How to organize an anti-nuke protest movement

Seabrook, New Hampshire - where my life changed.

The change had started ten days earlier, halfway around the world: in Tokyo.

I was in Japan attending a conference on “Marine Resources and the Whaling Issue”. At the end of the conference, several of my old colleagues from the Japanese environmental movement came to meet with me. They were extremely worried. “Our government is pushing very hard to build nuclear power plants in Japan,” they said. “But, Norie-san, we have so many typhoons, earthquakes and even tsunamis. Nuclear power is not safe here.”

I completely agreed: Japan was particularly ill-suited for nuclear power plants. But what on earth could I do?

“Can you help us?” they asked. “You know how it is, Norie-san. When America sneezes, Japan catches a cold. The American government is pushing our government to adopt nuclear power. We need some sort of counter movement here to stop them. But, as you know, we Japanese are not leaders. We are better at following. We need you Americans to come out strongly against nuclear power. That will help us build our movement here in Japan.”

My friends also expressed a deeper concern. “Nuclear power may also be, in part, an excuse for our government to slip nuclear weapons in through Japan’s back door. The hawks here want nuclear power so that someday they can have nuclear weapons and get rid of Article 9.”

Even then, back in late April of 1977, ultra-conservative Japanese leaders were denouncing their Constitution’s Article 9. Written in the aftermath of World War II, Article 9 states that Japan outlaws war as a way to settle international disputes that involve the state. This Constitution came into effect in May of 1947. With Article 9, Japan formally renounced the sovereign right of belligerency, declaring it would not maintain armed forces with “war potential.” The article further stated the national aim of creating an international peace based on justice and order.

For members of the Japanese environmental movement, however, many of whom had been children during WWII and had suffered through their nation’s total collapse at the end of the war, the Japanese government’s push to promote the building of nuclear power plants was a huge red flag. They saw this as a first veiled step by the government to reverse Japan’s policy of peace.

I was very honest with them. “I have no idea what to do.” Then, it occurred to me, “Hey, before coming over here, I did hear about a small town in New Hampshire called Seabrook where they are planning to build a nuclear power plant. I think that maybe there are some activists planning to do some kind of demonstration there pretty soon, but I don’t really know.”

My friends were very interested. “Okay,” I said, “I’ll go check it out.”

Ten days later, I was one of 1414 demonstrators arrested and put into National Guard Armouries around New Hampshire, as the state did not have enough jails to contain us all. We spent two weeks locked up - a gathering that became a major step in kicking off the anti-nuclear movement around the United States.

Backing up for a moment, however, when I got back to the US from this trip to Japan, I went into Philadelphia to talk with people at the Philadelphia Life Center, a group of Quaker activists I’d met at the end of Project America 1976, our 9-month bicycle trip across America.

“What’s happening at Seabrook?” I asked.

“There’s a big demonstration we’ve been organizing up there,” they told me. “It kicks off at the end of April.” Small groups of people from the Philadelphia Life Center had been quietly traveling around the northeastern and mid-Atlantic states, training groups of activists in non-violent conflict resolution skills and attitudes. They’d begun almost a year earlier and by now, there was a core of well-trained activists who were ready to show up at Seabrook in less than a week. They offered me a crash course, two hours of training with them, telling me that they felt that I already had a solid body of organizing experience and the “proper attitude” of peaceful engagement.

Back on the farm where I’d been writing my book about the cross-country bicycle trip, I talked with my housemates about the upcoming demonstration at Seabrook.

“I’m going up there,” I said. “I’ll probably be back in a few days.” At the time, no one thought it would be more than 3-4 days max for the whole action to take place. A long, fun weekend, we all thought, and then we’d be back home again.

Boy, were we wrong. Here’s what happened.

People worked out carpools, ending up at a location near Seabrook. We parked well away from the nuclear power plant construction site. From there we walked 2-3 miles to the site, where we planned to camp out for three days. Lining the roadway we walked along were local residents - men, women and children - who held up signs saying “Thank you!” and “No nukes!” Many of them applauded us and thanked us for coming. Some were even crying.

Another demonstrator explained to me that almost all the local residents were opposed to the plans to construct the Seabrook nuclear plant, in part because they were aware of potential hazards but also because the electricity the plant would generate was not even for local use. It would all be transmitted across the nearby New Hampshire border into the neighboring Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

“We’ll get all of the risk and none of the benefits,” one resident told us. Others nodded. Over and over, they expressed appreciation for our coming to help them.

