WSW EDITORIAL
It seems that every time we turn around, there's another pronouncement about' things which are hazardous to our health or will threaten or shorten our lives. In a world filled with alarms ringing, it's hard to take in one more warning or to feel, really feel, motivated to action. It's easy to feel numb, become apathetic, and stuck in our powerlessness. We cut back to activities that are personally satisfying, that will reap some measurable or visible reward. We choose not to hear the disturbing reports, and regard doomsday speakers as if they speak no words of truth, but perversely delight in bearing bad news. The really bad news of late focuses on the nuclear power industry. When Three Mile Island became a familiar part of the breakfast, lunch and dinner-time news for nearly a week, and Harrisburg was measured off in numbers of miles from the dense
Features
populations of Washington, Philadelphia and New York, it quickly became a crisis which forced us to examine feelings, to listen, and hopefully to act. The all-powerful heads of nuclear power companies, and their corporate friends and allies in government, have been caught with inadequate explanations and contradictions. Their ineptness has been obvious to the millions who watched their frantic public relations attempts on TV. What was seldom mentioned in newscasts is that a breakdown at Three Mile Island Plant had been as much as predicted by the Union of Concerned Scientists. Over the years, they and other scientists have issued warnings about inadequate safety conditions, poor maintenance, and design flaws in that plant and many others.
In the 1950's, technologists legitimized the concept of the "peaceful atom" and atomic tests were run in
CONTENTS
Reviews
The Bottom Line-Abortion Rights.. On Karen Silkwood.
7
Norma Rae.
14
8-9
News
Cleo Ferguson: Pottery for Karamu's Medea..... Bits & Pieces....
14
5
Local
Cleveland Women's Groups..
11-13
New Protection for Battered Wives..
3
Find It Fastest..
back cover
4
3
Letters to WSW....
2
What's Happening.
14-15
5
.5
Classified Ads.
14
Pregnancy Disability with Strings.
Voluntary Motherhood Day...
National
Child Care Act Abandoned...
Uncle Sam Might Want You..
Cover: Photo of Cleo Ferguson by Janet Century (See page 13)
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Carol Epstein, Linda Jane, Marycatherine Krause Gail Powers, Barb Reusch, Mary Walsh
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Nevada. Since then, many scientists and ordinary citizens have raised their voices in protest to this death-dealing form of energy. Just as in The China Syndrome and in televised reports from Three Mile Island, every effort has been made to gloss over neardisasters and outright defects in nuclear power technology. Only recently (April 20) did a Congressional hearing exploring governmental responsibility for cancers linked to atomic tests release previously classified documents. Statements from those documents showed a clear pattern of distortion. Evidence of actual suggestions from then-President Eisenhower to keep the public "confused" and press releases containing falsifications issued by the Atomic Energy Commission were exposed. This was the sort of cover-up and public relations double-talk that masqueraded as responses to years of protests, to evidence of abnormally high cancer-related deaths among the population close to the Nevada test sites, to 25 years of nuclear power plant "accidents". Evading and perverting the truth in this way seems to be the logical consequence of a society which encourages "progress" to be separated from humanitarian concerns. Most technologists and politicians are isolated from the effects of their decisions and actions.
Because this recent nuclear crisis played out all its scenes, large and small, in front of television, many more people who have been ambivalent or uninformed are questioning the sanity of using nuclear power. They now realize that the risks to all forms of life are too high. There's a great deal of pressure to examine all the details of the Three Mile Island "accident" to learn exactly what went wrong. This pressure should not let up; it should come from more than the citizens living in and around Harrisburg; it should not be allowed to become merely a search for a scapegoat.
There are 72 nuclear power plants now operating in America and more than 100 million people live within 50 miles of them. There was a measurable increase in radiation found as much as 200 miles away from Three Mile Island. All of us must insist upon an investigation and the indictment of the whole nuclear industry. We truly have no place to hide from this
menace.
Clevelanders and other Ohioans who want industry and government to face responsibility for their callous lack of concern for life have reason to push hard: sitting in our backyard is an identical Babcock & Wilcox-designed Three Mile Island plant-DavisBesse at Port Clinton. A Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) agent from Chicago, J. S. Creswell, has reported that Davis-Besse has problems similar to those at the Three Mile Island plant. The NRC recently ordered immediate safety inspections on Davis-Besse and four other plants designed by Babcock & Wilcox.
There is no longer any excuse for not acting, protesting, or writing to President Carter, our Senators, and the NRC. We can participate in the local antinuclear vigil in front of CEI each Friday at noon. We can join the Stop-Perry (a new plant under construction near Painesville) movement and protest there on June 2. Because our anger and frustration must be made visible and a large-scale protest is an important way to respond to Three Mile Island, we must plan to go to Washington on May 6 (see page 8).
As women, we have come to understand through our movement that there is a relationship between our deep-rooted life-affirming instincts and our concern for future generations. If we lose touch with these feelings we may also lose our ability to discern what supports life and what negates it.
Just as we insist that we must have control over our reproductive lives, we also need to demand a healthy and safe environment in which to live out those lives. If the conditions that now exist are allowed to continue, if the immoral position of profits over public safety goes on, will we honestly be able to choose to bring new life into this world?
-Barb Reusch
Copyright
19/9
May, 1979/What She Wants/Page 1