MLK & Coretta Scott King's Opposition to the Bomb

MLK historical sign, River Raisin park, downtown Monroe, MIToday, marking the 50th year since the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK) was assassinated in Memphis, TN, is a good time to reflect on his statements opposing nuclear weapons, and nuclear war.

On Jan. 16, 2016, the Boston Review ran an excerpt from Vincent Intondi's African Americans Against the Bomb. It included numerous quotations by MLK, dating back to as early as Dec., 1957, speaking out passionately, forcefully, and compellingly, for the abolition of nuclear weapons, and the prevention of nuclear war. 

(In Jan. 2016, the Stanford University Press blog also excerpted passages from Intondi's book, in a post entitled "Why Dr. King Opposed the Atomic Bomb.")

David Krieger, President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, published an essay on Jan. 15, 2018 entitled "Martin Luther King and the Bomb." 

Kreiger's article includes the following section:

King’s Nobel [Peace Prize] Lecture, delivered in December 1964, is worth reviewing.  He compared mankind’s technological advancement with our spiritual progress and found us failing to keep pace spiritually.  He said, “There is a sort of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance.  The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually.  We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple act of living together as brothers.”

The yawning gap between mankind’s technological advancement and spiritual poverty led King to draw this conclusion: “If we are to survive today, our moral and spiritual ‘lag’ must be eliminated.  Enlarged material powers spell enlarged peril if there is not proportionate growth of the soul.  When the ‘without’ of man’s nature subjugates the ‘within,’ dark storm clouds begin to form in the world.”  He found that mankind’s spiritual “lag” expressed itself in three interrelated problems: racial injustice, poverty and war.

When King elaborated on war, he spoke of “the ever-present threat of annihilation,” clearly referring to the dangers of nuclear weapons.  Recognizing the dangers of denial, or “rejection” of the truth about the nuclear predicament, he went on, “A world war – God forbid! – will leave only smoldering ashes as a mute testimony of a human race whose folly led inexorably to ultimate death.  So if modern man continues to flirt unhesitatingly with war, he will transform his earthly habitat into an inferno such as even the mind of Dante could not imagine.”

MLK used very similar language in a quotation inscribed on a historical sign posted in a park alongside the River Raisin just off of downtown Monroe, Michigan. (See photo, above.) The sign reads:

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

(1929-1968)

The words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"If you are cut down in a movement that is designed to save the soul of a nation, then no other death could be more redemptive. We must somehow believe that unearned suffering is redemptive. We must work passionately and indefatibably to bridge the gulf between our scientific progress and our moral progress. One of the great problems of mankind is that we suffer from a poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technologic abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually."

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. MEMORIAL COMMITTEE, 1993

What's even more remarkable about this historical sign, is that it is located in the company town of Detroit Edison's Fermi Nuclear Power Plant. The Fermi Unit 1 reactor, which partially melted down on Oct. 5, 1966, was originally proposed to supply weapons-grade Plutonium-239 to the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal, and even highly radioactive material like Cesium-137 for "dirty bomb" (radiological dispersal device) usage to the U.S. military, as proposed by a coalition of companies including Detroit Edison.

The Fermi 1 meltdown inspired a book by John G. Fuller, and a song by Gil Scott Heron, both entitled "We Almost Lost Detroit."

MLK continued to speak out against nuclear weapons, and the risk of nuclear war, right up to his final days. On April 4, 2018, WPFW-Pacific Radio in Washington, D.C. played audio recordings of sermons by MLK. One, "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution," delivered at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. on March 31, 1968 -- just four days before his assassination in Memphis, TN -- mentioned nuclear weapons and nuclear war multiple times. (See the text of MLK's March 31, 1968 sermon, here.)

For her part, MLK's wife, Coretta Scott King, a co-leader with her husband of the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S., was also actively opposed to nuclear weapons. A photo of Coretta Scott King (as part of a montage, see left), showing her marching with Women's Strike for Peace, in the late 1950s or early 1960s, in opposition to nuclear weapons testing and the threat of nuclear war, is displayed on an outside wall, in the fountain-side courtyard, of the King Memorial in Atlanta, very near the King's final resting place. Coretta Scott King's hand-made placard reads:

"Let's Make Our Earth a Nuclear-Free Zone."

