Anti-Nuclear Protesters Rally in Boston

Close to 2500 people gathered on Boston Common near the State House yesterday for a protest against nuclear power sponsored by the Clamshell Alliance.

George Wald, Higgins Professor of Biology Emeritus told the crowd that federal and state officials were "crazy" not to evacuate residents within a five mile radius of the Three Mile Island nuclear facility in Pennsylvania.

Hell No

"I'm simply telling you that there is not a threshold level, that all nuclear radiation harms," Wald told the crowd, which punctuated his and other speeches with cries of "No Nukes."

Clamshell Alliance spokesmen said they began organizing the rally on Friday when they realized the extent of the Harrisburg nuclear accident (see other story).

At dusk, some of the demonstrators drove in a motorcade to the Winthrop home of Massachusetts Gov. Edward J. King after yesterday's rally. "We want to let the governor know we are there," Diane Keefe, a Clamshell Alliance spokesman, said.

King received a petition from the demonstrators at his home. He said later that his position in favor of nuclear power remained unchanged.

"The time for action is right now," Joe Tyndall, who is pushing for a referendum banning nuclear power in Massachusetts said yesterday. "We thought we were going to wait until 1982. With the movie (The China Syndrome) and now the accident, it became clear that now is the time. We want to end nuclear power in 19 months," he said.

Harrisburg II?

"Sometimes it takes an event like this to pull people together. I just hope all these people will continue to show up at other demonstrations, and to protest with us at Seabrook (the Hew Hampshire town slated as the site for a new nuclear generating facility)," James M. Burns, another Clamshell member said.

Several Boston policemen at the demonstration, which lasted from 1:30 p.m. to 4:45 p.m., said the crowd was "very peaceful" and that there was no need for a large police force.

"The minority on the nuclear power issue is turning into the majority," Thomas Jacobson, a Clamshell official said. Anti-nuclear groups plan a variety of demonstrations throughout the week, including a noon rally at the Prudential Center to demand a nuclear moratorium, a State House march following the rally, and a talk given by California Gov. Edmund G. Brown in New Hampshire today.

Robert Case, a professor at Northeastern University and a member of the Mobilization for Survival, told the crowd that "we have all learned a lesson from Harrisburg.... We've learned from this accident that Hiroshima is in our neighborhood." Case called the Three Mile Island nuclear accident "the greatest domestic problem of the decade."

Close to Home

A spokesmen for the Union of Concerned Scientists said his group was calling for an evacuation of the area surrounding the leaking Harrisburg reactor. "Some of that radioactivity may end up here, and if it does there are problems: 40 million people live between here and Harrisburg, and New York City is only 115 miles away," he said.

"Stopping nuclear power may seem like an impossible job. Howard Zinn, a professor at Boston University said. "I think, though, that it is an impossible task we can accomplish," he said.

"It's becoming more and more difficult to lie to people," Zinn said. He added that there were no safe guards for nuclear power as long as businessmen "ran the country."

Many speakers compared the nuclear power dilemma to the controversy surrounding the Vietnam War a decade ago. Zinn said, "The same people who brought us Vietnam and who watched people die in mines and mills are still in power."

"We have to fight all power, gas and electric companies," Florence Kennedy, a liberal activist, said. "We're awfully well-behaved, but we're dealing with killers," she added