TRIDENT II: A LOCAL NUISANCE
McManus, Phil & Kennedy, Scott
Trident II; a local nuisance A neighborhood up in arms about the nuclear arms race Phil McManus and Scott Kennedy Like its counterparts in other communities, the county planning commission in...
...More than fifty people signed up to testify...
...Would Lockheed's works violate international law...
...But I will not be intimidated by an unruly mob...
...These stirrings had fallen on receptive ears among many in Santa Cruz County — the local religious Society of Friends, young people concerned about the threat to their futures, retired people worried about rising taxes fueled by the cost of military spending, members of the local Resource Center for Non-Violence...
...From the beginning, PNFF has viewed its work as part of a larger national disarmament strategy...
...Dozens of supporters volunteered to walk the precincts and to hang literature on 25,000 doorknobs...
...The local skirmish at Santa Cruz made it plain to the people of the community that the arms race begins at home...
...It was an awareness kindled by the activities of the Pacific Life Community and of the Mid-Peninsula Conversion Project, both of which focused attention on the impact of the giant Lockheed plant on neighboring Santa Clara County...
...The commissioners cut off the testimony of Robert Aldridge, a former Lockheed engineer, who said the county's land was being used for development of a "first-strike" weapon...
...The planning commission voted 4-to-l to grant the permit...
...There has been talk of appealing the board decision, of nonviolent resistance at the Lockheed site (seven demonstrators were arrested there in March), and of a ballot initiative to place the issue of nuclear weapons production1 before the electorate...
...The Santa Cruz experience shows that the arms race and disarmament can be significant local issues that unite many diverse factions and attract mass support, and that citizens respond when given an opportunity to speak out against the arms race...
...adjournment time the outpouring had just begun, so the weary commissioners continued the hearing to January 8 and transferred it to the much larger civic auditorium...
...The Santa Cruz County Planning Commission came to be the scene of a local skirmish in the nuclear arms race — perhaps the harbinger of many in the United States...
...In the following weeks the organizers distributed 20,000 copies of a twelve-page "Live Without Trident" tabloid...
...So there was little reason to expect much excitement last year when Lockheed got ready to go to the planning commission...
...The battle was triggered by the purpose for which Lockheed sought the use permit...
...Local efforts such as those at Santa Cruz are based on the conviction that genuine moves toward disarmament can come about only through the demonstration of grass-roots support for an end to the arms race...
...I do feel the arms race is a train to hell and we are being presented in our mountains an opportunity to participate in that ride," said Supervisor Gary Patton, speaking for a troubled minority on the board...
...About 300 company supporters, including employes and their spouses, joined 1,200 other spectators at the late January hearing, passing out leaflets for "People for a Free Future...
...And yet we have been mesmerized by the charismatic myths spread by those who have a stake in nuclear war...
...I have been called a war criminal, accused of killing people, and of allowing children to be mutilated," said Supervisor Pat Liberty, who seemed equally troubled...
...and general welfare...
...The company eventually got its way — but not before the entire community had been turned on its ear and a determined band of citizens had shown that local land-use questions can be the appropriate forum for the most far-reaching global issues...
...By the 11 p.m...
...Let us refuse to drink the poison of power...
...And the Santa Cruz facility of Lockheed Missile & Aerospace Co., a nondescript factory and test site that employs about 300 workers in the redwood forested mountains to the north of town, is not the kind of place that ordinarily attracts much attention...
...I have been yelled at and hooted at...
...And it offered the larger lesson that-the arms race must also end at home...
...The board voted 3-2 to sustain Lockheed...
...The crowd protested, the commission relented, and witness after witness rose to speak about the impact of nuclear weaponry on the peace, health, and safety of Santa Cruz County...
...They were there at the urging of People for a Nuclear Free Future (PNFF), a grass-roots anti-nuclear weapons and power group that had circulated stop-Trident literature, drafted a thirty-page statement of opposition to the Lockheed request, and primed the audience with knowledgeable witnesses...
...And what gave the opponents their standing before the county planning commission, as they saw it, was the illegality of the Trident missile under international law and a provision of the county zoning ordinance which says the purpose of county planning is "to promote and protect the public peace, health, safety, morals...
...For twenty-two years the plant has gone about its business of testing the engines that come from the big Lockheed factory across the mountains in Sunnyvale, little noticed except for the occasional roar of a rocket motor being tested on the ground...
...That gave PNFF the time and space it needed...
...Remember Hiroshima," said the People for a Nuclear Free Future...
...With forty to fifty speakers still to be heard from at a late hour, the commission recessed the hearing for two weeks — long enough for the Lockheed forces to rally...
...Although the immediate battle was lost, the cause is far from dead in Santa Cruz County...
...Its meetings deal with the humdrum business of building permits, zoning variances, and street-widening projects...
...And the consequences of that were voiced by Commission Chairman Stanley Nielsen, for whom county planning may never be the same: "If every little planning commission around the country stated what may or may not be done in the name of national defense, then we are in for serious problems.'" What set the stage for the Santa Cruz skirmish was the community's emerging awareness — long after Lockheed came to the county — of its role in the nuclear arms race...
...The planning commission tried to restrict the testimony to conventional "land-use" questions, but witness after witness raised the broader issue of the unconventional use to which Lockheed would put the land...
...by the statewide campaign of the Abalone Alliance against nuclear power in California, and by growing national agitation among peace groups over development of the Navy's submarine-launched Trident missile, for which Lockheed is the major contractor...
...Would Lockheed's "confined detonating fuse" serve the peace, health, safety, and morals of the people of Santa Cruz County...
...Phil McManus and Scott Kennedy are staff members at the Resource Center for Nonviolence and active in People for a Nuclear Free Future, Santa Cruz, California...
...a local nuisance A neighborhood up in arms about the nuclear arms race Phil McManus and Scott Kennedy Like its counterparts in other communities, the county planning commission in Santa Cruz, a town of 40,000 people on the Pacific coast south of San Francisco, is not the kind of group that ordinarily plays to a packed house...
...One of the new buildings was to be used for making "confined detonating fuses" — the explosive devices that separate a Trident II missile into fourteen independently targeted warheads, each one five times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima...
...Santa Cruz may be the place where the movement toward world nuclear suicide may come to an end...
...Unwilling to let the debate stop there, PNFF appealed the decision to the county board of supervisors, buttressing its arguments with support letters from two dozen members of the clergy, two dozen lawyers, and the full membership of the county psychological association...
...That was the question posed by some 600 citizens who crowded into the chambers of the planning commission when the Lockheed permit came up for a hearing last November...
...The supervisors were tense and divided when they met before a packed house on February 27 to dispose of the Lockheed application, but the outcome was never in doubt...
...AH but three of the thirty-five speakers urged denial of the application...
...The planning commissioners had an audience of 1,500 when they met at the civic auditorium to take up the Lockheed permit again...
...Remember the Arizona," said the People for a Free Future...
...It wanted to put up some new buildings for which the county required a use permit...
...Abandoning the argument that this was just a narrow "land-use" question, the Lockheed forces offered a stirring defense of the Trident missile and its role as a deterrent against "foreign aggression...
...One of them, Dar-rell Yeaney, a minister at the University of California Santa Cruz campus, likened the nuclear arms race to the Jonestown massacre: "Many have wondered how a mass of people could be so mesmerized by the charismatic leader that they could commit suicide at his bidding...
...They also said the "confined detonator fuse" would be built elsewhere if not in Santa Cruz County...
Vol. 43 • September 1979 • No. 9
