But Udall has come under
some heavy criticism lately for his position on Israel—uncritical support—and his
promotion of nuclear weapons production at Los Alamos and Sandia national
laboratories. Not surprisingly, the La
Jicarita article I wrote on the
Santa Fe protest at Senator Udall’s new office on August 2 generated more
comments than any other posting on our website. All of the commenters are
appalled by the devastation of the Israeli attack on Gaza; most of them also
agree that protesting the assault is a moral imperative (Zionists either don’t
read La Jicarita or don’t want to
waste their breath). What they don’t agree on, however, is what kind of protests
they should be, what kind of strategies and tactics are most effective, and
what constitutes private property or open meetings.
At the Santa Fe protest
Udall’s staff, in reaction to the morning’s protest at his office in
Albuquerque during which some folks inside loudly voiced their disgust with
Israel, was on high alert at the union building that houses the office. They asked
everyone to sign in and at first told activists that they couldn’t distribute
any literature regarding the assault on Gaza. That limitation then morphed into
telling demonstrators that they couldn’t come in the building at all, that it
was “private property.” Jeff Haas, one of the organizers, was allowed to read a
statement from the podium but only before Udall and Senator Al Franken, a
well-known Israeli supporter who I assume was either chosen as a fund raising
partner before the anti-Israeli demonstrations heated up or, more cynically,
because of his Zionism, showed up. Democratic solidarity must reign in the
presence of the senators. However, the jeering and booing that emanated from
the audience when demonstrators tried to interrupt Udall and Franken during
their speeches revealed how tenuous that solidarity is between progressives and
party stalwarts over Israel.
I’ve always had a cordial
relationship with Udall—Mark and I interviewed him several times for La Jicarita and worked with his New
Mexico staff on land grant and acequia issues. But at the protest I felt
compelled to get his attention and confront him about the complicity of the
senate in arming Israel. I had no desire to be “polite,” as some commenters
believe the protesters should have been. I finally pushed my way to the front
where he was shaking hands with constituents—and listening to a few others who
also wanted to talk about Gaza—and got his attention:
Tom: Hi, Kay, how are you
doing?
Me: Why won’t you have a
dialogue about what’s happening in Gaza?
Tom: We are talking about
it.
Me: When?
Tom: With our constituents
who we meet around the state and who come to the office.
Me: We’ve come to your
office. Why aren’t you having a conversation here, with us?
He moved on to the next
person.
I’ve also been after him
about his calculated support of the nuclear mission at LANL and Sandia. In an
August 25 e-mail his office sent me there’s a picture of him sitting at Sandia
with Senator Richard Durbin, who chairs the Defense Appropriation Subcommittee,
talking about their support of the B61
Life Extension Project, a GPS guided 50-kiloton
mini-nuke bomb that is, as he calls it,
“important for our national security.” They also talked about the great “tech
transfer” programs at the labs that will supposedly create businesses and high
tech jobs in New Mexico.
An article in the Santa Fe New Mexican during the same
week talks about the push to increase the production of plutonium pits, the
triggers for our stockpile of nuclear bombs, from 30 to 80 by 2030. After Rocky
Flats near Denver, Colorado was shut down in1989 the National Nuclear Security
Administration (NNSA), which runs the nuclear labs for the Department of
Energy, has looked to LANL as the only possible site to produce the pits, even
though its primary function has been research and development and it lacks a
facility large enough—and more importantly, safe enough—to manufacture such an
increase in pits (between 2007 and now 30 pits have been produced). La Jicarita has covered the abysmal
history of the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear
Facility, originally intended to house the production, which was finally put on
hold after a cost overrun of billions of dollars and concerns about the seismic
potential of the Pajarito Plateau, where LANL is situated. The NNSA now wants
to use an unnamed modern
pit facility that consists of
tunnels from the plutonium facility (PF4) to the Radiation Lab (RULAB), from
which six or eight small labs and workrooms will branch off.
Greg Mello of the Los Alamos
Study Group (LASG) wasn’t “polite” in his pointed debunking
of the longstanding claim of politicos that without LANL’s economic engine New
Mexico would grind to a halt. We’ve been stalled for years even with the
billions of federal pork flowing into the labs:
“As lab spending rose over three decades, the state’s relative income rank fell dramatically. Over seven decades, there has been no major “tech transfer” from the labs here, especially from Los Alamos National Laboratory. Our economic potential is now limited by our human development policy failures, exemplified by Udall’s choice to promote nuclear weapons at the expense of human and environmental needs. Unless we change those priorities, why would any (non-exploitative) business locate here?” (See LASG’s July 2006 analysis Does Los Alamos National Lab Help or Hurt the New Mexico Economy?”.)
While most of Congress is hopeless on the issues of Palestine and nuclear weapons production, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be out there confronting politicians like Udall, whose reelection is a given. He could step out from under the cudgel of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), whose formally bi-partisan flow of money on Capital Hill now flows to the right as it allies with the Likud Party in Israel, and as the senior senator from New Mexico he could push mission change at the labs.
Let’s not spend any more
time arguing over “being polite,” “not pissing people off,” “not creating a
backlash.” Night after night the protesters in Ferguson, Missouri stayed in the
streets to vent their anger and frustration at the killing of the unarmed
teenager Michael Brown and night after night the police department met them in
camouflage with tanks and assault rifles and tear gas and rubber bullets. Protesters
in Albuquerque faced off against the same militarized police force on the
streets and their administrative enablers in the city’s offices to decry the
use of unnecessary force on the citizen population (for those of you who
haven’t heard, the bogus felony battery charge against protester David Correia,
my co-editor at La Jicarita, has been
dismissed). Other acts of police violence have been protested and posted on
Internet sites across the county. Finally, a conversation has begun about the
American militarization of the police that began in the 1970s and has escalated
today to epic proportions: millions of dollars worth of surplus military
equipment from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan given to police departments;
soldiers trained to use this equipment to shoot and kill a foreign enemy are
now police officers who see American citizens as the enemy.
It’s extremely hard to maintain
the momentum these kinds of movements require to remain effective. If you’re
not prepared to join in the struggles—in the multitude of forms they may take—don’t
sabotage them with internecine bickering. To paraphrase Bob Dylan, just get out
of the way.
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