Testimony at Trespassing Trial Bernie Meyer December 11, 2013 Your Honor, I come as Bernie Meyer, called "American Gandhi" in India and the United States. Gandhi has been one of my teachers since the 1960s. I have been portraying Gandhi for almost 12 years, including the last eight in India. I present the historic Gandhi and I apply his principles and insights to today's realities. The reason I come to court today as Gandhi is that his last words have been prescient and I see them as fulfilled now. It is a message I tried to communicate on May 11th at Sub Base Bangor. On the day before he was assassinated on January 30, 1948 Margaret Burke-White, journalist for Life magazine, asked Gandhi, "How would you answer the atom bomb with nonviolence?" Gandhi replied, "Nonviolence is the only thing the atom bomb cannot destroy. I did not move a muscle when I heard that the atom bomb destroyed Hiroshima. I said, 'Unless humanity adopts nonviolence and ends the atom bomb, it will be suicide for mankind.'" This observation by Gandhi has been fulfilled today in ways that even Gandhi did not fully see. With nuclear radiation now unleashed in the world coupled with extreme climate change humanity may be approaching its last days. All we can do is face the reality in its fullness and change ourselves and our way of life to preserve whatever life will remain. Nuclear radiation cannot be seen, cannot be smelled, and cannot be tasted. Nuclear radiation can only be experienced in its lethal effects. All the releases of radiation over the last 70 years culminating with the most horrendous devastation of Daiiachi Nuclear Power Plant in Fukushima have killed and are killing humans, animals, and ecosystems. These releases of radiation result in slower death processes than a nuclear war or one nuclear bomb exploding. Chernobyl and Fukushima releases are still killing far more people than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I began my experience with nuclear radiation while living in Denver, Colorado from 1973 to 1978. Rocky Flats was the name given to the industry that produced the triggers for nuclear bombs. I participated in the Rocky Flats Action Group. Last year Kirsten Iversen produced the book Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats, which lays out the personal experiences of people living three and extensive analysis of Rocky Flats radiation effects, including its closure in 1989 due to the environmental and human suffering caused by its operation. In 1978, I moved to Seattle, which is across the mountains from the Hanford Nuclear reactors which produced the plutonium for the first nuclear bomb and many more over the years. Hanford is the source of much radiation still affecting the environment and humans. Hanford has a twofold source of radiation: wastes are leaking into the ground heading for the Columbia River and the Nuclear Power Plant, Columbia Generating Station, is set on earthquake faults putting us at great risk. In 1978, I also began participating in the actions resisting nuclear bombs at Sub Base Bangor which bases Trident Submarines, each capable of destroying 196 cities and possibly ending life on earth. Hanford, Rocky Flats, and Sub Base Bangor are directly connected. In 2007, I walked as Gandhi from Faslane, Scotland, the location of the UK's Trident base, to London, England. Walking along the English coast I became conscious of Sellafield Nuclear Power and Processing Plant which has made the Irish Sea one of the most radiated bodies of water on earth. We walked through areas marked "Danger" due to the radiation along the coast. The radiation has caused increased cancer rates along the England and Ireland coasts. The danger of low level radiation is summed up in this reference from a Science Daily article published in November 2012: "Even the very lowest levels of radiation are harmful to life, scientists have concluded in the Cambridge Philosophical Society's journal, Biological Reviews. Reporting the results of a wide-ranging analysis of 46 peer-reviewed studies published over the past 40 years, researchers from the University of South Carolina and the University of Paris-Sud found that variation in low-level, natural background radiation was found to have small, but highly statistically significant, negative effects on DNA as well as several measures of health." Last year, I was sent this book, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, by Alexey V. Yabokov, Vassily B. Nesterenko, and Alexey V. Nesterenko. Over one million people have died due to Chernobyl's melt down. That number grows with time. Here is one quote: "For the past 23 years it has been clear that there is a danger greater than nuclear weapons concealed within nuclear power. Estimates from this one reactor exceeded a hundredfold the radioactive contamination of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. No citizen of any country can be assured that he or she can be protected from radioactive contamination. One nuclear reactor can pollute half the globe. Chernobyl fallout covered the entire Northern Hemisphere." Now we have the tsunami devastated Fukushima Daiiachi Nuclear Power Plants in Japan on March 11th 2011. The disaster far exceeds that of Chernobyl and continues with exponential results and has more real potential increases. No one statement can identify all the consequences. The entire Pacific Ocean is radiated