VICTORY IN KC - Charges dropped 7 KC Peace Planters who blocked VIP Buses at Sept 8 Nuke Weapons Plant Ground Breaking Ceremony.
Frank Cordaro
Groundbreaking ceremony -- 3 of them Catholic Workers
http://groups.google.com/group/National-CW-E-mail-List/browse_thread/thread/4eee255fce62abf1
Flickr photo slide show of Sept 8, 2010 - 8 Arrested at KC N-Plant
Groundbreaking
http://www.flickr.com/photos/frank_cordaro_and_the_dm_catholic_worker/sets/72157624826048899/
This slide show is made up of photos taken by Dave Armstrong, Joshua
McElwee, Karen Fogelsong and Robyn Haas. Each photo sites the
photographer.
Attached photos of all eight KC Peace Planters arrested on Sept 8, 2010
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Victory in KC!
Good news from KC Peace Planters attorney, Henry Stoever. Henry sent
out the below very short and to the point e-mail message from Lowell
C. Gard, First Assistant Kansas City Prosecutor:
"The evidence in these cases does not support the charge of Disorderly
Conduct. The cases have been dismissed."
Victory in KC!!!! The campaign goes on... please join the KC Peace
Planters for our next effort in KC Nov 3-4.... see below news release.
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For immediate release Oct. 26, 2010
Peace Planters to protest nuke-production plant at festival Nov. 3, rally Nov. 4
Festival speakers: Sierra Club program director Scott Dye; local
resisters Sarah Cool, Jim Hannah
Protesters of a new nuclear weapons production plant will chant,
“Beans, not bombs!” at a festival of hope Nov. 3 and a rally Nov. 4.
Excavation is under way at a former soybean field at Mo. Hwy. 150 and
Botts Road, near Grandview, for a National Nuclear Security
Administration campus that will make or procure 85 percent of U.S.
nuclear weapons components. The new plant will replace the Kansas City
Plant at Bannister Federal Complex, which supplies guidance systems,
triggers and other non-nuclear parts for warheads.
Kansas City has sold municipal bonds for up to $815 million to finance
the new plant, and the city’s Planned Industrial Expansion Authority
holds the title to the campus. “Kansas City will have the world’s only
municipally owned nuclear weapons production plant,” says Scott Dye of
Columbia, Mo. The director of Sierra Club’s National Water Sentinels
Program, Dye will speak at the 7 p.m. festival of hope at the St. Paul
School of Theology library, 1535 E. Van Brunt Dr., L202. Referring to
an NBC Action News, Channel 41, list of those who have become sick or
died (see http://media2.nbcactionnews.com/pdf/sickBANNISTERlist.pdf)
from toxins at Bannister Federal Complex, Dye says, “One hundred
twenty-two people have died from working at the Bannister complex.
Nothing will happen at the new plant but death—no warm fuzzies, no
puppies or babies. They’re creating a manufacturing plant whose sole
function is to create death and mayhem—nuclear weapons have no other
function.”
About eight years ago, Dye led Sierra Club members in posting danger
signs by discharge pipes from the KC Plant to Indian Creek and the
Blue River. He had discovered reports indicating PCB (polychlorinated
biphenyl) levels up to 22,000 times higher than acceptable. “If the
government isn’t going to tell you what’s going on, we will,” he says.
At the Nov. 4 rally, from 1 to 3 p.m. on the Mo. Hwy. 150 public
right-of-way near the new plant site, KC Peace Planters will carry
crosses for those who reportedly died from working at the Bannister
complex. The activists will sow seeds, post signs and offer flyers to
drivers.
Sarah Cool, who will speak at the rally and the festival, lives at
Cherith Brook Catholic Worker House in northeast KC, where neighbors
can take showers and obtain clothing and food. Cool helped block a
bus-load of officials going to the plant’s groundbreaking Sept. 8.
“The police shoved us to the side, at least twice, as we tried to stop
a bus,” she recalls. “We tried again to move in front of a bus, and
Erik Johnson (from Tennessee) knelt down with his sign. I immediately
knelt, thinking, ‘We’re praying, and we’re protesting. We’re not
budging.’”
Another resister Sept. 8, Jim Hannah, a retired Community of Christ
minister in Independence, Mo., and a PeaceWorks-KC Board member, will
also speak at the festival. “The charge against us for our peace
witness was acting in a disorderly manner,” says Hannah. “I feel
strongly that the disorderly conduct was not so much on the part of
the resisters as by the people trying to profit from making weapons of
mass destruction.” (See attached doc with Jim's "Why are we making
weapons of mass destruction in KC?" from the Oct 8, 2010 Examiner -
Independence MO news paper or go to:
http://www.examiner.net/opinions/opinions_columnists/x710516816/Guest-Column-Why-are-we-making-weapons-of-mass-destruction-in-KC)
For more info contact:
Scott Dye, 573-874-5024 or 573.881.1409 (cell)<scot...@sierraclub.org> ;
Sarah Cool, 816-674-4224 <cools...@gmail.com>;
Jim Hannah, 816-254-4403 <hannahs...@sbcglobal.net>;
Ann Suellentrop, 913-271-7925 <annsu...@gmail.com>;
Henry Stoever, 913-375-0045 <henrys...@sbcglobal.net>
KC Peace Planters is a coalition of five KC area groups, communities
and orginizations:
*PeaceWorks, KC http://www.peaceworkskc.org/
*Physicians for Social Responsibility-KC
http://www.psr.org/chapters/greater-kansas-city/
*East Meets West of Troost http://eastmeetswestoftroost.ws/
*Cherith Brook CW KC MO http://cherithbrookkc.blogspot.com/
*Holy Family CW KC MO http://www.holyfamilycwhouse.org/
*KC’s Loretto Peace and Justice Network
More info: kcnukeswatch.wordpress.com.