When we arrived at the construction site, the police were already there. Some had German Shepherds. A high chain link fence surrounded the construction site. The police milled around on the outside of that fence. Over the next few hours, over 3000 demonstrators piled inside of the high fence, gathering into small Affinity Groups to have an on-site orientation.

Our Affinity Groups were to be our basic decision-making bodies during the entire time of the demonstration. Each Affinity Group was no larger than 10-12 people. The idea was to make sure that everyone involved in the demonstration had a small, personal group to relate to. A place to go to solve problems and get answers. Or, maybe, a shoulder to cry on.

The Affinity Groups were the places where we would also discuss any issues that might arise during the entire time of our demonstration. The idea was to use a mutually respectful dialogue process for discussing any and all issues within these small groups until each group reached consensus.

Next, we sought consensus throughout all the Affinity Groups. We created a central Council composed of two representatives from each Affinity Groups. These two people were called “Spokes” – like spokes in a bicycle wheel that connected the outer rim (of Affinity Groups) to the central hub (Council). The Spokes represented their Affinity Group’s views and decisions in the Council.

The central Council was not a decision-making body, nor was it seen as a “higher authority.” Rather, the Council was simply the place where all the ‘Spokes’ gathered together to share the decisions and suggestions that had been arrived at by each of the Affinity Groups, to see if they could reach consensus.

If the central Council failed to reach consensus, the ‘Spokes’ would go back to their Affinity Groups to let their colleagues know where consensus was blocked. The Spokes went back and forth between the “rim” and the “hub” until the Council, too, reached a consensus. It wasn’t always easy but it worked reasonably well.

Also, any person from any of the Affinity Groups was welcome to stand around the outside of the Council circle, so that they could listen in and even silently slip notes, with suggestions, to their Spoke.

Everyone understood that the central Council was not a decision-making body but rather a way of integrating all the voices, if that was possible. The Affinity groups were the most basic unit of democracy, the places from which all the decisions about the demonstration emerged.

During the first afternoon, we also handled various house-keeping details - pitching our tents and setting up port-a-johns, cooking stations and simple first-aid stations.

Some of us were tagged to help with “freak-outs” - random instances of emotional outbursts by people who didn’t hold up well under the stress of constant police surveillance and the uncertainty of not knowing what might happen next.

I wandered over to the fence. My instincts were to talk with the so-called “enemy” - the police - in a friendly way, to help defuse any future tension.

At first, my anti-nuclear colleagues looked at me as if I were crazy, but before long my conversation with the police had gotten interesting enough that a growing group of demonstrators was gathering around. Some weren’t very friendly and made comments to the effect that I was ’selling out’ to the ‘enemy’.

I explained patiently that the police were just doing their job and that it was important that we understand and respect that - and that we let them know why we were doing what we were doing. I could feel the tension reduce as the police heard me say that.

The most fun part came when I discovered that several of the police officers knew my neighbor, Tony, a policeman in Lyme Center, New Hampshire, where I’d lived from 1970-71. Tony was true bona fide “character.”

I hadn’t known Tony super well - but well enough to have an occasional cup of coffee with him, during which time he confided in me that as a hobby on the side, he wrote porn novels. “I make better money selling my porn novels than I do as a cop,” he chuckled.

The policemen also knew that aspect of Tony’s life, and we shared a good laugh. I then asked one of the officers what kinds of things his beautiful German Shepherd knew how to do. The officer then proceeded to put his dog through his paces, which attracted a larger crowd of demonstrators to watch.

The policemen had gotten quite friendly by now. One of the policemen asked me with a smile, “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

“Is it good coffee?” I asked, laughing. “And just how do you propose to get it to me?” The chain link fence was at least six feet high. Maybe eight.

We then had a fun game of coordination from each side of the chain link fence, working the styrofoam cup up, up, up and finally over the top of the fence. We were all laughing as we did this.

Frankly, the coffee wasn’t that great - in fact, kind of “yuk” - but the sentiment behind it was wonderful. Some fellow demonstrators were quite critical that I was accepting coffee from the “enemy.” Again, I explained, and the officers agreed, that they were just doing their job and that actually virtually all of them did not like the idea of the nuclear power plant either.

Time passed quickly on the demonstration site. I have collages of memories of people self-organizing to do sufi dances -“All I ask of you is forever to remember me, as loving you….”  We had a good number of talented musicians who accompanied the dancers.

People had come from all over the country but mostly from the northeastern states and mid-Atlantic region. Tents were pitched around the entire construction site and for three days and nights, we shared food, music, conversation and an extraordinary sense of camaraderie. It was a big party and thanks to the way we’d self-organized, we kept it peaceful and fun.

