 Too often around this time of year, we tend to only hear two types of stories of Native Americans: colonialist myths evoking racist stereotypes and true stories of immense historical trauma. The former continues to cause harm by dehumanizing contemporary Native peoples into caricatures. The latter is important to teach and understand, but also often fails to tell what happened to the survivors of colonial genocidal acts and their descendants. Especially in southern New England, many of those descendants continued to carry on Indigenous practices, often balancing traditional ways with the demands of living under an alien colonial government and, later, within a “modern” nation-state that formed over them. Despite the combination of economic, cultural, and political pressures that disparaged Native traditions and sought to push Native Americans into conformity with the white social hegemony, some Indigenous people were able to pass along such traditional knowledge to the next generation.
The Dovecrest Restaurant was the result of one of those Native families who managed to balance between old and new ways. Founded by Eleanor (Pretty Flower, 1918-2019) and Ferris Babcock Dove (Chief Roaring Bull, 1915-1983), both members of the Narragansett/Niantic Tribal Nation, Dovecrest was a family-operated restaurant that came to be known for its unique offering of Indigenous cuisine. From 1963 to 1984, the Doves and their extended family promoted Narragansett/Niantic culture through Native culinary arts. Eleanor herself had grown up in a family of chefs. But Dovecrest was more than just a restaurant. The main dining room of the restaurant could seat up to 90 people, and the restaurant itself became a cultural center for Narragansett/Niantic people. In the late ‘60s, the Doves invited fellow Narragansett/Niantic member Red Wing (Mary E. Congdon, 1896-1897) to live at Dovecrest. Red Wing was the co-founder and curator of the original Tomaquag Museum and an internationally known storyteller and keeper of cultural knowledge for the Narragansett/Niantic and Wampanoag Tribes. When the original Tomaquag Museum in Ashaway closed in 1969, it was relocated to Dovecrest and so well integrated into the restaurant that soon, Dovecrest and Tomaquag became effectively synonymous. Once Red Wing made the move, she and the Doves hosted several Indigenous thanksgivings at Dovecrest throughout the year. They would invite Native and non-Native peoples alike to join together to celebrate and learn more about the Indigenous culture of their area — something that almost never happened outside of powwows. The restaurant also sat adjacent to the Doves’ home, where the western part of the building was designated as the Dovecrest Trading Post: a gift shop selling “a variety of Indigenous art, clothing and jewelry from all over the United States.” Below, we have an excerpt from the Tomaquag Museum’s blog Belongings about the Dovecrest Restaurant. Check the source below the excerpt for the link to the full blog post, which includes additional details on the Dove family, Red Wing, the thanksgiving celebrations at Dovecrest, and more. On the Belongings blog page, you will also find four special Indigenous recipes! — …Initially, when the Doves had opened Dovecrest Restaurant the menu offered “standard steakhouse fare,” which was typically considered main dishes such as beef steaks, pork chops chicken and seafood with sides of vegetables and hearty soups, stews and chowders- your typical Yankee style meat and potatoes type restaurant. (This was very much the backbone of the Dovecrest Restaurant for its entire existence.) It wasn’t until a few years after Dovecrest was in operation that patrons of the restaurant noticed that the Doves were preparing different meals for their children in the room behind the kitchen. These meals comprised of wild meats, or “game” meats. Soon, customers were asking that if instead of ordering the standard steakhouse fare, they were able to order dishes such as venison stew and creamed dried cod. Venison was of course an important staple for the Indigenous people throughout time on both the North and South American continents. Venison was essential to both survival and culture as the white tailed deer provided not only food, but clothing, adornments and tools. Ferris, in his own words, “When I was growing up in Charlestown, we depended on food like venison. We would have feasts of venison steaks, oysters we pulled from the bay, Johnnycakes and potatoes. This was 1930, and only the poor people were eating that stuff. Now it’s a delicacy. Isn’t it funny how things change?” And things did change. Slowly, but surely the Doves began incorporating wild game and other traditional Indigenous recipes, some that Eleanor had learned from her father, Joseph Spears, Sr. (who had also been a chef at the University Club in Providence) into the menu. These wild games were then appeared on for special occasions or whenever wild game or shellfish happened to be available and/or in season. Eleanor said she tried to always keep one game dish on the menu, but it was often difficult to have a steady stock on hand. Many of the wild game was procured locally, from friends and neighbors who hunted, but for other types of game, such as bison they had to rely on private, out of state distributors such as ranch in Western Massachusetts or Iron Gate Products in Manhattan. As the specialty wild game dishes began appearing on the menu, word traveled fast and Dovecrest started to become well known as a restaurant that was not only owned and operated by Indigenous people-at that time the only such establishment east of the Mississippi River-but Indigenous people who were also serving traditional Indigenous foods in this small, out of the way place in rural Exeter. One of the dishes which became a specialty at Dovecrest was a “briny fresh clam chowder” which were of course locally sourced from Narragansett Bay and other locations in Rhode Island and were shucked by Ferris every Friday and according to Eleanor “does it faster than anyone I’ve ever seen.” In addition to the venison stew, creamed dried cod and briny; or Rhode Island style clam chowder, Dovecrest entrees on the menu could include bison steak and pie, quahog pie, venison steak and pie, rabbit stew, squirrel pie, racoon pie, bear, elk, succotash, Indian pudding-and what they became most famous for, Johnnycakes. Johnnycakes, or “Journey cakes” as they were known during the contact (Colonial) period, were a traditional staple of Indigenous people throughout North America and the Caribbean before the invasion of Europeans and was quickly adopted by European colonists and anglicized into what we know now as Johnnycakes. Usually (but not always) they are made out of ground white flint maize, water, milk and butter, salted with a little sugar and cooked on a griddle until deep golden brown, Johnnycakes then became a staple of European colonial life and like many of the plants and animals in the Americas slowly had their Indigenous roots erased through time. Johnnycakes were served plain, as is, or with additional local, seasonal ingredients such as maple syrup, blueberries and cranberries. Over the years as their reputation grew, Dovecrest Restaurant was recognized in many ‘Best of” guides, winning rave reviews for their Johnnycakes as often the best in the state (and even some said New England) appearing in a New York Times article ‘Cuisine as American as Raccoon Pie’ in December 9, 1981 and even winning a 1982 Ocean Spray Cranberry Salute to American Food Award in Pittsburgh in addition to a USA Today article, ‘On The Menu Succotash and Venison.’ All of the awards and accolades were hard earned and well deserved for Dovecrest Restaurant, especially the Dove matriarch Eleanor, who was the primary chef and ran the kitchen. According to Ferris, “she’s the cook and I’m the waiter.” In addition to Ferris’ clam shucking, bartending and wait duties, Dovecrest Restaurant and Trading Post was a family operation and relied on the help of close family members such as their children, Mark, Paulla, Dawn and Lori and later granddaughters Elisabeth Dove (Manning) and Lorén Wilson (Spears) as well as Eleanor’s father Joseph Spears, Jr. and Ferris’ mother Mimi Babcock Dove as well as other extended family members and local tribal members… -- Take Action See how you can support the Narragansett Food Sovereignty Initiative: http://www.narragansettfoodsovereignty.org/ Sign the petition and see what else you can do to stop Line 3 and support Water Protectors: https://www.stopline3.org/biden — Support Us We commit a significant amount of research and writing to produce A Peace of History each week. If you like our weekly posts, please consider supporting this project with a one-time or recurring donation. Your gift will be used to continue producing more A Peace of History posts as well as the greater mission of VPT. You may type in however much you would like to give; contributions of all sizes are appreciated. Click this link to learn more about what we do and how you can donate: https://www.mightycause.com/organization/Voluntown-Peace-Trust — Source “From the Archives: Dovecrest Restaurant & Thanksgiving.” Tomaquag Museum. 26 November 2020 [Accessed 17 November 2021]. https://www.tomaquagmuseum.org/belongingsblog/2020/11/2/dovecrest-restaurant-and-thanksgiving — Further Resources Here is a podcast episode for all ages about Wampanoag and Narragansett thanksgiving traditions featuring Loren M. Spears, Executive Director of the Tomaquag Museum: “Giving Thanks!” Time For Lunch podcast. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/giving-thanks/id1504928110?i=1000499993371  Today is Veterans Day here in the United States — better known as Armistice Day or Remembrance Day throughout much of the world. In the past, we have used this holiday to draw comparisons between the United States and much of the rest of the world. But this year, we are turning inward to examine how the US military has affected one specific racial category within the United States itself: Native Americans.
