 July-August 2000 American Friends Service Committee Peacework Magazine Patrica Watson, Editor Sara Burke, Assistant Editor Pat Farren, Founding Editor 2161 Massachusetts Ave. Telephone number: Fax number:
pwork@igc.org Peacework has been published monthly since 1972, intended to serve as a source of dependable information to those who strive for peace and justice and are committed to furthering the nonviolent social change necessary to achieve them. Rooted in Quaker values and informed by AFSC experience and initiatives, Peacework offers a forum for organizers, fostering coalition-building and teaching the methods and strategies that work in the global and local community. Peacework seeks to serve as an incubator for social transformation, introducing a younger generation to a deeper analysis of problems and issues, reminding and re-inspiring long-term activists, encouraging the generations to listen to each other, and creating space for the voices of the disenfranchised. Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC. |
Peace Action to Block Trident at Seattle's Seafair In the wake of the Navy's quiet announcement that a Trident submarine, the USS Alabama, is scheduled to come to Seattle's Seafair festival, a wide coalition has begun organizing to prevent and protest its arrival. When the Navy last brought a Trident submarine, the USS Ohio, to Seafair in 1997, it carried 192 nuclear warheads and sailed into Seattle on the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. The submarine was greeted by a flotilla of boats, a 24-hour vigil, and two nonviolent direct actions as well as critical articles in Seattle papers. Mayor Norm Rice said afterward that bringing a Trident to Seattle "would never happen again." Since the Seafair festival receives no city money and in fact pays $150,000 annually in permits and fees, Seafair pointedly told an inquiring City Council member that what it does is none of the city's business. "I think there is a real parallel between the Navy's decision to bring the Trident to Seattle with no process that's even remotely democratic and the way military policy itself is made," said May Hanson, an activist with the Northwest Disarmament Coalition, an alliance of peace and religious groups preparing to protest if the sub is not disinvited from the festival. Four of the Trident submarines are scheduled for massive post-Cold War upgrades of their missile systems costing from $6.5 billion to $20 billion. These upgrades, with no particular purpose beyond nuclear blackmail and corporate welfare, are scheduled to occur when there are no credible threats to US security that warrant such firepower. They need to be sold to taxpayers; Seafair is their commercial. This year, once again, the nuclear sub will be in port during the anniversary of Hiroshima. For more information on the Trident nuclear weapons system and resources
for resisting Trident, visit the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action
at <www.gzcenter.org> or
contact Peace Action, 5828 Roosevelt Way NE 98105; 206/527-8050; www.peaceaction.gen.wa.us
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