When we got there the Brass Liberation Orchestra was gearing up to play. They would circle for a while and then sputter a bit. Maybe a few bars of toe tapping rhythm. Then they'd huddle some more and start something else. Finally a nod went through them and they kept playing. Great background or dance music. Somebody gave me the flier you can read by clicking the "NoNukesAction" above. Other people were brandishing signs for the camera.

        

        

     

The guy in the black leather jacket started the speaking and worked as the MC. I think he mentioned some upcoming stuff. Then he handed the mike to the guy in the green shirt, who wrote an investigative article about the history behind Fukushima for the Bay Guardian.

The guy asked the question "why did they put the fuel rod cooling pools above the reactors, which was probably the dumbest place they could put them?" He explained that the nuclear power plants were agreed to by the loosers of WWII because the U.S. Military wanted them to get it. Don't forget, there was an occupying army there at the time. The design was a scaled up version of what the USA had in our nuclear submarines, which they were sure worked.

     

The woman from the Western States Legal Foundation said Fukushima just provides a further warning that we need to put all our nuclear waste in a fail safe situation before more things like this happen. She pointed out that we have created waste that will probably be dangerous for a 100,000 years. Egypt's pyramids are only 5,000 years old. How do we keep future generations from going in there? Make the location secret or put up warning signs? The pyramids had warning signs, but we ignored them.

The guy asked us to donate to earthquake/tsunami/nuclear disaster relief. Click on his picture to visit the URL that he was handing out orange fliers for.

     

The folk band sang some Japanese folk music for us. A Japanese-American woman I was standing near told me that they were singing a south island folk song in an accent so thick she could barely understand it. I guess that made what they were doing the Japanese equivalent of Dixieland Jazz, except with a slow and thoughtful mood. It sounded good.

When they introduced this guy they said he had been instrumental in the campaign to shut down Rancho Secho nuclear power plant near Sacramento. He talked about this initiative to shut down California's two remaining nuclear power plants. He is working on getting it ready to gather signatures on. Right now the Attorney General has just given him an initiative summary that is so PG&E friendly that nobody would sign it. He is appealing the summary in court, an unprecedented maneuver. Once they change it he expects to have five weeks to gather a half million signatures.

I just know he is going to need A LOT of help with that. I wish I knew where to send you for more information. Check back later and maybe I can put it here.

        

        

The organizer said we need to work together in the most thoughtful way possible to achieve better outcomes in the future.

Carol Brouillet said that nuclear contamination shortens lives. She also referred people back to our previous event and the articles about it. Click here to see my memory of it. After that there was a bit of schmoozing before we hit the road.

The trip back to Palo Alto was interesting. Jan joined us in Carol's carpool. Turns out he was named after some South African activist I'd never heard of before. Getting from there to the San Jose Peace Center to donate home cooked beans on behalf of the Santa Clara County Green Party to the movie audience was a big rush. Luckily I got to the Caltrain station just before the last reasonable train. There was on time to spare.