Winona LaDuke is a Native American Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) activist-economist who is known for her involvement in many large projects: the White Earth Land Recovery Project, which reclaims Anishinaabe reservation land for the economic development of Anishinaabe people; Honor the Earth, a Native arts and culture organization meant to support Indigenous communities and environmental issues; and most recently, the Line 3 pipeline protests that seek to prevent enormous ecological disasters in Native lands. In her 2013 book The Militarization of Indian Country, LaDuke explores several dimensions of the intersection of Native peoples and the US military, from historical seizures of Native land by the military, to contemporary post-traumatic stress disorder of Indigenous veterans, to glimmers of hope and peace in the future. As LaDuke alludes in these excerpts, the relationship between the US military and Native American peoples is complex and fraught. On the one hand, the military offered to many Native Americans a ticket out of desperate circumstances: the impoverished reservation, the horrifying residential schools, the abusive adoptive family, and other awful situations to which so many Native people had been subjected. On the other hand, it was precisely the US military that drove so many recent Native ancestors from their homes, violently fractured countless Native communities and families, and then appropriated Native names to describe the US military’s bases (all on occupied land), weapons and vehicles (inanimate death machines), and most problematically, enemies (nameless, faceless, irrational “Others”). — [...] I do not hate the military. I do despise militarization and its impacts on men, women, children, and the land. The chilling facts are that the United States is the largest purveyor of weapons in the world, and that millions of people have no land, food, homes, clean air or water, and often, limbs, because of the military funded by my tax dollars. Countless thousands of square miles of Mother Earth are already contaminated, bombed, poisoned, scorched, gassed, bombarded, rocketed, strafed, torpedoed, defoliated, land-mined, strip-mined, made radioactive and uninhabitable. I despise militarization because those who are most likely to be impacted or killed by the military are civilian non-combatants. Since the Second World War, more than four fifths of the people killed in war have been civilians. Globally there are some 16 million refugees from war… I decided to write this book because I am awed by the impact of the military on the world and on Native America. It is pervasive. Native people have seen our communities, lands and life ways destroyed by the military. Since the first European colonizers arrived, the US military has been a blunt instrument of genocide, carrying out policies of removal and extermination against Native Peoples. Following the Indian Wars, we experienced the forced assimilation of boarding schools, which were founded by an army colonel, Richard Pratt, and which left a history of transformative loss of language and culture. The modern US military has taken our lands for bombing exercises and military bases, and for the experimentation and storage of the deadliest chemical agents and toxins known to mankind. Today, the military continues to bomb Native Hawaiian lands, from Makua to the Big Island, destroying life. The military has named us and claimed us. Many of our tribal communities are named after the forts that once held our people captive, and in today’s military nomenclature Osama bin Laden, the recently killed leader of al Qaeda, was also known as “Geronimo EKIA” (Enemy Killed in Action). Harlan Geronimo, an army veteran who served two tours in Vietnam and is the great grandson of Apache Chief Geronimo, asked for a formal apology and called the Pentagon’s decision to use the code name Geronimo in the raid that ended with al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s death, a “grievous insult.” He was joined by most major Native American organizations in calling for a retraction and apology. The Onondaga nation stated, “This continues to personify the original peoples of North America as enemies and savages. . . . The US military leadership should have known better.” The analogy from a military perspective is interesting. At the time of the hunting down of Geronimo, over 5,500 military personnel were engaged in a 13-year pursuit of the Apache Chief. Geronimo traveled with his community, including 35 men and 108 women and children, who in the end surrendered in exhaustion and were met with promises that were never fulfilled. It was one of the most expensive and shameful of the Indian Wars… The military, it seems, is comfortable with this ground. Indeed, Native nomenclature in the US military is widespread. From Kiowa, Apache Longbow and Black Hawk helicopters to Tomahawk missiles, the machinery of war has many Native names. (The Huey helicopter―Bell UH-1 is the Iroquois, and the Sikorsky helicopters are also known as Chickasaw, Choctaw and Mohave helicopters.) As the Seventh Cavalry invaded Iraq in 2003 in the “Shock and Awe” campaign that opened the war, one could not help note that this was the name of the cavalry division that had murdered 300 men, women and children at Wounded Knee. Yet, despite our history and the present appropriation of our lands and culture by the military, we have the highest rate of military enlistment of any ethnic group in the United States. We also have the largest number of living veterans out of any community in the country. We have borne a huge burden of post traumatic stress disorder among our veterans, and continue to feel this pain today, compounded by our own unresolved historic grief stemming from colonization. In this book, I consider the scope of our historic and present relationship with the military and discuss economic, ecological and psychological impacts. I then examine the potential for a major transformation from the US military economy that today controls much of Indian Country to a new community-centered model that values our Native cultures and traditions and honors our Mother Earth… -- Take Action Sign the petition and see what else you can do to stop Line 3 and support Water Protectors: https://www.stopline3.org/biden While on the topic of Indigenous issues, there is a renewed campaign to free Native American activist Leonard Peltier from prison. Read about his story and, if you are moved to do so, support the Leonard Peltier Freedom Ride 2021 — Support Us We commit a significant amount of research and writing to produce A Peace of History each week. If you like our weekly posts, please consider supporting this project with a one-time or recurring donation. Your gift will be used to continue producing more A Peace of History posts as well as the greater mission of VPT. You may type in however much you would like to give; contributions of all sizes are appreciated. Click this link to learn more about what we do and how you can donate: https://www.mightycause.com/organization/Voluntown-Peace-Trust — Source LaDuke, Winona. The Militarization of Indian Country. Michigan University Press, 2012. — Further Resources Honor the Earth: a Native arts and culture organization meant to support Indigenous communities and environmental issues. https://www.honorearth.org/ White Earth Land Recovery Project: reclaims Anishinaabe reservation land for the economic development of Anishinaabe people. https://www.welrp.org/  Fourteen months ago, we told the story of the 1992-1995 grassroots campaign that successfully removed the statue of John Mason who led the massacre of the Pequot village in Mystic in 1637 from its original location on the site of the massacre. When we told that story, the country was grappling with the legacy of public statues that celebrate historical violence against people of color in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder. In the time since then, there have been further developments with the fate of John Mason’s statue. In Windsor, where the statue was relocated in 1996, the town council decided in January 2021 to move the statue from its prominent position on Palisado Green to an accessible site at the nearby Windsor Historical Society, where new plaques would provide more complete context for students and other members of the public. And in Hartford, in June of this year, the legislature included provisions in the state’s 2021-2022 budget to remove their own John Mason statue from the state Capitol building’s facade. However, in part due to some public resistance to the removal and in part due to the unexpectedly high cost of the project, the plans to remove the statue from the Capitol have been put on hold. Some of the opposition have argued that to remove the statue is to lose an important part of Connecticut history, and that “The historic preservation of history cannot be changed just because someone doesn’t like the moment.” But that is patently false. History is not a collection of immutable facts, but an ever-developing process of understanding the past. Moreover, as our story below shows, the movement to remove problematic statues is not new or simply part of our current “moment,” but has been a long process with roots as far back as the 1970s. And as this movement continues to develop and find success, previously buried parts of our state’s history will be revealed, new understandings of our state’s peoples will form, and we will all be better for it.
