photo by by Mary Lou Anderson
Culminating a week of peace events as part of Nevada Desert Experience’s August Desert Witness, six protesters were arrested at the Nevada Test Site (Nevada National Security Site) on Thursday morning, August 9th, in memory of the victims of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, 67 years ago.
Dennis DuVall (of Prescott, AZ), Jim Haber (of Las Vegas, NV), Robert Majors (of Las Vegas, NV), John Owen (of Los Angeles, CA), Janice Sevre-Duszynska (of Lexington, KY), and Louis Vitale (of Oakland, CA) walked with a community of 15 other activists, including Johnnie Bobb and Deanna Bobb of the Western Shoshone nation, through the blazing, early morning sun in the Nevada desert, from the sunrise ceremony’s fire circle to the Nevada Test Site line. Johnnie Bobb led the small group in prayer and remembrance of the victims of Nagasaki and all peoples affected by the horror of the bombings and testing over the past 60 years. Common practice prevailed for line-crossings at the NTS, and all arrestees were briefly detained in open-air pens, cited for trespassing and released.
The Nagasaki Day line-crossing concluded a week of demonstrations and educational events that included several news-worthy die-ins that focused on “killer drones” and a presentation by CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin who is on tour promoting her book Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control. Other events included a prayerful evening at the Sekhmet Temple in memory of all victims of the nuclear weapons arms race which followed on the heels of WW II. This year’s ADW was noteworthy for several reasons. It continued to deepen the working relationship between the Catholic Worker community, Nevada Desert Experience, the local Occupy movement and CODEPINK Women for Peace. In the process, greater connections were also made with various performance spaces and local, national and international media. The ADW group concluded the week by attending prayers at one of the local Sikh Temples in memory of the victims killed at the Gurdawara in Milwaukee during the week.
The next major events of Nevada Desert Experience include the Ediger Memorial Celebration of Active Nonviolence on September 23 and the 2013 Sacred Peace Walk from March 22 to March 29.
And we’ll be out on Monday since John McCain and Lindsey Graham will be in North Las Vegas promoting the need for more (yes, more) military spending.
For more information, visit NevadaDesertExperience.org