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TOM WHEELER:

Welcome to the Econews Report. I'm your host this week. Tom Wheeler, Executive Director of EPIC, The Environmental Protection Information Center and joining me is my friend and colleague, the executive director of the North Coast Environmental Center Caroline Griffith. And we are joined by Jack Irvine. Jack is the spokesman for the which way the Wind Festival. Welcome to the Econews Report, Jack.

JACK IRVINE:

Delighted to be here. Thanks to the invitation.

WHEELER:

All right, just briefly: What is the one-sentence synopsis? What is the Which Way the Wind Festival?

IRVINE:

I wish I could give it a one-sentence description, but can't. I will do my best with probably more than one sentence. So Which Way the Wind Festival is a bringing together of the community, really, to talk about two particular things. One: The risk of nuclear weaponry, nuclear war and the nuclear fuel rods stored here, and the second to talk about global warming and the effects that that's going to have on the Humboldt Bay community.

WHEELER:

All right. I I feel like that was pretty much one-sentence. So Which Way the Wind -- this is a relatively recent festival. When when did y'all get started?

IRVINE:

My engagement with this really began in the mid-2000s and it was really around the Golden Rule and the attempts of the local Veterans for Peace to restore the Golden Rule. Golden Rule has a very historic role in the anti-nuclear movement in the United States. It was the First anti-nuclear boat to attempt to protest above ground nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands. So, to give you some background to that.

In 1958, Albert Bigelow, a Quaker from Massachusetts, was an anti nuclear activist, had the idea that he would try and sail into the nuclear test zone in the Marshall Islands of protest nuclear weapon testing. He did this very publicly -- advertised it to everyone -- and left from San Pedro headed to Honolulu at the time he left. There was no law prohibiting American ships going into the nuclear test zone at the time he arrives in Honolulu, there's a law and he's presented on the dock when he arrives with the U. S. Marshal, who says, look, it's now against the law for you to do this.

That does not deter Bigelow and his Quaker crew. They make two attempts to sail to the Marshall Islands, both times have stopped by Coast Guard. Both times, they jailed the first time they're let out on parole. Second time they jailed and sentenced to six months in prison. They only served two of those months, but they're sentenced to prison. When Bigelow returns to the United States in later 1958, he wants to capitalize on the publicity that's been generated around the Golden Rule and around the anti-nuclear movement, he convinces the Quakers to support that effort nationally and they write an anti-war play -- Philip Lewis writes an anti war play -- that's called Which Way to Win. That play is narrated by Al Bigelow and travels both coasts in 1959, and again travels both coasts in 1960. But without Bigelow as a narrator, as near as I could tell, that play had never been restaged from 1960.

I got a copy of that play which is pretty scarce and I read that I found it was still very relevant and germane. I showed it to the body Messenger who agreed with me, suggested I should get in touch with John Heckel, who was a retired theater arts professor at Humboldt, which I did. He read the play. He agreed that it was relevant and germane. We then gathered a group around us with the intention of restaging the play as a way of raising money for the Golden Rule as we explored and read that play to each other and acted sort of out. It also became clear that the themes touched in this play are much larger than simply anti-nuclear and anti-war. And we began to expand what we wanted to do and we ended up a whole week-long festival in 2018. We repeated that same thing in 2019, broadening our scope a little bit to be more environmental as well as anti nuclear. We had planned a festival in 2020 and 2021 but was interrupted by COVID and we're back at in 2022, attempting the same thing with the mission being to inform and educate our community around the issues of nuclear, around the issues of global warming and provide them some information and hopefully ways that they can take action themselves on both of these issues. That's our purpose I think.

WHEELER:

Go ahead, Caroline.

