From: chriswilliams66 at hotmail.com
This is a great report, thanks John.
I'd just add there were between 500 and 600 people there, which I believe is unprecedented for one of these hearings held in a sleepy little Westchester town on a Thursday evening - with a majority of people there for well over 2 hours.
The only thing I would take issue with is casting this as "utterly discouraging" and that it "made no difference and effected no change". We can't possibly know that yet.
I don't know how it could have been anything but inspiring, as John mentions. It was an incredible atmosphere. People were angry and confident. Angry because they knew and expected the NRC to approve the plant and that this was endangering their lives because they've now witnessed Fukushima. Confident because they had the facts on their side and because they'd seen that mass protest had forced the German and Swiss governments into a humiliating u-turn on nuclear power. One of the biggest cheers of the night was when the next speaker after the minute of silence said that the best way to honor the workers and people of Fukushima was by building a movement that would close down IP so that there would never be a Fukushima-on-the-Hudson.
It was clear people who have been fighting this monstrosity for years (if not decades) were suddenly thrust from demoralization that the NRC does whatever Entergy tells it to, to being energized and inspired to believe something different - that it might just be possible to build a movement big enough to effect change and get the place shut down. I want to emphasize something John wrote. Many groups there are formally for patching up IP, making it safer etc and letting it continue to operate. But the overwhelming sentiment in the room and from the vast majority of speakers was to Shut It Down Now! If we'd held a vote right there and then (something that would have been good to do from the mike actually) I'm fully confident it would have been near-unanimous for immediate closure. John's absolutely right that our group couldn't have come at a more opportune time because a more forthright and unequivocal position helps to give confidence to others and sway them to our side.
We don't know what the NRC will do as a result of such a haranguing from such a large group - with many public officials or their reps there and tons of media. Of course we know what they want to do because they've done it every time previously and even in Vermont - where a town vote was taken.But that was before Fukushima and before Germany etc and before Thursday evening's events.
I don't see what there was to be "utterly discouraged" by unless we were expecting the NRC to suddenly say "you're right, we're listening to you, we're going to announce closure tomorrow".
In other words, things could not possibly have gone better for us. Our challenge now is to try to link up with these other groups and build a demo in NYC and see how we can contribute to other actions at IP or Albany over the summer. We need to use the momentum and energy from the meeting and translate that into a bigger core of activists within SDIPN! and a broader layer of people who will come to our events. We also need to see how we can reach out to student groups and see if we can organize teach-ins on campuses for the fall.
Chris
---------- From: johndavidbaldwin at aol.com
This is a brief report on the NRC hearing held in Cortlandt Manor last evening.
It was an amazing, inspiring example of citizen activism and at the same time utterly discouraging. There was tremendous energy and idealism and determination in that overflow crowd of several hundred people. Yet we all knew that the result was a foregone conclusion: the NRC will re-license the plant, if it can. Which means that we have to try other tactics.
To begin before the event, the bus ride was a disappointment. We started off ten minutes behind schedule and ran into heavy traffic not only in Northern Manhattan (on Madison Avenue), but surprisingly, in the Hudson Valley as well. It seems that the driver did not plan any alternate route to deal with this eventuality, so we were crawling northward for most of the way. As chair of the Media Committee, I was supposed to be at our destination in time for the press conference, but got there almost at the very end of the conference, and just before the hearing itself was due to begin. Fortunately, Chris Williams, who was representing us, was one of the last to speak at the conference and I saw and heard him address the crowd and represent SDIPN very forcefully and well. (I would have taken the early train to Peekskill if I had anticipated such a delay.)
From almost the very beginning of the hearing, the audience, not the NRC, was in control. The crowd could barely contain itself when the NRC's presentation began, but when it became clear that the commission was going to give Entergy its highest marks for safety (not even mentioning the explosion that occurred just a little over six months ago, in November) and particularly when they started talking about Fukushima, the cries of "liar!" "lapdog!" and "failure!" became overwhelming. The moderator called a five-minute break and, after this was over, the NRC representatives decided (wisely) to abandon its original agenda and go straight to audience Q&A.
The articles in the propaganda mill (aka the mainstream news media) are saying that there were people who spoke both for and against re-licensing of Indian Point at the meeting, but in fact, there were fewer than half a dozen speakers who supported Indian Point's continuation. The overwhelming majority was not just opposed to re-licensing, but wanted the damn thing shut down NOW! (Our organization is certainly timely.)
The speaker for Clearwater got cheers and a standing ovation when she said that the NRC should start trying to protect the people of New York and stop trying to protect the nuclear power industry. One speaker also got a great reception when she pointed out that the NRC works for *us*, the taxpayers, and demanded a list of all fire safety violations from the beginning of the plant's existence. Another speaker brought up an issue I hadn't thought of when she mentioned that global warming is contributing to the decay of the physical infrastructure of the plant and that any assessment of the site that doesn't take this into account is faulty. David Amram, the composer, pointed out the sacrifices that the plant's workers had put in throughout its existence, and said that when the plant is shut down, those workers should be taken care of and given necessary job retraining.
Compared to the intelligence, knowledgeability and wit of the audience speakers, the NRC representatives seemed pathetically flat-footed. Their way of responding to audience questions was to repeat the same empty platitudes over and over and hope they were believed. I wish I had five dollars for every time I heard the leader of the panel say that his "primary concern was the safety and security of New Yorkers." At one point, a New York legislator (I don't remember his name) invited members of the NRC panel to attend a session of his legislative body and listen to and address their concerns. This same NRC leader replied that he would "consider" the suggestion, which was heard with loud booing.
But the most dramatic moment occurred in the middle of the hearing. I had suggested to Peter Rugh that just when the hearing was about to start, he should cry out in a loud voice to demand a minute of silence on behalf of the radiation-stricken plant workers at Fukushima. He did so, but was brutally overruled by the NRC people. However, when our Chris Williams came up to the mike to speak, he pointed out the rudeness and callousness of the NRC for refusing this request, and all of a sudden the moderator *did* allow the minute of silence. As someone said later, one could hear a pin drop in that amazing silence. Which proved that the crowd was not "disrespectful," as one of the pro-Indian Point speakers claimed, but merely disrespectful of the NRC.
All in all, it was a successful yet frustrating evening: successful in that we got our point across; frustrating in that it made no difference and effected no change. But it should be an inspiration for us to change tactics and try other ways of shutting down the monster.
Jack Baldwin ShutDownIndianPointNow.org Chair - Media Committee Outreach Committee Action Committee
Ring the bells that still can ring, Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack in everything, That's how the light gets in. ~ Leonard Cohen