War and Peace and Nuclear Weapons ~ Class at Cherith Brook

During the month of February we will be talking about the new nuclear weapons plant in Kansas City and how our faith in Jesus informs our response to weapons of mass destruction.  

So all are welcome to come to Cherith Brook Catholic Worker every Tuesday in the month of February at 7 PM, to learn and deepen our faith.  

Classes will include discussion of scripture as it relates to war and nuclear weapons, a documentary on nukes, information about the current state of the nuclear weapons plant in Kansas City, and we will conclude the class with a time to discuss ways we can act on what we have learned durning the class.  

We hope to see you tomorrow!

Cherith Brook Advent Newspaper Now Online

We recently released our Advent 2010 newspaper. Be sure to read it and let us know what you think.

Advent 2010

Also, below is an article from that paper.

The New Kansas City Nuclear Weapons Plant

Contrary to President Obama’s rhetoric about a future nuclear weapons-free world, the U.S. is rebuilding the nuclear weapons complex of the Department of Energy’s semi-autonomous agency the National Nuclear Security Administration. This includes a new facility for expanded production of plutonium pits (the nuclear weapons cores or “primaries”) at Los Alamos, NM; a new facility at Oak Ridge, TN to manufacture highly enriched uranium thermonuclear “secondaries”; and a new Kansas City Plant that will manufacture and/or procure the thousands of nonnuclear components that transform nuclear weapons into deliverable weapons of mass destruction.

Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies (FM&T) LLC manages and operates the Kansas City Plant for the NNSA. Out of the eight U.S. nuclear weapons complex sites, the Kansas City Plant (KCP) is the most productive, producing and/or procuring 85% of all nuclear weapons components both by type and quantity. It specializes in a wide range of nonnuclear components, such as radars, guidance systems, arming, firing and fusing sets and reservoirs for tritium (a radioactive isotope of gaseous hydrogen used to boost the destructive power of nuclear weapons). KCP boasts that it ships 5,000 nuclear weapons components per month. Honeywell FM&T has said that the Plant’s workload is the heaviest it has been in 20 years, expected to last until 2015. This is astonishing given that a little over 20 years ago was the height of the Cold War nuclear weapons build-up under President Reagan.

KCP was originally built to manufacture Pratt and Whitney fighter planes engines during WWII. In 1949 the Atomic Energy Commission commissioned the Bendix Corporation to build non-nuclear weapons components at KCP with Plant ownership formally transferred to the federal government. Through a series of subsequent mergers and hostile takeovers the Bendix Corporation became AlliedSignal in 1983 and eventually Honeywell in 1999. Since then the Plant has been managed and operated by Honeywell FM&T, whose contract NNSA just extended for five years without competitive bid.

The new plutonium and HEU facilities mentioned above are now estimated to cost U.S. taxpayers up to $5 billion each. The new KCP is different since it is being built and operated by the private developer CenterPoint Zimmer (CPZ) LLC eight miles south of the existing Plant in the NW quadrant of Hwy 150 and Botts Road (groundbreaking occurred this last September 8). This limited liability corporation is composed of the Kansas City magnate Zimmer Real Estate Services and Chicago-based CenterPoint Property Trust. Zimmer just “happened” to own the 165 acres that the federal government chose as the site for new Plant.

In a very convoluted financing scheme, CPZ sold the site’s land to the KCMO’s Planned Industrial Expansion Authority (PIEA) for $5 million. But in July 2008 the PIEA declared that the 165-acre site was “blighted,” despite the fact that it was being actively farmed for soybean production. Still, this didn’t prevent CPZ from selling the land to the City for an estimated $26,000 an acre, when regional farmland typically sells for $2,000 to $4,000 an acre, one very tidy profit for “blighted” land!

