 During the night of August 23-24, 1969, a conservative American terrorist group calling themselves “the Minutemen” (an offshoot of the John Birch Society) conducted an armed attack on the headquarters of the New England Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA) in Voluntown, Connecticut. At the time, the New England CNVA was one of the most active US antiwar groups of the time, and despite FBI and State Police intervention, it has long been suspected that law enforcement purposely allowed the first part of the attack to commence. After all, the FBI had tabs on both the Minutemen and the CNVA, and if as a result of the Minutement attack (even an interrupted one), CNVA morale declined enough to collapse the organization, all the better for the Bureau. As it happened, one CNVA resident did get hit in the crossfire between Minutemen and the police (many plain-clothed, adding to the chaos of the night). Morale did flag for a time. Two members left. But on the whole, the New England CNVA members came together stronger, with a renewed sense of purpose and urgency, and funneled their frustrations and energies into repairing their facilities and building new ones. While the former New England CNVA headquarters has changed organizations over the decades and is currently known as the Voluntown Peace Trust, it has always remained a place dedicated to ecological sustainability, social justice, and war resistance. As we continue to evolve as an organization and a movement to meet future challenges, it is important to examine our history to remind ourselves of when we have encountered unthinkable events — both good and bad — and how we emerged out the other side. (Click the image below to download the PDF version of the original clippings)  —
Take Action The CT Committee for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons organizes pro-disarmament demonstrations throughout the year. To participate in these demonstrations against nuclear arms and in support of the UN’s Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, please get in touch with us on Facebook at facebook.com/voluntownpeacetrust or email us at [email protected]. — Support Us If you like our weekly posts, please consider supporting this project with a one-time or recurring donation. 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 Suzuki, Mary. "Minutemen Attack On New England CNVA: A Report." New England Committee for Nonviolent Action. September 1968.  In August 1961, southeastern Connecticut was host to perhaps the biggest war resistance training programs in the United States that year: the 5th Annual Peacemaker Nonviolence Training Program. This month-long program was a collaboration between the Peacemakers, a national community of mostly older war resisters, and the more youthful New England Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA), which had just been established in the past year. In the following newsletter clipping from The Peacemaker, it is reported that 130 adults and children went through the program over the course of 3 weeks. In that time, the participants considered the theme of the “individual and society” from a number of perspectives — among them, theoretical future plans for a “developmental center” to foster a community of individually-motivated war resisters. It is no coincidence that the New England CNVA would acquire the land that became the Voluntown Peace Trust in the following year. But the training program also addressed more immediately tangible issues and plans for actions, including more direct actions at New London-Groton opposing nuclear-armed submarines as well as support work for imprisoned allies near and far. (Click the image below to download the PDF version of the original clippings)   —
Take Action The CT Committee for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons organizes pro-disarmament demonstrations throughout the year. To participate in these demonstrations against nuclear arms and in support of the UN’s Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, please get in touch with us on Facebook at facebook.com/voluntownpeacetrust or email us at [email protected]. — Support Us If you like our weekly posts, please consider supporting this project with a one-time or recurring donation. 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 “Peacemakers Plan Nat’l Conference.” The Peacemaker. (Vol 14, #12) -- Further Resources Berrigan, Frida. “On Friday, ‘Say no to nuclear weapons.’” The Day. 1 August 2021 [Accessed 4 August 2021]. https://www.theday.com/article/20210801/OP03/210809975 “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  “Could Southeastern Connecticut survive a nuclear attack? What would be the effects of an atomic weapon dropped within this area? What conditions would we face if this area was not hit directly but other areas of New England and New York were hit by nuclear weapons? What defenses are available to us? What would conditions of post-attack living be like? Is there anything we could do now to prevent their happening?” These are the opening lines to Dr. Gordon S. Christiansen’s 1960 pamphlet “Survival in Nuclear War: A Vanishing Probability.” As the chair of the chemistry department at Connecticut College and active participant in the Committee for Nonviolent Action, Dr. Christiansen volunteered much of his time and energy to educate the public about the power of nuclear weapons, the horrific effects of nuclear fallout, and the ultimately suicidal