— (Originally posted on September 10, 2020: https://www.facebook.com/groups/voluntownpeacetrust/posts/10158463469292978/) After decades of Native and allied activists raising the consciousness and educating the public about the myths and truths about early European colonization of the Americas, starting in June of this year, Christopher Columbus statues started to topple all across the United States. Less than three decades ago, such a trend would have been unimaginable. In fact, during the 1992 “celebrations” of the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ first transatlantic voyage, activists in eastern Connecticut focused their efforts not on the removal Columbus statues, but on another target: Captain John Mason, “Conqueror of the Pequots.” The colonial leader’s 9-foot tall, 2-ton heroic bronze statue stood for more than a century in Mystic, CT over the place where he led the massacre of 400-700 Pequot people of all ages and genders, mostly noncombatants. In the end, the Pequot leadership was assassinated; the Pequot name was forbidden; and the roughly 200 survivors were hunted down and either taken in by their former Native rivals, the Mohegans and the Narragansetts, or else enslaved by the English and sold to far away places. In simplified terms, the Pequot survivors who were taken by the Mohegans to the west became the Mashantucket Pequots, and the ones taken by the Narragansetts to the east became the Eastern and Eastern Paucatuck Pequots. (To learn the story of the massacre itself, please visit the websites for the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center as well as the Battlefields of the Pequot War project.) The efforts to remove or relocate the John Mason statue that began in 1992 was not the first such attempt. Years earlier, starting in the 1970s and continuing into the mid 1980s, Raymond Geer of the Paucatuck Eastern Pequots led an attempt to remove the Mason statue, but did not gain much traction at the time. The Mashantucket (Western) Pequot Tribal Nation was only granted federal recognition in 1983, very narrowly having almost lost the entirety of their reservation land to the State of Connecticut a few years earlier. The Eastern Pequots and Paucatuck Eastern Pequots, two separate groups, unified and became recognized by the Department of Interior in 2002 -- only to have that recognition revoked in 2005 due to fears of a new possible casino on reservation land. In the 1970s-80s, indigenous groups such as the American Indian Movement (AIM) and the United American Indians of New England began publicly challenging the racist assumptions inherent to Columbus Day and Thanksgiving, but the full effects of those consciousness-raising campaigns would not be felt for years. In this period, the Pequot population that lived on reservation land was growing but still quite tiny. Geer had few allies to turn to when he made his attempts against the Mason statue, and this first attempt failed. But by the 1990s, changes in the broader culture were apparent. The recently federally-recognized Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation completed phase 1 of the planned Foxwoods Resort Casino in 1992. Columbus Day “celebrations” were held across the country for the 500th anniversary just as more Americans than ever before started to realize the problems with honoring a figure like Columbus. And in that same year, Wolf Jackson of the Eastern Pequots asked the Southeastern Connecticut Coalition for Peace and Justice (SCCPJ), which had initially formed to oppose the First Gulf War, to help renew the campaign to remove the Mason statue. This time, the effort was built on alliances. The SCCPJ itself was composed of diverse groups including the Catholic Diocese of Norwich, Veterans for Peace, and the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. Wolf Jackson and the SCCPJ circulated a petition that summer about removing the statue, which collected over 900 names agreeing that the statue is “an inappropriate commemoration of a massacre of over 700 men, women, and children and represents a distortion of history which is extremely offensive to many citizens, particularly Native Americans.” At first, none of the councils of the three Pequot tribal nations would officially endorse the move, despite the common opinion of Pequots that the statue was offensive. Complicating matters was the bitter rivalry between the Pequot tribes, especially between the darker-skinned Eastern Pequots and the lighter-skinned Paucatuck Eastern Pequots, that made forming a united front very difficult. But after two years of building alliances and healing old wounds, cultivating community support and exploring many possible options for compromise, the demand to remove the statue spread to more people and became impossible to ignore. The petition was presented to the Town of Groton, where there were allies on the Town Council. Despite the growing demand to remove the statue, a descendant of John Mason spoke in favor of keeping the statue on the massacre site. By then, the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, suddenly a big player in Connecticut politics, had ended their initial silence and proposed not just the removal of the statue, but its relocation to the in-development Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center. The Mashantucket Pequots even offered to pay for the statue’s removal, relocation, and storage while the museum was being built. The Town of Groton ultimately voted to follow the Mashantucket Pequot proposal, but the lawful owner of the statue, the State of Connecticut, instead moved it to Windsor, Connecticut, one of the towns John Mason founded. In May 1995, supporters of the campaign gathered at the statue’s location to witness its removal. The ceremony was one of Native unity and community power. Present were Pequots from all three tribal nations; Mohegans and Narragansetts descended from the old Pequot enemies; and members of SCCPJ and the neighborhood community. Rick Gaumer, SCCPJ member and a former resident of the Voluntown Peace Trust in the late 1970s, was in attendance at the ceremony. After working for the removal of the statue, he discovered that he was a descendant of Nicolas Olmstead, a soldier who followed John Mason’s command to burn the village. Rick spoke at the ceremony, describing how the burning of villages in Vietnam had made him a pacifist, bringing him to this place. A year later, the town of Windsor celebrated the “return” of their hometown founder. It was a solution that Wolf Jackson said he “could live with.” Now, the old question of what to do with the problematic statue is haunting Windsor. The statue has been a target of vandalism since it was moved to Windsor, and the most recent act of vandalism occurred within the last few months. On September 7 of this week, the Windsor Town Council voted 5-4 to take it down from its prominent position at the Palisado Green and move it to the Windsor Historical Society -- a decision difficult to imagine without the momentum of the many recent successes taking down Columbus statues right behind it. When Raymond Geer made his attempt to remove the John Mason statue in the 1970s and 80s, perhaps his society was not quite ready to hear him out. But within a decade or so, things in eastern Connecticut began to change. The 500th anniversary of Columbus’ arrival in the Americas heightened the attention and scrutiny paid to colonial history, and raised consciousness of the European invasion that led to the genocides of indigenous peoples. The successes of the Mashantucket Pequots and other Native groups along with the 500th Columbus anniversary created a unique cultural moment in eastern Connecticut in the early 1990s -- a moment that Wolf Jackson and the SCCPJ used effectively to complete their campaign. The 400th anniversaries of the founding of Jamestown (1619) and the landing of the Mayflower (1620) have similarly focused some people’s attention on the violent realities of White supremacy and capitalism, bringing coalitions of people together who are now removing statues and dispelling historical myths. Like Wolf Jackson and the SCCPJ, our present challenge is to use our own cultural moment -- and together create a more just society. — Support Us We commit a significant amount of research and writing to produce A Peace of History each week. If you like our weekly posts, please consider supporting this project with a one-time or recurring donation. Your gift will be used to continue producing more A Peace of History posts as well as the greater mission of VPT. You may type in however much you would like to give; contributions of all sizes are appreciated. Click this link to learn more about what we do and how you can donate: https://www.mightycause.com/organization/Voluntown-Peace-Trust — Sources “1637 - The Pequot War.” The Society of Colonial Wars in the State of Connecticut. https://www.colonialwarsct.org/1637.htm Gaumer, Rick. “Reminder of the violence that founded a nation.” The Day. July 20, 2020. https://www.theday.com/article/20200720/OP03/200729992 Goode, Steven. “State will move John Mason statue and take it to historical society; monument honored colonial leader of attack on Pequots.” Hartford Courant. September 9, 2020. https://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local/city-officials-discuss-removal-of-controversial-statue-in-windsor/2301219/ “The History of the Pequot War.” Battlefields of the Pequot War. http://pequotwar.org/about/ Libby, Sam. “For one Pequot, statue’s removal is vision come true.” Hartford Courant. May 11, 1995. https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-xpm-1995-05-11-9505110513-story.html Libby, Sam. “THE VIEW FROM: MYSTIC; An 1889 Statue Leads to Second Thoughts About a Battle in 1637.” The New York Times. November 29, 1992. https://www.nytimes.com/1992/11/29/nyregion/the-view-from-mystic-an-1889-statue-leads-to-second-thoughts-about.html Libby, Sam. “Where a Statue Stands Is State’s Decision.” The New York Times. July 24, 1994. https://www.nytimes.com/1994/07/24/nyregion/where-a-statue-stands-is-states-decision.html Louie, Vivian and Sam Libby. “Groton Statue Stands at Center of Debate.” Hartford Courant. October 4, 1992. https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-xpm-1992-10-04-0000111690-story.html “The Pequot War.” The Mashantucket (Western) Pequot Tribal Nation. https://www.mptn-nsn.gov/pequotwar.aspx Purdy, Erika M. “Windsor council votes to remove controversial statue from Palisado Green.” Journal Inquirer. September 9, 2020. https://www.journalinquirer.com/towns/windsor/windsor-council-votes-to-remove-controversial-statue-from-palisado-green/article_6c12a68c-f2b0-11ea-a772-6fc4cbb99145.html Shanahan, Marie K. “John Mason Statue has a Homecoming.” Hartford Courant. June 1996. https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-xpm-1992-10-04-0000111690-story.html “Town Officials Discuss Removal of Controversial Statue in Windsor.” NBC Connecticut. July 12, 2020. https://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local/city-officials-discuss-removal-of-controversial-statue-in-windsor/2301219/ Underhill, John. “Newes from America; Or, A New and Experimentall Discoverie of New England; Containing, A Trve Relation of Their War-like Proceedings These Two Yeares Last Past, with a Figure of the Indian Fort, or Palizado” (1638). Electronic Texts in American Studies. 37. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/etas/37 — Further Resources Hallenbeck, Brian. “A second Mason statue to be moved to less prominent site.” The Day. 10 June 2021 [Accessed 3 November 2021]. https://www.theday.com/article/20210610/NWS01/210619927 Stuart, Christine. “John Mason Statue at Capitol Gets Temporary Reprieve.” MSN CT. 1 October 2021 [Accessed 3 November 2021]. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/john-mason-statue-at-capitol-gets-temporary-reprieve/ar-AAP3mrn Goode, Steven. “Council vote to fund John Mason statue move reopens disagreement.” Hartford Courant. 20 January 2021 [Accessed 3 November 2021]. https://www.courant.com/community/windsor/hc-news-windsor-john-mason-statue-update-20210120-ylwwscrq7ra43nag7c2pynyufi-story.html  Which is scarier: a sudden death by inferno and collapsed buildings, or a slow death by lethal amounts of ubiquitous invisible radiation? Which is scarier: a single nuclear explosion in your community, or many nuclear explosions around your community?