(See an earlier Beyond Nuclear website post from Feb. 9, 2017, with links to Democracy Now! and New York Times coverage about Coretta Scott King.) 

The Hiroshima-Nagasaki Peace Committee in Washington, D.C. has held annual commemorations of the August, 1945 atomic bombings of Japan at the MLK monument on the National Mall in the nation's capital in recent years (see an image from the 2014 commemoration, here). Beyond Nuclear has been deeply honored and privileged to have been invited to speak at these events. 

Update on April 5, 2018 by admin

Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps addressed MLK's opposition to the Bomb during his weekly "Loud & Clear" radio show interview on Wed., April 4th.

"Loud & Clear" has conducted additional MLK related interviews in recent days, including with a King family attorney, William Pepper, who has long questioned the official version of MLK's assassination.

A Nuclear War Planner’s Guide To Resisting The Bomb

How did we get to the point where nations are prepared to use weapons that can literally destroy all life on the planet?

An article, written by Robert Levering, published by Waging Nonviolence, and posted at CommonDreams.

Why Trump might bend nuclear security rules to help Saudi Arabia build reactors in the desert

As report by Steven Mufson in the Washington Post.

The article quotes a number of voices skeptical of the nuclear weapons proliferation risks a nuclear power program in the Middle East would represent:

Henry Sokolski, the executive director of the nonprofit Nonproliferation Policy Education Center who served in President George H.W. Bush’s Pentagon, asked, “How do we feel about the stability of the kingdom? The reactors are bolted to the ground for a minimum of 40 years and a maximum of 80 years. That’s enough for the whole world to change.”

...Many experts on Saudi Arabia say the kingdom wants its own program to deter or counterbalance Iran. “I think part of it is keeping up with the Iranians and trying to build up a nuclear infrastructure that could be turned into weapons capability,” Gause said. [F. Gregory Gause is a professor of international affairs at Texas A&M University.]

...“We have a tendency to use nukes as a way of ingratiating ourselves with countries around the world and then we get into a negotiation of whether there are safeguards,” said Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.). “I think ultimately it’s going to come back to haunt us.”

...Saudi Arabia “would like us to cave to some degree on some elements of the 123 agreement,” said Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. But, he added, “the fewer Mideast nuclear weapons states, the better. And the fewer nondemocratic nuclear states, the better. And the fewer states where I can’t predict 10 years down the road what their attitudes will be toward the United States, the fewer of those countries that have nuclear weapons the better.”

Trump’s Budget Dramatically Increases Nuclear Weapons Work

Press release by Nuclear Watch New Mexico:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 12, 2018
Contact Jay Coghlan, Nuclear Watch NM, 505.989.7342, c. 505.470.3154, jay@nukewatch.org
               Scott Kovac, Nuclear Watch NM, 505.989.7342, scott@nukewatch.org

Trump’s Budget Dramatically Increases Nuclear Weapons Work

Santa Fe, NM – In keeping with the Trump Administration’s recent controversial Nuclear Posture Review, today’s just released FY 2019 federal budget dramatically ramps up nuclear weapons research and production. 
 
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the Department of Energy’s semi-autonomous nuclear weapons agency, is receiving a $2.2 billion overall boost to $15.1 billion, a 17% increase above the FY 2018 enacted level. Of that, a full $11 billion is for the budget category (Nuclear) “Weapons Activities”, 18% above the FY 2018 level. 
 
Digging deeper under Weapons Activities, “Directed Stockpile Work” is increased from $3.3 billion to $4.7 billion, or 41%. Directed Stockpile Work is the hands on, nut and bolts operations that include extending the service lives of existing nuclear weapons for up to 60 years, while also endowing them with new military capabilities.

In addition, NNSA budget documents show “Weapons Activities (Reimbursable)” (parentheses in the original), adding another $1.76 billion to NNSA’s Nuclear Weapons Activities, for a total of $12.78 billion. It is not made clear where that additional money comes from, but most likely is from the Defense Department, as it has been in the past. 
 
