Protesters anger local people

Press, 3 August 1983, Page 10

Protesters anger local people

NZPA Romulus Seventy-four women were arrested yesterday when they climbed fences surrounding the Seneca Army depot as about 1900 women protested against nuclear arms and 200 flag-waving townspeople shouted: “Go home.”

Sixty of the women were arrested in the afternoon after 14 were taken into

custody in the morning for entering the depot, in New York state, and planting a pine tree and sunflowers. Military police had spread bales of razor-sharp wire along a 200 m stretch of the fence to try to keep the women from trespassing.

The women tied yarn, crepe paper, and banners to the 2m-high fences around

the depot’s truck gate and carried banners reading: “There is no shelter from nuclear war” and, “Dollars for people, not profit and death.”

“The message we are giving is that we are peaceloving women,” said Connie McKenna, a spokeswoman for the demonstrators. She said that the women had wanted to plant trees,

gardens, and rose bushes inside the depot. But Romulus residents were outraged about the acts of civil disobedience, reports of witchcraft and public nudity by some of the protesters from the Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice, which believes that the depot stocks nuclear weapons.