From Hiroshima to Fukushima!
Responding to the Message of Fukushima
by Franciscan Priest Louie Vitale
In “From Hiroshima to Fukushima,” an article published in The Nation on March 15 in the wake of the nuclear power disaster in Japan, historian Jonathan Schell once again hit the mark. ( See www.thenation.com/article/159238/hiroshima-fukushima). The author of …The Fate of the Earth published in the 1980s, Schell again mobilized his brilliance… Given the half-life of plutonium is 24,000 years, Schell opined, humankind should invest at least 12,000 years in intensive study of nuclear power before authorizing any further use of this dangerous technology.
Why can’t this message, which seems so obvious to many of us, not register in Washington?
The day after the magnitude of this disaster began to come chillingly clear, President Obama held a press conference… The president opened with a reference to Libya, making the stock point that the United States needs to be freed from its dependence on foreign oil. He mentioned that we have to produce more of our own oil and commented with pride on new drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. No mention of the BP catastrophe was forthcoming. He then referred to the need to develop alternative sources of energy… followed by a call for the expansion of nuclear energy…
For thirty years, I have been part of a worldwide movement to end the perils posed by nuclear radiation. This movement achieved a global Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and a US moratorium on testing of nuclear arms at the Nevada Test Site. All along, we have raised the concern about nuclear weaponry’s supposedly kinder and gentler twin, nuclear power. Periodically, like this month, humanity is jolted into a new awareness of the dangers posed by nuclear energy. Most of the time, however, we sleep on…
It is time to awaken from our nuclear sleep. Schell’s invocation of the monumental timeline implicit in all things nuclear reminds me of philosopher and activist Joanna Macy’s Nuclear Guardianship Project. It envisions contributing to the political, technical and moral understandings required to keep radioactive materials from further contaminating the biosphere, in order to protect present and future generations. The project proposes shrines at the edge of nuclear facilities, and a global myth of “poison fire” to warn countless future generations of the danger.
The writing on the wall is a glaring radiation symbol. Now is the time to finally listen with our full attention to the survivors of Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Bikini Atoll, and the atomic veterans and cancer victims downwind from the Nevada Test Site in Utah and many other locations. Rather than using this latest disaster as an opportunity to jump-start a long moribund nuclear power industry…we must see it for what it is: a stark message for a new direction, for a Nuclear Guardianship Project to end six decades of wildly dangerous experimentation and to safeguard the future. It is never too soon to start.
Franciscan Priest Louie Vitale is a co-founder of Nevada Desert Experience and Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service. He is currently serving six months in Lompoc, CA federal prison for engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia last November protesting torture training. He has spent years in jail and prison for non-violent resistance to war, nuclear arms and injustice — he is a true peacemaker and justice seeker. Mahalo Louie.
War & Nuclear Power: Never Again!
1. Mourn all victims of violence. 2. Reject war as a solution. 3. Defend civil liberties. 4. Oppose all discrimination, anti-Islamic, anti-Semitic, etc. 5. Seek peace through justice in Hawai`i and around the world.
Contact: Malu `Aina Center for Non-violent Education & Action P.O. Box AB Kurtistown, Hawai`i 96760.
Phone (808) 966-7622. Email ja@interpac.net http://www.malu-aina.org
Hilo Peace Vigil leaflet (April 8, 2011 – 499th week) – Friday 3:30-5PM downtown Post Office