In the 1950s, the US government determined that despite the presence of the US Submarine Base and General Dynamics: Electric Boat in the New London - Groton area, southeastern Connecticut would not be a major military target in the event of nuclear war. The area, however, is surrounded by several likely major targets. How would nuclear attacks in the region around southeastern Connecticut affect our corner of the state? In 1960, Professor Gordon S. Christiansen, chairman of the Connecticut College Chemistry Department at the time, gave a description of such a hypothetical horror in his pamphlet Survival in Nuclear War a Vanishing Probability. Over the past few months, we have slowly doled out the contents of the pamphlet in excerpts. Excerpts 1 & 2 regarded the effects of a Hiroshima-size atomic bomb detonated over the New London - Groton bridge: the initial blast, firestorms, and radiation. Parts 3, 4, & 5 explore the same scenario but with a much more powerful “modern” thermonuclear weapon. (Read Part 1 here: https://www.facebook.com/VoluntownPeaceTrust/posts/2029219227228402) (Read Part 2 here: https://www.facebook.com/VoluntownPeaceTrust/posts/2040482629435395) (Read Part 3 here: https://www.facebook.com/VoluntownPeaceTrust/posts/2046153552201636) (Read Part 4 here: https://www.facebook.com/VoluntownPeaceTrust/posts/2057147997768858) (Read Part 5 here: https://www.facebook.com/VoluntownPeaceTrust/posts/2062709130546078) (Read Part 6 here: https://www.facebook.com/VoluntownPeaceTrust/posts/2085738148243176) The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ famous Doomsday Clock was set at “100 seconds to midnight” in both 2020 and 2021. At no other moment in history since the Doomsday Clock began have we come so close to utter calamity as we are now. Even while covid continues to ravage many parts of the world, nuclear programs in multiple countries have recently accelerated while other efforts to control nuclear arms internationally have eroded. The result is a highly destabilized world with even more nuclear weapons, nuclear states, and possible reasons to use such weapons than even in Professor Christiansen’s day in the Cold War. Therefore, earlier this year, the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons came into force, which made nuclear weapons illegal under international law. While there is still much work to do to convince the nuclear states to give up those arms, there is also reason to believe that this new treaty is the beginning of a new chapter in responsible international control of nuclear arms. — To complete the dismal prospect it is necessary to point out the difficulty of recreating a normal existence even after six months of imprisonment in a shelter. During the second half of the first year the average level of fallout radioactivity would be about 0.7 roentgens per hour, a level that makes human occupancy impossible. A person exposed to this radiation for six months would receive 3000 roentgens, probably a fatal dose even spread over so long a time. During the fifth year after the disaster, when levels of radioactivity would be slowly decaying from 0.1 roentgens per hour, a person who is constantly exposed would get a dose of something over 800 roentgens per year — a fatal injury in a single short dose but perhaps only a third of the fatal dose when taken slowly. The possibility of recreating this highly organized, industrial and partially urbanized community could only remain a dream of the future. Even the chance of a general rural farming community is slim. Undoubtedly natural changes in surface features of the land, greatly hastened by the excessive erosion of a denuded landscape, would cause great redistribution of the radioactive material. There would be some areas which would be naturally decontaminated by this process; there would also be other areas where the concentration of radioactivity would build up. It is quite probable that spotty areas would be reclaimed for farming, but it would be necessary to constantly and carefully check the produce of these farms for dangerous concentrations of radioactivity. It is well known that many plants and animals have a great tendency to concentrate some radioactive materials such as strontium 90 to levels far above their concentration in the soil. A safe and relatively unirradiated life in this area, even five years after the bombing, would depend first on a good working knowledge of the nature of radioactivity, its biological effects, its fallout origins, and its physical properties; it would also require considerable elegant radiological measuring equipment; it would also require a remarkable level of awareness, vigilance and restraint. The likelihood of help coming from outside this area is almost nonexistent. All ordinary means of communication and transportation would be totally destroyed. After several weeks or a few months it would be possible for an airplane or a boat to come here briefly (if facilities to receive them could be improvised). But one is always faced with the question, “Where would help come from? What could be brought here that is not needed just as badly elsewhere?” The probability is very great that conditions would be just as terrible throughout the whole eastern seaboard area, at least as far away as Washington, D.C. The more remote areas of the South and West, though probably not hit as badly as New England, would have fantastically difficult problems of their own. They would surely have more survivors — but would also have many more sick, injured and starving to care for. More probable than the arrival of teams of saviors would be the arrival of roving bands of marauders — frightened, injured, maddened, short-term survivors of other similarly devastated areas. If a person should be so lucky and so foresighted to have prepared and occupied in advance a perfect shelter stocked with the necessities of life underground, he might have to defend it against the raids of others who were not so lucky or so thoughtful in advance. He might even find it not worth defending. Could we survive a nuclear attack? Can shelters save us? Is there any defense? Is there anything we can do now to prevent this tragedy? The one clear and effective thing we can do is to strive to ensure that these hypothetical incidents do not become actual ones. — Take Action If you are concerned about nuclear weapons and live in Connecticut, consider joining the CT Committee on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The Committee organizes demonstrations against nuclear weapons throughout the year. Sign up to the mailing list here: https://forms.gle/pX8v2U4CktAcz8s78 You can also sign petitions to pressure our government to ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, like this one: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/support-the-nuclear-weapons-ban-treaty — Support Us We commit a significant amount of research and writing to produce A Peace of History each week. If you like our weekly posts, please consider supporting this project with a one-time or recurring donation. Your gift will be used to continue producing more A Peace of History posts as well as the greater mission of VPT. You may type in however much you would like to give; contributions of all sizes are appreciated. Click this link to learn more about what we do and how you can donate: https://www.mightycause.com/organization/Voluntown-Peace-Trust — Sources Christiansen, Gordon S. Survival in Nuclear War a Vanishing Probability. Connecticut College, 1961. — Further Resources “Electric Boat History.” General Dynamics: Electric Boat. [Accessed 4 August 2021]. http://www.gdeb.com/about/history/ “Nuclear Weapons: Who Has What at a Glance.” Arms Control Association. August 2020 [Accessed 4 August 2021]. https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Nuclearweaponswhohaswhat Mecklin, John, ed. “2021 Doomsday Clock Statement.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 27 January 2021 [Accessed 20 October 2021]. https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/ “Treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons.” United Nations: Office of Disarmament Affairs. [Accessed 4 August 2021]. https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/tpnw/ Wellerstein, Alex. “Nukemap.” Nuclear Secrecy. [Accessed 4 August 2021]. https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ “What if We Nuke a City?” Kurzgesagt — In a Nutshell. 13 October 2019 [Accessed 4 August 2021]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iPH-br_eJQ  Which is scarier: a sudden death by inferno and collapsed buildings, or a slow death by lethal amounts of ubiquitous invisible radiation? Which is scarier: a single nuclear explosion in your community, or many nuclear explosions around your community?
In the 1950s, the US government determined that despite the presence of the US Submarine Base and General Dynamics: Electric Boat in the New London - Groton area, southeastern Connecticut would not be a major military target in the event of nuclear war. The area, however, is surrounded by several likely major targets. How would nuclear attacks in the region around southeastern Connecticut affect our corner of the state? In 1960, Professor Gordon S. Christiansen, chairman of the Connecticut College Chemistry Department at the time, gave a description of such a hypothetical horror in his pamphlet Survival in Nuclear War a Vanishing Probability. Over the past few months, we have slowly doled out the contents of the pamphlet in excerpts. Excerpts 1 & 2 regarded the effects of a Hiroshima-size atomic bomb detonated over the New London - Groton bridge: the initial blast, firestorms, and radiation. Parts 3, 4, & 5 explore the same scenario but with a much more powerful “modern” thermonuclear weapon. (Read Part 1 here: https://www.facebook.com/VoluntownPeaceTrust/posts/2029219227228402) (Read Part 2 here: https://www.facebook.com/VoluntownPeaceTrust/posts/2040482629435395) (Read Part 3 here: https://www.facebook.com/VoluntownPeaceTrust/posts/2046153552201636) (Read Part 4 here: https://www.facebook.com/VoluntownPeaceTrust/posts/2057147997768858) (Read Part 5 here: https://www.facebook.com/VoluntownPeaceTrust/posts/2062709130546078) The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ famous Doomsday Clock was set at “100 seconds to midnight” in both 2020 and 2021. At no other moment in history since the Doomsday Clock began have we come so close to utter calamity as we are now. Even while covid continues to ravage many parts of the world, nuclear programs in multiple countries have recently accelerated while other efforts to control nuclear arms internationally have eroded. The result is a highly destabilized world with even more nuclear weapons, nuclear states, and possible reasons to use such weapons than even in Professor Christiansen’s day in the Cold War. Therefore, earlier this year, the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons came into force, which made nuclear weapons illegal under international law. While there is still much work to do to convince the nuclear states to give up those arms, there is also reason to believe that this new treaty is the beginning of a new chapter in responsible international control of nuclear arms. — The third hypothetical situation which should be examined is that in which no bombs are detonated in Southeastern Connecticut but some reasonably probable level of nuclear attack is suffered by the New York - New England area. In the 1959 Joint Congressional Committee estimates seventy metropolitan areas in the United States were assumed to have been hit by a total of 550 megatons explosive equivalent. This is a truly mild attack in view of the known Russian capabilities which include at least 40,000 megatons of nuclear weapons and adequate means (aircraft and missiles) to deliver most of them. Furthermore, the sizes of weapons tended on the small side of what might be reasonably expected. Ten megaton weapons were the largest considered in this hypothetical study and most were in the one to three megaton size — in spite of the fact that the standard big nuclear weapons, easily carried even by medium bombers, are the 20 megaton size. In the Congressional estimates it was assumed that New York and Boston would each be hit by two 10 megaton bombs; Providence by one 10 megaton; Albany by an 8 megaton; Hartford and Springfield by a 3 and 2 megaton each; Bridgeport, New Haven and Worcester by one 3 megaton each; and New Britain and Waterbury by a one megaton each. Thus, within a 100 mile radius of Southeastern Connecticut about 80 megatons of nuclear explosive would be detonated in a minimal attack. The distances of even the closest bursts are such that our community might escape the major blast and fire damage. The remaining major effect, radiation, would come from the local fallout. If there were a strong and persistent wind from the straight south, we would escape the worst of the fallout; if the wind were from any other direction, we would be in an area of fallout more intense than any except in the immediate vicinity of nuclear explosions. The prevailing south westerly wind would put us in the direct path of the fallout from the highest concentration of bombs in the nation. Consideration of the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory estimates of an average level of radiation of 7500 roentgens per hour makes it reasonable to assume a level of twice this, 15,000 roentgens per hour, near this heavily bombed area. This would be the level of fallout radiation at the end of the first hour after detonation, about the time heavy fallout would reach this area. Under these conditions unprotected exposure for five minutes would be a certainly lethal dose of radiation. To examine the effects of this radiation it is simplest to make a timetable of how much radiation a person in the open would likely to receive and then consider various types of protective measures he might take. If one takes the above assumptions: (a) that serious fallout reaches this area the first hour after detonation