Small Group Demonstrates At Draper Weapons Lab

Led by the "Trident death monster," a flapping line of black plastic streamers, 300 demonstrators paraded down Cambridge's Broadway Avenue to the Charles Stark Draper Labs to protest that facility's involvement in developing guidance systems for nuclear missiles.

Demonstrators chanted "Hell No, We Won't Glow," and "Nukes, Poverty, Racism, War--We won't take it any More," as they marched to Draper from Sennott Park where speakers had inveighed against nuclear weapons for nearly three hours.

Dueling Rallies

Organizers said they were disappointed with the turnout. "We were hoping for more, but the other rally (a Fair Share demonstration on Boston Common) may have lured them away," Cathy Matthews, a Mobilization for Survival official who organized the demonstration said. Earlier in the week, protest organizers said they hoped 1000 would join the rally.

Community residents were conspicuously absent. "Doing community outreach is a slow process. This is our first rally ever in Cambridge, and we'll be back for more," Matthews promised.

Good Eye

Sid Peck, a national leader of the Mobilization for Survival, told the crowd before the march that "Draper has the best eye in the world for delivering missiles. It is a fantastic technological achievement to be able to land a bomb within 90 feet after a journey of 4-6000 miles."

Peck termed the $30 billion spent annually on weapons production a "tragic waste. The most probable trigger for the holocaust will be a conscious decision by a world leader," Peck added.

Under a baking 80 degree sun Winona La Duke - Westigard '80, a Native American activist, told the crowd that "what's happening here at Draper Labs has been going on for a long time--we'd been here 40,000 years, and we didn't take uranium out of the land. It took the military industrial complex to do that."

See No Evil

In front of the Draper facility near Kendall Square, demonstrators listened to Richard Proescher, who was recently fired from the General Dynamics Trident submarine manufacturing plant in Groton, Conn. for his anti-nuclear activities. Proescher said that conversion of weapons plants to peaceful uses would mean more jobs. "Weapons production is the least labor-intensive industry there is," Proescher told the crowd