CAROLINE GRIFFITH:

Well, we have a lot of old issues of Econews archived in our office and when I took over a few years ago as editor, spent a lot of time just reading old issues to see what it was that we had worked on in the past and kind of, you know, wanting to get some idea of like those things that we don't work on anymore. And one of the things that is really, really prevalent in older issues is discussion of nuclear power. The big anti nuclear, my movement here in Humboldt County and this is one of those things that when I was reading it in 2020 was thinking, well this is really, I mean here's one of our success stories, right? Like we don't talk as much about nuclear anymore. That's not as much of a big deal. And it seemed like a very antiquated thing. A lot of us who are younger, grew up in an era where we didn't do bomb drills in school, we didn't worry as much about this. We don't have this hanging over us. So it was really interesting to me over the last year, once, once the Ukraine was debated by Russia to really think, oh right, this is a thing that we do still have to worry about. And then to further realize that we still have spent we have fuel here that is stored in Humboldt Bay, but also the inflation reduction act, which was recently passed, had subsidies for increased nuclear power plant production. So realizing that the cycle continues right, This is not something that has gone away and this is still very much a relevant issue. And so I'm curious what what within the festival that you are doing to really help bring this, especially to a younger generation who hasn't hasn't spent as much time thinking about the dangers of nuclear war or the impacts of nuclear power

IRVINE:

Caroline, you're absolutely right. You know, this has just been, has not been on people's radar over the last 50 years. We've become quite complacent about the issues about nuclear weaponry.

When we began this in 2018 in a very hard time engaging our community in nuclear issues, environmental issues, global warming. We're really front and center and we learned that the way to begin to talk about nuclear threats of nuclear weaponry was to come in through the environment. So we want to consider that there are two existential threats to our world. We have global warming and we have nuclear one is going to take 50 years to happen or maybe less, but the other can happen in 15 minutes and we need to really be paying attention to that the world did pay attention in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. And that attention really led to a lot of treaties around reduction in nuclear weaponry and just parenthetically, perhaps all those movements that led to these treaties were really community based worldwide activities that pushed politicians to create those treaties.

The way we're going to address that is really in three different events. We have a tour automatic a boat tour on Sunday, October the ninth on that will be Marnie Atkins, the director of the Wiyot Cultural Center, Jerry Rohde, local historian who has written a book about the historical changes on the day and Aldaron Laird, who knows the physical geography of the bay in every detail, every nook and cranny. The boat will be piloted by Leroy Zerlang who played a really important role in the resurrection, if you will, of the Golden Rule, we will look at two a lot.

We got sacred site which is gonna be underwater with global warming. We're gonna look at the Bayfront, especially along the edge of the bay front to talk about the historic changes and we're gonna go and look at the point where the nuclear rods are stored. Aldaron will talk about what's going to happen around our bay communities with the three ft rise in sea level, manila Samoa, Fairhaven, Fields Landing, King Salmon all go underwater and our highway corridor at CR and Bayside are underwater as well with three ft of sea rise. So our own transportation corridor is threatened.

In addition to the magical boat tour, on Tuesday, we're having a nuclear discuss panel discussion with some really very expert people, Robert Gould, who is the head of physicians for social responsibility in San Francisco has been the president of that organization nationally in the past will be here. Jackie Capasso who is the U. S. Representatives for an international organization called Mayors for Peace which is working on the back from the brink campaign, will be here to talk about that and she has just returned from New York where she spent a month at the nuclear non-proliferation treaty conference which is held every five years. She will talk about that whole month long discussion, and we also have Dale Preston who is a local expert on ionizing radiation and has been working with the U. S. Government and other governments to measure the long term effects of radiation on the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He has been a consultant at Chernobyl Fukushima and other nuclear power plant and travels widely talking about ionizing radiation.

In that nuclear panel, we want to talk about the nonproliferation treaty. We want to talk about the treaty for the prevention of nuclear weaponry which is the U. N. Treaty. We want to talk about the back from the brink campaign and we also want to talk about the huge effects of our defense spending has on the allocation of US resources. Yesterday, I read the New York Times where Paul Krugman says you know, we need to look at the U. S. Government as really it's an insurance policy with an army and what he meant was the insurance policies are healthcare spending and retirement, Social Security and Medicare, Medicaid with an army and that takes up the vast amount of all the money the U. S. Government spends and that just sort of little lightning like. But yeah really that's what we have as a federal government and you know our defense spending $800 billion sucks up. It's responsible for student debt, it's responsible for poverty, it's responsible for high tuition just on and on and on. It just distorts everything we do anyway, so that's that panel and that will explore all of those things.

