Lois Swimmer, Paul & Louise Freid, and Mike Miles will talk with Radio Active Magazine regular Spencer Graves about their plans for a Catholic Worker Retreat and Resistance event being planned for April 24-27, Friday through Monday. 

Swimmer is from the Minnecouji Band within the Blackfoot Tribe, which is part of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. She is a member of the Elders Circle at Cherith Brook Catholic Worker House in Kansas City, Missouri. Paul & Louise Freid are with the Lake City Catholic Worker Farm near Lake City, Minnesota. Mike Miles is with Anathoth Catholic Worker Farm a few miles out of Luck, Wisconsin. 

Midwest supporters of the Catholic Worker Movement are organizing a retreat and resistance in Kansas City, April 24-27, focusing on the Kansas City National Security Campus, which manufactures 80 percent of non-nuclear components that go into US nuclear weapons. If those weapons are ever detonated in a war, the most likely outcome would include lofting so much smoke to the stratosphere from burning cities that it would cover the earth and not get above freezing even in the summertime for several years in places as far north as Iowa, according to a team of 10 leading experts in climatology, food production and economics. Ninety-nine percent of humans in the US, Europe and Russia would starve to death if they did not die of something else sooner. Eighty percent of humans worldwide would similarly die. Over 90 percent of the fatalities would be in countries not directly involved in the nuclear exchange. 

The US plans to spend $2 trillion dollars over the next 30 years making new nuclear weapons and delivery systems to make them faster, “smarter”, and bomb deeper into the earth. That's $6,000 for every man, woman, and child in the US -- $200 per year per human in each of the next 30 years.

To achieve this, the KC plant is doubling in size. This is under the Dept of Energy. A cynic might insist that this facility is more accurately described as the "Kansas City National Insecurity Campus", as part of the Department of Nuclear Bombs, whose budget is not included in the official Department of Defense budget, to make it harder for the public to know how much the US is actually spending on military equipment, supplies and operations. 

Over a year ago, DOE agreed to hold public hearings in Kansas City and four other cities, discussing their plans for this and other facilities nationwide. This agreement responded to a lawsuit filed by antinuclear activist organizations. However, PeaceWorks has not yet heard a schedule. Are they planning on holding those hearings in 2060, after the nuclear winter?  

Whenever the hearings are scheduled, PeaceWorks will ask supporters to submit comments in person and online. PeaceWorks will offer trainings to help prepare humans to make informed statements. Supporting the Retreat and Resistance April 24-27 can help humans prepare as well.

PeaceWorks and the Catholic Workers coming for this insist that everything currently done at the Kansas City National Insecurity Campus is an enormous waste of money and part of a very dangerous new arms race. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which half the world’s nations have now agreed to, makes nuclear weapons illegal. Humans associated with PeaceWorks plan to attend the TPNW review conference at the United Nations in November.

The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability will also be lobbying the first week in June against new nuclear weapons and new nuclear power plants and for cleanup of the thousands of tons of US nuclear waste. To join us, see pwkc.org, especially pwkc.org/register-resist.

Bryan Stalder discusses Northeast Kansas City and Northeast News with Radio Active Magazine regular Spencer Graves, and Bill Clause invites y'all to attend a "No Kings 3" rally near you March 28 

Stadler is an illustrator and designer active with the Northeast Kansas City Chamber of Commerce and the Northeast News and former president of the Indian Mound Neighborhood Association. He describes Northeast Kansas City and his vision for that part of the KC metro area.