Stories Archive

Shared by alliance members over the years

Story Previews (click a title to view)

  • A Desperate Passion
    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,…
  • Clam Magic
    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…
  • Diane Garand Video Interview Transcript with Peter Kellman and 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…
  • Frances Crowe video interview transcript 6-26-07
    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
    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
    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,…
  • How the Clamshell Alliance Got Its Name
    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?
    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…
  • Mass. Municipal Wholesale Electric Co.: On Being a Nuclear Flak
    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….
  • Nukes’ Achilles Heel
    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….
  • Renew Fight Our Efforts Against New Nuclear Power
    My Past Experiences with the Clamshell Alliance and the Need to Renew Fight Our Efforts Against New Nuclear Power My first tasks when I started working at the Nuclear Information and Resource Service in January 1986 were to support the Clamshell Alliance in two ways. One was to help set up the Whistleblower Center to…
  • Seacoast Anti-Pollution League
    As a then young lawyer, I started work on the proposed Seabrook project on June 28, 1972: the date of the Watergate break-in. I stuck with it right through the abandonment of the second reactor and the final licensing of reactor one in 1996. Indeed, I haven’t quit yet. Originally, I represented two of New…
  • The Clamshell’s German Connection
    Here is a Clam story of which I was not aware. This comes from my colleague, Joseph Gerson, at AFSC in Cambridge. Prior to his time at AFSC, Joseph and his wife, Lani, were on the staff of War Resisters International in Brussels. Joseph writes: About Lani’s role: She was the principle organizer of the…
  • Western Massachusetts Region Clamshell, Trainers, and MNS
    What do liberation, process and a safe environment all have in common? For me, they all converged in Clamshell Alliance. In Western Mass some of us had been meeting regularly in Greenfield to stop nukes and support alternative energy before Clamshell got started. We had already fought and stopped the proposed Montague Plains nuke. A…
  • When I was called a Clam
    I participated in the April 30, 1977 occupation at Seabrook as a result of my then-wife working at in a non-profit energy/environment policy center in Washington DC. She found out about the occupation and wanted to be part of it. She persuaded me to go along, and so she, I, and another friend went together….