U.S. peace group trying to stop the White Train

Press, 29 May 1984, Page 17

U.S. peace group trying to stop the White Train

DAVID M. TAYLOR

recounts the persis-

tency of an American peace group.

A railway train, painted white, has become the focus of a determined peace group in the United States. This train has been conducting its business in the most intense secrecy, but the public is now awake to the materials it carries and to their destinations. It has prompted a growing struggle to stop it On Sunday, June 10, throughout the United States, Christians will be observing Peace Pentecost. A large number of them will be bearing witness at points along railway lines. Why? Because the White Train constantly carries the weapons designed to destroy the human race. It starts at the Pantex plant outside Amarillo, Texas, and carries completed nuclear missiles to various air, military, and naval bases both on the Atlantic Coast and the Pacific. Some are for sale to other countries. The work of the train has been going on for 20 years, but it was only during 1983 that dedicated peacemakers managed to track its various routes, and discover its destinations. Many alternative routes are used to deceive researchers, but, for instance, nuclear warheads are carried from pantex to Bangor $n Washington

State for the Trident submarines. The little group of researchers began to grow, all along the line, and began to warn cities that the train passed through. The group is now called the Agape Community, because it it witnessing to Love, the virtue that is given as the primary hope for the human race in the New Testament. The Agape Community is now working along every railway route from Pantex to Bangor to alert the public of the possibility of the White Train coming their way. Not only is the train completely secret; it is also heavily guarded. When some Agape members held a vigil at 11 p.m., in the middle of a snowstorm on March 18,1983, in La Junta, Colorado, they were confronted by carloads of police. Vigils were held in 35 different towns along the train’s route that time. In Fort Collins, eight people were arrested for kneeling on the tracks in front of it. Occasionally, facts are officially released. The Department of Energy, for instance, has said that it painted the train white to reduce temperatures. One of the men who actively participates in the work of the Agape Community is Jim Douglass, the co-foundeij of the Ground Zero Centre for Nohviolent Action. This

is situated next to the Trident submarine base at Bangor, not far from Christchurch’s sister city, Seattle. The magazine “Sojourners” devoted 14 pages of its February, 1984, issue to facts and comments about the White Train. It says: “ . . . The discovery of the White

Train has occasioned an outpouring of prayerful resistance that is stirring hearts and causing consternation in the Government . . . “The Government has responded by changing the routes of the train to try to elude the protesters, and by threatening to make the tracking of the White Train

punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a $lOO,OOO fine.” “The White Train is the most concentrated symbol we have of the hell of nuclear war,” says Jim Douglass. He describes how, during one train journey, “our experience of extended community via telephone was overwhelming. We were on the phone continuously during the 94 hours of the train’s journey: monitoring the train, updating vigilers up the line, sharing information with media, and meeting a series of people in the heartland of the United States whom I have never seen and will never forget.” Women are playing a prominent part in this campaign. One is Hedy Sawadsky, of the Mennonite faith, who was on the watch, looking to see when the next train left Amarillo, Texas, and on which route it appeared to be. She followed it, and reported it as going south-east through Oklahoma and Kansas. Weapons had to be sent to th§

naval weapons depot at Charleston, South Carolina. One of the bigger trains had 21 special white trucks, not counting locomotives or guards’ vans. Three turret cars were full of heavilyarmed guards. There could be as many as 200 nuclear warheads aboard the train. “Sojourners” has printed many stories from persons who were on vigil, telling how they felt as “200 Hiroshimas rolled passed them.” Among those who have been deeply distressed are some Roman Catholic bishops, disturbed partly by the thought of the huge numbers of their church members who get their living from the manufacture of parts that eventually go into nuclear missiles, or from assembling those parts, or from transporting them to where they are “needed.” Two such bishops who worked hard when the National Conference of United States Bishops was carefully preparing its Pastoral Letter on War and Peace, have given support to the Agape Community. Bishop Leroy Matthiesen of Amarillo, Texas, is notorious for having (in 1981) urged individuals involved in the production and stockpiling of nuclear bombs “to consider what they are doing, to resign from such activities, and to seek employment in peaceful pursuits.” Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle, says: “I’m extremely grateful that there has arisen this network of people, all intent on trying to bring to the fore what their name (Agape) really says — the strength and the power of love and truth. “They are challenging people to shift their sense of security, now so totally given over to these weapons of destruction, to what ought to be more our calling and our response.”