Tri-Valley CAREs
Communities Against a Radioactive Environment
Annual Hiroshima Day Protest Against Nuclear Weapons Goes Virtual
August, 5, 2020
Source: The Independent
The annual Hiroshima Day protest against nuclear weapons at the gates to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL ) in Livermore will be held virtually on Thursday, Aug. 6, with pre-recorded segments streamed on YouTube.
“We tried to replicate the rally experience for our viewers,” said Marylia Kelley, executive director of Tri-Valley CARES, which advocates for abolishment of nuclear weapons and organizes the annual protest.
This is the 75th anniversary of the first atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, by the U.S. on Aug. 6, 1945, during World War II. The online protest has been dubbed “From Hiroshima to a Healthy Tomorrow: Embracing Our Common Humanity.” It will be part of a national two-day event organized by the Hiroshima Nagasaki 75 Coalition. Nagasaki was bombed three days after Hiroshima.
Tri-Valley CARES recorded segments of the virtual protest outside the gates to LLNL last months, with cardboard cutouts to represent some of the people who usually attend the protest.
The rally will also include recorded segments with Gar Alperovitz, author of “Atomic Diplomacy, Hiroshima and Potsdam” and “The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb”; Daniel Ellsberg, best known for releasing the Pentagon Papers to the news media in 1971 and author of “The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner”; and the Rev. Nobuaki Hanaoka, who survived the bombing of Nagasaki.
Kelley noted that the Trump administration has requested a 20% increase in funding for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s weapons programs in the fiscal 2021 budget, and that other nuclear powers are following suit. She added that 88% of LLNL’s funding for the next fiscal year is targeted for nuclear weapons activities, while less than 2% of the budget is for civilian science.
“We live in a time of growing nuclear peril,” Kelley said.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ iconic Doomsday Clock, designed in 1947 to show the risk of existential nuclear danger and originally set at 7 minutes to midnight, was advanced to 100 seconds to midnight in January.
“That the closest to annihilation that it has ever been set,” Kelley said.
To view the virtual protest, from 8-9:30 a.m., go to bit.ly/INDY_Virtual-Protest. The protest can also be viewed on the Tri-Valley CARES website, www.trivalleycares.org, or the Hiroshima Nagasaki Coalition website, bit.ly/INDY-hiroshima.