Earth Day and War

By Tom H. Hastings
(600 words)

This Commentary is Unpublished.

It was still dark on Earth Day, 1996, and we were out in the northern boreal forest of Wisconsin at a military facility, committing felonies. Indeed, by the end of the day we were charged with two felonies each, and facing 15 years in prison each. Sabotage (10 years) and Destruction of Property (5 years). All in a day’s work for peace and the Earth...

...This is a system that defiled democracy and caused cancer. We proved the anti-democracy aspect by our political activism in Wisconsin and Michigan—scarcely a politician from either state could be found who supported the two-state system. We proved the ecological and health problems by a successful 1984 federal lawsuit (State of Wisconsin and Marquette County, Michigan versus the U.S. Navy and “honorable” Casper Weinberger).

But the U.S. Navy did then what it continues to do today—when threatened with environmental laws it and all branches of the military claim national security and a cloak wraps their actions...

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Tom H. Hastings is author of Ecology of War and Peace: Counting Costs of Conflict, and several other books. He is core faculty in the Portland State University Conflict Resolution Masters degree program and may be reached at hastings@pdx.edu.