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Hundreds Protest Nuclear Weapons in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

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Monday, 11 August 2003

by Marcelle Good

Email: marcellegood@yahoo.com

Phone: 865-483-8202

Summary: Hundreds gathered on Sunday, August 10 to protest the production of nuclear weapons at the Y12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Six people were arrested after chaining the gates of the bomb plant shut. The event commemorated Hiroshima and Nagasaki days. Components for the weapons used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were produced at the Y12 complex.

Demonstrators in Oak Ridge, Tennessee closed the Y12 National Security Complex, where the United States of America produces thermonuclear weapons of mass destruction in a nonviolent direct action commemorating the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. Six people were arrested Sunday afternoon, August 10, 2003, for chaining the gates of the bomb plant shut.

Several protesters were held overnight in Anderson County Jail. Activists from more than nine states converged on the Y12 Plant in a protest as part of a weekıs activities under the banner DISARMAMENT BEGINS AT HOME.

³It seems like everyone agrees that Weapons of Mass Destruction are horrible and must be eliminated,² said Marcelle Good, OREPA spokesperson. ³Yet the United States continues to make the nastiest weapons of all. We are here to say what should be obvious.

If we want other nations to stop making these weapons, we have to stop doing it ourselves. Disarmament begins at home.²

More than 300 people marched nearly two miles to the bomb plant where they held an afternoon rally for peace. At the end of the day, protesters approached the gates of the bomb plant with ashes which they sprinkled on the ground, tied in small pouches on the fence, and tossed into the wind. The ashes served as a reminder of the destructive power of nuclear weapons and a recognition that weapons produced at Y12 still threaten to turn the earth to ashes.

³We carry these ashes to represent the strong unbroken line between the suffering of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and our commitment to eradicating these weapons once and for all,² said the Rev. Erik Johnson of Knoxville, TN, one of those arrested.

Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of the archdiocese of Detroit participated in a separate nonviolent direct action; he was not arrested. Gumbleton has issued a call to members of Pax Christi, USA to oppose bomb production in Oak Ridge. ³We must put our bodies on the line here,² he said. Gumbleton was arrested in August 2001 when a blockade of the bomb plant during rush hour closed the facility for half an hour; charges were later dropped.

³We simply have to do everything we can to stop nuclear weapons,² said Ross before her arrest.

The action, sponsored by the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance and Pax Christi, USA, is part of the Stop the Bombs campaign launched in 1998.

³It is gratifying to have people come from around the country,² said Ralph Hutchison, OREPA coordinator. ³We expect larger and larger demonstrations here—people recognize almost instantly the hypocrisy in our policies and the simple common sense of DISARMAMENT BEGINS AT HOME.²

Tennessee IMC: http://www.tnimc.org/