ANOTHER
MOTHER
About ISO protesters, primarily test site employees anil their families, lined the road near the
t attle crossing.
Mother happily spends Mother's Day protesting nuclear testing
I didn't hang around home this Mother's
Day. waiting for my children to fix me dinner
and shower me with flowers and nicely wrapped
gifts. This year I did something completely
different.
I got arrested.
Reporter's notebook
and photos
by Karen Irmsher
I’m sure 1 could have found some simpler
way to do it right hen* in Eugene. Hut instead. I
traveled nearly 1.000 miles to share my first ar
Irest with 745 others, more than half of whom
were mothers, under the hot sun of the Nevada
desert.
Four other University women also wen; ar
rested: Margan-t Stalnaker. a junior studying
political science; l.isa Page, a senior studying
sociology: Pat Bryan, a graduate student in
linguistics; and Charlotte Richardson, a
freshman studying comparative literature.
Another University student. Sharon Bosser
man. a senior journalism major, attended the
demonstration hut was not arrested.
Julia Ward Howe, the founder of Mother’s
Day. would have Imhmi proud of the 2,500 to
3,500 people, more than 00 |>ercent women by
my estimate, who gathered in the sweltering heat
05 miles northwest of I.as Vegas, Nev. And she
especially would have been pleased with those
of us who crossed the cattle guard or crawled
through the barlred wire fence to risk certain
arrest.
Several of the day’s speakers pointed out
that it’s the sort of thing Howe had in mind when
she founded Mother’s Day. Her original Mother's
Day proclamation, written in 1H70. urged
| women to stand together and demand an end to
! all war-making and preparations for war. Were
! she still alive, she’d have been crawling through
that barbed wire with us.
At least 60 Oregonians, including 15 people
from Kugene, were among what organizers
believe was the greatest number of protesters to
gather, thus far. near the entrance to the Nuclear
Test Site.
The IJ.S. Department of Energy continues to
explode a nuclear device about once every three
weeks in underground tunnels inside the site.
The United States is clearly the front-runner in
this race. Since 1945 our government has ex
ploded 837. The Soviets trail with 606.
Stalnaker said she found it exhilarating to be
there with such a broad range of women. All
ages, lifestyles and geographical regions of the
United States were well represented, along with
a sprinkling of women from other countries.
“Women are mothers, and they feel a strong
connection with life." she said.
Mary Payton, a 54-year-old Salem
housewife, had never participated in anything
like this before. She asked her husband (yes. ask
ed) if she could do anything she wanted to
celebrate Mother's Day. After he innocently con
sented, he was shocked to find out what she had
in mind, she said.
That stretch of desert has never before been
exposed to such a sea of concentrated female
energy, undulating under colorful waves of
flower? and ribbon-decorated, broad-brimmed
hats. No official figures were available, but from
the show of hands, I estimate mothers made up
more than 60 percent of the gathering. And at
least 10 percent were grandmothers you'd never
expect to see in such.a setting.
One petite grandmother. Frances Crow. 67.
of Northampton. Mass., told me that this was her
21st arrest. Hut she said most of the women she
spoke to told her this was their first time.
The vast majority of the women I asked also
said this was their first. All of the first-timers
said they had been thinking about doing it for a
long time and that the appropriateness of choos
ing Mother's Day to make a strong statement in
favor of a nuclear test turn had grown increasing
ly appealing the more they thought of it. I was
surprised to hear my own thoughts reflected so
consistently.
The women, most of them in while and
pastels, created a striking contrast to the approx
imately 50 camouflaged and brown-uniformed
sheriff’s deputies and security officers, some of
them women, waiting with guns, riot sticks and
clusters of white plastic handcuffs on the other
side of the fence.
A helicopter circled overhead throughout
the rally and arrests, and helmeted men in
camouflage uniforms waited, ready for action,
tucked in among the cactus and sagebrush. In
camouflaged vehicles that wen; a cross between
dune buggies and jeeps.
All the organizers for this event were
women, although some men did fill support
roles. AII-women groups crossed the line to get
arrested first, before any male female groups.
Then later, when the mixed groups crossed the
line or climbed through the barbed wire, the
women in these groups went l>nfon; the men. I
was told by organizers that the decision to
operate in this way was made to force women to
assume leadership roles, something they are
often more reluctant than men to do.
before anyone crossed the line onto IXJK
land, a spokesman for the Nve County Sheriff's
Department informed organizers that the buses
wouldn't be able to hold all the protesters
in the past, those arrested have been bused
60 miles farther from Las Vegas to the tiny town
of Beatty for booking and release there. But this
time then; were too many, so four buses wen;
repeatedly filled and driven two miles into the
test site, where 15 deputies in a temporary trailer
office issued citations. Then we were reloaded
on buses and driven back to near the rally site.
alMiut a quarter mile outside the fence
As it was. the arrests and processing stretch
ed from 11 a m. until after :i p in. Some pro
testers recrossed the line and were rearrested
several times.
