Live Blogging from Oak Ridge Rally

STOP THE BOMBS


The rally is being held at a park with a library right there, so I have gone in the library and paid $2 to use their computers to bring you live blogging from the Oak Ridge Rally for stopping the building of nuclear bombs here in the USA. This event was organized by the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance of Oak Ridge, Tennessee. More information at www.stopthebombs.org.

We left Asheville at 7 AM this morning, and so far it is a beautiful day. The crowd here is very small right now, which is disappointing. It is still before noon, and the march to the plant does not start until 2 PM.

One of the musicians here is Guy Larry Osborne, and he did his song “Sing Peace”.

“It’s a world with so much darkness, what ever happened to ‘sweet land of liberty’?
You can have your American Empire built of war, greed, and slavery
So sing for Light, sing for Justice, sing for a world without nuclear bombs….

Sing Peace, every race and creed
Sing Peace, for all the least of these
Sing Peace, hear the mountains shout
Sing Peace, let the light of peace break out
Sing Peace, all creatures of the earth
Sing Peace, throughout the universe
Sing Peace, sing peace!

At the top of the handout for this rally is the statement “if you’re not worried, you’re not paying attention” and I think that is correct. I keep thinking of all the people in the ninth ward of New Orleans and how they were busy worrying about decorating their homes, building their communities – without thinking about the fact that they are living below sea level without adequate protection from the levees and flood walls. Today, we are sitting on a great big pile of nuclear weapons, with plans to build more, and no real protection from using those weapons. It is said that if a nuclear war starts, we would have a half billion dead in the first half hour. And they would be the lucky ones. We have got to do something to stop this madness the USA is pursuing.

Unfortunately, most of America is not paying attention. We could lose our country and our world as quickly as we lost New Orleans. There is no way we can have a nuclear war without bringing the whole planet (or at least most of it) down. There just is no way.

I heard today on the radio that saying you have “won a war” is like saying you have “won an earthquake”.

What if harm’s way is headed your way?

Here’s a quote from a song about Katrina: “today is sunny and the sea is calm, with the smell of death and everything gone”.

The USA is spending $2 BILLION on a new bomb plant here in Oak Ridge. It is for refurbishing of our existing nuclear bombs, so that they last another 100 years.

We need to create a world without nuclear bombs. We need to do this now, before it is too late.

And here is a message for a guy who calls himself ‘human’ and sometimes reads this blog: there is a band here today called HUMAN. They had jugglers there, and sometimes the jugglers would juggle together. I was so engrossed in watching that, I can’t tell you what the band named HUMAN played!

Now, it is off for some free food from “Food, Not Bombs” They are serving organic burritos and potato salad.

More later.