And then on Thursday we have our environmental panel which is really focused on Humboldt Bay. So Jennifer Kalt, director of the Humboldt Baykeeper, Jennifer Marlowe who wrote the several paper 44 ft above sea level and is an expert on the store nuclear rods at point. Steven Coleman who is a member of the Harbor Commission and part of Redwood Coast Energy Authority and Alex Brown who is a graduate student at Humboldt will be there to discuss the bay sea level rise and the story of nuclear rods, All of our themes around global warming and nuclear really can be talked about when we talk about the bay and what's going on in the bay. So that's how we're addressing nuclear and the bay and trying to tie all that together. And there's

WHEELER:

also a substantial art component to all of this. And this is delivered part of the festival to to try to link a very heavy subject matter with performance. Can you talk about the art that is being done at the festival?

IRVINE:

Part of our mission as we outlined for ourselves, is to really connect these issues through the arts. So art brings up such a different perspective to all of these issues and allows people in different entry point. So every one of our events has an art component to it. It's gonna be, we have a night of drama from high school kids at the North Coast Performing Academy and Eureka High School. We're gonna join together with a play and interpretation of that play on Friday and Saturday the seventh and the eighth. We have the magical tour. There will be music and medical plaza to bring us onto the boat Tuesday. We have a poetry being performed by a local poet who's gonna have a couple of poems around nuclear issues. We have a cabaret evening of burlesque and comedy on Wednesday. On Thursday we have to bring, bring people into synapses and to play during intermission and then on Friday as poetry group of six poets reading poetry around our themes and on Saturday is the music event songwriters contest with winners performing some of their songs on that night as well as to local bands performing. And then we have an art contest that we will be displaying at synapses during the festival. And then all that art will move to the Art Association for a month in mid-November to mid-December. So that's that's the art component of our events.

WHEELER:

It's really impact festival. Let me, let me say what I'm most looking forward to, which is the Friday poetry show because you have two of my favorite poets and Jerry Martin and Katie Curran if you haven't heard them before, they are just absolutely fantastic and really are great environmental poets as well, bringing in constantly themes of nature into their poetry. And they're also friends of of our organization. So going to them as well for that Econews Report.

This week, we're talking with Jack Irvine, the spokesman for the Which Way the Wind Festival? We We are in somewhat perilous times now. It is different in 2022 than it was in 2018 when you first started the festival, there is a renew Discussion on nonproliferation on the threat of nuclear weapons in Russia and the potential deployment by by Russia. So as we record this today, this is Tuesday the 27th. We have sham elections going on in occupied parts of Ukraine and Russia making threats that if these become part of the Russian federation, that the Russian federation will not stop and they will use all means necessary to protect their their land? What what does nuclear nonproliferation look like today? What where are the conversations being had? Where are the prospects for movement in in getting these weapons banned on that at all.

IRVINE:

