From Hiroshima to Yucca Mountain to the Middle East: Stop Bechtel
NO NUKES! NO WARS! NO PROFITEERS! Support Indigenous Rights!

Between August 6 and 9, the anniversaries of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, demand an end to the war in Iraq, no military attacks on Iran or North Korea, and the global abolition of nuclear weapons, starting with our own. This year, we call on groups to protest at the corporate offices of Bechtel, the world's number-one nuclear profiteer, and at nuclear facilities everywhere. Sixty-one years after the U.S. killed tens of thousands of civilians by dropping nuclear bombs on two densely populated cities, our aim is to expose the continuing hypocrisy of the U.S. nuclear double standard and to directly confront the U.S. corporations who are perpetuating and profiting from a worldwide nuclear crisis and the war in Iraq.

August 9 has also been declared by the United Nations as the International Day of the World’s Indigenous People. Indigenous peoples have often borne the brunt of nuclear devastation. In the United States alone, Native Americans have seen their land stolen to build nuclear infrastructure, mined for uranium, and bombed with test weapons; the U.S. government continues to push forward with plans to store massive amounts of highly radioactive waste beneath Yucca Mountain in Nevada, a site sacred to the Western Shoshone. We have an opportunity to make the connections between nuclear proliferation and attacks on indigenous rights.
The U.S. is the ONLY country that has used nuclear weapons. As war and occupation continue in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush Administration is fomenting nuclear crises in Iran and North Korea. At the same time it is pushing for new nuclear weapons and power plants here at home. We say NO to nukes, NO to wars, NO to war profiteers, and YES to the sovereignty of indigenous people around the world!

WHY BECHTEL
Bechtel Corporation is a leading beneficiary of the Iraq war and corporate globalization policies. Bechtel “connects the dots” for the anti-war, anti-nuke and global justice movements. Through its 100 years of revolving-door relationships with government, Bechtel illustrates the connections between corporate profiteering and war, between nuclear power and nuclear weapons proliferation, between “free trade” and the exploitation of indigenous peoples, and between corporate power-brokers and decision-makers at the highest levels of government. Click here for more background.

WHERE TO PROTEST
Bechtel has many facilities, projects and offices across the country and around the world. Plans are underway for protests at most of the major U.S. nuclear weapons facilities, including the Livermore and Los Alamos Labs, the Oak Ridge plant in Tennessee, the Nevada Test Site and the Pantex plant in Texas. Actions are also planned at Bechtel’s Bettis Atomic Laboratory in Pennsylvania, and Bechtel corporate offices in Houston and San Francisco. See www.August6.org for a growing list of actions.

ACTION IDEAS
Based on your group's capacity and background, you could organize anything:

• marches
• civil disobedience
• citizen’s inspections
• events that promote the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Commitments Act (H. Res. 373)
• teach-ins
• educational events
• outreach.

You might want to organize a bus trip to one of the larger regional events, or a protest at a nuclear power plant that Bechtel built or at another nuclear profiteer’s facility or office, such as BWX Technologies, Lockheed Martin or Raytheon. We especially encourage civil disobedience and nonviolent direct action. Let’s use our people power to confront key pillars of war and empire - including corporations like Bechtel.

At the 2004 World Social Forum, Arundahati Roy called on people to identify and locate the offices of Iraq war profiteers “in every city and every country across the world” and “go after them.” She continued, “We could shut them down. It’s a question of bringing our collective wisdom and experience of past struggles to bear on a single target. It’s a question of the desire to win.”

WE CAN WIN
Recently, the Western Shoshone Nation and its supporters helped to postpone indefinitely the “Divine Strake” simulated nuclear test explosion at the Nevada Test Site that could have exposed people who live downwind from a dust cloud of radioactive particulates. Indigenous resistance in Cochabamba, Bolivia, forced that government to cancel Bechtel’s contract after the company privatized Cochabamba’s water systems and sent prices skyrocketing. In San Francisco, activists helped to defeat Bechtel’s plans to privatize water in their hometown.

WHO WE ARE
This call was initiated by an ad hoc coalition of local and regional groups organizing August 6-9 actions in collaboration with the UFPJ Nuclear Disarmament/Redefining Security Working Group.

Our efforts are intended to complement the United Nations’ International Day of the World’s Indigenous People (Aug. 9); Global Call Iraq’s call for civil resistance to end the Iraq occupation (Aug. 6-9); the War Resisters League’s “Stop the Merchants of Death” campaign and its upcoming conference on war profiteering (Sept. 29-Oct. 2), United for Peace and Justice’s Nuclear Disarmament Campaign and No War on Iran Campaign, and growing efforts to link the anti-nuclear, anti-war, anti-corporate globalization and indigenous rights movements around common themes. We also hope to build momentum for the Declaration of Peace's September 21-28 week of resistance to end the occupation of Iraq.

JOIN THE CALL
We invite other groups to join in this call. You can circulate the call among progressive organizations in your community; you can connect with others who are organizing against the war machine. Seek peace, be part of the solution.

Be sure to list the activities that you are planning on the august6.org calendar: Add your event now.

The following groups are participating in the August 6-9 planning:

• Abolition 2000 New York Metro
  
• Citizen Alert Nevada
• Global Call Iraq Campaign
• Nevada Desert Experience
• Nuclear Watch of New Mexico
• Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance
• Peace Action
• Peace Farm, Amarillo
• Physicians for Social Responsibility Maine
• Pittsburgh August 6 Committee
• Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice
• Shundahai Network
  
• Tri-Valley CAREs
• UC Santa Cruz Students Against War
• United for Peace and Justice
• War Resister League Stop the Merchants of Death Campaign
• Western States Legal Foundation
• Women's International League for Peace and Freedom