Text Fwd: [F. Cordaro] report from Nov. 3 & 4 Festival of Hope and Rally at new Nuke Weapons Plant site in KC 11월 3~4일, 캔자스시 핵무기 공장 반대 행사 보고

* The below text was sent from Frank Cordaro on Nov. 6, 2010
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Previous posting: VICTORY IN KC - Charges dropped 7 KC Peace Planters who blocked VIP Buses at Sept 8 Nuke Weapons Plant Ground Breaking Ceremony.(* Click HERE)

Despite charges being dropped local peace makers hold Festival of
Hope and Rally at new Nuke Weapons Plant site... below report:
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[Reply to Cordaro] “Beans, not bombs!” report from Nov. 3 & 4 Festival of Hope and Rally at new Nuke Weapons Plant site in KC MO


“Beans, not bombs!” say KC Peace Planters at new nuke-plant site
By Jane Stoever

(Jane Stoever, member of PeaceWorks-KC and the KC Peace Planters, may be contacted at janepstoever@yahoo.com.)

Attached photos: Ron Faust, center, urges hope instead of despair; on left, Mark Bartholomew of Holy Family Catholic Worker holds a cross in memory of Alice, diagnosed at age 39 of brain and breast cancer after working at the current KC nuke-parts plant. Ann Suellentrop, center, holding a cross, calls the Peace Planters the “beloved community,” caring for each other and the community, and being blessed in the process.

Also see Eric Bowers photos (click):

* Bowers said Nov. 5 that people from Honeywell and the General Services Administration had already checked out his photos.


Twenty-four KC Peace Planters rallied at Kansas City’s new nuke-plant site Nov. 4. Chilled in a 21-mile-an-hour wind and mid-50s temperature, they passed flyers to drivers at the stop light. They danced by the side of the road, waving signs, “Stop Kansas City’s new nuke bomb plant,” “What’s best for the grandchildren? No nuke bomb plant,” and “Depleted uranium coming soon!”

They laid 122 crosses up the hill on the public right-of-way, crosses bearing names of workers whose families say they died from contaminants at Bannister Federal Complex. It houses the current nuke-parts factory (the Kansas City Plant) and other federal agencies.

The Peace Planters then huddled together for prayer, granola bars, Wurther’s butterscotch, petition-signing, mourning and rejoicing. They sang “Honeywell”—

“We’ve got nukes, they’ve got nukes,
Enough to make this place a Chernobyl,
Except that this would be global
And these bombs are being made in KC.”

The Peace Planters called their rally “Beans, Not Bombs!” They sowed seeds at the new site, a soybean field in 2009, now under excavation for a “modern” facility to replace the 61-year-old Kansas City Plant that Honeywell operates for the National Nuclear Security Administration. A new twist with the new plant: A city commission, the Planned Industrial Expansion Authority, holds the title to the facility, not the NNSA, which simply leases the KC-owned facility. This summer, the city sold municipal bonds to private investors for up to $815 million to finance the project.

At the festival of hope in KC the night before the rally, Ann Suellentrop shared with more than 40 attendees the news from Jay Coghlan of Nuclear Watch New Mexico. Namely, the NNSA FY 2011 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan says in Annex D, p. 44, “Finally, because the new facility will be leased, there will be no initial capital investment and NNSA will not be burdened by costs for legacy disposition should the mission ever be discontinued” (* click HERE)

Legacy. In KC nuke-speak, that word refers to the history of toxins at the current plant. Now the term is being applied to the new site, long before construction begins.

Scott Dye of Columbia, Mo., director of the Sierra Club Water Sentinels, said at the festival of hope, “The Department of Energy has called the Bannister complex ‘polluted into perpetuity.’ DOE estimated around $289 million in 1989 as the cost to clean it up. But it’s a tough political issue. No politician wants to say, ‘We’ve got a festering hellhole here.’”

Dye explained, “They want the new site because they know how polluted the old one is.”

He mentioned an Oct. 22 document prepared by Honeywell that suggested spending $85 million to clean up the beryllium and above-ground PCB (polychlorinated biphenyl) contamination at the Bannister facilities, then selling the complex to the general public in a “fee simple sale,”
an absolute sale, legacy pollution included. Referring to promises of a “clean” new site even though employees are expected to keep making non-nuclear parts such as radar, guidance systems and triggers, Dye said, “You can’t make triggers for nuclear weapons without using
depleted uranium.”

Calling on festival participants to push for green jobs, not mean jobs producing nuclear weapons, The Recipe (spoken-word artists Priest and 3*3*7) used NNSA’s abbreviation for the Kansas City Plant, KCP. They led the crowd in shouting,

“Warriors dream of the mean machine. KCP must go green!”

Two of the eight persons who did civil resistance during the protest to NNSA’s groundbreaking for the new plant Sept. 8 reflected during the festival of hope on their resistance. They noted the city’s decision that, although the resisters blocked buses laden with officials going to the groundbreaking, the evidence did not support the charge of disorderly conduct.

Sarah Cool of Cherith Brook Catholic Worker House in KC said, “I’ve always been of the belief that once one knows something, such as knowing that the City of Kansas City is building a nuke-bomb plant, then one can no longer operate as if you don’t know it. … I was convicted—convicted to do something to right this wrong. … I knelt in front of a big bus … after being pushed back twice by the police. I knelt and prayed.”

Jim Hannah of Independence, Mo., a retired minister in the Community of Christ, asked, “Shouldn’t they (the police) have arrested the war profiteers in those tinted-window tour buses?!” Concerning the dismissed charges, he deplored “the dismissive powers and
principalities who don’t want an embarrassing trial or media coverage of their death-dealing.”

Hannah said he had had time, since Sept. 8, to ponder, “Why did I speak up, and act up?” He came to one word: gratitude. He called oneness with nature, with sacred life the source of his gratitude and his restlessness, calling him to resist nuclear weapons.


***The reflections of Cool and Hannah are attached.

Sarah Cool Convicted.doc
24K View Download

Jim Hannah Gratitude.doc
71K View Download
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For more info on the on going campaing to stop the building of the KC
MO Nuke Weapons Plant:
blog: kcnukeswatch.wordpress.com
web: nukewatch.org/KCNukePlant

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KC Peace Planters is a coalition of seven KC area groups, communities and organizations:

PeaceWorks, KC

Physicians for Social Responsibility-KC

East Meets West of Troost

The Recipe LLC

Cherith Brook CW KC MO

Holy Family CW KC MO

Benedictines for Peace

KC’s Loretto Peace and Justice Network