Nuclear Family, Nuclear Stories...

News of Fukushima hit me hard, my fears for the people of Japan and the world were almost numbing, incomprehensible, like being told that I had a deadly incurable disease. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's work on death and dying was key to my understanding of nuclear issues and humanity's embrace of a suicidal technology. I don't think people realize that radiation quite simply accelerates the aging process. The invisible particles cause cancers, genetic damage, and basically hastens the breakdown and death of the unfortunate organisms that ingest or are in the path of the harmful particles. If there was truth in reporting, truth in our media, truth in government, true democracy, true participation in key decisions determining which technologies humanity should use to meet our basic needs; there would be no nuclear weapons, no nuclear industry, no problems with containing nuclear waste. However, I was born into the "Nuclear Age" and it is still an enormous growing problem for my generation and my children's generation, and for generations to come.

I grew up in a dysfunctional nuclear family, but I always yearned for a family of my own, to love and be loved and be happy; I suspect that most people feel these basic, deep human desires. Eventually I found myself happily married with two children, pregnant with a third, and then my bubble of happiness was punctured by the thorns of political realities, once I had attained personal happiness; I became much more aware of the problems that faced my society, my culture, and the world. Perhaps the shock of my worldview being shattered caused my first miscarriage. Ever since then, I have struggled to balance my family life with solving the systemic problems that face humanity. My first foray into political organizing coincided with a hurricane that struck Kauai, where my brother was living, and my second miscarriage in 1992.

Months later, I was invited to attend a meeting of the Nuclear Guardianship Project at Joanna Macy's house in Berkeley (which was an awfully long drive from where I lived in Palo Alto), but I was so nurtured spiritually, mentally, emotionally by the meetings that I continued to attend them and plunged into the anti-nuclear work. Amazingly, about the time that I attended that first meeting, I became pregnant, again, (not at the meeting!) but all my anti-nuclear work I did while thinking of my young children, the growing baby in my womb, and future generations.

I stayed away from the direct actions at Livermore Labs and radiation to safeguard the health of my unborn child. During this time, I edited a small book entitled The Invisible Nuclear War: The Effects of Low-level Radiation, the Massive Government Cover-up, and the Continuing Battle waged by the Nuclear Powers Against All Life on Earth which I hoped would be tool for the anti-nuclear movement, as we struggled against a renewal of nuclear weapons testing in Nevada, the deployment of nuclear weapons and nuclear power in space, the expansion of the nuclear industry... I was so impressed by the scientists and dedicated activists whom I met working on the issue and at how difficult it was to get the information out to the public.

I vaguely realized that there was some excellent information posted "online," but most people were not "online" or aware of the "internet." My technophile husband with a Masters in Artificial Intelligence helped me set up an email account, so I could communicate with other activists, but in those days the internet seemed very limited in scope. Books, films, direct contact with people was where I put my energies.

I went to meetings, conferences, rallies, marches, and I even went to Washington DC where I passed out a printed version of my book to Congressmen and Senators, in the eighth month of my pregnancy. At that point we scored a victory when Clinton decided to extend the moratorium on nuclear testing. There was even a big celebration help in the Capitol Building which I attended.

When I returned from DC, however, the publisher of my book, decided it was no longer needed and to not publish it. I thought about revising it and finding another publisher, but entering the ninth month of pregnancy, I shelved that idea and concentrated on having a healthy baby.

One of the struggles that I was involved with was to prevent Ward Valley from becoming a dump for nuclear waste. Ward Valley is located in the desert not too far from the Colorado River, the nuclear powers were pushing for unlined waste dumps for "low-level nuclear waste" which meant that radiation could easily migrate into the river which supplied the drinking water for over ten million people. I made a pledge to the Earth that I would do all I could to prevent that from happening. Friends of mine were working on a ballot measure to ban nuclear waste from unlined waste sites and asked me to help them raise a staggering $200,000 in a very short amount of time. I made a donation, but I didn't have that much money, and so I tried to contact an old family friend with political connections. He had worked for the mayor of Los Angeles and the White House under Carter, and his father had died recently of cancer. I was totally shocked by his response. He graciously asked about my family, my mom, but bluntly said that they could put nuclear waste directly in the drinking water and it would be ok with him. Honestly, I had another friend, whom I had sailed around the world with in my youth, who became the head of the Republican Party, who exhibited the same disregard for human health and mercenary self interest displayed by the "Democrat."

It is no coincidence that nuclear industry grew up along with the television industry. Television programming is perhaps the most powerful tool of mind control devised, able to implant ideas, suggestions, present a small segment of reality while omitting a much greater, harsher reality, such as the shadow side of the nuclear industry, the oil industry, the black operations conducted by the US Intelligence Agencies.

I became a media activist, trying to get out the stories , information, hidden by the corporate press, that challenge the dominant institutions and their blind pursuit of profits and power, regardless of their high human and environmental costs. I have learned that the most important stories are hidden, and we must seek them out to understand ourselves, our world, and to begin the process of healing.

My worldview has evolved over the years, as understanding one problem leads to the discovery of yet another deeper underlying issue. I have tackled some of them, and others have been beyond my ability to fathom or get a handle on. Christopher Rudy has written some amazing articles and has been a visionary pioneer in the realm of healing, in ways that shatter the limited box of conventional thinking about reality. Einstein has famously said and I paraphrase that the thinking that has caused the problems that we find ourselves in will not be able to find a solution to them. Facing the unprecedented scale of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, perhaps the only solution is to break out beyond the bounds of conventional thought and activate a deeper wisdom that has long been denied, ignored, repressed. In the process of attempting to heal the wounds inflicted upon the Earth by humanity, perhaps we will also miraculously learn how to heal ourselves and consciously evolve in a less suicidal, creative way, in lines with the Universal laws so well illustrated by the natural world that gave us birth.

Christopher Rudy and I will be discussing Fukushima, Radiation, Emerging Realities, Health on this Thursday's Community Currency Radio Show from 2-3 pm on the Progressive Radio Network.