Story Previews (click a title to view)

• A Desperate Passion
  by Helen Caldicott
  It was on a cold spring day in May 1977 when the wind cuts straight through your clothes, the daffodils were not even out and the ground was still brown and muddy. I had moved to live in Boston from Australia six months earlier and was only just acclimatizing to the New England weather. We,…
• A Rhode Island Clam
  by Shel Horowitz
  I got involved with the Clamshell Alliance through an affinity group organized out of the Providence, RI Quaker meeting youth group. But I actually first took part in the antinuclear movement back in 1972, when Con Edison proposed (and quickly retracted) a nuke 2 miles from NYC! In 1974, I did a school project on…
• Arthur Harvey and the Greenleaf Harvesters
  by Paul Gunter
  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…
• Atomic Power and Nuclear Weapons: Flip Sides of the Same Coin
  by Paul Gunter
  Public Service Company of New Hampshire headquarters sits on Elm Street in the middle of downtown Manchester. It was August 9, 1976, Nagasaki Day. Ron and I were fresh out of Hampton city jail from the August 1st action at the Seabrook. My wrists were scabby with handcuff cuts from the dragging we took through…
• Bird Dogging the Duke
  by Jay Gustaferro
  We wanted Massachusetts to intervene against the Seabrook nuclear power plant at the federal level. Attorney General Francis X. Belotti wanted to but Governor Michael Dukakis was on the fence. So, I accepted Tom Moughan’s invitation to birddog Dukakis the weekend he announced his run for second term. We knew it was going to be…
• Bridge over Troubled Waters
  by Peter Kellman
  It got to the point where the Clamshell had the political power to force the state of New Hampshire to force Public Service to allow the Clamshell to use three acres on the nuclear plant construction site for a two-day demonstration.Diane Garand walked down and got a building permit from the town of Seabrook for…
• Burnt Toast: Trouble in the Nation’s Breadbasket
  by Paul Gunter
  Ron Reick and I organized to take a horse drawn wagon across the state of New Hampshire from Hinsdale on the Connecticut River to Seabrook to raise the public awareness of the first Clamshell occupation of the nuke construction site scheduled for August 1, 1976. Steppingstone Farm over in Marlow generously loaned us “Dick,” a…
• Clam International: Inspiration and Solidarity
  by Anna Gyorgy
  Even before the age of international listserves and multilingual websites, we had international connections and cooperation, but they were more physical. We went there, they came here, lugging suitcases full of local leaflets and posters to trade. We felt deeply that we needed each other, for information, inspiration, and mutual support. The Clamshell Alliance’s strategy…
• Clam Magic
  by Court Dorsey
  Early in 1977, a group of young activists in DeKalb, Illinois began a self-study seminar created by The Movement for a New Society (MNS) called the Macro analysis Seminar. We were all a part of a network of affiliated projects centered around Juicy John Pinks, a restaurant and coffeehouse that included a food coop, Duck…
• Clam Media
  by C.W. Wolff
  “What’s a nuke?” “What’s a nuke?” was a common question in 1976 when “No Nukes!” bumper stickers began appearing in New Hampshire. By 1978 — thanks largely to the Clamshell Alliance and the media focus it generated — most people knew what nukes were, not only in New England, but across the nation. The struggle…
• Clam Self-Defense and Lawyers
  by Benjie Hiller
  For me, working with Clamshell, first as a law student and then as a lawyer, was a remarkable experience. I was involved in the planning of actions and with legal training for demonstrators and legal workers. I met with and advised folks who had been arrested, both during and after their arrests. I assisted folks…
• Clamshell Alliance
  by Winona LaDuke
  I remember the early morning at Seabrook, and my time in Boston. I remember the smell of the ocean and the mist on my face, and I remember faces and smells, and through that the courageous souls who helped me shape my own humanity. I know that what we all did changed history. Seabrook was…
• Climbing the Towers – 1989
  by Chris Nord
  The fact is, we had fought PSCo to a standstill in court, by organizing in each of the six towns within the ten mile radius in  Massachusetts , to hold binding votes,  yea or nay on accepting the proposed Emergency Response  Plans (ERP’s).  All six towns voted “no”, and it was made clear to Governor…
• CORPORATE AND GOVERNMENT SURVEILLANCE OF THE CLAMSHELL
  by Robin Read
   CIVIL LIBERTIES VIOLATED  YELLOW JOURNALISM, 1970s STYLE Corporate and government surveillance of the Clamshell Alliance began with the inception of the organization in 1976, intensified in the weeks before the April 1977 occupation, and continued for the next several years. Fear mongering by right wing organizations and media, fed by the surveillance and infiltration, were…
• Create the Action by Acting on Your Passion
  by Naoto Inoue
  Do you remember 1976? The anti-nuclear planning was happening and I was living in Newburyport. I had dropped out of UNH and was looking for direction in my life, not really knowing what to do. I was working as a carpenter. On Water St there was a natural food store called Corn Mother, and Katrina…
• Diane Garand Video Interview Transcript with Peter Kellman and Renny Cushing
  by Renny Cushing
  Renny- What’s the date? According to this… it’s not on the film. Peter- It’s the 18th of September 2004. I am here with Diann Garand formerly of Salem, New Hampshire. Renny- And you’re formerly from Salem, New Hampshire, too. Right Peter? Peter- Formerly I lived in Salem. We were and currently. When Diann lived there…
• DOGS THAT CLIMB TREES
  by Eric Wolfe
  A Puppeteer’s Perspective on the Origins of the Clamshell Alliance I landed a job as a puppeteer fresh out of college because I could talk like a duck. “You see, an anthropology degree did prepare me for the real world,” I explained to my mother. She cried for joy. Well, anyway, she cried. The duck…
• EFFE, Jobs, Energy & the Clam
  by Richard Grossman
  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…
• Frances Crowe video interview transcript 6-26-07
  by Frances Crowe