nature of the arms race and MAD (mutually assured destruction). In the pamphlet, Dr. Christiansen addresses all of these questions, the answers for which mostly have not changed in the ensuing decades. Some answers remain the same because there have been only a few major advances in nuclear weapons technology since the 1960s. On the other hand, other answers remain unchanged because of the lack of advances in handling the unavoidable radioactive fallout. In fact, in some cases, a nuclear detonation in a heavily populated area today could be worse than such a detonation in 1960 simply because of how much more reliant we now are on technology and a globalized economy. Here, we present Dr. Christiansen’s 15-page pamphlet in its entirety. For any Connecticut residents who have ever felt anxious about living so close to the US Navy sub base, or for the morbidly curious who have ever wondered what a nuclear detonation might look like in New England: this is a must-read. (Click the image below to download the PDF version of the original pamphlet)  — Take Action The CT Committee for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons organizes pro-disarmament demonstrations throughout the year. To participate in these demonstrations against nuclear arms and in support of the UN’s Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, please get in touch with us on Facebook at facebook.com/voluntownpeacetrust or email us at [email protected]. — Support Us If you like our weekly posts, please consider supporting this project with a one-time or recurring donation. 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 Christiansen, Gordon S. Survival in Nuclear War: A Vanishing Probability. Connecticut College, 1961. -- Further Resources Berrigan, Frida. “On Friday, ‘Say no to nuclear weapons.’” The Day. 1 August 2021 [Accessed 4 August 2021]. https://www.theday.com/article/20210801/OP03/210809975 “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  The following is a slightly modified repost from last year about Hiroshima Day, the UN’s Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, and the submarines our community in Southeastern Connecticut builds as part of the US nuclear arsenal. At the time of original posting, few of us could have predicted the imminent Russian invasion into Ukraine. Many, however, have been sounding the warning calls about the combined US-Russia global nuclear threat for years — in fact, opposition to nuclear weapons was a founding principle for VPT. Now, on the one hand, we seem to be hurtling closer to nuclear war every day — but on the other, much of the rest of the world has already agreed to ban nuclear weapons outright. These are the two paths before us, and the choice is clear. All that is needed is the courage to take the right path.
-- Tomorrow is Hiroshima Day: the 77th anniversary of the US atomic bombing of the Japanese city Hiroshima. It is a somber annual reminder that too few Americans let pass without a second thought: a reminder of one of the most vicious, destructive, and world-changing actions the United States has ever committed. The moral legitimacy and strategic necessity of using the atomic bomb in war has been debated since even before the weapon was completed in 1945, but much of the recent scholarship concludes that the primary motivation for using the bomb on primarily civilian targets in Japan came from political expediency and racist ideas of the Japanese. As of January 22, 2021, nuclear weapons are illegal under international law: that includes prohibitions on developing, testing, producing, acquiring, possessing, stockpiling, deploying, and using or threatening to use nuclear weapons. The United States and Russia combined possess over 12,000 nuclear weapons, more than 90% of those in the world. All of the countries presently possessing nuclear weapons are now in violation of international law, but the United States has a unique responsibility among the nuclear-armed nations to dismantle its nuclear weapons and commit to a future free of nuclear weapons: the United States is the first and only country to ever use nuclear weapons in war. Since at least the beginning of the Cold War, the economy in southeastern Connecticut has been heavily influenced by the military-industrial complex. General Dynamics: Electric Boat (EB) in New London and Groton is the 6th largest military contractor in the country, and has been designing and building nuclear-armed submarines for decades. Despite the outsized importance of EB in New London County’s economy, the company does not appreciably benefit the vast majority of residents — the City of New London’s median income is less than $36,000 per year, while CEO of EB Phebe Novakovic earned nearly $19 million in 2020. In fact, it was EB’s production of the Polaris subs, the first to carry nuclear weapons in the world, that brought the Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA) to the region in 1960. Two years later, as they continued their opposition to the growing nuclear weapons industry, the CNVA established the Voluntown Peace Trust. One common argument employees of Electric Boat often repeat is that EB does not build nuclear weapons; they merely build the delivery system. But how reasonable is this argument? Did the EB workers reach this conclusion on their own or is this argument part of the corporate culture? Is this argument taught to workers as the official company line? To take an example from another chapter of Connecticut’s