Under a Blue Sky in Tennessee

We followed the back roads from the great Appalachian Mountains to the Mighty Mississippi, this Fall with presentations in Knoxville, Nashville and Memphis, Tennessee, finding hospitality along the way with friends and family.

In August, New South Network activists Clare Hanrahan and Redmoonsong visited with Bro. Utsumi & Sr. Denise of the Nipponzon Myohoji Buddhist Order at the Great Smoky Mountains Peace Pagoda near Newport, Tennessee.  Work is underway with dedicated volunteers and, when completed, the Peace Pagoda will be visible from miles around, including to those traveling through East Tennessee on Interstate 40. Bro. Utsumi & Sr. Denise will be leading their 11th annual peace walk to Fort Benning and the SOA Watch vigil November 16th through 24th. 

Sign-painting table in Johnson City

In September Coleman and Clare were up around Johnson City, in the Eastern mountains of Tennessee for an activist picnic with Everyone Acting Together in Solidarity. EATS is an outgrowth of the Tri Cities Occupy Movement and is doing great work on issues of social justice, environmental activism and community building.


 In October at the Appalachian Public Interest and Environmental Law Conference in Knoxville we joined with several hundred eco-minded and socially conscious activists, attorneys, students and scientists working to achieve environmental and social justice throughout Appalachia and surrounding areas.

Brethern Pastor Ken Edwards of Jonesboro, Tenn.

Keynote speaker Tom Butler of the Foundation for Deep Ecology, editor of Energy: Overdevelopment and the Delusion of Endless Growth made a compelling presentation as a voice for the inherent rights of wild nature, challenging the view of the natural world as "commodity."
While there we connected and reconnected with folks working on many fronts for environmental and social justice, including Ken Edwards, Brethren Pastor and member of the Appalachian Peace Education Center and Aerojet Action Project. We met with Ken in Jonesboro, Tenn. in August when he hosted the Christian Peacemaker Teams in town to raise awareness of the environmental and human rights impacts of  Aerojet/Rockedyne, a Jonesboro based plant manufacturing "depleted" uranium weapons and polluting the soil and water with uranium.

OREPA Sunday vigil outside gates of Oak Ridge bomb plant

The climate for environmental activism in Tennessee has its challenges.  In June 2013 Huffington Post reported on the chilling remarks of the deputy director of the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation's (TDEC) Division Of Water Resources who warned a public assembly: "...you need to make sure that when you make water quality complaints you have a basis, because federally, if there's no water quality issues, that can be considered under Homeland Security an act of terrorism."  Nothing new there. The Green Scare rears its head everywhere people speak and act on behalf of the Earth.

Educating & Activating along the road

In Oak Ridge, Tenn. we joined with friends from Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance at their long-standing Sunday vigil at the gates of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)nuclear bomb plant. The 35,000 acre site contains hundreds contaminated areas and contaminated surface water and sediment outside the boundary fence,  including the Poplar Creek, the Clinch River, and lower Watts Bar Reservoir of the Tennessee River. From EPA Superfund info. We appreciated the overnight hospitality of Eric & Libby Johnson in Maryville.  On the way to Nashville we passed by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Kingston Fossil Plant in Harriman. On December 22, 2008, a failure of the  dike used to contain fly ash spilled over one billion gallons of fly ash sludge into Watts Barr Lake and the Emory River. The environmental catastrophe was 100 times larger than the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, which released 10.9 million gallons of crude oil.

In Nashville we were hosted by the Nashville Peace Coalition to present our PowerPoint:  Environmental Impact: Atomic Appalachia & the Militarized SouthEast.We appreciated the warm welcome at the Nashville Friends Meeting and the overnight hospitality at Nashville Greenlands, a Catholic Worker Urban Agriculture community, home to legendary war tax resister Karl Meyer.

Traveling West we detoured to Milan, Tennessee, and the WWII era Army Ammunition Plant. The 22,540-acre site is on the EPA Superfund list of most contaminated sites. It has a ground water contamination plume that continues to spread. The once thriving ammunition plant is now a desolate-looking wasteland.  Primary include 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT) and RDX, also known as cyclonite.

