October 16, 2009
There will be two opportunities for the public to attend the fall meeting of the national network of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability next week in Santa Fe and to hear presentations about nuclear issues in New Mexico. www.ananuclear.org The presentations will span the nuclear cycle, from uranium mining to nuclear weapons manufacturing to waste disposal. They will be held at the Ghost Ranch Plaza Resolana.
On Thursday, October 22 at 7 pm, representatives from New Mexico non-governmental organizations will talk about the work of the organizations to address the nuclear weapons industry at Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories and the resulting environmental and public health consequences. Presenters include: Marian Naranjo and Robert Chavez of Honor Our Pueblo Existence; Sheri Kotowski of the Embudo Valley Environmental Monitoring Group; Harold Trujillo of the New Mexico Acequia Association; Joni Arends of CCNS; and Jay Coghlan, Scott Kovac and Cathie Sullivan of Nuclear Watch New Mexico.
On Saturday, October 24 at 9:00 am, Manny Pino, from Acoma Pueblo will talk about the consequences of uranium mining and milling in New Mexico and the impacts on indigenous communities around the world.
The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA) is the only national organization watchdogging the U.S. nuclear weapons complex through the combined analysis of weapons policy and environmental laws. ANA member groups are based in communities most immediately affected by U.S. nuclear weapons policy and by environmental contamination. ANA has effectively worked to expose the operations of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to close polluting, obsolete and unsafe facilities, and to stop nuclear weapons testing as well as the construction of many new bomb production plants.
ANA has had major impacts on many local, site-related decisions, such as at the Fernald site in Ohio, the Rocky Flats site in Colorado, and at the Nevada Test Site. Susan Gordon, ANA Executive Director, explained, "One of the reasons is that ANA has helped to change the way that issues are framed. Rather than allowing the DOE and others to define problems as purely local, ANA has exposed them as part of larger issues. [A]ctivists look for solutions that do not shift the burden of risks onto others."
The New Mexico member groups of ANA are CCNS, Nuclear Watch New Mexico and Southwest Research and Information Center.
Marian Naranjo, Director of Honor Our Pueblo Existence, said, "The knowledge of the power of splitting the atom, created in a place that is sacred to Pueblo Peoples, has gone full circle. This knowledge has traveled the Earth. The power has been acknowledged. It has been revealed that all that benefits the continuance of life for Mankind should be kept and all that continues the destruction of Mankind should end, NOW! We must bury this knowledge and call it sacred."
Please plan on attending these informative presentations. For more information, please call ANA at 473-1670.
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