with continuous daily releases in the millions of tons of radiated water. The air above us contains radiation which is brought to the ground with rain. A study published in the International Journal of Health Services and referenced in a Washingtonblog.com article from May 2013 estimates U.S. deaths from Fukushima. "An estimated 14,000 excess deaths in the United States are linked to the radioactive fallout from the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear reactors in Japan, according to a major new article in the December 2011 edition of the International Journal of Health Services. This is the first peer-reviewed study published in a medical journal documenting the health hazards of Fukushima. "[The authors] note that their estimate of 14,000 excess U.S. deaths in the 14 weeks after the Fukushima meltdowns is comparable to the 16,500 excess deaths in the 17 weeks after the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986. The rise in reported deaths after Fukushima was largest among U.S. infants under age one. The 2010-2011 increase for infant deaths in the spring was 1.8 percent, compared to a decrease of 8.37 percent in the preceding 14 weeks." Japan itself is radiated and is consuming food produced from radiated soil and the sea. If the 1,565 spent fuel rods, which are now being removed, cannot be removed without an accident to just one of them by being exposed to air, it means the end of Japan and potentially significant life on earth. If reactor number four collapses or incinerates, the results are the same. We are dealing with end times for life as we know it. We are dealing with times to face truth and to get real by loving. I put this together with the reality of extreme climate change which the science I study indicates we have passed the possibility of return. The only question is the degree of severity. People rationalize that nuclear power is needed to produce energy for our way of life. As Gandhi implied, it is suicide for humanity. The absurdity of denying it is illustrated by the statement by Edward Teller, the father of the nuclear bomb: "Radiation from test fallout is very small. Its effect on human beings is so little that if it exists at all, it cannot be measured. Radiation from test fallout might be slightly harmful to humans. It might be slightly beneficial. It might have no effect at all." Contrast Teller's 1950's statement with a Noble Laureate lecture by Herman J. Muller's warning: "With the coming increasing use of atomic energy, even for peace-time purposes, the problem will become very important of insuring that the human germ plasm - the all-important material of which we are the temporary custodians - is effectively protected from this additional and potent source of permanent contamination." People deny the effects of radiation from nuclear power. People deny the possibility of nuclear war. People deny climate change. The reason I entered the road on May 11th at Sub Base Bangor is to say the flames are invisible. Life on earth is being destroyed. Beginning with the whole process of nuclear development from ground extraction to ground waste deposits, we need to face the reality of human extinction potential, to face our mortality. Nuclear weapons are the tap root of mental images creating denial. The Trident Bomb is the most visible representative of nuclear destruction. Albert Einstein said, "The invention of nuclear weapons have changed everything, except man's thinking." Man's thinking is centered in the images the ego creates. When humans place themselves as God, instead of creatures of nature, human thinking is based on illusion. In the case of radiation, as Gandhi said, it is suicide. Bernie Meyer has been a justice and peace activist since the 1960's embracing nonviolent direct action to resist the Vietnam war, participate in the civil rights movement and impact poverty. He began acting on eliminating nuclear weapons in Denver in 1974 and has continued with the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action at Sub Base Bangor since 1978. He works on many issues through the Fellowship of Reconciliation, among other organizations. He approaches these from a spiritual perspective which he calls "reality."
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On May 11, 2013, I entered Sub Base Bangor, home of the Trident submarines on the West Coast of the United States, by crossing the blue line. Entering the roadway was to risk arrest. I was carrying a peace flag and reading Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day Declaration. My purpose was to cry out about the deaths being caused by nuclear radiation even before a nuclear bomb from the Trident subs is detonated. Nuclear weapons and the total nuclear system are directly related to catastrophic climate change which is drastically close to being completely out of control. These lethal creations are totally due to human inventions. I was taken to the ground, arrested, and charged with "trespassing." I decided not to plea bargain, but to go to trial to attempt to make my message heard. After months of ignoring a plea offer, the charges were dismissed on December 6th. The following is [an abridged version of] my prepared statement for the Court, intended for the Navy, the United States government, and each U.S. citizen. We must do all we can to live as true human beings as a loving part of Mother Earth.