Janice Vandarhaar with Atty. Jeribu Hill 

We were in Memphis for the 10th Annual Gandhi-King conference organized by our long time friends at the Mid South Peace & Justice Center. The Keynote speakers were two powerful voices for justice:  Medea Benjamin of Code Pink, speaking on the dangerous use of weaponized  Drones, and Attorney Jeribu Hill, orator and organizer extraordinaire of the Mississippi Workers Center, fighting for the human rights of low-wage workers. Both women spoke with compelling urgency and a call to action.

Setting the Record straight

Memphis is Clare's hometown, and while there we visited the Viet Nam Veterans memorial in Overton Park, taking action to add the names of her two brothers, Dan & Tom, and remembrance of all the victims of PTSD, Agent Orange and Suicide whose names have yet to be etched on the war memorials.  Clare has joined the VFP working group on an alternative/accurate/counter commemoration of the American war in Viet Nam.

We took time out to spend an evening on Beale Street with VFP's Elliott Adams and enjoyed warm Memphis hospitality with Clare's brother Robert and family.

Visiting family & discussing the persistence of racism in Memphis

Coleman Smith & Rev. Charles Utley of S.C. at NRC hearing

 Back home in Asheville, we took the bus to Charlotte, North Carolina to testify before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to emphatically say:  "No More Nukes: We have no confidence in the NRC to safely manage 70,000 tons of existing nuclear waste. Don't make any more! There is no safe level of radiation.

Tennessee is the only state that incinerates nuclear waste, and the state accepted into municipal landfills 38,343,961 lbs of radioactive waste. In 2000, Tennessee accepted 75% of the nations' so-called low-level radioactive waste. 

We're back on the road in November where Clare will be presenting our Powerpoint on Atomic Appalachia and Militarism's environmental impact in the South at the Drone Summit and Coleman will be in Columbus, Ga. at work with the Puppetista Collective for the SOA Watch vigil at the gates of Fort Benning.  In December we've been asked to present at the U.S. Human Rights Forum in Atlanta.  Stay tuned for reports.

Thanks to the ongoing support of our local friends for helping to keep us on the road.  Your support is welcome and much needed to keep us on the ground weaving connections in the Southeast. We especially need help to get to Fort Benning for the annual SOA Watch vigil at the gates.

Photos & Story by Clare Hanrahan

Folks I've just been down, down to Memphis town,
That's where the people smile, smile on you all the while.
Hospitality, they were good to me.
I couldn't spend a dime, and had the grandest time.

The Memphis Blues  (1912) by W. C. Handy (music) and George A. Norton (lyrics)

"The Law is in the Service of Death": Nuclear Weapons Resisters Jailed in Tennessee

"The no trespass law at Y12 is one of a web of laws used to protect Weapons of Mass Destruction...The laws and the courts defend weapons for doomsday. The law is in the service of death. My action at Y12 was to willfully do good in the service of life." 

--Steve Baggarly testifying at Knoxville trial

 The scales of justice were tipped against the defendants long before the trial began," according to a report by the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance. Eight of the twelve Y-12 nuclear resisters convicted of federal trespass at the Y-12 nuclear bomb plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, are being held in the Blount County Adult Detention Center in Maryville after a three-day trial ending May 11 in Knoxville. The Y-12 facility processes uranium for new hydrogen bombs being built to replace W76 warheads on Trident submarine ballistic missiles

Nuclear Resisters gather prior to Federal trial in Knoxville

Asheville organizers Coleman Smith and Judith Hallock of New South Network of War Resisters, joined with the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance and other regional activists in support of defendants who traveled from throughout the U.S.

Judith Hallock, a founding member of the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, was one of 23 arrested in July and convicted on state charges for blocking the road into the Y12 facility.

According to a report by John LaForge in Nukewatch, U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Guyton prohibited the defendants from relying on justification defenses, specifically declared irrelevant  their moral, political or religious beliefs, and declared, "Whether the production of nuclear weapons at the Y-12 National Security Complex violates international law is irrelevant to the present case."

Sr. Mary Dennis Lentsch of Washburn, Tenn. at the gates of Y-12 bomb plant.

Conviction on federal charges carries a potential prison sentence of up to one year for those resisters who crossed the barbed wire fence onto federal property at the bomb plant. Prison and jail time is not a new experience for these valiant activists, each with exemplary records of civil resistance to the crime of nuclear weapons production. 

