Bent over double with a forty-pound, borrowed, Boy Scout rucksack on my back, I was stumbling down Route One in New Hampshire on a Saturday morning at the end of April in 1977.
Speaking at my college, George Wald
[1] had said if you believed in justice, freedom, democracy and America, you would sign up for nonviolence training in preparation for the Seabrook occupation. During the training session, moved by role-playing an “occupier,” and singing Woody Guthrie’s, “This Land is Your Land,” I decided to join in the protest.
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On site with affinity group - photo Russell Puschak
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I formed an affinity group with school friends and local folks in Worcester, Massachusetts. We prepared ourselves by arranging equipment and food, discussing possible scenarios, naming ourselves the “Worcester Quahogs.” We were going to be camping out, and needed sleeping bags, backpacks, food and water. The morning we left, New Hampshire Governor Meldrim Thomson was quoted in The Boston Globe saying, “Terrorists were descending on New Hampshire.” I remember our apprehension as we looked at each other; we did not know what to expect.
We drove to the New Hampshire seacoast and arrived at a farm that was a staging area for the protest. We formed a huge circle with other occupiers and everyone sat on the person behind them: “United we sit.” This was to encourage trust. I slept outdoors for the first time in my life.
The next morning, after eating oatmeal prepared by our support person and putting on all our gear, we set out. By the time we reached Route One, I was bent double under the weight of my borrowed Boy Scout rucksack and my heels were blistered from my boots, but I was determined to keep up with my group. We entered the site easily, with more than a thousand people marching onto it from various access points; some even came by boat. We danced in circles on the site, elated, chanting “No Nukes!”
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| Tent City on site - photo Russell Puschak |
As it got dark, we set up tents and prepared ourselves for whatever would happen next. Streets were established, one named for Karen Silkwood. Karen Silkwood was a worker at a Kerr-McGee plutonium
[2] production facility in Oklahoma. She became a union activist in the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union (OCAWU) and began to uncover serious safety violations at the plant. After being deliberately contaminated by plutonium in her home, so that she set off alarms arriving at work, she died in a suspicious car crash while on her way to a meeting with a New York Times reporter and union official. Documents that friends and family attested that she had with her were missing. Local authorities attributed the crash to her falling asleep at the wheel. After a decade of litigation, her estate accepted a 1.3 million dollar out of court settlement with Kerr-McGee. Her friends put a sign saying “Karen Silkwood – Vindicated,” on the road where she had died.
A little walk from the new town of “Freebrook,” behind some bushes, there were two trenches (his and hers) that served as bathrooms–another first. Every New England state except Massachusetts had sent troopers to assist the New Hampshire authorities. They were around, watching us use the trenches, flying over the site in helicopters. I particularly remember the Rhode Island State Troopers–they looked like German storm troopers to me with their jodhpur-like trousers.
One of my most powerful memories is a pantomime baseball game that happened on Sunday just before the arrests began. There was no bat (it would have been considered a weapon) and no ball, but the crowd knew just when to cheer as the home runs were hit. A completely spontaneous moment that seemed perfectly choreographed.
When the arrests began, I was in an area close to the buses that had been brought onto the site. The troopers arrested the men from our group first; when it became clear that the women were not going to leave, they arrested us as well. Although our group was now fragmented, I was still with Jane, my freshman year roommate and friend. We managed to stay together through the hours following the arrest. First we were held on the bus, then we were crammed into a cattle-car without windows; we counted off to find there were 75 of us in there. Someone started chanting “Om” and everyone took it up. A breeze of fresh air swept through the car as if by magic.
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| Men from the Worcester AGs in armory - photo Russell Puschak |
Finally, we were called into the Portsmouth Armory for fingerprinting, matched with our arrest photos, and arraigned. Following arraignment, Jane and I waited together, and then in an awful moment were separated and sent to different armories. I was on a bus going somewhere at 3 or 4 a.m.–had I ever been up that late before?
