A year of disobedience and a criticality of consciousness : a photodocumentary of the demonstrations, civil disobedience, arrests and trials of thousands of people against the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant PDF
Preview A year of disobedience and a criticality of consciousness : a photodocumentary of the demonstrations, civil disobedience, arrests and trials of thousands of people against the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation https://archive.org/details/ayearofdisobedience A YEAR OF DISOBEDIENCE AND A CRITICALITY OF CONSCIENCE A PhotoDocumentary of the Demonstrations, Civil Disobedience, Arrests and Trials of Thousands of People against the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant Produced and Photographed by Joseph Daniel Original Preface, Trial Transcripts, and New Afterword by Daniel Ellsberg Original Reporting by Keith Pope Original Poetry and “Plutonian Ode” by Allen Ginsberg New Updated History and Reflection by LeRoy Moore Activists Appendix by August Freirich w StoryArtsMedia A Year of Disobedience And a Criticality of Conscience Copyright © 2013 Joseph Daniel All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, with¬ out written permission from the publisher. Published by Story Arts Media PO Box 1230, Boulder, CO 80306 www.storyartsmedia.com ISBN: 978-0-9889754-4-6 (paperback) Library of Congress Control Number: 2013941898 www.ayearofdisobedience.com Plutonian Ode reprinted by original permission of Allen Ginsberg All photographs are by Joseph Daniel (unless credited otherwise) Cover and Interior Design by Joseph Daniel Crit*i*cal*i*ty 1. The quality, state, or degree of being of the highest importance 2. The point at which a nuclear reaction is self-sustaining Waiting room at the Plutonium fabrication facility “Give us the weapons we need to protect ourselves.” The bareheaded guard lifts a flyswatter above his desk whap! — Green letter’d shield on the pressboard wall: “Life is fragile. Handle with care” — My Goodness! here’s where they make the nuclear bomb triggers. -Allen Ginsberg A NOTE TO READERS A Year of Disobedience was first published in 1979 by the Daniel Publishing Group. What you are holding is the 2013 revised edition in a re-designed format, published by Story Arts Media (same folks, new company name). The new subtitle - And a Criticality of Conscience - has been added to reflect additional, updated material included in the book. Referring to the Table of Contents (opposite), Part I through Part III features all of the original text and photographs from the 1979 edition, completely unchanged except for design. It should be read in that context, although the timelessness of the material is startling. Part IV features a current, up¬ dated history and a personal reflection by Professor LeRoy Moore, and a brand new Afterword in the form of May/June 2013 interviews between author Joseph Daniel and activist Daniel Ellsberg. Part IV also features an Activists Appendix compiled by August Freirich. Photos of the authors in Part I through Part III are of them in 1978, photos of the activists in the Appendix are of them today. An enhanced version of A Year of Disobedience And a Criticality of Conscience is also available in ebook formats through iTunes, Amazon, and Nook, which (depend¬ ing on format) include embedded video by Joseph Daniel, original music by Elena Klaver, and a 1979 Plutonian Ode reading by Allen Ginsberg. TABLE OF CONTENTS 6 About the Photographs - by Joseph Daniel PART I - A YEAR OF DISOBEDIENCE 8 Original Preface - by Daniel Ellsberg 14 Original Introduction & Chapters - By Keith Pope 19 Chapter One 23 Chapter Two 38 Chapter Three 44 Plutonian Ode - By Allen Ginsberg PART II - THE TRIAL 54 Chapter Four 59 Original Testimony - By Daniel Ellsberg 82 Chapter Five PART III - BACK TO ROCKY FLATS 86 Chapter Six 89 Chapter Seven 103 Original Epilogue PART IV - A CRITICALITY OF CONSCIENCE 106 Local Hazard Global Threat - By LeRoy Moore 136 Afterword - By Daniel Ellsberg & Joseph Daniel 156 Activists Appendix - By August Freirich 168 The Author 169 Acknowledgement 170 If Youe Were Inspired Reading This Book A YEAR OF DISOBEDIENCE BY JOSEPH DANIEL did we know that events at Rocky Flats - right there in our own backyard - would soon become international headlines of critical importance. Over the next twelve months I spent a great deal of time on assignment at Rocky Flats cov¬ ering the demonstrations, civil disobedience, ar¬ rests and trials of thousands of people determined to expose the danger and end the production of plutonium triggers used in nuclear warheads. At the end of that year I had amassed my first comprehensive photo essay on a subject of real