Every now and then someone got freaked out but we managed to talk the person down. One guy near me suddenly started screaming. I simply walked over, put my hand on his back, over his heart, and asked if I could help. Whatever had upset him soon passed when he realized that someone was paying attention and really listening to him.

Then, suddenly, shortly after noon on the third day of our demonstration - on May 1, 1977 - everything changed. Word passed around, like wildfire on a windy day that Governor Meldrim Thompson had given the order that morning that if we did not evacuate the nuclear power plant construction site by 2pm that day, we’d be arrested.

The chaos was remarkably well contained. Even orderly. People met in Affinity Groups. Over half of the demonstrators left over the next couple of hours, returning home to jobs and family responsibilities.

Then, buses arrived. Those of us who were going to be arrested now got on the buses. A policeman stood at the door of each bus and batch processed us by saying in a monotone as we filed past him, “You’re under arrest. You’re under arrest.”

Once on the bus, we chattered nervously. None of us knew what to expect except that now we’d been arrested and were on our way to have our photos and fingerprints taken for FBI files. Also, we were going to be formally charged with the crime of trespassing on the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant construction site.

After that, who knew what was going to happen?

As I’d learned during the nine months of bicycling across America, you just need to take it one pedal-push at a time. I thrive in difficult situations and perceive them to be a grand adventure where you just wait for opportunities to emerge.

I didn’t have to wait long.

Some farsighted soul had brought a magic marker in her backpack - one of those big thick black ones. In a moment of inspiration, thinking ahead to the Kodak moment of the photo for my future FBI file, I asked her to write NO NUKES on my high forehead.

“Do it in big capital letters,” I said, laughing.

That went viral. By the end of the bus ride, I’d guess that about half of the people on the bus had been so inscribed. My bangs hid her handiwork neatly.

We finally arrived at a building where hundreds of demonstrators were lined up, waiting to have their photos and fingerprints taken. We learned that after photos and finger-printing, we’d then be brought before a judge and formally charged with trespassing.

Waiting in line we also learned that we were going to be divided up into groups of a couple hundred or more, and that we would be spending the night in one of several National Guard armouries around the State, as there were not enough jails in New Hampshire to accommodate all of us.

We thought we’d be there for a night or two until the charges were dropped.

We were wrong.

It took nearly an hour for the line to reach the photo and finger-print booths. I took the same attitude I’d taken with the police: the young man taking our photos and fingerprints wasn’t the “enemy.” He was just doing his job.

I decided to see if I could make him laugh. By the time it was my turn to be photographed, he and I were swapping funny comments and jokes. I watched carefully for his precise move to snap the photo - and quickly swept my bangs up off my forehead.

“Snap!”

“Oh, no!” he said. He looked sincerely stricken.

“It’s perfect,” I said, laughing.

“Oh, please, let me take another one with your bangs down,” he pleaded.

“No thanks,” I said. “It’ll look good in my FBI file.” I gave him a big smile and moved over to the fingerprinting table.

After being fingerprinted, we moved slowly forward. From here, we were to go in front of a judge. This took ages.

Around 2am, a group of about 20-25 of us were ushered into a large room before a judge. He solemnly pronounced us guilty of trespassing on the Seabrook nuclear power plant construction site and told us that we would all be detained until further notice.

But one young man stole the show. “Your Honor!” he declared passionately, “How can we be guilty for something we feel so deeply good about?”

I stared at him - as did the judge and everyone else in the room.

He was absolutely right. I filed that statement away in my head. This young man was my hero at that moment - like the kid in our third grade dramatic production of the Emperor Has No Clothes as he announced to the world the Emperor’s nudity.

Wow. THIS was speaking truth to power!

From the court room, our small group was taken to the Dover National Guard Armoury, one of the smaller armouries but still the size of a very large high school gymnasium. In total, about 265 of us were in the Dover Armoury. By now it was 3am. Most of us had backpacks, a sleeping bag and a mat. But after all that we’d been through, sleeping was not easy. I slept fitfully.

At 7am sharp, we were startled by a wake-up call. Members of the National Guard were carrying trays of steaming coffee and doughnuts out from the kitchen. They placed these on several large portable tables that were set up for serving meals.

“Hey, everyone! Time to get up!”

I surveyed the situation and sensed Big Trouble ahead. It was not a difficult assessment. One, we’d gotten very little (if any) sleep. Two, we were in a highly stressful situation, with no idea what was going to happen to us. Three, most of the people in the room were guys - young guys with LOTS of testosterone. And, four, they were serving us coffee and doughnuts for breakfast…which summed up:

Caffeine and sugar. Blood sugar up…and blood sugar will come crashing down in about 30-35 minutes.

