Monthly Archive for March, 2012

Locking the Gate, from left, Frances Crowe, Hattie Nestel, Anneke Corbett, Ellen Graves, and Paki Wieland. photo by Marcia Gagliardi

from the Shut it Down affinity group

Seven women of the Shut It Down Affinity Group chained the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant gate shut at about 10 a.m. on Wednesday, March 21, 2012, the power plant’s fortieth birthday and the date it was originally scheduled to close.

The plant’s operating license expired on Wednesday. Entergy Corporation continues the nuclear plant’s function courtesy of a twenty-year extension and the recent decision of federal Judge J. Garvan Murtha, whose order allows the plant to operate despite appeals surrounding lawsuits from concerned citizens who want Vermont Yankee to close.

Political graffiti at Dumbarton Sheriff Court

from Trident Ploughshares

Two peace activists were sentenced today in Dumbarton (Scotland) Sheriff Court for painting “political graffiti” on the walls of the court following a 2010 trial in which they maintained that the court did not uphold international law with respect to the illegality of the Trident nuclear weapon system. Barbara Dowling, a retired Occuptational Therapist, 67, of Knightswood was given 3 months in prison and Janet Fenton, 64, Secretary of Scottish CND was given 120 hours Community Service.

Thirty years ago today a handful of us nonviolently blocked the South Gate of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), a top-secret nuclear weapons lab in Northern California.  Most of us were sentenced to a week in the local county jail. It was my first arrest.