DAVID SWANSON – U.S. military recruiters are teaching in public school classrooms, making presentations at school career days, coordinating with JROTC units in high schools and middle schools, volunteering as sports coaches and tutors and lunch buddies in high, middle, and elementary schools, showing up in humvees with $9,000 stereos, bringing fifth-graders to military bases for hands-on science instruction, and generally pursuing what they call “total market penetration” and “school ownership.” But counter-recruiters all over the United States are making their own presentations in schools, distributing their own information, picketing recruiting stations, and working through courts and legislatures to reduce military access to students and to prevent military testing or the sharing of test results with the military without students’ permission. This struggle for hearts and minds has had major successes and could spread if more follow the counter-recruiters’ example.
The Trillion Dollar Question
LAWRENCWE WITTNER – Isn’t it rather odd that America’s largest single public expenditure scheduled for the coming decades has received no attention in the 2015-2016 presidential debates? The expenditure is for a thirty-year program to “modernize†the U.S. nuclear arsenal and production facilities. Although President Obama began his administration with a dramatic public commitment to build a nuclear weapons-free world, that commitment has long ago dwindled and died.
For First Time, Majority in U.S. Oppose Nuclear Energy
REBECCA RIFFKIN – For the first time since Gallup first asked the question in 1994, a majority of Americans say they oppose nuclear energy. The 54% opposing it is up significantly from 43% a year ago, while the 44% who favor using nuclear energy is down from 51%.
33,480 Americans Dead After 70 Years of Atomic Weaponry
NUKEWATCH QUARTERLY – The U.S. government has compensated over 52,000 nuclear workers for illnesses related to radiation exposure, but the process is complicated. Deaths resulting from exposure while working at the factories and the compensation process for survivors begs the question: How much is a life worth? As the death toll mounts, nuclear weapons workers must decide whether their jobs are worth it.
Building New “Nonviolent Citiesâ€
JOHN DEAR – If Carbondale, Illinois can seek to become a nonviolent city, any city can seek to become a nonviolent city. This is an idea whose time has come. This is an organizing strategy that should be tried around the nation and the world. The only way it can happen is through bottom-up, grassroots organizing, that reaches out to include everyone in the community, and eventually becomes widely accepted, even by the government, media, and police.
Residents Demand No New Offshore Oil Leases in Gulf of Mexico
KATE COLWELL – For the first time ever, hundreds of Gulf Coast residents are joining forces with local and national environmental and social justice groups to oppose a federal offshore fossil fuel lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico. The proposed lease of 43 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico to develop as much as 965 million barrels of oil and 4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas is the largest single offering by the Obama administration. Today, the coalition sent a letter to President Obama requesting the sale’s cancellation as it [prepared] for an unprecedented March 23 demonstration at the Superdome, where the bids will be announced.