The PIEA declared the site “blighted” so that construction of this new federal nuclear weapons production plant could be subsidized by KCMO municipal bonds. The Missouri state government created Planned Industrial Expansion Authorities to counter urban/industrial blight and spur economic development. The PIEAs’ charter is to recommend to city councils whether or not tax abatements and/or bonds should be implemented to fight blight. The enabling legislation that created the PIEAs declares that Missouri municipal governments can act positively on a PIEA recommendation only when “the development of such area or areas is necessary in the interest of the public health, safety, morals or welfare of the residents of such city.”

KCMO is closing many hospitals and schools and laying off workers, but nevertheless managed to issue nearly $700 million in municipal bonds to subsidize a new federal nuclear weapons production plant. [$10.6 million is being used to improve utilities and the Hwy 150/Botts Road intersection, which will also benefit CenterPoint Zimmer’s NAFTA intermodal transportation center on the other side of Hwy 150 at the former Richards-Gebaur Air Force Base.] The KCMO Council approved municipal bonds in the name of saving 2,100 jobs in the local nuclear weapons industry (with one admirable dissenting vote-of-conscience by Councilman Ed Ford). The nuclear weapons industry is arguably immoral, with for example the Vatican declaring, “Nuclear weapons are incompatible with the peace we seek for the 21st century. They cannot be justified. They deserve condemnation.” Further, the nuclear weapons industry has adversely affected the health of hundreds of workers at the old Plant.

Local Kansas City citizens should ask why the KCMO municipal government is not prioritizing sustainable green jobs, instead of subsidizing a hopefully shrinking industry whose purpose is to produce weapons of mass destruction? With respect to the public health of Kansas City citizens, according to U.S. Dept. of Labor statistics, 1,993 former KCP workers or their survivors have filed health claims seeking compensation, of which only 211 have been paid to date.

The KCMO municipal government will own the new KCP after construction. As far as I know this is globally unprecedented to have a city own a federal nuclear weapons production plant. The PIEA will then lease it to a CenterPoint Zimmer Holding LLC, who as sub-landlord, will lease it to the private developers CenterPoint Zimmer LLC. CPZ will then sub-sublease the new Plant to the federal General Services Administration (GSA), who acts as landlord for numerous federal properties (including the old KCP in the Banister Federal Complex). GSA will then sub-sub-sublease this new federal nuclear weapons production plant to the NNSA. Got that? It’s way convoluted.

Because the new KCP is being built and operated by “private developers” who stand to profit many time times over, this new federal nuclear weapons components production plant is not included in the NNSA’s annual Congressional Budget Requests. It is therefore outside of typical Congressional review and appropriations, and perhaps would have been rejected. It is a very sweet deal for Centerpoint Zimmer, who first sold the land to the PIEA; then is subsidized by municipal bonds sales to build the Plant; is granted a 20-year lease-to-purchase by the PIEA in which it pays the bonds back with guaranteed income from the NNSA; and after that owns the Plant outright.

During this 20-year term the NNSA will pay $1.2 billion in lease costs, not a good deal for the American taxpayer. Leaving aside the question whether the new Plant is needed to begin with, the NNSA has repeatedly justified it by claiming it will save $100 million in operational costs compared to the old Plant. But a report by the federal Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that lowering security requirements at the Kansas City Plant to reflect the simple fact that it does not have large inventories of nuclear materials would save $37 million annually. A new Plant is not needed for that.

Moreover, after a first round of bidding by private developers for the project went bust, according to one report “Based in part on specific cost-cutting advice from CenterPoint, the solicitation was restructured.” This perhaps means that the contract was hallowed out in order to make a second round of bidding successful. In any event, CPZ was awarded the contract, but NNSA started asking Congress for around $100 million in “transition costs” for moving to the new Plant in each fiscal year 2009-2015, despite earlier claims by NNSA that the new KCP would not cost the federal government any up front money.

Finally, leasing is more costly over the long term than constructing and owning a facility outright. The GAO found that the break-even point of construction costs vs. lease costs for the new KCP is 22 years. However, the new Plant could be operational for 40-60 years, and therefore the federal government could pay another $1.2 to $2.4 billion in lease costs to the private developers. Life Extension Programs for existing nuclear weapons are already scheduled to last until at least 2042, for which the Kansas City Plant is the main supplier of components.