and (b) a level of 15,000 roentgens have dropped to about 1 roentgen per hour; in four years it would be about 0.1 roentgen per hour. The head of a household would probably be willing to risk exposure to radiation by leaving the shelter as much as an hour a week after the first two weeks of extremely intense fallout radiation. On such a schedule he would receive a total of about 150 roentgens in six months time. This would include the 75 roentgens he would receive during the major part of his time which he spends inside the shelter; the other 75 roentgens would have been his hour a week dose of direct radiation in the open. Half of this dose would have been the expense of his first four excursions out of the shelter, while an hour spent in the open six months after bomb day would cost him only about 1 roentgen. A person could avoid death by radiation on such a schedule but it is questionable whether he could avoid death by starvation or disease. And it is perfectly clear that no semblance of community life or function could be recreated. If the survivor could manage to avoid any exposure during the first month, then he could double his time above ground during subsequent months and still get the same exposure of 150 roentgens. But two hours a week could hardly be considered active community participation… — Take Action If you are concerned about nuclear weapons and live in Connecticut, consider joining the CT Committee on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The Committee organizes demonstrations against nuclear weapons throughout the year. Sign up to the mailing list here: https://forms.gle/pX8v2U4CktAcz8s78 You can also sign petitions to pressure our government to ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, like this one: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/support-the-nuclear-weapons-ban-treaty — Support Us We commit a significant amount of research and writing to produce A Peace of History each week. If you like our weekly posts, please consider supporting this project with a one-time or recurring donation. Your gift will be used to continue producing more A Peace of History posts as well as the greater mission of VPT. You may type in however much you would like to give; contributions of all sizes are appreciated. Click this link to learn more about what we do and how you can donate: https://www.mightycause.com/organization/Voluntown-Peace-Trust — Sources Christiansen, Gordon S. Survival in Nuclear War a Vanishing Probability. Connecticut College, 1961. — Further Resources “Electric Boat History.” General Dynamics: Electric Boat. [Accessed 4 August 2021]. http://www.gdeb.com/about/history/ “Nuclear Weapons: Who Has What at a Glance.” Arms Control Association. August 2020 [Accessed 4 August 2021]. https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Nuclearweaponswhohaswhat Mecklin, John, ed. “2021 Doomsday Clock Statement.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 27 January 2021 [Accessed 20 October 2021]. https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/ “Treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons.” United Nations: Office of Disarmament Affairs. [Accessed 4 August 2021]. https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/tpnw/ Wellerstein, Alex. “Nukemap.” Nuclear Secrecy. [Accessed 4 August 2021]. https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ “What if We Nuke a City?” Kurzgesagt — In a Nutshell. 13 October 2019 [Accessed 4 August 2021]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iPH-br_eJQ  Here at the end of Latinx Heritage Month, we are wrapping up our series on Puerto Rico by highlighting Jason Ortiz, a Connecticut Puerto Rican activist-organizer probably best known for his work in cannabis justice in our state: he’s the current executive director at Students for Sensible Drug Policy, the policy director for Connecticut United for Reform and Equity (CURECT), and founder and immediate past president of the Minority Cannabis Business Association. But Ortiz’s activist work has had a long arc. He was first trained in nonviolent direct action by VPT Board President Joanne Sheehan and had his political awakening as a teen when he participated in a protest at the infamous School of the Americas in Georgia with a YouthPeace organizer. But aside from cannabis activism, Jason Ortiz perhaps performed his most impactful work as the founder and president of CT Puerto Rican Agenda. It was through this organization that Ortiz was able to organize relief efforts and emergency lodgings in Connecticut for thousands of displaced Puerto Ricans after Hurricane Maria.
A few weeks ago, we got to interview Jason Ortiz about Connecticut Puerto Ricans, challenges and advantages in organizing along ethnic lines, and advice for organizers in those positions. We have included parts of that interview below. [Read The Recolonization of Puerto Rico, Part 1 here: https://www.facebook.com/VoluntownPeaceTrust/posts/2012501098900215] [Read The Recolonization of Puerto Rico, Part 2 here: https://www.facebook.com/VoluntownPeaceTrust/posts/2068347923315532] [Read The Recolonization of Puerto Rico, Part 3 here: https://www.facebook.com/VoluntownPeaceTrust/posts/2073703802779944] When Hurricane Maria reached Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017, the island was still recovering from its brush with Hurricane Irma just a couple of weeks earlier. The power grid had failed for about two-thirds of the island, another third had lost access to clean water, and various infrastructure elements were badly damaged. When Maria developed into a Category 4 storm and slammed into the already battered island, it knocked out the rest of the power grid and 95% of cell towers, majorly flooded thirty rivers, destroyed nearly all road signs and traffic lights, structurally damaged an unknown number of buildings, and closed over 90% of roads even a month after the hurricane had passed. The wide dispersal of Puerto Ricans through much of the United States has at times strengthened the home island. Puerto Ricans make up over 8% of the Connecticut population, the highest percentage of any US state. Puerto Ricans in Connecticut generally maintained close ties with family and friends on the home island, then and now, and many Puerto Ricans still frequently travel between the island and the US mainland. Thus, various issues and crises in Puerto Rico over the decades have often felt much closer to Connecticut than the geographical distance would suggest. Therefore, even before Maria ripped through the island, some Puerto Ricans in Connecticut were already preparing relief efforts for the aftermath of Irma. In June 2017, a group of Puerto Rican politicians, community leaders, and activists across the state founded CT Puerto Rican Agenda, a chapter of National Puerto Rican Agenda. Jason Ortiz became the first president of the Connecticut chapter and quickly joined the CT PR Agenda to the national Puerto Rico Hurricane Relief Network. Even considering past pan-Puerto Rican campaigns like the anti-Navy work on Culebra and Vieques islands, the scale of the effort for Hurricane Maria relief was “unprecedented” in the Puerto Rican diaspora. In the early stages, according to Ortiz, “the folks stateside were mobilizing faster than the needs on the island, and I think that does show… that that network [connecting Puerto Rico and the mainland US] is stronger than it ever has been before.” Despite the strong Puerto Rican network, there were still challenges to organizing around such a multifaceted and catastrophic issue as hurricane relief. For Jason Ortiz, part of the challenge was trying to balance the needs of hurricane-displaced Puerto Ricans and the needs of local vulnerable populations: “The work with the families was so hard, they needed things like housing and jobs which Hartford residents didn’t even have. For example, we had to ask for the displaced families to be put at the front of the affordable housing line, which meant Hartford families who were already waiting had to wait longer.” But organizing Puerto Rican communities statewide also meant that the coalition could draw from more resources. According to Ortiz, “The Center for Latino Progress played a big role. The San Juan Center and the Puerto Rican Day Parade of Hartford helped as well. Joe Rodriguez from Blumenthal’s office played a big role getting us spaces and donors. But mostly it was Puerto Ricans who were not in an official group. Through the hurricane efforts people kind of knew each other, but it felt like one of the few times we organized Ricans statewide — Hartford Ricans were meeting the Meriden Ricans, who finally met the Bridgeport Ricans, etc. outside of the establishment Ricans.” Many of the Puerto Ricans within these cities already had strong relationships with each other through extended family ties, churches, and various cultural activities. Jason Ortiz, the CT PR Agenda, and the rest of the statewide coalition were able to unite these pre-existing relationships and communities into a single cause. These unification efforts bore fruit. The Connecticut National Guard flew emergency supplies into Puerto Rico and St. Thomas. In the state itself, Connecticut acquired the temporary housing of roughly 13,500 displaced Puerto Ricans — 10% of all Puerto Ricans who left the island for shelter on the mainland. At the peak, 187 families were housed in hotels like the Red Roof Inn in Hartford through the FEMA Transitional Sheltering Assistance program. The coalition in Connecticut initially received $3 million in state funds to support displaced families, and in conjunction with state leaders like Senator Blumenthal and former Governor Malloy, successfully had the funding renewed multiple times. And all this was accomplished in the face of a president who was intentionally slow to respond to the crisis and who was at the time actively stoking white supremacy. Many of the intercity relationships between Puerto Rican communities in Connecticut that were forged during the Hurricane Maria crisis have continued to develop, although not necessarily through formal channels. While Jason Ortiz left CT PR Agenda to focus on cannabis justice in Connecticut, he has since been able to draw on some of these relationships he had helped to develop. Some had joined in the minority cannabis justice movement that successfully convinced the Connecticut State Legislature to decriminalize cannabis this year. Although CT PR Agenda is now defunct, Ortiz holds high hopes for the political potential of these communities. With the growing Puerto Rican population in Connecticut, as well as climate change exacerbating hurricanes in the Caribbean, the need for broad organizing will likely increase in the coming years. For the organizers who find themselves in these kinds of communities, Ortiz has some advice: “Don’t try to get everyone to do the same thing. Give folks lots of autonomy but then support. And trainings are a must, and on a continuing basis. It’s ok to start small and let folks develop relationships before, say, organizing a statewide march or something. Organizing around ethnic lines by definition requires it to be across ideological lines, so it will be necessary to put aside political purity to get to real unity, but simultaneously allowing for the views to be expressed even if you disagree with the content. It’s less about finding one path and more about finding lots of different ways.” -- Support Us We commit a significant amount of research and writing to produce A Peace of History each week. If you like our weekly posts, please consider supporting this project with a one-time or recurring donation. Your gift will be used to continue producing more A Peace of History posts as well as the greater mission of VPT. You may type in however much you would like to give; contributions of all sizes are appreciated. Click this link to learn more about what we do and how you can donate: https://www.mightycause.com/organization/Voluntown-Peace-Trust -- Sources dos Santos, Cyrus. “Puerto Rico Struggles With Recovery, Connecticut Officials Promise Help.” CT News Junkie. 22 September 2017 [Accessed 12 October 2021]. https://ctnewsjunkie.com/2017/09/22/puerto_rico_struggles_with_recovery_connecticut_officials_promise_help/ “Housing Benefits Extension to Puerto Rican Families Halted.” NBC Connecticut. Last updated 19 January 2018 [Accessed 12 October 2021]. https://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local/housing-benefits-extension-to-puerto-rican-families-halted/141604/ Ormseth, Matthew. “Hurricane Maria, One Year Later: Exodus Strained Connecticut, But Families And Service Providers Still Resilient.” Hartford Courant. 20 September 2018 [Accessed 12 October 2021]. https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-news-hurricane-maria-year-later-20180918-story.html Park, Daz. “Interview with Jason Ortiz on CT-PR Activist Organizing.” 14 Sept. 2021. Ragland, Jamil. “Ortiz: Puerto Rico facing long, challenging recovery — bravely.” The CT Mirror. 29 October 2017 [Accessed 12 October 2021]. https://ctmirror.org/2017/10/29/ortiz-puerto-rico-facing-long-challenging-recovery-bravely/ Scott, Michon. “Hurricane Maria’s devastation of Puerto Rico.” Climate.gov. Last updated 18 April 2021 [Accessed 12 October 2021]. https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/hurricane-marias-devastation-puerto-rico  Last week, we told the story of the popular nonviolent resistance of the early 1970s that ousted the US Navy from the Puerto Rican island Culebra. For decades, two-thirds of Culebra had been controlled by the US Navy which used the island for combat training and weapons testing, including a bombing range. Although the campaign was ultimately successful in forcing the US Navy out of Culebra, the US military simply moved their Culebra operations to the other Puerto Rican island they controlled: Vieques. But when an errant ordnance during a botched bombing run exploded and killed Viequense civilian worker David Sanes on April 19, 1999, a new campaign to remove the US Navy from Vieques was born.