I arrived at Dover Armory, tottered in, saw Denise from my affinity group, thought to myself everything will be o.k., unrolled my sleeping bag, and went to sleep. In the morning we re-formed affinity groups with whomever was near us and called ourselves “Dunkin’ Meltdown” after the breakfast the National Guard provided.
We were detained for 12 days in the armories around New Hampshire. We read the newspaper coverage of our protest: we were in all the newspapers–local, national, international–and on TV news. New Hampshire authorities had been caught off-guard and did not know how to handle the situation. This became clearer over the next few days as people were brought into court and sentenced to jail in a “sharp break with legal practice” (NYT, 5/6/77) following an “unusual” appearance in court by then State Attorney General David Souter
[3].
By agreeing in advance amongst ourselves to “bail solidarity,” and insisting on being released on our word that we would return for trial (personal recognizance), protesters threw a monkey wrench into the legal system. This agreement had several purposes: it protected people who had been arrested the previous year from being singled out and treated more harshly, it prevented the state from getting our cash, and it brought the issue of nuclear power into focus. We were prepared to sit in jail a long time to make these points. We made the authorities nervous, they refused to release us, and we refused to play by their rules. We took away the power they derived out of people’s fear of the stigma of being arrested and going to jail.
The armory experience was many things–lonely, exhilarating, tiresome. We got sick and had to have doctors brought in. We insisted on vegetarian meals. We refused to have male and female sides of the room and the guardsmen had to forcibly separate us. The guardsmen began to like us; one of them named his puppy “No Nukes Luke.” We sang songs all day and half the night. We held an impromptu graduation ceremony for someone who was missing his real graduation. Students who hadn’t finished their semesters were awarded amnesty by various universities. We cheered when people had to bail out to return to families and jobs. I finally called my family to tell them I was fine and managed to convince my dad that the guardsmen would not shoot us like at Kent State. Some people from the Fenway neighborhood in Boston who were in my armory wrote a song to the tune of “Daisy, Daisy” (“
Dover, Dover, Dover Armory, it’s been full of the likes of you and me, we just staged a peaceful sit-in, nuclear power should be forbidden, so we believe we’re detainees of the nuclear industry. Clamshell, Clamshell we’re hanging in there with you, we want clean air and healthy children too…”).
Our armory drafted and signed a public letter quoted in the New York Times (5/7/77): “
Radioactivity is a silent and invisible killer. You cannot see it, hear it, or taste it. Can we tolerate having such a killer in our midst? Having such a killer strangle our planet? We believe the answer is no.”
I had a deck of cards and played hours of solitaire; I still have that deck of cards. I got a love letter through Core Support that I still have. I still have half my armband (I shared the other half with someone in my affinity group who had lost his) as well as the Clamshell Alliance button given to me by the late, great Guy Chichester, a legendary leader in and hero of the New England anti-nuclear movement.
We made history during those two weeks. We maintained the principal of bail solidarity. When the authorities finally released us, some 700 of us were still in the armories. Freedom and the reunion with my original affinity group was a truly joyous moment. The grass was green, the sky was blue, we were free and it was on our terms.
When I look back I see that we successfully brought the issue of nuclear power to our nation. My own parents changed their minds about nuclear energy as a result of my participation in the demonstration. No new plants have been ordered for more than 20 years, many were canceled and the rest straggled on line under great protest. I feel I had the incredible good luck to participate in a genuine revolutionary moment along with some of the best people I have ever had the privilege to know and love.
[4]
[1] Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, 1967. Harvard professor, important anti-war voice.
[2] Plutonium is a highly radioactive byproduct of the nuclear cycle, used in bombs, lasts tens of thousands of years and is lethal if inhaled.
[3] David Souter went on to serve as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the U.S. from 1990-2009.
[4] From Dover Diary-Recollections of a Rank and File Clam, in Peacework Magazine, July/August 1996, New England Regional Office of the American Friends Service Committee, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