The NNSA wrote in its recent Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan that “because the new facility will be leased, there will be no capital investment and NNSA will not be burdened by costs for legacy disposition should the mission ever be discontinued.” The “legacy” of the old Plant is one of serious contamination with cancer-causing volatile organic compounds (mostly industrial solvents) and PCBs, for which NNSA has formulated no comprehensive cleanup plan. NNSA plans to be fully operating in the new Plant in a couple of years while in effect abandoning the old Plant. The Kansas City municipal government is counting on reusing the existing Plant for local economic development, which probably cannot take place without comprehensive cleanup costing more than $250 million. Kansas City subsidies for a new nuclear weapons production plant reward the federal government even as the federal government ignores its moral responsibility to protect its citizens and their future economic prosperity through full environmental restoration of the old Plant. The federal government should be cleaning up its nuclear weapons complex, not building it up!

For much more information, visit http://kcnukeswatch.wordpress.com/ and http://www.nukewatch.org/KCNukePlant/index.html
See NukeWatch NM’s interactive map on the nuclear weapons complex at http://www.nukewatch.org/activemap/index.html
Please support these local organizations working on Kansas City Plant (KCP) issues: Physicians for Social Responsibility-Kansas City, PeaceWorks Kansas City and the Cherith Brooks Catholic Workers House.

Jay Coghlan
Executive Director
Nuclear Watch New Mexico
www.nukewatch.org

December Work Day & Other Appeals

Our Second Saturday work day is already upon us so put it on your calenders for December the 11th, from 9-1 pm, and we will eat together to finish our day.

We will be working on the following projects:

Deck Work

Insulation

Mortar Work

Electrical projects

Tiling projects

and of course there will always be work to do in the clothing closet!

Hope to see you all here!

Few other requests......

We are looking to get a wood stove to help heat the shower space for our friends who come to showers.  If you have one you would like to donate, please let us know.

As many of you know, a prized possession for those who come to showers is a hooded sweatshirt.  So, for the up coming Christmas, we are hoping to make 40 gift bags for our shower friends,which will include a hooded sweatshirt.  We would like to be able to get new, sturdy hoodies, and hope to get some that are fair trade.  If you have new hooded sweatshirts you would like to donate, or if you would like to send money for the purchase of fair trade sweatshirts, we and our showers friends would be very grateful.  Thank you very much.

Festival of Shelters Sept 26 & 27

Cherith Brook Catholic Worker
invites you to join us in our 3rd annual
Festival of Shelters

Sunday, September 26 at 5pm ~
Celebration of shelter and blessing for the homeless

Monday, September 27 at 5pm ~
Celebration of the Harvest of God’s provision
(shared dinner together)

WHAT IS THE FESTIVAL OF SHELTERS?
The Festival of Shelters comes to us from Leviticus 23:42 where the People of God are instructed to build simple shelters and to live in them for seven days remembering a lifetime of days spent homeless, wandering the wilderness, in search of food and water, hoping for a promised place. The Festival also became a harvest celebration where the people remembered what it was like to be hungry and thirsty and to show gratitude for God’s provision of food.

WHY DO WE DO IT?
Our Festival of Shelters is intended to be a challenge to resist and celebration of rejoicing:

 We who have plenty are reminded that we have all experienced need and , that it is God who provides our needs;

 we are challenged to move away from greed and pride of wealth and accumulation toward a more just society where affordable housing is a right;

 to remember that the stranger, the wanderer, the homeless and the hungry are specially loved and cared for by God.

HOW YOU CAN PARTICIPATE!
On Sunday afternoon, September 26 we will begin setting up structures that represent the different kinds of homeless suffering in our city: Those on the streets, the refugee experience, the undocumented immigrant, and the sexually exploited woman.

At 5pm we will have a liturgy that speaks to the different experiences of those without shelter in our society and calls us to greater justice.

