On a bitterly cold morning in early March of 1979, one full busload and one van of peace and anti-nuclear activists left Worcester to go to Groton, Connecticut to protest a Trident Submarine launch (or christening?) at General Dynamics Electric Boat Corporation.
At that time, one Trident Submarine carried enough nuclear warheads to wipe out six hundred cities around the world all at once. The trigger for all this destruction was a Colt 45 pistol, exemplifying the cavalier “cowboy” fantasy.
Crowds of very well-dressed people walked on the inside of a chain-link fence to welcome, bless, and worship that submarine.
Crowds of not so well-dressed people stood outside the fence to protest the submarine death machine that could cause so much destruction. A lady in a navy blue coat and white gloves on her way in to worship, told us: “I’m praying for you.” Someone on our side of the fence said drily, “We are praying for you, too.”
It was so cold and windy standing there along the fence that we huddled together. Snipers with fearsome long guns were staked out along the roof of the building to protect the deadly submarine from unarmed peace protesters.
Men with cameras were taking our pictures from the other side of the fence. People chanted, “Smile for your files!” Someone with a camera on our side of the fence began taking pictures of the men taking pictures of us.
I saw members of the War Resisters League dressed dramatically in long black robes and they held a small sit-in at the entrance gates. They were arrested and taken away in police vans.
More than any other protest I have ever attended, the one at Electric Boat exposed the militarism that is so deeply etched into our national character. People were literally worshipping apocalyptic machinery with so many nuclear warheads that humanity could be wiped out by firing a Colt 45 pistol and unleashing nuclear holocaust.
Those bomb worshippers made a strange quasi-religion by brewing up patriotism, nationalism leavened with militarism.
In a significant moment of emotional comprehension, I had a dream that I was at an amusement park watching dolphins and whales cavort down a water slide lined with people who were cheering. When I woke up I knew I had dreamed in symbols, the truth of what I had witnessed that bitterly cold and windy day, with dolphins and whales instead of the submarine. Worship them - not a man-made diabolical machine that can wipe out planet earth.
2015
Protesting the Trident submarine has become a lifetime struggle. This past August 12, out on the West Coast at the Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, 20 miles from Seattle protestors with the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action blocked traffic entering the base. They held banners "We can all live without Trident" and "Abolish Nuclear Weapons."
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| Photo: Glen Milner |
There are eight Trident submarines at Bangor - the largest concentration of operational nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal. Each submarine carries up to 24 Trident II (D-5) missiles, loaded with 8 independently targetable nuclear warheads with an explosive yield up to 32 times the yield of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
The Trident fleet is slated for replacement by upgrading to the OHIO class submarine at a cost estimate of $100 billion.
Our comrades in Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament "across the pond" in the UK are also protesting plans to replace their existing fleet of Vanguard-class nuclear submarines with new Trident carriers at a cost of £100 billion while cutting billions from public spending on health care and education.
A protest in April took place at Faslane naval base, near Glasgow, with about 200 protesters from the Scrap Trident coalition's "Bairns Not Bombs" campaign blocked the gates to the base.
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| Photo found at: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-32282564 |
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