Arrests at Lawrence Livermore Lab

April 18, 2003

LIVERMORE -- About 300 anti-war, anti-nuclear activists gathered this Good Friday to protest the continued research and development of weapons of mass destruction at the Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab and to protest the Iraq war.

About 50 of the protesters put their bodies on the line to block one of the entrances to the lab and were arrested when they refused to budge. Officers in heavy pads with batons were ready to cart the peaceful protesters away to an outdoor holding pen at the lab for processing.

Faiths of all denominations as well as a smattering of atheists and agnostics, some holding pictures of maimed and killed children attended the annual rite.

Police attendance was larger than in previous years a according to long-time activists Jim Forsyth and Corine Thornton who have been coming to the annual event for, respectively, 20 and 14 years, "most likely due to the war in Iraq" said Thornton. They also said the crowd of protesters was larger as well.

Speakers from various peace and justice and interfaith groups spoke out on how the world can’t afford, either financially or morally, to continue to design and create nuclear weapons and called for a moratorium on their development.

One of the most powerful speeches came from Father Bill O’Donnell of St Joseph the Worker Church in Berkeley as he gave a vitriolic attack of the scientist’s work at the lab.

"At each of these meetings we know again that our gathering is far more vital than the kind of meeting these physicist do each day as they go about the devil’s work of creating and devising more devastating ways and methods of killing not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of innocent human beings. Each day coming to work for them is a fix to satisfy their addiction to violence." O’Donnell said.

O’Donnell continued, "What drives them to this macabre egomaniacal madness? It’s got to be some feeling about getting off doing their patriotic duty, plus being handsomely paid, so they can shed sentimental tears of pride at their grandchildren’s graduation from some PHD in physics graduate school."

When reflecting on the seeming futility of the protest to stop weapons development, O’Donnell opined, "We have been meeting here since 1980, 23 years ago, at least twice a year. The only thing we have been able to do is effect a name change from the politically incorrect Radiation Laboratory to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the home of these cultural Livermorons. One square mile factory of nuclear death and ruin."

But he did say that the protests do generate debate among the physicist and the community and have caused some physicist to leave the lab to pursue less destructive science.

Carolyn Scarr from the Ecumenical Peace Institute called the weapons being developed n the lab as the US’s trump card. "These are the weapons that maintain the American Empire, just like the Romans used the crucifixes as their trump card to intimidate the Christians, these weapons are used to intimidate the world."

One of the main concerns expressed at today’s protest was the lab’s directive to develop mini-nukes and bio-weapons. Marylia Kelley of TriValley CARES described work on the B83, a high-yield 1.2 megaton nuclear bomb otherwise known as a bunker buster as "incredibly dangerous."

"The United States is trying to create usable nuclear weapons. By doing so they would be breaking the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. We need to preserve the ban on mini-nukes. If we don’t this it would be a desecration, a blasphemy against the world." Kelley said.

First time lab protester Sophia (last name withheld) from Castro Valley decided to get up early to attend because she wanted to be with others who are against the war. Though not religious she felt compelled to come to express her solidarity with the other protesters.

"I’m here today because I am so sad about what is going on in the world today. All the killing. I just want to be around other people who feel the same way I do."