Organizing Notes

Bruce Gagnon is coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. He offers his own reflections on organizing and the state of America's declining empire....

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Location: Brunswick, ME, United States

The collapsing US military & economic empire is making Washington & NATO even more dangerous. US could not beat the Taliban but thinks it can take on China-Russia-Iran...a sign of psychopathology for sure. We must all do more to help stop this western corporate arrogance that puts the future generations lives in despair. @BruceKGagnon

Saturday, April 02, 2011

REMEMBERING PLOWSHARES ACTION 20 YEARS LATER

Before dawn on Easter March 31, 1991 Phil Berrigan, Daniel Sicken, Barry Roth, Tom Lewis, and Kathy Boylan boarded the USS Gettysburg, an Aegis destroyer that was docked at Bath Iron Works in Maine. They hammered and poured blood on the missile hatches. It became a huge story in Maine. The charges were dropped the day before they were set to go to trial.

On Friday, April 1 the surviving members (Daniel, Barry and Kathy) of the Aegis Plowshares held a 20th anniversary reunion vigil at BIW and then a pot luck supper at the Addams-Melman House in Bath. A severe snow storm that same day though hampered the turnout but still twenty hearty souls turned up for the vigil at the shipyard and the pot luck that followed. Then again this morning another vigil was held at the shipyard as the Saturday shift was getting out of work.

It was a wonderful reunion for the Aegis plowshares and their supporters.

The ships are outfitted with "missile defense" (MD) systems and are key components in the U.S first-strike attack system. Their job would be to knock out a given country's nuclear retaliatory forces after the initial U.S. attack.

One of these Aegis MD systems was used by the Pentagon to hit a falling U.S. military satellite in 2008 proving they also had the capability to serve as an anti-satellite weapon. Obama is now deploying these Aegis destroyers with their MD systems around Russia and China.

A very fine article about the reunion vigil appeared in our local newspaper yesterday. See it here

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