Burning Fires (Spring/Summer 1995)
Nuclear Technology & Communities of Color (Vol.5, No.3&4: Spring/Summer 1995)
U.S.
Army General Leslie Groves and nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer
designed the Manhattan Project according to the military model: secrecy
was created and sustained by compartmentalizing every phase of the
work. The Project that produced the first atomic bomb was spread over
thirty-seven installations scattered across the
In
the crafting of the Nuclear Age, the same forces of
compartmentalization and secrecy used in the Manhattan Project merged
with the psychological, sociological, economic, and political forces
that have shaped environmental racism. The result: a suspiciously high
percentage of research laboratories, test sites, reactors, and waste
dumps are housed in communities deemed “the middle of nowhere” and “the
other side of the tracks” and inhabited by people deemed “poor,
uneducated, and politically ineffective.”
How could it have been otherwise?
Ever
since western world views emphasizing the domination of nature and
“progress” replaced the older ecological philosophies of
people-in-relation-to-the-cosmos, the theme of human experience has
centered on arms build-up, expansionism, and colonization.
The
unraveling of this union has begun. At the World Uranium Hearing in
Austria in 1992, people of color from all over the world—from Namibia,
Tahiti, Mongolia, Tibet, the American West, Canada, Peru, the Arctic
Circle—testified to a board of scientists, journalists, and scholars
about the effects of nuclear development on native peoples. Remarkable
facts were revealed: over 70 percent of the world’s uranium deposits
lie on lands inhabited and considered sacred by indigenous peoples. For
every ton of uranium oxide used by the nuclear industry, up to 40,000
tons (still emanating 85 percent of the ore’s original radioactivity)
remain behind—often left in mounds, seeping into the water table,
scattering in the wind across indigenous lands. Nuclear testing
disproportionately rains down upon people of color. And today
industrialized nations are luring impoverished tribal governments with
promises of money in exchange for storing nuclear waste on their
ancestral lands.
Beginning
with physicist Enrico Fermi’s revealing declaration at the moment the
scientists realized they could catalyze a controlled chain reaction,
this issue of Race, Poverty & the Environment marks the 50th
anniversary of the Nuclear Age by tracing the intertwining of the
nuclear fuel cycle with the contamination—and activism—of communities
of color.
People
of color have borne more than the lion’s share of the toxic effects of
development. And yet, despite the injustice of the situation, if we do
not do our job of caring for and communing with our beautiful world,
all is lost. In this issue of Race, Poverty & the
Environment, we hope to reveal to you the tragic connections between
nuclear development and the suffering communities of color—and to
inspire you to join the struggle to stop this source of pain and
dislocation before another fifty years pass.
--Chellis Glendinning
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In this issue...
2 "6 August 1945"
4 The American Hibakusha
5 Depleted Uranium: Legacy of the Gulf War
by Dolly Lymburner
6 Remembering the Cuban Missile Crisis
by Carl Anthony
9 Los Alamos DC: Growing Up Under a Cloud of Secrecy
by Hilario Romero
11 Radiation and AIDS
by Jay Gould and Benjamin Goldman
12 IQ Is Affected by Fallout
by Jay Gould and Benjamin Goldman
13 Fight Back: Uranium Mining in the Grants Mineral Belt
by Simon Ortiz
16 The Jackpile Mine: Testimony of a Miner
by Dorothy Ann Purley
18 Secrecy and Disregard at Savannah River
by Mildred McClain
20 You CANT Do It in Claiborne Parish LA
by Citizens Against Nuclear Trash
22 Death on the Road: Transportation of Spent Fuel Rods
by Nancy J. Nadel
26 Another Broken Promise
by Manuel Pino
28 High Hopes: Testimony on Human Radiation Experimentation
by Caroline Cannon
29 Other Than Honorable: An Atomic Bomb Veteran
by William Hodsden
32 Indian Nations Go Nuclear Free
by Chuck Johnson
34 A Premonition Fuels Mescalero Apache Struggle
by Rufina Marie Laws
37 Who Here Will Begin This Story?
by Herman Agoyo
39 The Declaration of Salzburg
41 Only Justice Can Stop a Curse
by Alice Walker
43 Resources
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