About 70 anti-nuclear activists arrested outside Nevada Test Site

[struggle4progress]

ASSOCIATED PRESS

MERCURY, Nev. (AP) - About 300 anti-nuclear demonstrators gathered at the Nevada Test Site to celebrate the indefinite postponement of a massive explosion that they feared would spread radioactivity across the West.

About 70 people were cited for trespassing during Sunday's gathering, said Peggy Maze Johnson, executive director of the Nevada environmental group Citizen Alert, which co-sponsored the event ..

Among those arrested was Carrie Dann, a key figure with her late sister, Mary, in the Shoshone Nation's effort to reclaim millions of acres they claimed as their ancestral land.

Also arrested was Roman Catholic priest Louis Vitale of San Francisco, who recently completed a six-month prison term for trespassing onto Fort Benning in Georgia during a protest of a school there that has been blamed for human rights abuses in Latin America ..

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/nevada/2006/may/28/052810737.html

[Peace Patriot]

1. Las Vegas Sun have a little trouble there understanding what the School

of the Americas is?

"...a six-month term for trespassing onto Fort Benning in George during a protest of a school there that has been blamed for human rights abuses in Latin America..."

U.S. military school, funded by our tax dollars, for training Latin American death squads in how to torture, kill and 'disappear' leftist schoolteachers, mayors, peasant farmers, nuns, priests, bishops; how to assassinate any leadership that develops, and how to prevent or destroy democratic governments. The School of the Americas.

"...a school there..."

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Hats off to my fellow and sister Americans who have represented the conscience of our nation for many decades, on nuclear weapons, on our offensive and gargantuan military machine, and on the evil purposes to which our resources, our taxes and our agencies have often been put, and who would not go away then--in the 60s, in the 70s, in the 80s, in the 90s--and will not go away now. These witnesses for peace, who endure jail and all sorts of harassment, often at great personal cost, are often religious--priests, nuns and others--who take their devotion to the poor and to the ways of peace seriously. They are an antidote to the "religious right" who cloak gentle Jesus in a military uniform and arm him with a gun, and advocate "killing commies for Christ," or (fill in the blank) "killing Arabs for Christ," "killing brown Spanish speaking people for Christ," "killing Southeast Asians for Christ," "killing homos for Christ." The "religious right" gets all the attention, way out of proportion to their numbers--because it is in the interest of the war profiteering corporate news monopolies to give that ilk a big trumpet--while the real Christians get black-holed in the so-called "news."

And still they bear witness at nuke testing facilities and at the School for Death Squads, and for peace and against war. The true humanitarians. The true patriots. The true believers in freedom. The true defenders of democracy. The people who represent the very best in our culture.

Blessings upon Fr. Vitale, Carrie Dann, Peggy Maze Johnson and the other participants. Thank you for your service. If it was in my power, I would give you all Congressional medals of honor!

:applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: