NH #394: UChicago Nuclear Die-In at Atomic Pile Commemoration – New Anti-Nuke Generation’s India Weston

UChicago’s Henry Moore Statue “Nuclear Energy” was surrounded by body outlines
representing the civilians who were killed by atomic bomb blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Photos: Brittney Dorton

This Week’s Featured Interview:

  • UChicago’s India Weston, a remarkable young anti-nuclear activist, fills us in on the new-media way she first discovered the hidden nuclear history, how she grew in her understanding nuclear issues under the mentorship of Prof. Norma Field, and not only what motivated her to head-up two extremely effective protests at UChicago, but what they were and what they did.  It’s an encouraging story, for a change, of how to engage a younger generation in learning about nuclear issues and continuing the legacy of anti-nuclear work.

Two views of India Weston’s most recent anti-nuclear action, at the Henry Moore sculpture “Nuclear Energy” on the campus of UChicago.  On the left, the blacking in of outlines of the die-in demonstrators from 2017.  On the right, the “ghosts” left behind after either rain or campus-mandated scrubbing of the paint – an eerie reminder that the true legacy of the atomic bomb is not in the sky, but on the ground.  View from adjacent scientist-filled building:

Original Die-in Body Images in black.

“Cleaned up” ghost-like body images – a different       kind of nuclear legacy.

LINK to India Weston’s paper, “Artistic Interventions in UChicago’s Nuclear Media Ecology: Methods and Analysis.”  Clumsy academic title; interesting read.

Numnutz of the Week (for Outstanding Nuclear Boneheadedness):

Two words:  Chernobyl.  Rave.  Final thought:  Oy!

Activist Links:

  • Backgrounder on the work of Marco Kaltofen and his work measuring radioactive contamination in communities around nuclear sites.  This is the work that busted Hanford on the contamination of workers after two 2018 accidents and is now in place in a 25 mile radius of the Santa Susana Field Lab, the site of a 1959 nuclear meltdown and the start of the recent Woolsey Fire, only 30 miles from downtown Los Angeles.