[Read The Recolonization of Puerto Rico, Part 1 here: https://www.facebook.com/VoluntownPeaceTrust/posts/2012501098900215] [Read The Recolonization of Puerto Rico, Part 2 here: https://www.facebook.com/VoluntownPeaceTrust/posts/2068347923315532] Protests against the US Navy presence in Vieques had been going on for decades — in fact, the New England Community for Nonviolent Action (CNVA; founders of the original VPT) had helped to organize a demonstration on the very matter as early as October 1978 at the Naval Submarine Base in Groton. They sought to end the decades-long occupation of their island by the US Navy which had harmed local fisheries and wildlife, disrupted civilian infrastructure and daily life, severely worsened the health of Vieques residents, and taken over three-quarters of the island. Additionally, the Viequenses demanded that the US clean up more than half a century’s worth of unexploded ordnance, industrial chemicals, and heavy metals including depleted uranium with which they had polluted the island and surrounding waters. In 1993, some of the local anti-Navy efforts from civic and community leaders in Vieques coalesced into the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques (Comite por Rescate y Desarrollo de Vieques, CPRDV). Soon, the coalition expanded to include Vieques fishers, women’s and youth organizations, religious leaders, and other groups on the small island. On the night of Sane’s death, 200 residents of Vieques protested at the entrance of the US Navy’s Camp García. The number of protesters rose to 300 the next day, and the movement grew quickly from there. The Association of Fishermen in Vieques staged their own protest by laying wreaths and an eight-foot cross where Sanes was killed. Civil disobedience encampments appeared on the US Navy training grounds across Vieques, organized by various groups: a pan-denominational Christian coalition, the teacher’s federation, university students, political parties, and others. Trainers from the American Friends Service Committee, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the War Resisters League held civil disobedience and nonviolent action workshops in the encampments. And as the protests grew, people began to connect the US military’s exploitation of Vieques as training and bombing grounds with the country’s controversial involvement in the Kosovo War and the military-industrial complex as a whole. Soon, the protesters successfully pressured some Puerto Rican government officials to make an official request to President Clinton to immediately cease military operations in Vieques. But despite the popular movement and the sympathies of some officials, Puerto Rican Governor Pedro Rosello refused to intervene on the protesters’ behalf. Many activists publications, including The Nonviolent Activist, shared solidarity and support requests widely: “The people of Vieques are asking mainland U.S. activists for support, specifically for environmental, ecumenical, peace and trade union organizations and individuals to bring up the issue of Vieques at the workplace, in schools, at community and religious meetings and to join the demand for the demilitarization of Vieques, a paradise invaded.” As mentioned last week, Connecticut has the highest percentage of Puerto Ricans among the fifty states. So, it is no wonder that when the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques (Comite pro Rescate y Desarrollo de Vieques, CPRDV) began to organize a resistance campaign after Sanes’ death, many Puerto Ricans and non-Puerto Ricans from Connecticut joined. In Hartford, one group held demonstrations outside of the Puerto Rican Federal Affairs Office in solidarity with the people of Vieques and CPRDV to pressure Governor Rosello to side with the Puerto Rican people against US colonial exploitation. In February 2000, a demonstration with 150,000 protesters was held in San Juan. A couple of weeks later, Puerto Rican activists and teen members of the Norwich Free Academy YouthPeace Club (which held weekend workshops at VPT) demonstrated outside of the Navy Base in Groton. On May 4, 2000, US marshals and about 1000 Marines attempted to break up the encampments on Vieques only to find hundreds of CPRDV allies from around the world descend upon the restricted zones just five days later. That summer, the YouthPeace Club traveled up to Hartford to join the local Puerto Rican group All Connecticut with Vieques and their allies in solidarity. The US Navy and federal government attempted to negotiate with the CPRDV, offering $90 million in exchange for the continued use of part of the island as a live-munitions training zone. But CPRDV had unequivocally articulated their demand for the unilateral evacuation of the US Navy from Vieques within just a few months of Sanes’ death. Finally, in July 2001, over two years after the Sanes’ death, a nonbinding referendum was held on Vieques: 68% voted for the US Navy’s immediate removal, while 30% voted to accept the money in exchange for indefinite US Navy presence. Between the massive civil disobedience disruptions, the expenses related to property damage (mostly to barriers like fences), and now this very large and clear majority of Vieques residents and solidarity groups on the mainland maintaining their hard line after two years,(ADD) the US Navy and federal government had had enough. Reversing President Clinton’s decision to continue negotiations with the people of Vieques, President Bush declared that all military exercises in Vieques would cease by February, and that the US Navy would be evacuated from the island by May 2003. The federal government followed the agreement, but also established wildlife preserves on much of the land formerly used by the US Navy as waste dumping grounds and other heavily polluted areas. Some have argued that the redesignation of those lands freed the federal government from taking responsibility for cleaning up the pollution it had dumped there for decades. The fact remains that on both Culebra and Vieques, the vast majority of unexploded bombs and toxic waste has not been removed, and a recent federal report states that cleanup efforts will not be completed until at least 2032. Still, despite the challenges that remain, within just over three decades, the people of Puerto Rico and their allies successfully ousted the US Navy from not one but two of the islands using civil disobedience and nonviolent action. The VPT community is proud to have participated in the efforts to decolonize Puerto Rico and to bring peace to the islands. -- Support Us We commit a significant amount of research and writing to produce A Peace of History each week. If you like our weekly posts, please consider supporting this project with a one-time or recurring donation. Your gift will be used to continue producing more A Peace of History posts as well as the greater mission of VPT. You may type in however much you would like to give; contributions of all sizes are appreciated. Click this link to learn more about what we do and how you can donate: https://www.mightycause.com/organization/Voluntown-Peace-Trust -- Sources Colón Cortés, Wanda. “How a People’s Movement Stopped the Bombing in Vieques.” Fellowship of Reconciliation. January 2007 [Accessed 5 October 2021]. https://www.proquest.com/openview/30aac6b5c1cbbdb811bd93bc212ef22b/1?cbl=2041863&pq-origsite=gscholar “Puerto Ricans force United States Navy out of Vieques Island, 1999-2003.” Global Nonviolent Action Database. [Accessed 5 October 2021]. https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/puerto-ricans-force-united-states-navy-out-vieques-island-1999-2003 “Puerto Rico cleanup by U.S. military will take more than a decade.” NBC News. 26 March 2021 [Accessed 5 October 2021]. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/puerto-rico-cleanup-us-military-will-take-decade-rcna529 Rabin Seigel, Robert L. “The U.S. Navy Bombs Puerto Rico: Paradise Invaded.” Nonviolent Activist. July-August 1999. Richards, Ron. “U.S. Naval Bombing `Accident' In Vieques, Puerto Rico, Kills Resident.” The Militant. 3 May 1999 [Accessed 5 October 2021]. https://www.themilitant.com/1999/6317/6317_4.html “The Vieques Referendum.” The Hartford Courant. 2 August 2001 [Accessed 5 October 2021]. https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-xpm-2001-08-02-0108021821-story.html  Latinx Heritage Month runs from September 15 to October 15. In Connecticut, more than half of our Latinx population is Puerto Rican, and we are home to the sixth largest Puerto Rican population in the fifty states. No state has a higher percentage of Puerto Ricans in their total population than Connecticut — roughly one out of every twelve CT residents (8.5%) can claim Puerto Rican heritage as of 2020. Due to the strong connections between so many Connecticut residents and Puerto Rico, this week we examine the story of the successful campaign at Culebra won by a coalition of Puerto Rican and mainland American activists including New England Committee for Nonviolent Action members (CNVA, predecessors of VPT).
