Hundreds Are Arrested in Anti-Nuclear Protest

MERCURY, Nev. —  More than 740 trespassing citations were issued Sunday to demonstrators during a Mothers Day protest against nuclear testing that attracted 2,000 people to the Nevada Test Site, officials said.

Department of Energy spokesman Jim Boyer said many of those arrested for trespassing returned to be cited a second and third time after being released on their own recognizance, so a precise count of individuals cited was difficult to determine.

“We had 746 trespassing citations,” said Karen Swanson of the Nye County sheriff’s office. “We’re going through them right now to determine if the same people were arrested several times. They were all arrested for trespassing and they all were released.”

The number of protesters willing to be arrested apparently was swelled by an announcement earlier this month from Nye County Dist. Atty. Philip Dunleavy that his office will no longer prosecute demonstrators who walked across the boundary of the restricted nuclear testing facility during organized protests.

When some of the demonstrators, billing themselves as “Mothers and Others,” walked across a cattle guard on the roadway leading into the test site 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, authorities placed plastic handcuffs on the trespassers and took them to a control point about two miles away where they were cited and released. Many immediately returned to the demonstration site.

The demonstration rivaled the largest anti-nuclear protest ever held at the test site, last Feb. 5, when 2,000 people gathered and 438 were arrested for trespassing. Those charges subsequently were dropped.

Anti-nuclear demonstrators gathered about 7 a.m. Sunday in 90-degree temperatures in a desert parking lot near the entrance to the test site.

They were greeted by about 350 test site workers and their families who waved American flags and carried signs reading: “Trust testing or test trusting” and “Go home mothers.”

Barbara Cones, an organizer of the anti-nuclear demonstration said, “Women from across the United States are demanding an end to testing at the site where nuclear weapons are detonated every three weeks while the predominantly male Congress debates cutting funds for nuclear weapons testing.”