eyes with mass shootings become relatively common events.
I think its time to try something new. It is time to become more civilized, more humane and compassionate. Time to see if man can evolve and break a cycle of violence that has existed for thousands of years. Will you join me in visualizing this and being this change?
“If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. … We need not wait to see what others do.” Mahatma Gandhi