February 18, 2025

SWEIS debrief and next steps -- in-person and Zoom meeting this Thursday 2/20/25 at 6:30 pm in Albuquerque (to attend by Zoom you must register in advance)

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This is a letter to our New Mexico-oriented activist mailing list, a subset of our whole mailing list. If you missed our most recent emails, here they are:

• Our most recent Bulletin, sent to our whole mailing list: Bulletin 355: Francis Boyle, RIP / New START countdown, Feb 3, 2025
• Our most recent Press Release, also sent to our whole mailing list: Citizens decry years-long tardiness, lack of democracy in hearings on future of Los Alamos National Laboratory, Feb 10, 2025
• Our most recent Letter, sent to this smaller mailing list: Urgent planning and background sessions this WEDNESDAY EVENING IN SANTA FE and this THURSDAY EVENING IN ALBUQUERQUE pertaining to NNSA hearings Feb. 11-13 about LANL's future. Help spread the word!, Feb 2, 2025

Key "heads-up" in this letter: we will have an in-person and Zoom SWEIS de-brief and "next steps" meeting this Thursday 2/20/25 at 6:30 pm (Mountain Time) at our offices in Albuquerque, 2901 Summit Place NE (map).

If you plan to attend by Zoom, you must register at https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/qVbN51U7RmqMQi8TNhj-oA. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Dear friends -- 

The charade of Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement (SWEIS) hearings is over. We are pleased that not one person spoke in favor of plutonium warhead core ("pit") production at LANL, and nearly everyone spoke against it. Many people, possibly even most, also spoke out against the SWEIS process in one way or another. Almost everyone spoke authentically and eloquently, which is so inspiring and uplifting to us here. Every person provided a unique perspective, such that there was actually very little repetition. Every voice was fresh and real.

All in all, we feel quite good about the public's participation in these hearings. You and we did well.

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) did not undertake these hearings to hear public comments, however. They did so to check a bureaucratic box so they could continue to do what they want to do with the minimum amount of resistance from "we the people." The hearings were offered as pacifiers, but the public was not and is not pacified. Nonviolent, yes, but not pacified.

Unless we can talk NNSA into posting their videos of the hearings, we will be posting our own and others' videos of citizen testimony and protest. If we do not post what we have, parties which were not present (physically or on-line) will not be able to understand the inspiring character of what went on.

Here are two representative news articles and a short video:

• Public rails against plutonium pit production during LANL meeting, New Mexico Political Report, Feb 12, 2025
• Critics at hearing speak out against expansion plan, pit production at LANL, Santa Fe New Mexican, Feb 11, 2025
• New Mexicans say 'No' to a new plutonium bomb factory in Los Alamos, short video, Breakthrough News, Feb. 15, 2025

The New Mexican article was the only mainstream one that mentions the protest organized at the second Santa Fe hearing by the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), which was a high point of the hearings.

Our social media followup from this meeting (our own, BT News) has already reached almost a hundred thousand people.

Here at the Study Group we will conclude our SWEIS participation at this time by filing some basic written comments regarding the overarching illegitimacy of this process, and perhaps a few other issues. We will not be providing peer review for the Draft SWEIS. You can of course comment too, although it is generally a waste of time. The comment period is currently slated to close on March 11.

So what's next? That's what we want to discuss with you on Thursday. Tremendous changes are afoot. See the box above for more on the physical and virtual locations of this important meeting.

We will follow up this local letter with a Bulletin discussing more of what we think can be done at this time, to stop the pit factory and also gear up for ending the Ukraine War and nuclear disarmament nationwide.

Sincerely,

Greg Mello, for the Sudy Group