Three groups will be sent out this year to spend time on the streets. They will be blessed and sent out after the liturgy. Monday evening we will share a dinner and a time of sharing reflections on homelessness. Please let us know by Tuesday, September 21 if you are interested in spending the night on the streets and which group you are interested in. There will be limited spaces to keep the groups small.

Group 1: Leaves Sunday night and returns Monday morning

Group 2: Leaves Sunday Night and returns Monday for 5pm dinner

Group 3: Leaves Monday morning and returns Monday for 5pm dinner.

Call if you have questions: 816-241-8047.

2nd Saturday Work Day - September 11 @ 9am to 1pm

Please join us to help with the following projects:

small electrical projects
caulking and painting
gardening
cleaning
sorting clothes
cutting down trees (need chainsaws)
basic repair projects

October 22nd Clarification Meeting

Dr. Ed Chasteen asks, What do we win? The answer is, FRIENDS! Will Rogers is famous for having said, “I never met a man I didn’t like.” Dr. Chasteen has always wondered if he would have said, “I never liked a man I didn’t meet.”

Five friends will join us on October 22nd for a Clarification Meeting on Race and Religious Relations from 7 to 8:30pm. Our panel discussion will be led by the following folks:

Bassam Helwani - a businessman from Syria who lives in Lawrence, he attended KU.
Ed Chasteen - likes to meet every person he can and expects to like every person he meets.
Samuel Shareef - a Kansas City businessman who heads a non-profit to help young black males.
Taalib-ud-Din Al Ansare - a Muslim chaplain at Research Hospital.
Yahya Furqan - a Vietnam vet, a Muslim Imam and a father of 11 beautiful children.

Dr. Chasteen says, We five are friends. We meet together nearly every week to plan and dream. Four of us are Muslim. One is Christian. One was born in Syria. Three trace their roots to Africa; one to Europe. We go by invitation anywhere in the Kansas City area to talk to folks about the ordinary, everyday things that give meaning to all our lives: our parents, our brothers and sisters, grandparents, uncles, aunts; our home town, our wives, our children, our schooling, our jobs, our neighborhoods, our favorite foods, our leisure time activities, our hobbies. Friendships need not be limited by race or religion. We all are part of humanity. We all are weak and fragile, easily made fearful of the future and of each other. Life at its longest is short. Friends help us make it through the day. That’s what by our presence we demonstrate. Invite us and we will come. Join us and we will win.

Please study the verse Galatians 3:28 "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." and be prepared with questions you may have for our panel.

Kansas City WMDs - Not on our watch!

From our friend Frank Burgh:

Kansas City WMDs - Not on our watch!

Over 75 protesters, ranging in age from 8 to nearly 80 and hailing from 12 states, descended upon the construction site of a future Nuclear Bomb manufacturing plant this morning, blocking power equipment and bringing construction activities to a halt for nearly 2 hours. KC police eventually arrested 14 protesters, all of whom were released this afternoon. The plant will be the first new USA nuclear weapons manufacturing facility in 32 years, despite President Obama's continued message of nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament.

The Kansas City government is actively seeking to subsidize this new federal nuclear weapons production plant with $815 million in municipal bonds outside of NNSA's annual budget. Taxpayers will pay an estimated $4.5 billion over 20 years for the new Kansas City Plant, which is intended to replace the current KC Plant. The existing plant has been in operation since 1949, manufacturing 85% of the non-nuclear components of the USA's nuclear arsenal, despite documented reports of health and environmental hazards resulting in employee illnesses and ecosystem contamination.
Please see the following:

http://www.nbcactionnews.com/dpp/news/local_news/groups-to-protest-site-of-new-weapons-plant-in-southern-kansas-city
http://blog.ericbowersphoto.com/2010/08/kansas-city-nuclear-plant-protest/
http://www.nukewatch.org/KCNukePlant/
http://kcnukeswatch.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/statement-of-resistance-to-nuclear-weapons-production-in-kansas-city-mo-aug-16/
http://www.kansascity.com/2010/08/16/2153596/kc-police-arrest-nuclear-protesters.html
http://www.kansascity.com/2010/08/16/2154151/police-arrest-14-at-honeywell.html
http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/activists-gather-kansas-city-resist-nuclear-weapons-plant
http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=2010kc-nukes
http://iplextra.indiatimes.com/article/0bH28WB8qH95f?q=Kansas+City
http://www.allvoices.com/news/6533244-kc-police-arrest-nuclear-protesters-at-honeywell-construction-site
Resources:
http://groups.google.com/group/kcnukewatch?pli=1

Green Jobs, Not Mean Jobs.
Clean it. Close it. Don't Repeat it.