Big doo-doo headed for the fan blades, I thought. I decided to drink water and meditate so that I’d be ready for the Defining Moment.

Sure enough, in about 30 minutes, a big guy who was standing 15-20 feet away from me started screaming at the guards. You could see a big ripple of anxiety pass through the entire room.

Even without any caffeine or sugar in my system, I could feel the wave of anxiety go through me.

I went Infinite, asking, “Is there anything I’m supposed to do?” I just got silence.

Then, suddenly, less than a minute later, on the far side of the very large room, another guy started screaming at the guards. This time his screaming was much louder and went on even longer.

By now the anxiety was palpable. It felt that at any moment, the whole room would break into pandemonium.

This time when I when infinite, I simply screamed, “HELP!” in my mind, as loud as I could.

And, in a way that never ceases to amaze and delight me, help came.

I immediately knew what to do.

I stepped forward and raised my right arm with my index finger pointing out to the crowd. Okay, a bit theatrical. But I was following my “Cosmic Orders.”

I slowly turned, looking each person in the eyes as I raised and lowered my arm, finger pointed out toward the crowd. It was a bit like directing an orchestra. Or maybe being a cheerleader.

As I slowly pivoted, I called out very loudly (trust me, I can project), clearly and rhythmically….my arm and finger punctuating my words:

“I’d like to propose….

three cheers….

to Governor Meldrim Thompson….

(Some of the people were now staring at me with their mouths open, as if I’d gone totally nuts. Not unreasonable, really, since Governor Thompson was the guy who’d ordered us to be arrested!)

I continued, even louder and slowing the rhythm:

“…FOR PROVIDING US

WITH….THE….BEST

ALL…EXPENSES…PAID

ANTI-NUCLEAR ORGANIZING CONFERENCE

I’VE EVER ATTENDED!  

HIP HIP HOORAY!  

HIP HIP HOORAY!

HIP HIP HOORAY!”

By the third ‘hip-hip-hooray’, almost everyone in the room had joined me in cheering. Many people were laughing hysterically.

NO! We were NOT victims, locked up by the evil authorities! We were being subsidized by the State of New Hampshire to organize an anti-nuclear movement, right there inside the armouries! This was a FANTASTIC, one-in-a-lifetime opportunity that we’d been given by the governor!

I then clapped my hands together and, rubbing my palms against each other briskly, took a couple of deliberate steps forward, saying loudly and authoritatively,

“OKAY, EVERYBODY!  LET’S GET ORGANIZED!”

With that, I “disappeared” into the crowd. Just another member of the group. My job was done.

I then had the great privilege of witnessing a miracle - an absolutely inspiring thing of beauty.

All around me, the stressed-out, anxious energy that less than a minute earlier had threatened to blow up into pitched battle, suddenly transformed into purposeful, constructive activity.

A small (but growing) group of people began circulating, asking each person, “Hey, did you bring in any books with you?”

Someone found a large cardboard box and put it in the middle of the huge room.

Someone else found a heavy black magic marker - maybe the same one we’d used earlier to decorate our foreheads!

And, someone wrote on the box in bold black letters, PUBLIC LIBRARY. The box was quickly filled with books, with overflow stacked around our Public Library.

Another group of people, over in the far corner, were busily creating an art gallery.

Some creative soul had brought into the armoury a very large roll of paper and, after writing ART GALLERY on it in huge letters, several people worked together to tape it up on the wall - high enough so it could be seen over people’s heads from anywhere in the room.

Scattered around on the floor near the “art gallery,” over a dozen artists were busily drawing and coloring. Before very long, a couple of dozen pictures were taped up on the wall under the ART GALLERY banner.

I wandered over to take a look. Wow! The artists were GOOD! One picture was particularly memorable: a nuclear reactor puffing radioactive smoke in the background and, in the foreground, a GIGANTIC cockroach. Obviously, the message was that the insect had mutated from radiation.

Another group of people - comprised in in good measure of the non-violence trainers I knew from the Philadelphia Life Center - were now going around with clipboards and pens, asking, “Hey, is there anything you’d like to give a talk on? Do you have a workshop you’d like to present?”

They’d created a calendar on that sheet of paper and people quickly signed up to teach something. Brilliant!

I signed up to give a talk about the Japanese nuclear situation. After all, that was what had led to my being in the armoury. I wanted my fellow “inmates” to know that our action at Seabrook was not only important for New Hampshire and the US, but was also important for Japan.

