• Home
• About
• Contact
• Donate
• Archives
• Links

Support State Senator Ortiz y Pino’s Memorial to Dismantle the Kirtland Nuclear Weapons

By Jeanne Pahls

A team of highly committed individuals met in December in Albuquerque at a Stop the War Machine meeting in order to launch this year’s campaign to have the 1,914 nuclear weapons at Kirtland dismantled and challenge the expansion of the Nuclear Weapons War Center at Kirtland. (Stop the War Machine is a grassroots organization centered in Albuquerque.)

Secretary of Defense Gates made a speech on Oct. 28, 2008 that unfortunately appears to set the tone for the new presidential administration, since he will be continuing as the Secretary of Defense. In his speech, he declared that “we must be realistic about the world around us” and that this demands that we preserve the “hedge” of having our nuclear arsenal tuned up and ready for use since “we simply cannot predict the future.”   Part of having our nuclear arsenal tuned up greatly involves Albuquerque:  Kirtland’s Nuclear Center will be in charge of the upkeep and monitoring of nuclear weapons.   Secretary of Defense Gates announced plans to revitalize and expand the Nuclear Center for this reason.

We at Stop the War Machine are taking the position that all of our weaponry did not keep us safe on 9/11 and that what we need is a better foreign policy, not a fine-tuned nuclear arsenal. We are calling for the dismantlement of all the nuclear weapons at Kirtland (and anywhere else too, for that matter) and the shutdown of Kirtland’s Nuclear Center.

We are inviting all interested individuals to join us in working to accomplish the dismantlement of the KAFB nukes and the shutdown of the nuclear center!

There are many ways to help out:

NM State Sen. Jerry Ortiz y Pino will introduce a memorial (our memorial!) on the first day of the session this year that calls for the dismantlement of the nuclear weapons at Kirtland.   (You can find out about this memorial at http://www.nmlegis.gov/lcs/legdetails.aspx?SPONCODE=SORTI .) This will be the third year in a row that the memorial has been in the state Senate (it was SM 29 in 2007 and SM 25 in 2008), and we can see that a good bit of momentum for the memorial grew between the first year and the second, thanks to the very many of you who organized meetings, made phone calls and talked with your state senators.

We invite people to support Jerry’s memorial by doing any of the following:

•    Invite a speaker to speak to your organization on this issue.   If you would like a member of our WMD disarmament team to talk with your group, organization or friends at a house meeting, please call 505-401-4808.
•    Contact your state senator and schedule a meeting to talk with her/him about this memorial. (If you would like one of us to be there with you, we can do that.)
•    Write a letter to the editor on this topic.
•    Make a donation toward the cost of packets, postage, any traveling expenses for speakers going to meet groups in statewide communities. A little bit of money goes a long way with this issue, paying for packets, fliers and traveling expenses.   Donations can be made out to Stop the War Machine and sent to SWM at 202 Harvard SE, Albuquerque, NM 87106  (Tax-deductible donations of $100 or more can be made out to the Albuquerque Center for Peace and Justice  – put SWM in the note line – and sent to SWM at 202 Harvard SE, Albuquerque, NM 87106.)
•    Download the petition calling for the dismantlement of the nuclear weapons at Kirtland at www.StoptheWarMachine.org. Sign the petition, ask your friends or organization to sign it, and mail it to SWM, 202 Harvard SE, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87106.

Please let us know if you can help.   Any effort goes a long way with this issue.   Contact us at 505-858-0882 or StoptheWarMachine@comcast.net.

Jeanne Pahls is a teacher in Albuquerque and a co-founder of Stop the War Machine.

Comments