Anti-nuclear weapons protesters claimed partial victory in a long struggle against the Nuclear Navy and its Project ELF submarine transmitter in late September .

Ashland County, Wisconsin, District Attorney Michael Gableman moved for dismissal of non-criminal trespass charges against four of us, the day before our scheduled jury trial Sept. 26. After 11 years of hearing identical charges, the court dismissed these, which resulted from our arrest last May 12. Others arrested that day had earlier pleaded guilty and were fined $212.

Then, as U.S. bombers and ships attacked sites in Afghanistan on October 7, three people were arrested at the ELF transmitter during an anti-war rally there. John Heid, Roberta Thurston, and Don Timmerman were detained and released to face charges of criminal trespass on National Forest land. After 28 years of protests against the controversial system, it is only the second time federal charges have been brought against protesters. An arraignment date in federal court in Madison has not yet been set.

Over the years, the cost to Ashland County of prosecuting dozens of conscientious objectors has run to tens of thousands of dollars. Just since 1999, the Court jailed four of us for 60 days each, spending, at $60-per-day, $14,400 trying to collect $848 in fines. In 1995, the County spent $29,000 keeping three of us in jail 180 days apiece - at about $55-per-day. All this punishment was for nonpayment of parking ticket-level forfeitures.

The District Attorney's passing of the buck will save the county lots of money and time, and the County has worked hard to scare off the protests. In 1994, when Mike Miles and I were in jail for non-payment, we discovered that the "county ordinance" we'd been convicted of violating did not exist. We were hastily released from jail. The County then adopted a State trespass statute as a local ordinance, allowing the suspension of drivers' licenses for nonpayment. This saved the County the cost of jailing protesters. However the legislature rescinded the license suspension law (for non-traffic offenses) two years ago and the burden was back on the County.

So how does the dismissal of local charges amount to a victory? Our nonviolent endurance of the consequences of dissent - prosecution, fines, jail - like water on the rock, finally wore away the stone. As with dozens of nonviolent campaigns in U.S. history - for woman's suffrage and the eight-hour workday, civil rights and an end to the Vietnam War - people have gone to jail rather than cooperate with official misconduct. The long struggle against nuclear weapons is a part of this honorable tradition. The case against the threatened use of H-bombs is better argued in federal court where Trident subs - and their 80,000 Hiroshimas-waiting-to-happen - can be confronted with U.S. laws against genocide and wars of indiscriminate destruction.

Civil disobedience didn't come easily to the anti-ELF campaign. It was taken up only after regular channels of opposition were exhausted. The height of conventional resistance came in 1984 when U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb agreed with the original Stop Project ELF and the State Attorney General, and halted ELF construction in Wisconsin v. Weinberger. Judge Crabb found that electromagnetic pollution (EMP) from the transmitter should be studied more seriously before ELF went on line. Her injunction was vacated by a Federal Appeals Court which ruled that the former Soviet threat was more dangerous than the risk of cancer from the transmitter's EMP. The Appeals Court left questions about ELF's health effects unanswered.

With the collapse of the USSR, the Navy lost its only rationale for the ELF system and Judge Crabb's warnings about EMP and cancer loomed large. Concerns about the danger of ELF emissions are again the focus of serious investigation in Wisconsin thanks to the Lac Courtes Oreilles Tribe's study, and the June 2001 finding by the International Agency for Research on Cancer that EMP is a "possible human carcinogen."

With no Cold War and no nuclear-armed enemies, ELF is an easy target for homeless shelter providers, hospital workers, teachers and environmentalists. Tangible threats to national security - poverty, pollution, lack of health care, schools falling apart - are getting inadequate attention, while redundant military systems keep on ticking. Says who? Navy spokesman Richard Williamson told talk radio's Native America Calling host Harlan Makasato on Oct. 3, 2001, "ELF is not a bonafide military target and there are other means to communicate with the submarines." And U.S. Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) said in early October, "Taxpayers should not continue to be asked to pay $14 million a year for a submarine beeper system that is a relic of the Cold War and a component of a particular nuclear strategy that is no longer relevant to our most pressing security concerns." (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Oct. 7, 2001. p. 1B)

Feingold is the sponsor of the ELF Termination Act, Senate Bill 112, which would mothball the system. It goes without saying after Sept. 11 that submarines don't deter or protect us from terrorists.

With ELF being confronted by the Tribes, by Congress, by editors and by the anti-nuclear community, perhaps, as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has suggested, "It's time to give Project ELF a dignified retirement." (Editorial, April 10, 1995)

For more information, contact Nukewatch, POB 649, Luck, WI 54853. (715)472-4185, nukewatch@lakeland.ws.