And I expect Jackie will help us a great deal to understand where that is. I do understand the outcome of the nonproliferation conference that was held just last month. Was no statement. No statement could be reached. The nuclear the nuclear states nine of them are absolutely not moving anywhere in terms of non proliferation. There's no discussion going on That's really disheartening. If you go back to the nonproliferation treaty, which was executed in 1970 there were three pillars of that treaty. One was that the nuclear states that had nuclear weapons would share their knowledge around non weaponry nuclear power. Secondly, all the non nuclear states were Would refrain from becoming nuclear states. And the third and really vital pillar of that was the nuclear states would work toward nuclear disarmament. They next met in 19, I think 95, and agreed then to meet every five years after that. And the non nuclear states, which is basically the rest of the world, other than the nine nuclear states have been saying, you know, you guys are not doing anything about one of these pillars, but we're supposed to do? Everything that we are asked to do? And I think we all not recognize that if the world were voting tomorrow with the world vote for disarmament Or would we vote for another arms race which we're engaged in right now. The us through all of through Obama through Trump onto biden. We are committed to renewing all of our nuclear weaponry over the next 30 years. That suspending somewhere estimated between around $1.7 trillion. That turns out to be like $50 million 30 years. That's what we're committing ourselves to. Meanwhile, Russia is upgrading their nuclear weaponry. China's upgrading their nuclear weaponry. We have north Korea who feels that they're only hanging on as a quote country because they have nuclear weaponry. We are also militarizing space. We are pushing a whole new arms race around hypersonic weaponry. We are moving to a very, very dangerous position in the world. And we also learn through Ukraine and through Putin. But you don't have to explode a nuclear bomb to have nuclear issues. Nuclear power plants in Ukraine have become military targets and the father of war and a missile hits nuclear power plant and destroys and let's all that radiation out. No one will know who did that because each side will say it was, you know, it was me. No, no it wasn't me, it was you and the father of war will not allow us to know all we will know is there's radiation spreading around in the vicinity, it's just a terrible situation at the moment. I think the union of concerned scientists which has been maintaining the doomsday clock for 50 plus years, move that clock to 100 seconds to midnight in 2021. Yes, it's how close we are to nuclear war. The threat of nuclear war and Armageddon. It was they moved in a couple of years ago too, Two minutes to midnight in 2021. They moved to 100 seconds. It's never, ever, ever been that close to midnight in the history of the organization. They haven't changed it with the invasion of Ukraine. Although I know that discussion is ongoing. Um,

GRIFFITH:

I one thing that I I appreciate about this this festival and the renewed focus on it is that tying together the war machine with climate change and with the environment. And that's something that I think that a lot of early environmental activists knew and saw. You can see that like, as I'm looking through old echo knows that these two, these two things are very closely linked together. Right? And that to be pro environment means to be anti war. And I think that that is something that has kind of fallen off of our radar cars recently, certainly since kind of renewed itself during the Iraq war in the early two thousand's when people saw the connection between the war machine and oil. But to really see that these two things are not are not separate at all. They are very, very much linked. And our survival really depends on looking at both of these aspects of it. But I want to go back to something that you see said a minute ago, Jack about a radiation cloud, which made me wonder if that's where the title of this festival and the title of the play comes from. What's the significance of which way the Wind

IRVINE:

Indeed, thank you for asking that. Because when you hear just which way the Wind, I don't know that anybody completely understands what we are about and what our goals are, but which way the wind is the name of the play that Albert Bigelow had commissioned Philip Lewis to write? And the name comes from a line in the play. So near the end of the play, there's a general sitting before a committee of the senate and the senator says to the general, what's what happens general in the nuclear explosion in a large city? And the answer that the general gives, he says senator, that depends on which way the wind blows. And we took that Phil Philip Lewis named his play after that line. And we took that line as something that looks at a variety of things in our world. It's a colloquialism for everything, isn't it? So what are the effects of climate change? Well, that depends which way the wind. What are the effects of a nuclear rods stored at point? Well, that depends, It's which way the wind. So we use that as an entry point to a lot of these issues and that's where that name came from. I guess another thing I'd like to just mention, I think the Golden rule, I'm so proud of the Golden rule and what was done with that boat. So just to give a little background to that for the audience in 2010, that boat sinks over on Fair Haven, right in front of Leroy's Ireland's boatyard. It just goes to the bottom And Leroy had been telling the owner of the boat that he was, he needed to do a better job, taking care of that. We have no idea. So sells the boat when he leaves Honolulu in 1958, we know who owns it then and we know who owns it for a few years after and then it just disappears off the radar. And this boat sinks. Leroy's Erlanger resurrects the boat and pulls it onto his property. But it's a wreck. It is just total wreck. He knows it's sort of a historic boat, but it's such a mess. He decides he's going to call chuck Dewitt and the two of them are going to get a bottle of maker's Mark and they're going to sit and have a bonfire and burn the boat and just have a and get loaded, but he hears it's famous and he sort of puts it out on, I think he puts it out on Ebay and he gets some responses. There are people who know about the Golden Rule. He's contacted by the Smithsonian, he's contacted by Swarthmore who have a large piece collection and he's contacted by other people and he has it for sale, but no one really wants to buy it. But they do think about preserving it. And then the Veterans for Peace in Garberville hears about this and they come up and they want to take a look at this boat. And Freddie Champagne is the head of Garberville Veterans piece and he comes up and he looks at this boat and he says to Leroy, you know, I'd like to take this out as a project. Leroy says, what do you know about boat? And he doesn't know anything, but he's a long time Anti war activist and a fund he knows about fundraising and really he then partners with veterans peace, Humble Bay. And those two groups begin this restoration project in 2010. It takes them five years to get it done in 2015 and able to re launch the boat in the humboldt Bay. This is its homeport. It just left here a month ago, it's now somewhere up in the upper Mississippi I think planning travel down the Mississippi and then through the Great Lakes, active with its mission of working for anti nuclear other connection. I just would love to talk about a little bit. anyway, is how Golden Rule was the inspiration for Greenpeace. Yeah,