Watching the 0 p.m. news coverage of the
event from our hotel room at the Colden Spike
that night, we were heartened to hear the com
mentator comparing the escalating numbers of
arrests at the test site to the time period during
the Vietnam protests, just before the tide ol
public opinion liegan to turn. Only time will tell
if the analogy holds true.
In our non-violence training on Saturday.
APT organizer and one of its founders. Nancy
Hale. said. “We have a very rich history of using
this kind of action to make the kinds of changes
that make us proud of the country we art! today."
The arrests from this action were half as
many as all the test site arrests in the past to
years. People have been getting arrested then!
since 1057. As of the end of March, the Nve
County sheriffs had made more than 1.571 ar
rests, according to an information sheet prepared
by the organizers of this action APT. the
Nevada Desert Experience, I.oretto
Disarmament-Economic Conversion Committee
and Women's International league for Peace and
Freedom.
In fact, the flood of arrests has so overloaded
the Nve County court and jail systems that at the
•Mid of April the county commissioners voted to
discontinue the; prosecution of trespassers.
Charge's have boon dropped against the 4:tH ar
rested in February and probably will lie dropped.
or possibly never even filed, gainst Sunday’s
protesters.
At the tNittoin of my citation is a place for the
"complainant" to sign Nobody signed it All of
the people in one affinity group from Portland
gave their names as Benjamin hinder, after (he
young engineer from Portland recently slain hy
the Contras in Nicaragua Their names warn not
contested The arresting officers just kept mov
ing people through as fast as possible.
But I do know I tell strong and alive, smell
ing the sagebrush crushed beneath our shoes as
my friend Dorothy and I holding hands,
sidestepped the clumps of cactus and walked
toward our camouflaged arresting officer
I have a feeling flowers, gifts and the pro
mise of dinner are going to feel like a mighty
poor excuse for Mother's Day from now on.
Deputies remove a couple who tied themselves together and sal down in the mad to Mm k a hus
removing p ml esters.
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Judiciary committee urges Senate to approve divestment bill
By B.|. Thomsen
t M I hr tmrrelri
SAI.KM A bill that would divest state
funds from South Africa and Namibia
came one step closer to becoming a reality
Tuesday.
Legislative
issues
The bill, I IB 2001. was passed out of the
Senate Judiciary Committee during a
work session to the full Senate with a do
pass recommendation and a subsequent
recommendation to refer the bill to the
Senate Ways and Means Committee.
Committee Chairman Sen. Bill Frye, I)
Cottage Grove. made the motion to recom
mend referral to the budgeting committee.
A split vote followed with some com
mittee memt>ers reluctant to send the hill
to ways and means for fear that it would
not make it out of committee before the
end of the session
Sen. |an Wyers, D-Portland. said he
voted for the motion only because he said
he knew Frye had gotten assurances from
ways and means that the bill would la
moved quickly out of that committee.
"I know that many of us would be quite
upset if the bill is in committee for more
than a couple of days." Wyers said.
A similar bill was vetoed twu years ago
by then-Gov. Vic Atiyeh. Gov. Neil
Goldschmidt, however, has promised to
sign this legislation if passed by both the
House and the Senate.
The bill breezed through the House late
last month on a vote of 51-1).
Steve Nelson. ASUO president, attend
ed the work session and afterward ex
pressed disappointment that the bill
wasn't moved to the Senate without the
recommendation to send it to ways and
means for consideration.
He said he was confident the hill would
be passed by the Senate and be signed into
law b*!f«tn- the end of the session
laite last month the State Board of
Higher Education voted unanimously to
support divesting higher education funds
from South Africa
Nelson testified before the House
Human Resources Committee in support
of the bill lust month.
“Students .it the University of Oregon
and in the State System of Higher Kduca
lion in general have a long history of sup
port for divestment," he told the
committee.
"We find it hard to believe that people
who have endowed our educational in
stitutions in this stale would want
their dollars used to deny the most basic
rights to people based on the color of their
skin." hu said.
Nelson noted further that "as taxpayers
in this state, most students... do not want
their dollars used to give power to the on
ly government in the world where racial
separation and discrimination are written
into the constitution ami the laws."
Thu divestment issue at the University
dates (kick to f‘J77, when University
students passed two ballot measures seek
ing to show disapproval of the policy of
apartheid through economic sanctions.
The first measure denied companies in
volved in South African business ventures
tilt! rivhl to recruit on the University cam
pus. The second usked that the Slate
tioard and the University's development
fund divest funds from any corporation
involved with South Africa,
A 1*178 opinion from the Oregon at
torney generul's office said the State
Hoard, which already had voted H :t to
divest funds from South Africa, could not
lega ly do so.
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