LIVERMORE, Calif.—As the sun rose over Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on April 3, dozens of anti-nuclear weapons advocates were gathering outside the Lab’s East Gate and virtually, for the annual Good Friday Interfaith Worship and Witness service of prayer, music, and dedication to nuclear disarmament and world peace.
Welcoming the activists to the threshold of one of the two national laboratories where every nuclear warhead and bomb in the U.S. arsenal is designed, Rev. Sally Juarez of the Ecumenical Peace Institute told them, “I can’t think of any more important time or place for us to show up again, especially now as our country is in a time of war.”
Bill Joyce recalled Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of the Beloved Community as he led participants in prayer.
“All humanity is bound together in a single destiny,” Joyce said, “be it environmental or economic collapse, or an ethical awakening to our universal kinship, and a shared concern for our beautiful Mother Earth … When we struggle to redirect our resources away from weapons, war and slaughter, and toward the necessities of a dignified human life, we become the Beloved Community.”
Scott Yundt, executive director of Tri-Valley Communities against a Radioactive Environment (Tri-Valley CAREs), which monitors nuclear weapons and environmental clean-up activities with a special focus on Livermore Lab and surrounding communities, carried that theme forward. He told participants they represent “millions and millions who have stood in our shoes, and these Beloved are among us right now, speaking truth to power. That truth is that these illegal weapons of mass murder must never be used again, new ones should never be made, and all the world’s stockpiles of nuclear weapons must be retired and disassembled immediately.”
Yundt said the decades of anti-nuclear weapons protests at sites throughout the country have brought significant results, including an overall 80% reduction of nuclear weapons stockpiles since their peak in 1986 and stopping U.S. plans for the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator bunker-buster bomb and the Reliable Replacement Warhead. Protests have also stopped nuclear waste incinerators and proposals for high-explosive bomb blasts near Livermore.
Most recently, Yundt said he’s been inspired by the work done by nations in the Global South and non-nuclear countries to bring the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons into force. The treaty, which entered into force in January 2021, now has 95 signatories, though none of the world’s nuclear powers have signed on.
“But,” said Yundt, “as we are here today on Good Friday, recognizing the violence that took place that day, we are also standing here as the tide of diminishing nuclear danger has shifted.” Since the New START Treaty, the last remaining U.S.-Russian nuclear arms treaty, expired in February, there are no limits on the numbers of deployed nuclear weapons or delivery vehicles, and no inspection regimes are in place, “meaning we are back to the most dangerous days of the Cold War, where each side is guessing what the other side is doing.”
While President Trump has repeatedly talked about wanting to engage Russia and China in nuclear arms talks, Yundt said the administration has not taken steps to start talks and is cutting funds for nuclear nonproliferation.
“Perhaps most concerning,” he said, “they’ve increased rhetoric about conducting nuclear tests. We have not conducted nuclear tests since 1992 … Once the genie of nuclear testing is back out of the lamp, it will be very difficult to put it back, and then all the elements of full-scale nuclear arms racing will be back upon us.”
But instead of working toward a more stable world and making sure more countries don’t arm themselves with nuclear weapons, Yundt said, “This administration has started a war with Iran.”
Noting that the president was about to send Congress a proposed budget requesting an unprecedented $1.5 trillion in military spending, including nearly $30 billion for nuclear weapons programs, he said Livermore Lab would receive over $3 billion, with nearly 90% of that going to the Lab’s nuclear weapons-related activities.
Yundt pointed to “rays of hope”—upcoming activities he urged members of the public to join.
In May, a public comment period with public hearings in five locations around the country will give people a chance to speak out and submit written comments about plans to manufacture new plutonium bomb cores for the new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile at sites in South Carolina and New Mexico, with Livermore Lab serving as the lead design lab.
And a measure now before the House of Representatives, House Resolution 317, calls for negotiations to achieve a successor treaty to New START. H. Res. 317, Urging the United States to Lead the World Back from the Brink of Nuclear War and Halt and Reverse the Nuclear Arms Race, also explicitly opposes nuclear weapons testing, seeks to end the president’s sole authority to launch a nuclear first strike, and halts funding for new nuclear warheads.
- Res. 317, introduced in the House a year ago, has 53 cosponsors, including Bay Area Representatives Lateefah Simon, Zoe Lofgren, John Garamendi, and Mark de Saulnier. Yundt urged constituents to thank them, and encouraged constituents whose representatives haven’t yet endorsed to press them to sign on as well.
“These may seem like small actions,” he said, “but if many of us take them, it can have a big impact.”
The Interfaith Service of Worship and Witness was planned by the Ecumenical Peace Institute, Livermore Conversion Project, and Tri-Valley CAREs.
Rev. Max Lynn of St. John’s Presbyterian Church in Berkeley gave the homily. Francisco Herrera and Benjamin Mertz provided music, and Kathleen Robbiano led participants in ceremonial dance.
Co-sponsors were the Haiti Action Committee; Newman Nonviolent Peacemakers/Fr. Bill O’Donnell Social Justice Committee; NorCal Sabeel; St. John’s Presbyterian Church, Berkeley; Trinity Cathedral “TREE” Committee: Trinity Respecting Earth and Environment; and Veterans for Peace.
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