Nukewatch: 25 years later

Venerable Wisconsin-based organization celebrated anniversary last month

One of the formative experiences of my youth was a trip I took with a friend in July 1979. We left Minneapolis on a Friday, reaching Madison, Wisconsin in time for speeches and a concert given by Pete Seeger and other musicians in the UW Stock Pavillion. This concert kicked off a weekend-long Nukewatch Rally & Symposium Against Nuclear Secrecy. The messages from that event 25 years ago reverberate today.

It was there – in the wake of the Iranian revolution, US-Soviet Cold War machinations (soon to be underlined in Afghanistan), a festering energy crisis, the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor incident, and the 1st Amendment/prior restraint case concerning the US government's attempt to stop publication in The Progressive magazine of an article describing the conceptual (not technical) "secrets" of hydrogen fusion weapons – that I received some early political wings.

We heard in person the likes of Nicholas von Hoffman, Barbara Ehrenreich, John Trudell, and the now dearly departed Dave Dellinger, Sidney Lens, Sam Day, and Erwin Knoll.

Knoll was then editor of The Progressive. At the Madison event with Knoll was the author of the H-Bomb Secret article, Howard Morland. I recall being at a session with Morland that was deadly serious – the lawyers had what he could say under strict control and there was a palpable feeling of the national security state in the air — a year-and-a-half before Reagan took office.


Poster for Nukewatch Rally & Symposium, Madison, Wisconsin, July 13–15, 1979

Fast forward to August 2004. While visiting Duluth, Minnesota, I picked up a free newspaper. It was the Summer 2004 issue of Nukewatch Pathfinder. I was so happy to see that they still exist and to read about their current activities while I filled with memories of that summer 25 years ago.

These days, Nukewatch continues with its mission of opposing the nuclear march towards planetary destruction. For many years running now, Nukewatch activists have stood steadfast in protection of the world from nuclear war planning still underway over a decade after the end of the Cold War. Perhaps their most important project has been to demonstrate for peace at the US Navy ELF (Extremely Low Frequency) communications site in northern Wisconsin, an installation designed to direct Trident submarines during the execution of a nuclear war.

Keep up the good fight, Nukewatch. The people of the world are counting on you.