Tuesday, October 15, 2002
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

NEVADA TEST SITE: Minorities join nuclear foes

Protesters claim communities contaminated

While eight anti-nuclear demonstrators remained jailed in Beatty until noon Monday, a contingent of minorities in Las Vegas accused the government of contaminating communities around nuclear weapons plants.

The eight men and women were arrested Sunday at the Nevada Test Site after they declined to identify themselves. After intervention by the American Civil Liberties Union, they were released by the Nye County Sheriff's Department.

They were among 61 cited for trespassing Saturday, Sunday and Monday at the test site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Five also were cited and released for trespassing Monday at a Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project field office at the test site, a National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman said.

The administration, a branch of the Energy Department, operates the test site, where 928 full-scale nuclear weapons tests were conducted from 1951 to 1992.

The eight were released after a Justice Court appearance in Beatty where they pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor charges of trespassing and failing to give their names to investigating police officers. Separate hearings for the eight were scheduled to begin next month.

An ACLU attorney, Allen Lichtenstein, said they were jailed on a state law that has been invalidated by federal courts. That law requires suspects to give their names to investigating police officers.

Lichtenstein and local ACLU Executive Director Gary Peck said the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has ruled in a similar case that the Nevada law is, in Peck's words, "transparently unconstitutional."

"It's a question of constitutional law," Lichtenstein said. "That's why we got involved."

Peck said he also was concerned that officials at the Beatty jail prevented Lichtenstein from meeting with the eight for four hours Monday. Peck said he was allowed to meet with them shortly before their appearance before Justice of the Peace Bill Sullivan.

"What went on in Nye County yesterday and today did little to inspire public confidence in its justice system. Instead, it created the impression that folks there simply make up the rules as they go along," Peck said by telephone Monday.

Nye County Sheriff Wade Lieseke said detaining protesters who refuse to give their names is a procedure that law enforcement officials have followed for many years at the test site.

Despite the appeals court ruling, Lieseke said, the law the ACLU attorneys refer to is still a state law. "Refusing to identify yourself is still a crime in Nevada," he said.

At a news briefing in Las Vegas, protesters castigated the government's handling of radioactive and hazardous materials that they say have greatly affected minority communities near weapons facilities.

"We are coming together from across the world to say no to nuclear energy and nuclear weapons," said Mildred McClain of Citizens for Environmental Justice in Savannah, Ga.

Standing behind her outside the Sawyer Building were about two dozen blacks, Latinos and American Indians who had joined protesters at the test site over the weekend.

The protesters claim that contamination from nuclear facilities in South Carolina, Washington, New Mexico and Nevada and a chemical plant in Mississippi have caused cancer, birth defects and skin disorders in nearby communities.

They linked the illnesses to the government's reliance on a policy of nuclear weapons deterrence and bemoaned President Bush's call for military action in Iraq, chanting, "No. War."

One speaker, Charlotte Keys of Jesus People Against Pollution in Columbia, Miss., said, "the land, air and water do not belong to President Bush."