THE LAST WORD
Day, Samuel H. Jr.
THE LAST WORD Samuel H. Day Jr. THE UNION CARBIDE SIX f you were looking for the corporation that best symbolizes the role of business in the manufacture of hydrogen bombs, you wouldn't be far...
...Every new claim takes the tribes a step closer to radioactive oblivion...
...This was his fourth time behind bars in a single year...
...Union Carbide operates twenty-five uranium mines in Utah and Colorado, as well as a large Utah uranium mill that produces one million pounds of yellowcake per year...
...If interrupting business as usual at Union Carbide, manufacturer of nuclear weapons, on the anniversary of Hiroshima was a crime, I would be proud to plead guilty...
...Every day, the winds scatter radioactive dust and spread radioactive gas from the mill's huge tailings pile...
...I had the feeling that a baton was being passed...
...Union Carbide is a major investor and technical adviser in the nuclear power and weapons programs of the Republic of South Africa, where, every day, the noose of racial repression grows tighter...
...We were arrested, charged with criminal trespass, mugged and fingerprinted, locked up overnight in a holding cell of the Chicago city jail, and released on bond the next morning...
...Two weeks later, Union Carbide decided not to press the complaint, and the charges were dropped...
...For Bossie, a full-time foe of nuclear weapons, going to jail has become part of his job...
...Every day, two or three more hydrogen bombs are added to the stockpile...
...For those few hours we were a microcosm of a movement which is growing just as surely as is the Government's headlong rush toward "nuclear superiority"—and toward the nuclear holocaust it will engender...
...And, at its "Y-12" factory in the rolling hills of eastern Tennessee, Union Carbide manufactures the uranium and lithium deu-teride components for the largest nuclear weapons stockpile in the world...
...Union Carbide wants to extend its uranium holdings onto the lands of the San Felipe Indians in New Mexico and the Lakota Sioux in South Dakota...
...We were greeted by William Simmons, the manager of building and site services, who appeared genuinely anxious to accommodate us...
...The two others arrested with us, Sylvia Kushner and Mary Lyons, were taken to the women's prison...
...Union Carbide operates two factories in Paducah, Kentucky, and Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which enrich uranium for the U.S...
...He invited us into the conference room while he dialed the two company officials (both in New York City) whose names were at the top of our list...
...The first, William Sneath, chief executive officer of Union Carbide, was traveling and could not be reached...
...And I listened to the professor, Dan Stern, and his much younger companion, Rich Hutchinson, volunteer executive director of the Chicago Mobilization for Survival, who had learned his politics in Stern's class at Northeastern Illinois University...
...We were also warned by the building security director to get out or face the consequences...
...Those are some of the reasons why there is a peculiarly gruesome irony behind the folksiness of Union Carbide's corporate motto: Today, something we do will touch your life...
...With that, the manager of building and site services lost his patience and demanded that we leave...
...The world will little note nor long remember the "Union Carbide Six...
...Its greater strength lies in the growing numbers of others willing to do time in jails around the country for similar transgressions...
...Every day, workers in the two plants are exposed to high levels of radiation...
...Our third and final warning came from a lieutenant of the Chicago police department...
...Many have died horrible cancer deaths as a result...
...nuclear power and weapons programs...
...As a guest speaker at the rally and a participant in the march, I found myself in a small group that filed into the company's office that afternoon to present what seemed like a reasonable request: Could we speak with someone in charge of Union Carbide's nuclear policies...
...No, we would wait until Mr...
...we want you for genocide...
...But for me it was an unforgettable introduction to civil disobedience as a political tactic—and to those who practice it against America's preparations for nuclear war...
...The more often we break the law in the name of peace, the more likely we are to stop the next war before it starts...
...And that is why, I suppose, the Chicago chapter of Mobilization for Survival, an anti-nuclear group, singled out Union Carbide for special attention at its annual Hiroshima memorial rally on August 6—the thirty-sixth anniversary of the start of the nuclear arms race...
...The movement's best known symbols are Daniel and Philip Berrigan, now facing lengthy sentences with six others (the "Plowshares Eight") for hammering missile nose cones at a Pennsylvania nuclear weapons factory...
...M Samuel H. Day Jr., a contributing editor of The Progressive, is a special representative of the Nuclear Weapons Facilities Project, sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee and the Fellowship of Reconciliation...
...Would we settle for the vice president in charge of public relations...
...I felt ennobled to be among them...
...I looked at the priest, Bob Bossie, curled up in a corner of one of the cell's two hardwood benches, sleeping fitfully despite the unremitting glare of the overhead lights and the din from dozens of voices echoing against the steel and concrete walls...
...THE UNION CARBIDE SIX f you were looking for the corporation that best symbolizes the role of business in the manufacture of hydrogen bombs, you wouldn't be far off in picking Union Carbide, the largest petrochemical company in the United States...
...Besides, it was only an eight-block march from the downtown rally site to the company's carpeted office suite on the thirteenth floor of a building overlooking the Chicago River—a convenient distance in which to work up a few lusty rounds of Union Carbide, you can't hide...
...Anderson had finished his meeting and could spare us a moment...
...He goes to jail with much the same spirit of resignation as a Union Carbide technician might accept an unwelcome tour of duty in Katanga or Saudi Arabia...
...The second— company president Warren Anderson— was in a meeting and could not be disturbed...
...My cellmates were a professor of sociology, a bookstore clerk, and a Catholic priest...
...The offense carries a maximum penalty of a $500 fine and thirty days in jail...
...Stern, veteran of many civil rights and antiwar protests, was filling in his protege on what to expect in the jail...
Vol. 45 • October 1981 • No. 10
