‘Demise of the bomb’ aim of full-time protester

Press, 10 April 1980, Page 3

‘Demise of the bomb’ aim of full-time protester

“A Jesuit friend of mine I has said that the tap-root of violence in our world is theintent to use nuclear weapons. Once we have consented to that, any hope of improving public morality is doomed to failure,” said Mr Jim Albertini, an American anti-nuclear bomb campaigner, in Christchurch yesterday. Mr Albertini, brought to New Zealand by the Catholic Commission for Justice and Development, will address public meetings this evening and tomorrow, and will; speak at three Masses in the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament on Sunday. The nuclear bomb has occuoied Mr Albertini’s attention for the last 10 years. He lives simply, working a few days a month as a truck driver or carpenter so that he can spend the rest of his time working for the demise of the bomb. He has been to prison because of his opposition to it, and expects to) go again soon. Mr Albertini was born in Pennsylvania in a poor coalmining town, and spent 17 years at Roman Catholic schools, including time studying theology at college, which he later taught in schools.

He finished high school in 1964, and was faced with the draft and the Vietnam War. He became a conscientious objector. "I

thought I was going to be put in jail but I had been so active campaigning against the war that they classified me as ‘morally unfit’ instead,” he said. For the last six years Mr Albertini has been working almost full-time on Hawaii against the bomb. There were 110 separate military installations on the Hawaian islands, he said. Twenty five, per cent of the main island, Oahu, was devoted to war weapons. Kahoolawa was entirely controlled for the purposes of war. Twentyseven nuclear submarines had their home port in Pearl Harbour. The bomb had become “an idol, a false god” in Hawaii. “It is the thing people hav e given their lives to; the thing they believe in. It is their security. They believe that it is a basic necessity of life like food, clothes and shelter. They are reassured I by the bomb. They are possessed by it,” Mr Albertini I said. “To me the bomb is a form of blasphemy. The Bible says clearly, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ We are committing the sin of mass destruction. We are no different from the people of Jonestown in Guiana training for their mass suicide.” Mr Albertini spent 60 ■ days in jail after saying the Lord’s Prayer at the entrance of the nuclear weapons area at a Trident

submarine base at Bangor in, Washington state. He denied’ that he was trespassing, al-1 though that was the charge. “I consider Trident has trespassed on the human 1 race,” he said. “Why are people who are trying to speak out for life pers< uted Every dollar being spent on this (about $1 billion a submarine) is stolen from somebody who is starving. The first two Trident submarines would be launched this year. Mr Albertini said that one submarine could destroy 408 different targets simultaneously and the United States was planning to build 30 at $3 billion each. I In the face of the huge | build-up of nuclear weapons, I the $750,000 a minute being spent on arms production; world-wide, and the fact that I 35 countries would have a! nuclear bomb in the.next 10 years, what was the point of protest? | Mr Albertini is not daunted. Although he had been in New Zealand only for half a day yesterday, he said he had already detected in the people he had met, including; several journalists, a “fresh-| ness” on the issue. “They are not clouded up with the thinking that points to despair. They seem to realise that the world does not have to be this way,” he ‘ said. , I

. The only way things could be changed was by changing I people’s minds, so that they would tell their Governments that they would not have the bomb, he said. Assertions that the bomb was necessary for peace were the “ultimate absurdity.” The billions of dollars being spent on arms could be spent to much better advantage on health and welfare and creating more useful jobs and services. Military spending also caused inflation because it produced consumers who produced nothing, creating a scarcity of goods and pushing prices up. Christian churches were “dragging the chain on the issue,” Mr Albertini said. Members of his own church in Hawaii who were prepared to march in anti-abortion protests but would not say a word against the bomb were guilty of “gross inconsistency.” “How can we expect the nurturing of life of the unborn when we are assenting to the death of the living?” he asked. Small actions, such as the small-boat protests when I nuclear submarines visited I New Zealand harbours, and i the Omega protests in the 19605, had a far-reaching significance, and were good examples of how people could make a non-violent protest ‘against the bomb, Mr Alber- * tini said.