We're home! by way of Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, South Carolina and Georgia

It's October 14th, 2009, and we're sitting in the mountains of North Carolina, feeling SO blessed by the past four months.

Two or three days ago (I'm too tired to count) we drove 17 hours from St. Louis, MO to Tryon, NC, slept five hours, then headed toward South Carolina and Georgia.

In the past 32 hours we spoke in Aiken, South Carolina and Augusta, Georgia, showing the film "Proposition One: Peace Through Reason," and brainstorming with other activists. How can we bring the hope of nuclear disarmament and the dangers of nuclear weapons industries to the consciousness of young people who weren't born in the shadow of the cold war and its films? How about to people such as those at the heavily-contaminated "national sacrifice zone," the Savannah River Site (SRS), who are afraid of losing their jobs and have been told by the Department of Energy that SRS is "the cleanest" of all nuclear weapons production sites and they mustn't worry.  Right.

Today we were on an hour-long segment of Anthony Esposito's AM radio (1230) talk show in Augusta 15 hours ago, at which I suggested that it might be time to emulate the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, which organized an event in 1983 when 16,000 people surrounded Rocky Flats, Colorado, demanding it be shut down.  The radio host found that a good time to stop for a commercial.

I hadn't finished making my point, but we were able later to reassure listeners that Proposition One isn't intended to put people out of a job; rather, the intent is to make sure the money saved from halting nuclear weapons production will be used to pay people while they retrain, to help corporations retool, to mass-produce solar panels and windmills and other truly clean and renewable energy systems instead of weapons of any sort, as well as to clean up the radioactive and chemical messes that have already been made.

Just as the automobile industries were transformed into war industries during World War II to fight fascism, Jay likes to say, war industries can be transformed into clean energy industries to fight global warming, a much more unifying enemy.

Back soon.  Nice to be home,

Ellen