[Read The Recolonization of Puerto Rico, Part 1 here: https://www.facebook.com/VoluntownPeaceTrust/posts/2012501098900215] The relationship between Puerto Ricans and mainland Americans was in part responsible for building up the campaign that successfully ousted the US Navy from the Puerto Rican island of Culebra in the early 1970s. Local resistance to the US Navy takeover of Culebra Island in Puerto Rico began shortly after the United States recolonized the nation from the Spanish Empire in 1898, but in the aftermath of the rapid US invasion, the Culebrans alone could not keep the US Navy out. Instead, the US Navy evicted all of the residents of the biggest town on the island, leveled the town, and built a naval base upon the ruin. By the time the United States joined WWII, the federal government claimed exclusive rights to the air space of Culebra as far out as 3 miles from the coastline, and had sights on converting the entire 10 square mile island into a military base. By 1950 the US Navy controlled ⅓ of the island, the civilian population had dropped from 4000 residents in 1900 to just 580 residents, and the small island was covered in bomb craters. Decades of live training exercises and weapons tests littered the island and surrounding waters with unexploded bombs, heavy metals, and other toxic chemicals. In the early 1950s, the US Navy attempted to evict the remainder of Culebra’s civilian residents, but was blocked by the Puerto Rican government on constitutional grounds. Less than two decades later in 1970, the US Navy attempted the mass eviction again, but this time they faced intense popular opposition and unwanted scrutiny by the press both in Puerto Rico and on the US mainland. As local Culebrans began to stage public demonstrations and nonviolent direct actions against the US Navy, a diverse coalition of allies began to form on both sides of the Caribbean: the Puerto Rican Senate urged President Nixon to reconsider the US military’s plans, the Puerto Rican Independence Party occupied San Juan naval base with 600 protesters for three days, and groups like the Rescue Culebra Committee (RCC) and the Clergy Committee to Rescue Culebra (CCRC) formed to coordinate support from the US mainland. One mainland ally organization, A Quaker Action Group (AQAG), originally formed in 1966 to “apply nonviolent direct action as a witness against the war in Vietnam” and soon found themselves involved in the Culebra campaign as an extension of their antiwar work. Several CNVA members participated in the campaign under the AQAG banner including New England CNVA cofounder Bob Swann. Many of these allies from the US mainland went to Culebra to join direct action efforts there. In January 1971, the Puerto Rican protesters and their allies from RCC, CCRC, and AQAG gathered on Flamingo Beach, a US Navy bombing range. As a former home builder for Frank Lloyd Wright, Bob Swann volunteered his skills for an ambitious project: to design and build a chapel on the beach over the site of an older church that the military had previously destroyed, all while being monitored and blockaded by the US Navy. They completed the chapel after just three days and AQAG members led worship services to disrupt Operation Springboard, a massive military training exercise involving eight countries. When US Marines deployed tear gas against the protesters, demolished the new chapel, and had over a dozen people arrested and jailed (including Puerto Rican Independence Party President Rubén Ángel Berríos Martínez), students at the University of Puerto Rico rebelled and joined 1000 other allies to protest the sentencing and hold daily vigils at the jail. Soon after the arrests were made, the US Navy agreed to relocate to another island by 1975 with the signing of the Culebra Agreement. Within a year, however, the US military’s duplicity was revealed when US Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird voiced intentions to keep using the military base on the island until at least 1985, if not indefinitely. The revelation was an insult to Puerto Ricans all over and sparked even more protests in Puerto Rico and the mainland US. Activists on the mainland built replicas of the demolished chapel in front of the Pentagon and several of the embassies of nations involved in Operation Springboard. In Puerto Rico, rival political parties united to oppose the US Navy’s true plans for Culebra. On the island of Culebra itself, someone put a cross on the fence blocking protesters from the original chapel location with the slogan “You tore down a chapel but you can’t destroy the spirit that builds it ever again.” Due to the sustained pressure on the US Navy from all sides in Puerto Rico and in D.C., President Richard Nixon finally declared in 1974 that the federal government would comply with the original Culebra Agreement and cease all military operations on the island by the end of 1975. While the US government’s clean-up of the toxic chemicals and unexploded ordnance on Culebra has been extremely slow, and while it is also true that the US military simply moved their Culebra operations to Vieques, another small Puerto Rican island, the success at Culebra proved to Puerto Ricans all over that they could successfully organize themselves to challenge their colonizers. Primarily using nonviolent direct action and the strategic use of ally groups, the Culebra campaign kicked out the most powerful military in the world. -- Support Us We commit a significant amount of research and writing to produce A Peace of History each week. If you like our weekly posts, please consider supporting this project with a one-time or recurring donation. Your gift will be used to continue producing more A Peace of History posts as well as the greater mission of VPT. You may type in however much you would like to give; contributions of all sizes are appreciated. Click this link to learn more about what we do and how you can donate: https://www.mightycause.com/organization/Voluntown-Peace-Trust -- Sources Balderston, Daniel. “Culebra Action 1971.” [PDF]. https://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/20357/1/Culebra_Action_1971.pdf “Puerto Ricans expel United States Navy from Culebra Island, 1970-1974.” Global Nonviolent Action Database. [Accessed 28 September 2021]. https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/puerto-ricans-expel-united-states-navy-culebra-island-1970-1974 Swann, Marj. “Culebra Action.” Direct Action for a Nonviolent World. 17 Feb. 1971.  How much damage could a modern nuclear weapon cause in southeastern Connecticut? How far would the damage spread, and for how long could it last? How likely is a firestorm to develop, how is it different from a regular forest fire, and how big could it get? If the bomb goes off close to the shoreline, I’d be okay up in Willimantic, right? I mean, how bad could it really be?
Professor Gordon S. Christiansen, chairman of the Connecticut College Chemistry Department in the 1960s, addressed these questions in this week’s excerpts from his 1960 pamphlet Survival in Nuclear War a Vanishing Probability. The first two excerpts regarded the effects of a Hiroshima-size atomic bomb detonated over the New London - Groton bridge: the initial blast, firestorms, and radiation. Excerpts #3 & 4 explore the same scenario but with a much more powerful “modern” thermonuclear weapon. Today’s excerpt finishes the second scenario with a brief discussion on the devastating firestorm that would rip through the entire region. (Read Part 1 here: https://www.facebook.com/VoluntownPeaceTrust/posts/2029219227228402) (Read Part 2 here: https://www.facebook.com/VoluntownPeaceTrust/posts/2040482629435395) (Read Part 3 here: https://www.facebook.com/VoluntownPeaceTrust/posts/2046153552201636) (Read Part 4 here: https://www.facebook.com/VoluntownPeaceTrust/posts/2057147997768858) In all previous excerpts, the catastrophic scenarios described were the results of single bombs of different sizes detonated over the New London - Groton bridge. In the final two excerpts after this one, the topic will turn to the more likely scenario of a general widespread nuclear attack on the New York - New England region — and what effects such an attack would have on southeastern Connecticut. On Tuesday, people around the world celebrated the UN International Day of Peace. The theme this year was “recovering better for a sustainable and equitable world.” Earlier this year, the UN marked an even more impactful moment: the coming into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which made nuclear weapons illegal under international law. As we read the frightening scenario presented by Professor Christiansen, let us consider the barrier to international peace that the United States nuclear arsenal poses, how the mere existence of the arsenal encourages rival powerful governments to build their own nuclear weapons, the fact that the United States is the only government to ever use these weapons in war, and thus our special responsibility to dismantle our nuclear weapons immediately. A sustainable and equitable world cannot be recovered while we keep weapons of such destructive power in our holsters. — After describing the effects of radiation it is almost too much to turn now to the effects of the fire which would be an inevitable result of this hypothetical nuclear incident in Southeastern Connecticut. But the searing heat and the attendant fire store are facts of nuclear war and any serious appraisal of this incident must consider them. The detonation of the bomb takes place in less than a millionth of a second. During that time the materials of the bomb itself and all substances near it, the earth, water, steel, concrete, are vaporized, then are heated to temperatures in excess of a hundred million degrees and are compressed to many billions of pounds pressure. A huge fire ball develops, increasing in size quickly to two miles across and rising at a rate of 300 miles per hour to a height of 25 or 30 miles. There are two pulses of heat radiation, the first lasting only a fraction of a second, the second reaching a maximum in a few seconds but lasting for half a minute or more. If our hypothetical man in Willimantic had looked at this fire ball [in New London], he would have had a very brief impression of something many hundreds of times brighter than the noon sun — then he would have been blinded permanently; his exposed flesh would have been charred; his clothing would have been burned off him. His frame house would burst into flame; his lawn, shrubs and trees would take fire; his asphalt driveway would melt. The range of third degree burns to exposed people would be 25 to 30 miles out from this bomb. This would also mark the edge of the fire storm, in principle like the one described for the small, old fashioned atomic bomb but vastly greater and more devastating. The wooded areas of Southeastern Connecticut and Southern Rhode Island, extending from the Connecticut River almost to Narragansett Bay and north almost to Glastonbury and Danielson, would form one huge fire raging through the whole area, swept toward the center by 200 mile an hour winds. This fire would be many orders of magnitude greater than any ordinary forest fire. It is almost certain that it would only be extinguished by ultimately consuming all combustible material in its path. There would be some light rainfall along with the fallout during the early stages of the fire storm. But this would be ineffectual in controlling the fire and would also bring more unpleasant and dangerous material down with it. An example of such noxious secondary products of the bomb which would fall over the devastated area is the 120,000 tons of nitric acid which the nuclear explosion forms from the nitrogen and oxygen of the air. It is possible that many people in the outlying areas might survive this combination of assaults on human life. But any attempt at prediction of numbers would be meaningless. Geographic location, precautionary measures, and intelligent understanding of the nature and timing of the threats would be important factors in determining individual survival. But the most important factor of all would be plain luck. If a particular unique set of circumstances prevailed so that the blast, the initial flash of heat, direct radiation, flying objects, falling buildings, fallout radiation, and ingested radioactivity were all avoided, then the lucky person might survive to deal with the untold almost unimaginable, exigencies of the post-attack period. But if any single one of the primary threats could not be avoided then post-attack living would be a problem. — Take Action If you are concerned about nuclear weapons and live in Connecticut, consider joining the CT Committee on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The Committee organizes demonstrations against nuclear weapons throughout the year. Sign up to the mailing list here: https://forms.gle/pX8v2U4CktAcz8s78 You can also sign petitions to pressure our government to ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, like this one: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/support-the-nuclear-weapons-ban-treaty — Support Us We commit a significant amount of research and writing to produce A Peace of History each week. If you like our weekly posts, please consider supporting this project with a one-time or recurring donation. Your gift will be used to continue producing more A Peace of History posts as well as the greater mission of VPT. You may type in however much you would like to give; contributions of all sizes are appreciated. Click this link to learn more about what we do and how you can donate: https://www.mightycause.com/organization/Voluntown-Peace-Trust — Sources Christiansen, Gordon S. Survival in Nuclear War a Vanishing Probability. Connecticut College, 1961. — Further Resources “Electric Boat History.” General Dynamics: Electric Boat. [Accessed 4 August 2021]. http://www.gdeb.com/about/history/ “Nuclear Weapons: Who Has What at a Glance.” Arms Control Association. August 2020 [Accessed 4 August 2021]. https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Nuclearweaponswhohaswhat “Treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons.” United Nations: Office of Disarmament Affairs. [Accessed 4 August 2021]. https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/tpnw/ Wellerstein, Alex. “Nukemap.” Nuclear Secrecy. [Accessed 4 August 2021]. https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ “What if We Nuke a City?” Kurzgesagt — In a Nutshell. 13 October 2019 [Accessed 4 August 2021]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iPH-br_eJQ  How much radiation does a nuclear detonation emit? How far does it span, and how long does it last? How quickly can radiation kill me after a nuclear explosion? These are the questions Professor Gordon S. Christiansen, chairman of the Connecticut College Chemistry Department in the 1960s, sought to answer in the following excerpt from his 1960 pamphlet Survival in Nuclear War a Vanishing Probability. Previous excerpts have dealt with the force of the initial blast, the potential for a firestorm to develop, and some of the effects or radiation.