Sr. Jackie Hudson, 76, of Poulsbo, Washington; Sr. Carol Gilbert, 63, and Sr. Ardeth Platte, 75, both of Baltimore, Maryland; Jean Gump, 83, of Bloomingdale, Michigan; Steve Baggarly, 46, of Norfolk, Virginia;  Bonnie Urfer, 59, of Luck, Wisconsin; and Michael Walli, 62, of Duluth, Minnesota.are all being held at the Blount County Adult Detention Center.  The men are reported to be together in one small unit, while the women have been split between two separate units. 

Fr. Bill Bichsel, 82, of Tacoma, Washington who was already serving a three month prison sentence for the Disarm Now Plowshares action, remains at the Knox County Sheriff's Detention Facility, where federal marshals had delivered him in shackles from a prison in Washington state to stand trial in Knoxville.

The other defendents are Beth Rosdatter, 50, of Lexington, Kentucky.; Sr. Mary Dennis Lentsch, 74, of Washburn, Tennessee; Bradford Lyttle, 83, of Chicago, Illinois; and Dennis DuVall, 69, of Prescott, Arizona. (Ill health prevented a 13th defendant, David Corcoran of Chicago, from participating and the court scheduled an August 22 trial.).

Members of the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance and other supporters have begun visiting the prisoners during the one hour per week they are permitted to have visitors, according to a report by the Nuclear Resister, and commissary accounts have been established for all of the defendants. Contributions for that purpose should be sent by check payable to Sue Ablao and note it is for the Y-12 Resisters. Sue¹s address is: Ground Zero Center For
Nonviolent Action, 16159 Clear Creek Road NW, Poulsbo, WA 98370.

The complete postal addresses for the peace prisoners are listed below and can also be found at http://www.nukeresister.org/inside-out/. Individually addressed letters to the activists held in Blount County
may not contain photos, cards, or any enclosures in addition to your letter.  Your letter should be written on standard 8.5 x 11 paper.

To write individually to Bonnie Urfer, Jackie Hudson, Carol Gilbert, Ardeth Platte, Jean Gump, Michael Walli and Steve Baggarly:

(Inmate's Name)
Blount County Adult Detention Center
920 E. Lamar Alexander Parkway
Maryville, TN 37804-5002

To write to Bill (Bix) Bichsel:
William Bichsel, IDN 1155703
Unit 2B
Knox County Sheriff's Detention Facility
5001 Maloneyville Rd
Knoxville, TN 37918



Report by Clare Hanrahan of New South Network of War Resisters

Hundreds Rally to Resist Tennessee's "Secret City" Y-12 Bomb Plant

 Soldiers in camouflage uniform were dispatched  from the federal side of the barbed-wire fence after the April 16, 2011  rally at the gates of the Y-12 bomb plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Their mission?  To untie the hundreds of paper peace cranes fluttering along the length of the perimeter fence.  

We who marched to the gates of this hellish place through the streets of Tennessee's "secret city," came from throughout the Southeast and as far as Michigan. We were perhaps outnumbered  by the armed security forces on alert behind the barbed wire. Numerous high powered cameras recorded our arrival, no doubt zooming in to capture close-ups of the gathered resistance to the crime and to President Obama's $6.5 billion allotted to pay for more nuclear weapons production at Oak Ridge.

The W-76 and W-76-1 thermonuclear secondaries produced at Y-12 are designed and produced to unleash 100 KT of uncontrollable and indiscriminate heat, blast and radiation, six times more than the Hiroshima bomb, according to a 2009 report in the  Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

As we approached the gates, with Japanese Buddhist drumming and chanting, an officer with the bomb plant security detail issued his gruff order:   "You have five seconds to vacate the road or you will be arrested."  We all complied. There were to be no arrests this time. This was a contrast with the July 2010 civil resistance there where 37 were arrested declaring "Independence from Nuclear Terrorism."  A court date for dozens of these is expected in May at the federal courthouse in Knoxville.

 "U.S. law and international law as U.S. law prohibit threatening or inflicting indiscriminate harm and unnecessary suffering, in any circumstance in war or peace.  Because all nuclear weapons “cannot be contained in space or time,” any use would, ipso facto, constitute a crime against humanity and a war crime including those prepared for use at Y-12."
International Law, Y-12 & Civil Resistance

Story and photos:  Clare Hanrahan