Peace activists spoke, rallied and rapped outside Main Gym on April 30 to protest the University of California’s involvement with nuclear weapons research and the Bush administration’s stance on nuclear weapons proliferation.
Guardian
California Peace Action, a peace lobbying organization, came to “”educate students about UC’s role in the war machine,”” according to California Peace Action campus coordinator and UC Berkeley student Inez Sunwoo.
Hip-hop group La Paz performed at the event, rapping about police brutality and other social issues.
The UCSD Skillshare collective and the Progressive Student Alliance invited California Peace Action and La Paz to UCSD. This was the seventh stop on California Peace Action’s tour of college campuses. About 15 people attended.
“”The University of California is responsible for the development and testing of every nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal,”” Sunwoo said.
The University of California operates the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos laboratories for the U.S. Department of Energy. Among other things, the labs research and develop nuclear weapons.
Using the university to conduct testing lends academic credibility to the deployment of weapons of mass destruction, Sunwoo said.
Nathan Britton, the Southern California assistant political director for California Peace Action, spoke on the larger role of nuclear weapons in maintaining a “”grossly disproportionate distribution of resources globally.””
The role of the University of California in nuclear development is obscured from students, according to Britton. He said if it were more visible, students and faculty would not support the nuclear research, and students would be less inclined to apply for jobs and graduate work in Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos labs.
A.S. Commissioner of Student Advocacy Brie Finegold, one of the event’s organizers, declined to comment.
Herbert F. York, a former UCSD chancellor, was the first head of the Lawrence Livermore lab in 1952. York initiated lab research that included a magnetic fusion program, diagnostic weapon experiments, the design of thermonuclear weapons and a basic physics program.