consequence, and I decided to publish the work in a small 9” X 9” soft cover book entitled A Year of Disobedience. The printing was inconsis¬ tent, the design was pretty - pretty damn hard to read - and the cost was so prohibitive we could only produce a couple of thousand copies. But the story was incredible. And somehow I managed to convince Daniel Ellsberg (of re¬ PHOTOGRAPHS cent Pentagon Papers fame) to write a preface T and comment on testimony from the trial, and hirty-five years ago, in the spring of 1978, poet Allen Ginsberg to contribute original work all of this happened. I was a 23-year-old including the first ever printing of his now re¬ dropout from journalism school trying to make nowned poem Plutonian Ode. it as a professional photographer. The book sold out almost immediately, main¬ I worked for the Colorado Daily at the time, ly to people who “had been there.” Then, that which had been the student newspaper for the was that. It disappeared into the ether of what University of Colorado, my elusive alma mater. had been, and I moved on to other stories. I got A couple of years earlier, determined to detach married, raised a family, built a career, and rarely ourselves from the purse strings and perceived thought of Rocky Flats. The plant was shut administrative control of the university, we had down, the cold war ended, and somehow the taken the paper off-campus and reorganized threat of nuclear weapons passed with the years. it as a privately-held, independent publication Until... I woke up one recent morning to news serving the needs of both CU students and the about how madmen - in North Korea, Iran, and Boulder community at large. secret terrorists enclaves - might now have such It was an ambitious experiment, immediate¬ a bomb and the impetus to use it. ly challenging financially, but exceedingly rich The realization shocked me awake, and I in journalistic fervor. All we needed to compete knew it was time to revisit that defining “year with the “big” papers were good stories. Little of disobedience” at Rocky Flats. Join me. 6 A CRITICALITY OF CONSCIENCE PART I A YEAR OF DISOBEDIENCE A YEAR OF DISOBEDIENCE BY DANIEL ELLSBERG radioactive, poisonous, explosive metal, the U.S. inventory of operational weapons begins inexorably to dwindle. A very strategic location, that little railroad spur, a true seat of power. By just sitting—no threats to anyone, no violence to property or people, no “action” at all—occupying, long enough, 18 inches of iron rail in Jefferson County, Colorado—you stop the arms race, and reverse it. “But you don’t, really, stop production,” it will be pointed out by journalists, prosecu¬ tors, judges, other citizens. “The train will al¬ ways get through.” To which the answer is, “Not without arrests.” Not invisibly, anymore; not smoothly, on time, without effort or reflec¬ tion from within the bureaucratic system; not without public question, comment, controver¬ sy, challenge. Not, anymore, with the presumed PREFACE consent of all American citizens. Sand will have entered the machinery. hy sit on the tracks at Rocky Flats? And more than that: I believe that the pro¬ Because as long as you sit there, no train cess within American society, over more than will go through to the plant, or come out 30 years, of building up a stockpile of over with radioactive waste. Without shipping that 30,000 weapons—22,000 “tactical” weap¬ waste away from the workers, within ten days ons that average the explosive yield of the to several weeks production at the Rocky Flats Fiiroshima and Nagasaki weapons and 9,000 Nuclear Weapons Plant would have to cease. “strategic” warheads that range from several Without the product of that single plant—the times to a thousand times as powerful—has only facility that machines plutonium compo¬ nents for all U.S. fission weapons and ther¬ Daniel Ellsberg purchased stock in Rockwell monuclear fusion weapons—no new nuclear Corporation in order to attend stockholder weapons could be added to the U.S. stockpile. meetings and voice his opinion about their role at Rocky Flats. He would later burn his first divi¬ Because of “normal” radioactive decay of the dend check to the delight of the crowd at one plutonium components, each of the 30,000 of many demonstrations at the nuclear weapons U.S. warheads deployed around the world facility. Ellsberg was already a seasoned activist must be periodically returned for recycling at when he joined the efforts against Rocky Flats this one plant in Colorado. And if you sit there and he brought with him a powerful celebrity long enough to stop the lathes that shape the and a well-honed skill in "protest PR." 8
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