INTERFAITH WORKER JUSTICE NEW MEXICO NEWS
The 11th Annual “Witness for the People” is slated for noon on Friday, Jan. 31 in the rotunda of the Roundhouse. The event commemorates the 75th anniversary of Trinity, the first atomic bomb test on July 16, 1945 in New Mexico.
Confirmed speakers for the event include:
- Lt. Gov. Howie Morales
- Archbishop John C. Wester, Diocese of Santa Fe
- Marian Naranjo, founder of Honor Our Pueblo Existence (HOPE)
- Tina Cordova, Co-Founder of Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium (TBDC)
- Ken Mayers, Major USMC ret., Veterans for Peace
We gather in the state where it all began to kick-off a full year of events around the world marking the first atomic bomb in human history in 1945 right here in New Mexico. While “the bomb” may have been necessary to end World War II it also resulted in devastating consequences for the Peoples of New Mexico.
Untold hundreds, perhaps thousands, of men, women and children living in the surrounding counties were exposed to radiation after the blast on July 16. They suffered and died as a result of radiation exposure. Genetic effects have been passed on to their children and their children’s children. Thus, the health and economic loss, and generational trauma continue while the people of New Mexico fight to be recognized and compensated by their own federal government through the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990 (RECA).
A Congressional Budget Office report in February estimates that the United States will spend $494 billion on nuclear weapons from fiscal years 2019 through 2028. That is an increase of $94 billion, or 23 percent, from the CBO’s previous 10-year estimate of $400 billion, which was published in January 2017. (March 2019.) The Trump administration’s budget proposal contains increases for several Defense and Energy department nuclear weapons systems.
As Pope Francis stated this year in Hiroshima: “In a world where millions of children and families live in inhumane conditions, the money that is squandered and the fortunes made through the manufacture, upgrading, maintenance and sale of ever more destructive weapons, are an affront crying out to heaven.”
Tina Cordova, co-founder of the TBDC states, “After 75 years, we are still waiting for acknowledgement and the help we so desperately need and deserve. The science is on our side. The time has come. This is the year for Congress to approve the RECA amendments to bring justice to the people of New Mexico.”
Music will be provided by Paul Pino and the Tone Daddies. Pino is a member of the TBDC steering committee and a Downwinder from Carrizozo.
The public is invited to both events. Admission is free.