WHEELER:

let's talk about that because the Golden Rule was the first, the first time that a boat had been employed for civil disobedience in this sort of way. And and the connection to me seems obvious. But you tell the story.

IRVINE:

Well, there's a group that they were now fast forward in like 19 71 the U. S. Is again doing above ground nuclear testing at this time. There in the aleutian islands in Vancouver british Columbia. There's a group of Canadian anti nuclear activists and expatriate american anti nuclear activists who are there because of the Vietnam era war and they've left and gone to Canada. So this group wants to do something around that issue. And a woman named Helen Boland is a member of this group and she is aware of the history of the golden rule. She comes to this group and says, look what the golden rule did in 1958, we could do something similar. They go out and they get a old fishing boat called the Phyllis Cormack with the intention of sailing that into the nuclear test zone. And the illusions, they rename that boat Greenpeace and they attempt to go into the solutions. They like Golden Rule is stopped by the Coast Guard. They never do get there. But they come back and that's the beginning of Greenpeace as a anti nuclear and then larger role whale. and you know, activism around the world. That's Green pieces connection to Golden Rule.

WHEELER:

Well, I'm not sure how the Golden Rule ended up in humble, but I feel like I feel like given our history of civil disobedience here, it is perfectly appropriate that that we were the place where she was found again.

IRVINE:

Yeah, I think you know, it's that activism that leads these guys to rebuild this boat over five year period of time really devote an enormous amount of time and energy to that effort. It's really a monumental undertaking. They do.

WHEELER:

So you said that she is sailing on the Mississippi now

IRVINE:

the intention, you can go to their website Golden Rule and find out that route. But yes, I believe that their intention is to sail along the Mississippi through the Great Lakes into the ST Lawrence and doing their activism along the way.

WHEELER:

Yeah, very cool.

GRIFFITH:

This time. I feel like we should put a shout out in there for the veterans for peace because I got to say that that is an organization that their civil disobedience around the world is really inspiring. And they have been connecting environmental issues and war for as long as I've known about them and they're out there protesting climate change, they're shutting things down and I think like really kind of going under the radar here. So when you when you pass the fellas in front of the courthouse next thursday or whenever there there, give them a honker, stop by and say hello there. Really pretty red.

IRVINE:

They definitely are. They've been great partners for us as well. They were, they were the sponsoring organization. We started, we're now in the humbled area Foundation but they sponsored us in 18 and 19. Peter Aronson who has been a 40 year member of Veterans for Peace and stood In front of the courthouse on Friday afternoons for 20 years. Every single Friday is a member of our steering committee and very active and we're very connected to veterans for peace. I just talked to, had a communication with Freddy Champagne just the other day as well. So still doing it in fortuna.

WHEELER:

Yeah, very cool. All right. So if you're interested in more information, the festival runs from October seven through the 15th and you can find more at which way the wind.org. You can also find that link in our show notes on the lost coast outpost dot com. Jack, thank you so much for joining the Econews Report and I look forward to seeing you at the festival.

IRVINE:

Great to be invited. I appreciate that. Love everybody to join us. I think we have really an outstanding program to present to the community. So thanks again

WHEELER:

and join us again on this time and channel next week for more environmental news from the north coast of California.