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Help Needed–Keep Rocky flats Closed

July 10, 2018 By Bob Kinsey

Help us demonstrate community support for
KEEPING ROCKY FLATS CLOSED!

July is ‘HOT’ with meetings and events on Rocky Flats issues, and because it takes a community to protect the community, we need your help! Below are a bunch of opportunities to get involved, and to help us amplify the the public opposition to the opening of the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge in September.

There’s really no such thing as a “safe level” of exposure to weapons grade plutonium (Pu), which is just one of the 1,000+ known contaminants at Rocky Flats. The tiniest spec of Pu, if inhaled or ingested, can be deadly. That said, no one, not the EPA, nor Colorado Dept. of Health, is denying the ‘hot spots’ and elevated levels of plutonium that exist on the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge. So, how is it that they are advocating for recreation there now? Why not err on the side of caution, and keep the area closed? And, how do we know the superfund site with the buried plutonium processing buildings and contaminants at the center of the refuge will stay safe and covered while people recreate next to it?

I can’t believe I have to say this, but there are so many other wonderful places already open to enjoy on the Front Range and beyond that do not have elevated levels of weapons grade plutonium, so, protect yourselves, your families, and your community by opposing the opening of the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge. It’s not just activists that want to keep Rocky Flats closed, it’s the public at large.

Thank you all for your ongoing support and interest!

-Alesya

Town Hall:
Wednesday, July 11th: JeffCo Telephone Town Hall
The JeffCo Board of County Commissioners will hold a live telephone town hall on the evening of July 11, 2018. During this one-hour, over the phone meeting, the commissioners will discuss topics related to development in Jefferson County. But most importantly, the commissioners want to hear from you. Take the time to call in and express your concern about opening the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge.
Click here for details on how to participate.
Demonstrations:
Sunday, July 15th @ 2:30 p.m.: Planning and Poster Making Meeting
Join us for a sign making and protest planning meeting at the Standley Lake Library. Bring your paints, cardboard, and markers to make signs for the following demonstrations. Click here for the address.

Tuesday, July 17th @ 9 a.m. and @ 12 p.m.: Help us pack the Alfred A. Arraj Courthouse, room A701, in Denver at 9 a.m. to show public support for keeping the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge closed, and to hear expert testimony on why opening the Refuge is dangerous. We recommend arriving by 8:30 a.m. for time to park, and to get through security. Then, at 12 p.m., step outside for a DEMONSTRATION against opening the Refuge in front of the Courthouse at 19th and Champa. Click here for full event details and information.

Tuesday, July 17th @ 5 pm: Then at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, (It’s a full day- I know!) bring your “Keep Rocky Flats Closed” protest signs from the noon demonstration, and join us at the first of two open house forums in Westminster @ the Westview Recreation Center. JeffCo Open Space is hosting a public meeting about the sampling and analysis plan for the soil testing before the opening of the trails to, and on, the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge.
While they insist public comment is limited to only the sampling and analysis methods, we intend to educate the public on the dangers of opening the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge, and make it clear that the community is opposed to its opening in September. Please join us and make your voice heard!

Click here for full event details and information.

Can’t Make the Demonstrations? Don’t worry!
Here is an online petition you can sign and send that support the efforts to keep the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge closed.

Letter Writing Campaign:
US Fish and Wildlife has announced they intend to open the refuge September 2018. It is an urgent matter of public health to keep Rocky Flats closed! Click here to learn more about how you can write letters to urge regulators to oppose the opening.

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Disarmament Quotes

There are still thousands of warheads loaded on operational systems and standing on high states of alert on virtually hair-trigger posture. And you have to ask yourself: Why is that? Who is the enemy? What is the threat? 

U.S. General Lee Butler Former Commander in Chief, U.S. Strategic Air Command in 1991-92

A world free of the threat of nuclear weapons is necessarily a world devoid of nuclear weapons…. Nuclear weapons pose an intolerable threat to humanity and our habitat…. Others subscribe to Churchill’s assertion ‘Peace is the sturdy child of terror.’ For me, such a peace is a wretched offspring, a peace that condemns us to live under a dark cloud of perpetual anxiety, a peace that codifies mankind’s most murderous instincts….The beast must be chained, its soul expunged, its lair laid waste.