(Read Part 1 here: https://www.facebook.com/VoluntownPeaceTrust/posts/2029219227228402) (Read Part 2 here: https://www.facebook.com/VoluntownPeaceTrust/posts/2040482629435395) (Read Part 3 here: https://www.facebook.com/VoluntownPeaceTrust/posts/2046153552201636) This excerpt continues the examination of radiation from a hypothetical nuclear blast over the bridge that connects New London and Groton, especially the shockingly brief amount of time one has to be exposed to radiation to receive a lethal dose, as well as the enormous geographical extent over which the radiation would spread. Because of the inevitability of these weapons eventually being used in war, and because of the unconscionably horrifying amounts and types of destruction these weapons cause, on January 22, 2021, the United Nations’ Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons came into force. In honor of all of the victims of nuclear weapons, and with great hope in the new international treaty, we present Professor Christiansen’s Survival in Nuclear War a Vanishing Probability, part 4. — Again, the truly awesome destructive effects of radiation are shown by the fallout from the bomb. The energy released by large nuclear weapons is divided among three major effects; somewhat over a third appears as blast, a third as heat, and less than a third appears as radioactivity. Nearly half of this radioactivity will be carried by the huge mushroom cloud into the stratosphere and will be more or less equally distributed over the whole earth. Much of the radioactivity of this worldwide fallout will be lost while it is remotely high up; the remainder will be so evenly distributed over the surface of the earth that it is of no concern in the local crisis. The most damaging effect is caused by the so called “local” fallout, that which falls within several hours of the detonation and within a couple of hundred miles of the center of the burst. This local fallout is distributed in two patterns. The major one is a long elliptical area up to 250 miles long and about 40-50 miles wide, with the long dimension in the direction of the prevailing winds. From our hypothetical bomb dropped on the Thames river bridge a deadly wave of fallout would sweep to the northeast. Providence — and the whole state of Rhode Island — would be covered within two hours; Boston and all of Massachusetts between there and Cape Cod would be covered within four hours after the detonation here. Over half of this huge elliptical pattern of “local” fallout would fall harmlessly into Massachusetts Bay and the Gulf of Maine — harmless that is, except that the fish and other sea life in this area would become too radioactive to eat for several months after the incident. The second pattern of local fallout from this bomb would be of much more concern to us in Southeastern Connecticut. This pattern is roughly circular, about 25 miles in radius; it would start at Madison on the coast, include most of Middlesex County, just miss Middletown, include Willimantic to the north and the southwestern third of Rhode Island to the east; it would just miss Block Island and include the tip of Long Island as far back as Sag Harbor. Within this area large particles of fallout would rain down almost immediately after the bomb detonation; within an hour the whole area would be covered by a deep layer of wildly radioactive dust. It is not possible accurately to predict the level of this radioactivity within the area close to the bomb site. The most pertinent estimate is one made by the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory. This institution has made the most detailed studies of actual fallout levels in the Pacific bomb tests and on the basis of these actual measurements has estimated the average level of fallout radioactivity over the whole land surface of the United States which would result from the explosion of 263 hydrogen weapons on strategic and population targets scattered throughout the country. On the basis of their estimates the average level of fallout radioactivity would be 7500 roentgens per hour at the end of the first hour. Since there are sizeable areas which would have no fallout at all, clearly some areas would have levels of radioactivity inordinately higher than the average and certainly among these would be the area immediately surrounding a big bomb drop. An extremely conservative estimate would be that the 25 mile circle around New London would have an initial (end of the first hour) level of radioactivity of 20,000 roentgens per hour (roughly three times the average); the level in the elliptical pattern would be much lower than this, probably less than twice the Naval Laboratory Radiological Laboratory estimate of average radioactivity. A dose of radiation between 300 and 500 roentgens has a 50% probability of being fatal; a dose of around 700 to 900 roentgens is always fatal. Thus anyone exposed to the fallout within the 25 mile circle for as long as two minutes during the first hour would certainly die of radiation damage; in Providence the fatal exposure would be 10 to 20 minutes during the second hour. Further consideration of the damaging effects of the fallout radiation and the possibility of protection against it must take cognizance of three factors. The first is that the level of radioactivity decreases rapidly with time because of the natural decay of the radioactive materials[...] Thus, at the end of seven hours the level of radioactivity in Southeastern Connecticut would be about 2000 roentgens per hours[...] At the end of two days the level at the fringes would be about 200 roentgens per hour; at the end of two weeks it would be 20; in four months it would be 2 roentgens per hour. The second factor to consider is the protection offered by various structures or shelters. An automobile or the first floor of an ordinary home offers a protection factor of about 2. That is, a person in (or under) an automobile or inside a house would receive only half the radiation he would in the open. In the basement of a house the factor would be between 10 and 100; the best basement shelter recommended by OCDM has a protection factor of about 1000; a self contained deep blast shelter would decrease the radioactivity by several thousand. The third factor to consider is that harmful effects of radiation are cumulative. That is, if a person in Willimantic say, heard the explosion in New London and came out in the open to see what it was and stayed out long enough to be exposed to radioactive fallout for 30 seconds, he would have received about 150 roentgens. If he then went inside and took another 30 seconds to pick up his portable radio, he would have received another 75 roentgens. If he then went immediately to a near perfect deep blast shelter and stayed there from then on, he would still be in danger of dying from radiological exposure[...] The chances of survival for people further out from the bomb blast would be much better; but those closer in would have much less chance. Also it is quite clear that the first minute, the first hour, the first day are the times when protection is most effective. If a person is inside an adequate shelter at the time of detonation and has an adequate supply of uncontaminated air, food, and water and sanitation facilities to hold out in a deep shelter for the first few weeks, he can then safely stand brief periods of exposure to the unshielded radiation from fallout. — Take Action If you are concerned about nuclear weapons and live in Connecticut, consider joining the CT Committee on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The Committee organizes demonstrations against nuclear weapons throughout the year. Sign up to the mailing list here: https://forms.gle/pX8v2U4CktAcz8s78 You can also sign petitions to pressure our government to ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, like this one: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/support-the-nuclear-weapons-ban-treaty — Support Us We commit a significant amount of research and writing to produce A Peace of History each week. If you like our weekly posts, please consider supporting this project with a one-time or recurring donation. Your gift will be used to continue producing more A Peace of History posts as well as the greater mission of VPT. You may type in however much you would like to give; contributions of all sizes are appreciated. Click this link to learn more about what we do and how you can donate: https://www.mightycause.com/organization/Voluntown-Peace-Trust — Sources Christiansen, Gordon S. Survival in Nuclear War a Vanishing Probability. Connecticut College, 1961. — Further Resources “Electric Boat History.” General Dynamics: Electric Boat. [Accessed 4 August 2021]. http://www.gdeb.com/about/history/ “Nuclear Weapons: Who Has What at a Glance.” Arms Control Association. August 2020 [Accessed 4 August 2021]. https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Nuclearweaponswhohaswhat “Treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons.” United Nations: Office of Disarmament Affairs. [Accessed 4 August 2021]. https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/tpnw/ Wellerstein, Alex. “Nukemap.” Nuclear Secrecy. [Accessed 4 August 2021]. https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ “What if We Nuke a City?” Kurzgesagt — In a Nutshell. 13 October 2019 [Accessed 4 August 2021]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iPH-br_eJQ |
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