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And from our friend Ron Faust:

I wonder if most people understand the complexity, secrecy and seriousness of the KC plant. It is a key component of the nuclear weapons strategy with Los Alamos NM and Oak Ridge TN, but we are what makes it work. Purported to be $685 million but rising into the billions, the city has collaborated with tax abatements over the next 20 years, leased from Zimmer for 5.4 million and justifying their role in offering jobs. Although we have some confusion about a Jim Cross ? owning this land. Yet, this seems to be the mantra for building weapons without wondering what will be the result. The protestors spread over the field and shut down the bulldozers scouring over the soy bean field declared as a blighted area. They planted seeds and raised sun flower replicas. Police tried to issue orders of trespassing and to move from the area, but it was like herding too many cats. Fourteen were arrested, many who have a faith based reason to engage in civil disobedience and raise the question of what we are trying to do to ourselves. The inertia to extract this cancer seems terminal once the lump of nuclear weapons is created. Allerting the public continues.

Peace, Ron

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And from friend Frank Cordaro:

Aug. 17, 2010
National Catholic Reporter

"Catholic activists arrested at Kansas City nuclear weapons facility"

By Joshua J. McElwee - NCR staff writer jmcelwee@ncronline.org

http://ncronline.org/news/peace/catholic-activists-arrested-kansas-city-nuclear-weapons-facility

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Singing choruses of “we shall not be moved” while
scattering sunflower seeds, 14 activists were arrested here Aug. 16
after blocking an earth moving vehicle on the site of a proposed
nuclear weapons manufacturing facility.

The acts of civil disobedience came at the end of a three-day
conference which drew peace activists here from around the nation. The
efforts were aimed at building awareness of and resistance to the
construction of the weapons plant, which will replace an existing
plant here.

The new plant, which will make non-nuclear parts for nuclear weapons,
is set to be the nation’s first new major nuclear weapons production
facility in 32 years.

Before their arrest the protestors walked onto a soybean field being
plowed by several earth moving vehicles as part of the plant building
preparation effort. The group, walking in a single file, held hands;
some carried large signs. They approached and surrounded one of the
vehicles, forcing the driver to stop her work, and eventually leading
20 other vehicles to halt theirs as well.

After about a 45 minute shut down, police arrived, announcing the
protesters had two minutes to leave the privately-owned grounds. The
flurry of activity stopped all work at the site for over an hour.

In a statement to the press before they began their action, the
activists called the new facility a “crime against peace” and a “crime
against humanity.”

This is the second time that people have been arrested for civil
disobedience to the plant in two months. On Aug. 6 a local activist,
Jane Stoever, was sentenced to eight hours of community service for
having blocked the entrance to the current facility, known simply as
the Kansas City Plant. Her action took place in June.

Currently a part of the Bannister Federal Complex, located about 13
miles south of the city’s downtown area, the Kansas City Plant is
responsible for the production and assembly of approximately 85
percent of the non-nuclear components for the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
The plant is due to be relocated in 2012 to the “more modern
facility.”

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), a division of the
U.S. Department of Energy, has said the new facility will carry an
estimated price tag of $673 million for construction and $1.2 billion
over the next 20 years

Coming from 15 states and three countries by bus, train, airplane, and
caravan, anti-nuclear activists gathered here to attend the weekend
conference leading up to the civil disobedience in a local Methodist
church.

Recalling her 30 years working at the current site of the nuclear
weapons facility, Barbara Rice told those in attendance that she had
lost count of how many of her colleagues had died of cancer after 110
passed away from various kinds of the illnesses.

