Plans are afoot for the demolition of the Trojan Nuclear Plant’s cooling tower. I hope to be there, although not nearly as close to the monstrosity as I’ve been in times past.
For many of us, the cooling tower at the Trojan Nuclear Plan has stood for more than 30 years as a huge symbol.
At first, it represented Promethean hubris, science and technology gone mad, and of course a special distillation of corporate greed that these days could be termed “Enronic.” There stood a lurking, toxic threat to the health of surrounding communities in a radius of hundreds of miles.
But over the years following our spate of direct action protests (“occupations,” we called them) in the late 1970s, the nuclear tower has come to symbolize something different and even more profound. When I see it now, it reminds us of a way to press for social change that always seems to be an endangered species on our political landscape. What we enthusiastically brought to our struggle against Trojan was a method that had discipline, courage, compassion and selflessness at its core. We had looked to great historical teachers for help in applying a special kind of force – what Gandhi had termed “soul force,” and Dr. King called “the most powerful force in the universe.”
Gandhi once said that he had invented nothing new, yet it seems necessary to keep reinventing or rediscovering this method called satyagraha. In today’s increasingly troubled America, we must choose the only method that has any chance of success long-term. Some of us will be labeled “terrorists” even as we uphold our pledge of harmlessness.
But the truth will out, and prevail.
Vip B. Short
Eugene Resident