[NukeNet] Press Release on UC Hunger Strike Against New Nukes and their University's Management of Continued Nuclear Development

[Marylia Kelley]

Dear colleagues -- FYI -- And if you can support by hunger striking for a
day, sending a letter or by attending the Regents meeting in San Francisco,
so much the better. Contact any one of the folks below for details.
--Marylia

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 8, 2007


*UNIVERSITY* *OF CALIFORNIA* *STUDENTS AND ALUMNI TO HUNGER STRIKE TO
DEMAND NUCLEAR WEAPONS LAB SEVERANCE*


*Contact:*

Ellen McClure, 2nd-year UCSB student: (858) 663-9326

Mark Valen, 3rd-year UCSC student: (619) 395-2794

Chelsea Collonge, UC Berkeley alumna: (408) 813-5625

Will Parrish, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation: (805) 965-3443

Jedidjah de Vries, Tri-Valley CAREs: (925) 443-7148


*WHAT: *UC Student & Alumni Hunger Strike

*WHEN:* Wednesday, May 9th until ?

*WHERE: *UC Santa Barbara, UC Santa Cruz, and UC Berkeley

*WHO: *The Coalition to Demilitarize the UC and supporters

Students and alumni at three University of California campuses will
begin a fast this week to demand that the University of California stop
designing, engineering and manufacturing nuclear bombs. Many of them
pledge to go without solid food until the demand is met. The hunger
strikers are calling on the Regents to pass a resolution at their next
meeting -- scheduled for May 17th -- severing all ties to the nuclear
weapons complex. The UC has managed, since their inception, the two US
national labs responsible for all nuclear weapon design in the U.S.,
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and Los Alamos National
Laboratory (LANL).

This bold act of principled non-violent resistance is timed in response
to the US Nuclear Weapons Councilís recent announcement that LLNL would
design the first new Hydrogen bomb since the end of the Cold War, as
well as to the planned resumption of plutonium bomb core (ìpitî)
manufacturing en masse at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2008.
These programs are the first step in plans to revamp the entire nuclear
weapons complex, under the auspices of the DOEís ìComplex 2030.î

ìThere has never been a more pressing time for the UC Regents to take a
principled stand against the USí nuclear weapons programs,î says Will
Parrish, a UCSC alumnus (2004) who has pledged to go without solid food
until the Regents meet the demand for severance. ìThey are in a very
powerful position to do so: They can withdraw their management of the
Los Alamos and Livermore labs, which are the keystone institutions in
the US nuclear weapons complex. They could cast the UCís enormous
political and intellectual weight on the side of international law and
morality, and seize this opportunity to work toward nuclear disarmament.
To do otherwise is to continue to provide a much-needed veneer of
academic legitimacy to the creation and maintenance of weapons that
poison communities and endanger the entire world.î

Now is an especially critical time in the future of labs. The Department
of Energy decided on Tuesday, May 8^th , to award management of the
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to a private consortium
consisting of the University of California and Bechtel Corporation, the
same consortium recently selected to manage the Los Alamos nuclear
weapons lab. This marks a missed opportunity to move the labs away from
designing bombs.

According to second-year UCSB student Ellen McClure, ìThe university
should not be involved in any way with the production of weapons of mass
destruction. The UC's involvement has done nothing to make the research
at the labs more transparent or less deadly.î

Jedidjah de Vries, outreach director of the Livermore-based Tri-Valley
Communities Against a Radioactive Environment (CAREs), said: ìThe
nuclear programs of the UCís weapons labs threaten our security rather
than enhance it. Continued U.S. development of nuclear weapons
encourages other nations to develop their own nuclear bombs,
complicating international efforts to stem proliferation. Nuclear
development also harms our environment by continuing to contaminate
sites and nearby communities, including at Livermore and Los Alamos
Labs. We are profoundly disappointed that the Regents of the University
of California continue to lend an imprimatur of academic respectability
to the dirty enterprise creating new nuclear weapons, and we call on
them to recommend against the RRW program and refuse to manage it. We
need ëgreen labsí not new nukes.î

During the week the hunger strikers will camp at central locations on
their individual campuses. You can follow their progress at:
http://nonukeshungerstrike.blogspot.com. On May 17th they will converge,
along with supporters, at the regents' meeting in San Francisco to hold
the Regents accountable to the will of the students and to the moral
responsibility of the university. Student governments at multiple
campuses have passed resolutions opposing the UC's ties to the weapon
labs, and more are considering similar resolutions.

The students of the UC have a long history of organizing and taking
action on this issue. The multi-campus Coalition to Demilitarize the UC
has worked on several fronts to sever the UC's nuclear ties, including
writing letters, generated petitions and speaking at Regents meetings
during the public comments period. Most recently, this past November,
they undertook an act of nonviolent civil resistance, disrupting the
Regents meeting during its discussion of the nuclear weapons labs.
Students are concerned with the Regents' actions, not only because of
the dangers posed by nuclear weapons, but because the Regents presume to
act on their behalf and in their name.

/To arrange an interview with the hungers strikers, contact any of the
individuals listed above./



--
Jedidjah de Vries
Outreach Director
Tri-Valley CAREs

www.trivalleycares.org
office: (925) 443-7148
cell  : (805) 698-3577

Marylia Kelley,
Executive Director

Tri-Valley CAREs
2582 Old First Street
Livermore, CA  94551

Ph: (925) 443-7148
Fx: (925) 443-0177
Web: www.trivalleycares.org
Email: marylia at trivalleycares.org or marylia at earthlink.net