Of concern to the American taxpayer, DOE and NNSA nuclear weapons programs have been on the Government Accountability Office’s High Risk List for project mismanagement and fraud, waste and abuse since its inception in 1990. 
 
Meanwhile, NNSA Nonproliferation Programs are budgeted at $1.86 billion, only 16% the size of the nuclear weapons budget. Further, the State Department is being cut by $10.4 billion to $28.3 billion (a 29% cut), while many senior diplomatic positions are left unfilled (such as the U.S. ambassador to South Korea), even as the possibility of peace on the Korean peninsula is breaking out.
 
The NNSA budget also reiterates the executive branch’s intent to terminate the Mixed Oxide (MOX) program, designed to “burn” military plutonium in commercial reactors. That program would introduce plutonium to the global market, contrary to its stated intent as a nonproliferation program. It has also been a debacle in terms of cost overruns, blown schedules and lack of contractor accountability, kept alive only by South Carolina congressional political pork interests. 
 
However, the MOX program’s slow demise puts yet more pressure on New Mexico to become the nation’s radioactive waste dumping ground, with up to 35 tons of military plutonium potentially headed for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (which already lacks capacity for currently scheduled wastes). In addition, the Trump budget increases funding for so-called interim storage of spent nuclear fuel rods, the nation’s deadliest high-level radioactive wastes. There are two separate proposals for “interim” storage of up to 120,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel in southern New Mexico, and/or up to 40,000 metric tons just on the other side of the border with Texas. 
 
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) received an increase to $397 million, $106 million above the FY 2018 level. This starts the expansion of WIPP with a new ventilation shaft that has silently morphed from replacing the old contaminated exhaust shaft into being an additional intake shaft. Plans are underway for a new filter building, which will replace the capabilities lost due to the 2014 radiological release caused by an improperly prepared radioactive waste drum from the Los Alamos Lab. That closed WIPP for nearly three years, costing the American taxpayer at least $1.5 billion to reopen. The planned new intake shaft will greatly increase WIPP's capabilities, allowing for expansion to take more of the nation’s radioactive wastes.

The cleanup request for Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) stays flat at $192 million. This basis for this is DOE’s woefully low life cycle cost estimate for LANL cleanup, which in turned is predicated upon the New Mexico Environment Department’s revised cleanup Consent Order. Under Governor Susana Martinez, the revised Consent Order allows DOE and LANL to fund so-called cleanup at levels they choose, rather than needed cleanup driving the funding.

The Los Alamos Lab explicitly plans to leave permanently buried 200,000 cubic yards of radioactive and hazardous wastes in unlined pits and trenches, above our groundwater and three miles uphill from the Rio Grande. Once those wastes are “capped and covered”, LANL plans to claim that “cleanup” is completed. 
 
Finally, under Trump’s budget, the Department of Energy cuts sustainable transportation, renewable energy and energy efficiency by 33% and zeroes out weatherization programs. 
 
Jay Coghlan of Nuclear Watch commented,

"The Trump budget prepares for nuclear war, in which even Ronald Reagan said there can’t be any winners. It finances a new Cold War arms race with Russia and indirectly increases the chances of a nuclear war with North Korea. It sets back nonproliferation and cleanup programs, and further hollows out our country by diverting yet more huge sums of money to the usual fat cat nuclear weapons contractors. Come November, voters should vote their conscience over how the federal government under Trump prioritizes their tax dollars for good or ill."
 

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Nuclear Watch New Mexico will provide more budget information on our web site https://www.nukewatch.org <https://www.nukewatch.org/  and blog https://www.nukewatch.org/watchblog/ as it becomes available. The available budget documents are still not detailed enough for new issues and programs that we are keenly interested in, such as new, more usable mininukes and expanded plutonium pit production at LANL.

Nevada has been blasted enough

An op-ed in the Las Vegas Sun by Judy Treichel of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force, discussing past nuclear weapons testing in Nevada, as well as the Trump administration's proposal to restart nuclear weapons testing in Nevada for "political" purposes.