General Lee Butler Former Commander, Strategic Air Command, April 28, 1996

[T]he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. . . . [I]n being the first to use it, we . . . adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.

5-Star Admiral William D. Leahy Chief of Staff to President's Roosevelt and Truman, leader of Combined US-UK Chiefs of Staff during WWII

Viewing Trinity Test July 16,1945: "Now we are all Sons of Bitches"

Kenneth Bainbridge Deputy Director

It is my fervent goal and hope…that we will some day no longer have to rely on nuclear weapons to deter aggression and assure world peace. To that end the United States is now engaged in a serious and sustained effort to negotiate major reductions in levels of offensive nuclear weapons with the ultimate goal of eliminating these weapons from the face of the earth. 

Ronald Reagan, October 20, 1986

So far as I can see, the atomic bomb has deadened the finest feeling that has sustained for ages. There used to be so-called laws of war, which made it tolerable. Now we know the truth. War knows no law except that of might. The atomic bomb brought an empty victory but it resulted for the time being in destroying the soul of Japan. What has happened to the soul of the destroying nation is yet too early to see... 

Mahatma Gandhi from The Essential Gandhi, Louis Fisher, ed.

Elimination of nuclear weapons, so naive, so simplistic, and so idealistic as to be quixotic? Some may think so. But as human beings, citizens of nations with power to influence events in the world, can we be at peace with ourselves if we strive for less? I think not. 

Robert McNamara Former U.S. Secretary of Defense

We endorse setting the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons and working energetically on the actions required to achieve that goal ... 

George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn, January 4, 2007

Now, understand, this matters to people everywhere. One nuclear weapon exploded in one city -– be it New York or Moscow, Islamabad or Mumbai, Tokyo or Tel Aviv, Paris or Prague –- could kill hundreds of thousands of people. And no matter where it happens, there is no end to what the consequences might be -– for our global safety, our security, our society, our economy, to our ultimate survival. 

Former President Barack Obama, April 5, 2009

“Everything I did at Kings Bay was a result of my faith and my commitment to challenge the idols whose only purpose is to destroy human life on an unimaginable scale. I went to Kings Bay to use my body to refuse to bow down to these idols. I went to try to bring attention to the idolatry that it is requiring of our nation and its people. I went in a spirit of prayer and repentance. I went in hope that this witness might invite other people to reflect on the obscenity and on the idolatry that it is before God.”

Liz McAlister Kings Bay Protestor 2019

We are prone to self-righteousness if we call ourselves peacemakers, and yet do not perceive how the peace issue cuts through all the economic and social issues that we often try to keep separate. If the race for nuclear arms is encouraged by our fear of losing the affluent ways of life that we have taken for granted, then we must see how our fears and desires have left so many other human beings naked and hungry.

Malsolm Warford "The Church's Role in a Nuclear Age

Through the release of atomic energy, our generation has brought into the world the most revolutionary force since prehistoric man's discovery of fire. This basic force of the universe cannot be fitted into the outmoded concept of narrow nationalisms. For there is no secret and there is no defense; there is no possibility of control except through the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the world. We scientists recognise our inescapable responsibility to carry to our fellow citizens an understanding of atomic energy and its implication for society. In this lies our only security and our only hope - we believe that an informed citizenry will act for life and not for death. 

Albert Einstein, January 22, 1947

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending he sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children...This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron." --spoken to the American Society of Newspaper Editors 1953

Dwight Eisenhower US President 1953-1961

It is my firm belief that the infinite and uncontrollable fury of nuclear weapons should never be held in the hands of any mere mortal ever again, for any reason. 

Mikhail Gorbachev, 1995

Over the past 15 years, the goal of elimination of nuclear weapons has been so much on the back burner that it will take a true political breakthrough and a major intellectual effort to achieve success in this endeavor.

Mikhail Gorbachev, January 31, 2007

We seek the elimination one day of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth. 

Ronald Reagan, Inaugural Address, January 21, 1985

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