Week of action report: Las Vegas
Cara, Teresa and April in front of Sen. Reid’s office
As part of our Week of Action for the No Soldier Left Behind campaign, and to follow up on our Nevada mobile’s work to highlight nuclear weapons, I organized local lobby meetings with Rep. Shelley Berkley’s staff and Sen. Harry Reid’s staff in Las Vegas. There are several groups in the Las Vegas area that work on nuclear weapons issues and ending the war in Iraq. I invited them to join the meetings so we’d all have a chance to discuss our concerns and illustrate that a broad spectrum of the community wants to see Congress acting on our behalf. Judy of Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force, Megan of Nevada Desert Experience, activist Teresa, and April of Military Families Speak Out joined the meeting at Sen. Reid’s office, and Judy was able to come to the meeting at Rep. Berkley’s office as well.
I dropped off our Week of Action lobby packet, which contained summaries of comprehensive strategies to withdraw from Iraq while addressing economic, political, diplomatic, and humanitarian concerns. With Congress firmly saying no to Bush’s attempts to create new nuclear weapons, we highlighted the importance of beginning to reduce the US nuclear arsenal. And at Sen. Reid’s office, I dropped off the stack of petitions our organizers collected from around Las Vegas urging him as Senate Majority Leader to help the US play a leading role in the global elimination of nuclear weapons.
Lobby packet and petitions delivered to Sen. Reid’s office
Hi, I wanted to personalize a message about weapons safety concerns in relation to the “one question” to be sent to Jim Leher. I’m hoping this could be sent to him.
If the next president is willing to go in the direction of nuclear disarmament, what exactly does this look like (politically AND physically). Do they also have a feasable plan on how to persuade or initiate (through incentives and/or tougher laws) to update and make more efficient all power plants-including the existing nuclear power plants? Perhaps in the focus on greening the existing coal plants, the nuclear plants could be given the same scrutiny.
What also concerns me is the security question relating to how we keep track of the united states and the world’s nuclear power plants in general, that is, the safety queston in how we protect and moniter these plants from terrorist’s reach. In additon, how do we keep track of and maintain the world’s chemical agents that could be tampered with, sold, or stolen. To me, these two issues are nearly the same, because of the massive devastation each can cause. The checking of our ports is just as immediate, if not more so than the money spent on securing our land borders. It would seem to me, that a quarter of the agents now stationed at our borders could be trained in port security. Just a thought. Seems like there are so many of them running around out there. wasting time and gas.
Ann Sutherland-Faerber.
Hi, I wanted to personalize a message about weapons safety concerns in relation to the “one question” to be sent to Jim Leher. I’m hoping this could be sent to him.
If the next president is willing to go in the direction of nuclear disarmament, what exactly does this look like (politically AND physically). Do they also have a feasable plan on how to persuade or initiate (through incentives and/or tougher laws) to update and make more efficient all power plants-including the existing nuclear power plants? Perhaps in the focus on greening the existing coal plants, the nuclear plants could be given the same scrutiny.
What also concerns me is the security question relating to how we keep track of the united states and the world’s nuclear power plants in general, that is, the safety queston in how we protect and moniter these plants from terrorist’s reach. In additon, how do we keep track of and maintain the world’s chemical agents that could be tampered with, sold, or stolen. To me, these two issues are nearly the same, because of the massive devastation each can cause. The checking of our ports is just as immediate, if not more so than the money spent on securing our land borders. It would seem to me, that a quarter of the agents now stationed at our borders could be trained in port security. Just a thought. Seems like there are so many of them running around out there. wasting time and gas.
Ann Sutherland-Faerber.