The National Nuclear Security Administration has proposed an oversized, "capacity-based" Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) in Oak Ridge to manufacture thermonuclear secondaries for 80 nuclear warheads a year. The new production facility at Y-12 is estimated to cost somewhere in the range of $4.2 billion to $6.5 billion, or more. The recently released 2014 DOE Budget proposes $7.87 billion for weapons activities, an increase of $654 million, or nine percent above the 2012 enacted level, "to maintain a safe, secure, and effective nuclear deterrent." An expanded Uranium Processing Facility would enable the production of new design nuclear weapons into the indefinite future, according to the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance.
Sr. Mary Dennis Lentsch, who has seven convictions at Y12 and served time prison and jail for acts of conscience against nuclear weapons says it well:
"Continuing nuclear weapons production at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, is in direct violation of the treaty obligations of the United States (The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Article VI), and therefore is a violation of Article 6 of the Constitution of the United States of America and fails to conform to our obligations under international law according to the ruling of the International Court of Justice, July 8, 1996."
The rally in Bissell Park was energized with music by the Knoxville band, Emancipators, and a creative puppet show dramatizing the human costs of nuclear weapons spending. The three Transform Now! Plowshares activists, in town for a court hearing prior to their May 7 trial, addressed the crowd. Then we set off along the sidewalk for the two mile walk to the bomb plant.
"What we hope to do is tie peace cranes on the fence, then move to the other side of the road," Hutchinson told the gathering. "If you want to cross the fence, expect considerable time in a federal prison." The Transform Now Activists are facing up to 35 years imprisonment for their nonviolent breach of plant security.
Police patrol cars cruised up and down the route to the bomb plant with some pacing the walkers by driving alongside. One young peace walker recorded the vehicle numbers of nine separate Oak Ridge police cars. We were under close scrutiny.
As the walk began, one legal observer, standing on a grassy median to observe, was warned by police to get back to the sidewalk. He complied. A few blocks later, on Tulane near Illinois, Legal Observer Bill Ramsey stepped off the curb to follow alongside the walkers. A squad car pulled up, and two officers jumped out.
Ramsey, of Asheville,
NC, was whisked off into police custody. As a Southeast
organizer with the American Friends Service Committee thirty four years earlier, Ramsey had worked with others in Knoxville and Oak Ridge on three public hearings about the environmental impact, health &
worker safety and economic impact of the bomb plant. "My concern is with the
restrictive climate for First Amendment Rights in Oak Ridge," Ramsey said, "and my joy is that there are still people organizing for an alternative to nuclear weapons production.
As the walk proceeded,
turning on Illinois Avenue, passersby
in cars and trucks yelled "Go home!" and "Remember Pearl Harbor." No one
responded to the taunts.
Japanese Buddhist Monk, Gyoshu Utsumi and Sister Denise Laffin, of the Nipponzan Myohoji order, led the walk, chanting and drumming their traditional prayer for peace, as they have done for decades, walking to weapons plants, mountain top removal coal mining sites, military installations, and commemorations of civil rights struggles in the south. As the walkers stopped at a crosswalk at Tulsa Ave., awaiting the change of light, Bro. Utsumi and Knoxville resident Larry Coleman, stepped off the curb in anticipation of the changing light. Five police rushed to arrest, and the Buddhist monk and the anti- nuclear activist were quickly taken away and officers directed the marcher to "Keep moving."
One of the participants, Asheville, North Carolina, Veterans for Peace member Jim Brown who organized a van of 13 to the rally, noticed soon after that his van, and other vehicles belonging to demonstrators, were no longer parked where they had left them. After several queries of police officers riding alongside the walkers, he discovered the vehicles had been towed. The fee for retrieval was $160 per vehicle. Maryville, Tenn. resident and OREPA organizer Rev. Erik Johnson's van was not only towed, but the bomb squad was called in because of the small gas container in the van he had used to bring fuel for the generator for the rally musicians.
As we proceeded to the gate, somewhat bewildered at the hostile and aggressive police actions, it became clear that we would be prevented from approaching the fence with our origami peace cranes. Dozens of Oak Ridge Police were visible, standing at the Bear Creek Road entrance to the bomb plant. They directed walkers to a roadside grassy area across the rail tracks, to a space barely large enough for the walkers to stand, with water filled depressions and sloping ground. Each walker was filmed close up with a police camera and warned to stay five feet from the white line on the edge of the highway.
In the distance, other security vehicles and personnel were visible at the guardhouse entrance further up Bear Creek road.
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