In signing up, I realized that what we were doing was, quite literally, a “shot heard round the world.”

After signing up, I went off to the side of the room and sat down quietly to meditate. I wanted to understand what had just happened. For me the burning question was, Why had my few words had such a powerful impact?!

After all, people talk all the time. At times I’ve been deeply affected by what people say. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech makes me cry each time. At other times, however, people’s words, even spoken in an impassioned manner, have almost no impact, on me or on others.

So, what had happened?!

It took a few minutes for the “aha moment” to come. When it came, it was a life-changing realization:

I had changed the story!

Here’s the core of it.

Reality - the Infinite-Eternal “IS-NESS” of which we humans are all a part - just IS. It is whatever it is. And then, we walk around making up stories about it.

Here’s how that works. When we’re born into this world, we start trying to understand where we are and how things work.

What is this “reality” that we’re a part of? We start having experiences. We make early decisions, “Oh! This is how things are.”

As we get a little older, we may then reflect on and maybe tell others about our experiences. Those descriptions - generally about some much smaller aspect of reality than the whole enchilada – the whole “Infinite-Eternal IS-NESS - form our perceptions about reality: our stories about reality.

We also call these our maps of reality.

But here’s the rub: when we make up our stories about reality, often based on very limited experiences, we tend to end up thinking that those stories ARE reality. But, our stories are not reality. They’re just our perceptions, our stories, our maps about reality.

Reality just IS. And our stories are just our STORIES about reality. They’re completely different things from reality itself.

Confusing reality with our stories about reality or our maps of reality makes about as much sense as holding up a paper map of New York City and insisting that the paper map IS New York City.

It gets worse.

The real problem comes when people attack each other over their different stories or maps of reality. This happens when one person or group is so absolutely convinced that its stories or maps about reality ARE reality that the group attacks or even kills others who have a different story or map of reality.

A good example is some Christians and some Muslims. They’ve each been telling stories about God, about heaven, about who gets to go to heaven and who doesn’t. They both say, “Our God is the one true God. If you accept OUR God as the one true God, then you go to heaven. If you don’t, you go to hell. That’s the way it is, because we say so.” And then they attack and even kill each other over their different stories.

Okay, so how does this all apply to what had just happened there inside the armoury?

What I realized is that, in calling for cheering the governor was, I had changed the story. And, people were okay with and even LIKED my story. Enough so that they adopted it as their story.

And, when you change the story, you change what happens next. You change the game.

Before I proposed three cheers to the governor, people were anxious and worried about what was going to happen to us. They saw themselves as victims of an unfair governor. At least a couple of people who had bought into that story were so angry and freaked out that they’d started screaming at the National Guardsmen, who were just doing their duty.

If that momentum had continued, things could well have gone south in a hurry - particularly with people so tired and stressed. Testosterone + stress + caffeine + sugar = lighted match + gasoline.

I had one other big “aha.” Before delivering my “new story,” I had caught people’s attention. Maybe that doesn’t sound like much but if you’re going to deliver a message (proposing three cheers, etc.), the very first thing you have to do is to catch people’s attention so they’ll bother to listen to you.

Looking at it like this, I had to laugh: I’d caught their attention by the ridiculous proposing of three cheers to the guy who’d ordered us to be arrested. By saying something so off-the-wall that many of them must have thought, “Huh? This woman must be CRAZY!”

But immediately after I’d caught their attention, I’d then explained super briefly and in a kind of funny way, WHY I was proposing three cheers to the governor. At that point, they suddenly realized that my crazy, funny proposal actually gave a whole new meaning to our current situation of being arrested and locked up in the National Guard Armoury.

In short, I was giving us a new story about reality, a whole new story about our immediate situation.

We all suddenly saw ourselves in a very different way: we weren’t victims of the governor, we were his PAID GUESTS. And, we were “attending an anti-nuclear conference” right there in the armoury.

Indeed, about a week later, while still in the armouries, we learned the governor was subsidizing our “conference attendance” to the tune of $50,000 a day!

My new “story” empowered us as a group to take on an epic task together of getting organized:

Governor Meldrim Thompson was subsidizing us to create and launch an antinuclear movement nationwide.

Wow.

One final observation seems important. I could never have thought up that whole action by myself. No way. I’m not smart enough. All I had done was to stay connected with the Infinite-Eternal One - i.e., with the fullness of reality, and ask for help. And, “Ask and it shall be answered unto you.”

I asked and help came immediately, in the form of knowing just what to say and how to say it.

That “access” is available to all of us. I’m convinced that this is what Jesus meant when he said, “Go thou and do likewise.”