Students shut down UC nuclear labs meeting
Michael Spies
On Thursday, November 16, student activists from the Coalition to Demilitarize the University of California (UC) shut down a Board of Regents committee meeting, which was set to discuss issues related to the University’s management of two U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories: Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
According to the UCLA based Daily Bruin, the student coalition acted to shut down the meeting after “they were cut off during the morning’s public comment period.” Members of the Coalition included students and alumni from UC campuses in Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz, and community members from the Santa Barbara based Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. The Coalition was able to make a statement during the public session detailing its demands:
- that the University of California Board of Regents sever their ties with the nuclear weapons laboratories at Livermore and Los Alamos;
- that the Regents issue a public statement in opposition to the insanity of US nuclear weapons policy, and
- that the Regents lobby the federal government, in the interest of true national security, to build a new, federally-funded sustainable energy research laboratory, with said funding to be transferred from the budgets of the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore laboratories. Any serious national research effort toward sustainability must be fully autonomous from militarized institutions like the weapons labs.
Later, as the Department of Energy (DOE) Lab Oversight Committee of the UC Regents was set to convene, nine members of the Coalition “adjourned” the meeting by sitting on the floor, chanting and linking arms. As the UCLA police intervened to “disperse” the protest, the regents filed out of the meeting room, thus conceding the day to the protesters.
The nine members of the Coalition were arrested and, one by one, dragged from the meeting room. They vowed to be back and to not let the regents meet until the University met their demands.
Video clips of the protest are available on YouTube (part one, part two, part three, part four, part five).
Additional coverage of the protest and the full Coalition statement is available on Indymedia here.
For more information about military spending at universities see: Military Spending: Researching Impacts on Your Campus or Community
December 2nd, 2006 at 9:37 am
Kofi Annan closed his November 28 Princeton speech with this:
“Let me conclude by appealing to young people everywhere, since there are -– I am glad to see –- so many of them here today.
My dear young friends, you are already admirably engaged in the struggle for global development, for human rights and to protect the environment. Please bring your energy and imagination to this debate. Help us to seize control of the rogue aircraft on which humanity has embarked, and bring it to a safe landing before it is too late.”
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2006/sgsm10767.doc.htm
I would say that the students in the Coalition to Demilitarize UC already got the message!!
December 8th, 2006 at 6:22 am
Thanks for the kind words, John! And thanks, Michael, for posting this.
We’ll continue doing our best to create a stir.