  with Sharon Tracy 6-26-07 My husband Tom was a radiologist and was a founding member of Physicians for Social responsibility in this area. Back in the 60s we were working to stop the testing of nuclear weapons. I was running around trying to corner the powdered milk for this area (because the radiation was concentrating…
• FRANCES CROWE’S STORIES
  by Frances Crowe
  EARLY DAYS My husband Tom, a radiologist, was a founding member of Physicians for Social responsibility in this area. Back in the 60s we were working to stop the testing of nuclear weapons. Radiation was coming down in the Albany area from the bomb tests out west. We collected baby teeth and the Tooth Fairy…
• From South Meeting House
  by Renny Cushing
  Building and operating an atomic plant on an earthquake fault in Seabrook, in a densely populated area just 45 miles from Boston, and requiring ratepayers throughout to New England to pay for it, is an assault on the health, safety and economy of our region. The nuclear industry shattered the very foundation of our democracy,…
• From too cheap to meter to too costly to matter
  by Michael Mariotte
  From the industry’s proclamation of nuclear power being “too cheap to meter” in the 1950s to the reality of a major utility going bankrupt in the 1980s, nuclear power has proven to be a source of economic speculation since its inception. At the beginning of the building boom in the 1960s, reactors were estimated to…
• Gloucester Resistance
  by Jay Gustaferro
  Gloucester resistance to the Seabrook nuke is amazingly broad-based, from ditch diggers to college professors, and even a disillusioned NRC official. One active group was the Fishermen’s Wives Association, formed because the men were out to sea so much of the time and needed a group to speak for their interests. They were astute and…
• Herbie Greene
  by Chris Nord
  An old guy I sat next to at the counter of the Agawam Diner recently triggered a flood of memories of my dear old  friend Herbie, senior member of the Last Ones Out the Door affinity group of the Clamshell Alliance.  I’ve missed Herbie the seven or eight years since I last saw him; and…
• Here’s what happened as I recall it.
  by Sukie Rice
  In April 1976 Linda LeClair (the AFSC staff person in Concord) called  and asked me to come up and do a n-v workshop with some folks who were  considering some actions against building the S. nukes. I did so and we had an evening of discussion and role-playing at a neat vegetarian restaurant. There were…
• How our Affinity Group got its Rather Odd Name of Honet Locust
  by Bob Brainerd
  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 –…
• How the Clamshell Alliance Got Its Name
  by Renny Cushing
  The Clamshell Alliance got its name from the testimony of a SAPL witness, who testified that one of the effects of the cooling system, a total mortality system taking in more than a billion gallons of water a day, could destroy the “neuritic band” of pelagic clam larvae. By the way, the Clams can and…
• How Ya Gonna Keep ‘em Down on the Farm?
  by Kristie Conrad
  I grew up smack in south central NH, in dairy country, where we would often awaken to find cows had once again broken through the fence and generously left behind evidence of their presence all over our front lawn. I grew up sheltered from the harshness of much of life, though I do remember that…
• INSIDE: Manchester Days
  by Karl Meyer
  All did not come together easily.  No food had been stockpiled for prisoners.  Upon arrival Francis Crowe looked around and said to a friend, “Let’s put up a table and share all the food we have in our packs.” The National Guard guards were grand kids compared to the 58 year-old peace activist.   And…
• LABOR AND THE CLAM
  by Steve Thornton
  Peter Kellman went to work at the Laconia Shoe Company in Sanford, Maine on the morning of September 18, 1980.  Peter was a machine operator at the factory and the president of the local shoe workers union. He was also an anti-nuclear activist with the Clamshell Alliance.  That morning he posted a notice on the…
• Legacy
  by Berri Kramer
  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…
• MAINSTREAM MEDIA
  by Robin Read
  “The socialists were there…” Meanwhile, The Manchester Union-Leader, the state’s largest, most powerful and most conservative newspaper, launched a relentless “Red Tide” campaign, trying to paint the Clamshell Alliance as a communist and terrorist organization. Rather than fuming about the paper’s hysteria and half-truths, we found creative ways to respond.  For example, Union-Leader coverage of…
• Mass. Municipal Wholesale Electric Co.: On Being a Nuclear Flak
  by Wesley Blixt
  I was a nuclear flak. From an industry perspective, I was neither well-prepared nor eager to promote the magic of nuclear power . . . and, it certainly was NOT what I had signed on to do when I went to work for the Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Company – MMWEC – in February, 1977….
• Non-Violence and Consensus
  by Wally Nelson
  Non-violence is the constant awareness of the dignity and humanity of oneself and others. It seeks truth and justice. It renounces violence both in method and attitude. Non-violence is a courageous acceptance of active love and goodwill as the instrument with which to overcome evil and transform both oneself and others. It is the willingness…
• Nukes and Passion
  by Cathy Wolff
  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….
• Nukes’ Achilles Heel
  by Adam Auster
  The landmark 1977 Clamshell Alliance occupation launched a national grass-roots antinuclear movement and changed the public debate on energy. Then-President Richard Nixon called for 1,000 nuclear plants by the year 2000. Just over one-tenth of that number were built, and none after Seabrook, which was, like others, so over budget that they bankrupted their owners….
• Public Education – The Lifeblood of a Clam Local
  by Tom Wyatt
  Public education was the glue that held the Worcester-based Central Massachusetts Citizens Against Nuclear Power together well into the 1980s. Because we were a local Clamshell Alliance chapter, from time to time many members organized for and joined nonviolent direct actions, spending time in armories and jail. But we were always planning the next radio…

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