history: while Colt did not produce ammunition, no one can reasonably claim that the company’s manufacture of its famous revolvers and rifles wasn’t a part of the firearms industry. Those guns were made to serve no other practical purpose than to shoot specific ammunition; so, too, are the modern submarines being built at EB. But while bullets can only usually strike one or two targets each, the modern nuclear weapons delivery system on the new Columbia-class submarines is designed to hold up to 16 Trident D-5 missiles, with each missile capable of carrying up to 14 W-76-1 thermonuclear warheads. Each of those warheads possess six times the destructive force as what the United States detonated over Hiroshima in 1945. Therefore, due to the way that multiple warheads are bundled into bigger missiles, the modern submarine-based nuclear weapons delivery system is specifically designed to launch multiple, city-destroying nuclear weapons at once. As Frida Berrigan recently concluded in a recent op-ed in New London’s The Day: “Multiply 12 times 16 times 14 times 6 and the potential carnage is almost unfathomable. The best way to understand the Columbia class submarine, then, is as a $100 billion-plus initiative that aims to deliver 16,128 Hiroshimas.” Many Americans think that they understand nuclear weapons. We’ve seen the iconic photographs of the mushroom cloud and of the ghostly black shadows where people close to the epicenter were vaporized, seen the shockwave on TV and in movies, perhaps even deployed such weapons in video games. But nothing, not even the actual historical examples of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, can fully convey the sheer devastation and suffering a nuclear detonation would have on a modern city today. First of all, a modern city relies much more on its infrastructure than even 76 years ago. A thermonuclear detonation over a modern city would be very much like several natural disasters at once, except far worse: buildings, bridges, roads, and essential infrastructure collapse like in an earthquake; a blast of wind shatters windows as far as 12 miles away and sends the lethal debris at unsuspecting bystanders; fires suddenly appear across the city at once as people begin burning alive and gas stations start exploding with no warning; if the city is lucky, the mushroom cloud will merely begin to rain down tarry, radioactive sludge; if the city is unlucky, the mushroom cloud will turn into a firestorm. Secondly, scientists and military leadership now know that after most nuclear detonations, anyone who enters the affected area within two weeks of the detonation will likely receive a lethal dose of radiation. This means that after a nuclear detonation, no doctors, nurses, firefighters, emergency response personnel of any kind, not even the military — no one will come to help for at least two weeks. The significance of the radiation’s effect and the two-week nuclear quarantine period cannot be overstated. In every other kind of massive disaster, outside help is feasible and even expected. Such help is impossible in the two weeks after a nuclear detonation, and no government on Earth has a practical, aid-oriented planned response to such an event. Meanwhile during those two weeks, thousands will remain trapped under the rubble of collapsed buildings, while thousands more with their clothes melted into their skin will wander the streets looking for food and water. Within the two weeks, still more thousands will have died from radiation sickness, physical injuries, and sheer exhaustion. Such a horrifying event is not simply possible; if we do not dismantle all nuclear weapons on Earth, it is inevitable. In some city someday, this will happen if we continue on the present path. It is naive to think that such a thing wouldn’t happen in New London County either; the very fact that Electric Boat is the US Navy’s primary submarine manufacturer, as well as the presence of Naval Submarine Base New London just upriver makes the region a key military target. Though the Hiroshima victims and the hibakusha (“explosion affected people”) are fading from living memory, we must never stop retelling their stories. But as long as nuclear weapons — and the tailor-made means to deliver them — are held by the United States, we as Americans have a unique responsibility to pressure our government to be rid of them. And as residents of New London County, we have a double-responsibility to honestly examine how the products of our local economy will eventually, inevitably cause the unthinkable level of death, devastation, and suffering inherent in a nuclear attack. — Take Action If you are concerned about nuclear weapons and live near New London, CT, consider joining the CT Committee on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons tomorrow, August 6 at the corners of Howard and Bank Streets in downtown New London. We will be there from 3p-5p to honor the victims of the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima, as well as to educate the public about the new illegality of nuclear weapons. See the Facebook event page for more info and to RSVP: https://fb.me/e/D33GQsIP 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 Berrigan, Frida. “On Friday, ‘Say no to nuclear weapons.’” The Day. 1 August 2021 [Accessed 4 August 2021]. https://www.theday.com/article/20210801/OP03/210809975 “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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