While she said she couldn’t prove that the deaths were related to
chemical exposure at the current facility, Rice remembered one
instance when a pipe burst at the plant and her supervisors told her
to “go home immediately and destroy her clothes.”

At the same event, Jay Coghlan, executive director of the watchdog
group Nuclear Watch New Mexico, said the new plant in Kansas City is
only one of several projects underway to increase U.S. nuclear weapons
production capability.

Coghlan said that while the international community thinks the U.S. is
working towards nuclear disarmament, "the reality is that we’re
building 3 new sites: one to process uranium, one to process
plutonium, and one to create the non-nuclear parts of the weapons such
as triggers and fuses.”

The three sites Coghlan referred to are the Oak Ridge National
Laboratory in Tennessee, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New
Mexico and the new Kansas City Plant.

While the new facility in Kansas City is expected to continue
production of non-nuclear parts for nuclear weapons, the Chemistry and
Metallurgy Research Replacement Project at Los Alamos plans to
increase U.S. capability to produce plutonium pits, the core of a
nuclear weapon, according to Coghlan. Meanwhile, the facility at Oak
Ridge plans to reinvest in its capability to produce uranium
components for the weapons.

In the original proposal for the Kansas City project, CenterPoint
Zimmer LLC — the company which won the bidding process to design and
build the plant for the NNSA — said the new facility would simply
modernize operations for nuclear weapons parts production while
ensuring the continued employment of “a minimum of 2,100 workers at
the campus in good ‘quality jobs.’ ”

The day before the arrests the activists visited the two Kansas City
Plant sites for prayer and reflection.

After walking with the rest of the activists on the side of a busy
street where the current plant is located, Japanese native-born
Mercedarian Sr. Filo Hirota told those gathered that she envisioned a
new world order in which the “principle of nonviolence is translated
into the way how the world is organized.”

Hirota, who is the international relations officer for the Catholic
Council for Justice and Peace of the Episcopal Conference of Japan,
asked in a prayer following her brief talk for an economy “that
creates communion in equal and just relationships.”

Arriving in a caravan at the field where the new facility for the
nuclear weapons plant is under construction, activists came together
there near idle bulldozers where they blessed the land and asked
forgiveness in view of its future use.

Tom Kascoli, a Native American of Apache and Navajo background,
blessed each of the assembled, waving an eagle’s feather over a
burning sage stick while chanting a prayer in his native tongue.

Editor's Note: For more photographs from the event Aug. 16 take a look
at the slideshow in below link:
http://picasaweb.google.com/joshua.mac/KansasCityPlantConferenceWeekend?feat=flashalbum#5506406936781327026

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14 protesters who got arrested. Ed Bloomer c/o DMCW IA,Felice Cohen-Joppa Nulcear Resister - Tucson AZ, Steve Jacobs Columbia MO CW, Frank Cordaro holding banner DMCW IA, Fr Jerry Zawada ofm Tucson AZ, Rachael Hoffman
Holy Family CW KC MO, Gina Cook Holy Family CW KC MO, Robby Jones
Columbia MO CW, Brian Terrell Maloy IA CW, Josh Armfield
Cherith Brook CW KC MO, Donna Constantineau KC MO, Beth Seberger
KC MO, Eric Garbison
Cherith Brook CW KC MO and Steve Clemens
Minneapolis MN

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Local NBC KC TV News Report:
http://www.nbcactionnews.com/dpp/news/local_news/groups-to-protest-site-of-new-weapons-plant-in-southern-kansas-city

"KC police arrest nuclear protesters at Honeywell construction site"
KC Star News Paper
http://www.kansascity.com/2010/08/16/2153596/kc-police-arrest-nuclear-protesters.html#ixzz0wsuwzXAN


Cherith Brook Community
3308 E 12th St
Kansas City, MO 64127
816-241-8047
cherithbrookkcmo@yahoo.com
cherithbrookkc.blogspot.com