Arthur Harvey was the founder of the Greenleaf Harvesters, a guild of blueberry and apple agriculture workers named after the New England Quaker poet abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier. Read about Whittier’s connection to Hampton Falls, NH athttp://www.ritro.com/sections/people/story.bv?storyid=3649 . Anyways, the guild “twithed” its earnings each season (20%) and pooled the money into a fund. At…
The same threats and boondoggles that mobilized the Clamshell Alliance and an anti-nuclear movement around the world in the 1970’s are only more apparent today.Nuclear power presents more problems than solutions to global warming The history of nuclear power over the past 50 years is marked by nuclear accidents and an increasing number of near…
In spring 1976, I moved from California to Washington DC to become director of Environmentalists For Full Employment (EFFE). EFFE’s task was to counter corporate state propaganda that safe energy threw people out of work, was anti-progress and bad for the economy. We also built alliances among workers and environmentalists. I had worked for the…
Act Three was great in Reinhardt’s play —Six hundred extras milling.Listen to what the critics say!All Berlin finds it thrilling.But in the whole affair I seeA parable, if you ask me.“Revolution!’ the People howls and cries‘Freedom, that’s what we’re needing!We’ve needed it for centuries —Our arteries are bleeding.’The stage is shaking. The audience rock.The whole…
Journalists at the time described the “military efficiency” and “discipline” of the 1977 Clamshell Alliance occupation. What they were seeing was the power of a nonviolent movement, of people committed not only to a cause, but to each other, to communication with “opponents,” and to the community created from that conflict. People came to Seabrook…
I was chopping onions for spaghetti sauce one winter Sunday evening, listening to the radio. It was one of those NPR variety shows. The host was chatting with people in the studio audience. “What do you do for a living?” he asked one guest. “I’ve taught English composition for 30 years,” a weary voice replied….
Grass roots movements create culture. How else do we get the story out? How else do we feed our hearts and souls for the long haul? When I went to my first Clamshell rally (Autumn ’76) there was music – Pat DeCou and Tex LaMountain singing with beauty and passion about the promise and the…
We didn’t have many meetings at the Montague Farm, so it was something of a surprise when Sam (Lovejoy) asked us – the dozen or so hippie farmers and novice anti-nuclear activists who lived in the big sprawling farmhouse – to a meeting. A few months earlier, over Christmas, 1973, Northeast Utilities had announced their…
I was a student at Kent State in 1971 when National Guard troops openedfire on Viet Nam war protesters and killed four of my fellow students. I was one of the 1,414 at Seabrook in 1977. After I was arrested, theycouldn’t keep me in jail for too long as I was pregnant with my first…
The first meeting of the group was at Northeastern University. It was evening, and wewere sitting under a tree recently planted in the new courtyard on Huntington Avenue.The tree was a Honey Locust – probably named because of the honey-shadeof its leaves. As I recall – possibly with the aid of a romanticizing memory –…
