Commemoration of the 25th Anniversary of Chernobyl Disaster

The AA Clearinghouse and allied organizations held a speak-out and open mic at the new Federal Building at 7th and Mission Streets in San Francisco today.

The event started at noon with signs and banners carrying the "shut 'em down" message as people gathered to remember the Chernobyl disaster 25 years ago. Protesters said that the accident going on now at Fukushima Dai-ichi should be enough to bring down the entire nuclear industry.

The "AA" in AA Clearinghouse stands for Abalone Alliance. Abalone Alliance was formed in 1977 as a nonviolent civil disobedience group to shut down the Pacific Gas and Electric Company's Diablo Canyon Power Plant in San Luis Obispo County. They modeled their affinity group-based organizational structure after the Clamshell Alliance which was, at that time, protesting the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant in coastal New Hampshire. The name "Abalone Alliance" was adopted in reference to the tens of thousands of wild California Red Abalone that were killed in 1974.

The Abalone Alliance itself was closed in 1985 with the Clearinghouse taking on the responsibility of holding onto the history and resources of the Alliance in the Bay Area.

The Abalone Alliance staged blockades and occupations at the Diablo Canyon Power Plant site during the years between 1977 and 1982. Nearly two thousand people were arrested during a two-week blockade in 1981, making it the site of the largest number of arrests at an anti-nuclear protest in the United States.

The Diablo Canyon controversy started in 1963 when PG&E scrapped its attempt to build the Bodega Bay Nuclear Power Plant at Bodega Head, 71 miles north of San Francisco. The Bodega struggle started in 1958, but was opposed by a group led by a University of California professor and young Sierra Club activist named David Pessonen. This was the first anti-nuclear power campaign in the US. The main reason that the facility wasn't built was due its location less than 1,000 feet from the fault zone that struck San Francisco in 1906.