WELCOME
Nukewatch is a Wisconsin-based environmental and peace action group, dedicated to the abolition of nuclear power, weapons and continued radioactive waste production. Nukewatch brings critical attention to the locations, movements, dangers, and the politics of nuclear weapons and dangerous wastes. Staff and volunteers advocate Gandhian nonviolence in education and action, and report on nuclear issues in the Nukewatch Quarterly newsletter.
Nukewatch began in 1979 in response to the cold war build up of nuclear weapons and the secrecy surrounding the nuclear industry. Nukewatch conducted TrackWatch; a program to monitor and expose secret shipments of radioactive waste on U.S. rails; TruckWatch, the transportation of H-bombs and component parts in unmarked trucks by the DOE; in 1987/88 Nukewatch mapped all 1,000 land-based nuclear missiles (now reduced to 400) for educational and organizing purposes and published two books on the ICBMs. We have a long history of successful grassroots organizing across the nation.
Nukewatch organized — for 13 years — two to four activities each year at the Navy’s Project E.L.F. (Extremelyh Low Frequency) in northern Wisconsin in opposition to this first-strike nuclear war communication system. It was closed on September 30, 2004.
ABOUT NUKEWATCH
Nukewatch is based ten miles east of Luck, Wisconsin on the Plowshares Land Trust. The troup functions as an independent education and action group working for peace and justice, with a primary focus on the radioactive pollution and militarism. The organization’s various projects bring critical attention to the locations, movements, dangers, and the politics of nuclear weapons, nuclear power and radioactive wastes. Staff and volunteers advocate nonviolence in the spirit of the civil rights movement in education and action to abolish war and nuclearism.
The Progressive Foundation
Nukewatch is fiscally sponsored by the Progressive Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non profit organization, which permits supporters to make tax-deductible contributions. The Progressive Foundation was born in a Milwaukee, Wisconsin courtroom on March 9, 1979, when a federal judge handed down a precedent-shattering decree restraining The Progressive magazine from publishing an article about secrecy in the U.S. nuclear weapons program. The Progressive Foundation was created by the magazine to educate the public about the issues in that historic First Amendment case. In the fall of 1979, the government abandoned its attempted censorship of The Progressive, and the foundation has since been independent of the magazine.
Investigation
Government secrecy and misinformation help keep the nuclear industry alive. Nukewatch investigates the industry and its government collaborators and lets the public know what is often unreported, under-reported or kept hidden. An example of this type of work is the Missile Silo Mapping Project. In the mid 1980s, Nukewatch organized hundreds of volunteers across the country to find and document the location of all 1,000 land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Prior to our mapping project, U.S. citizens were not informed of the missiles’ locations, although the information was available to foreign governments through satellite surveillance and treaty agreements. Maps, post cards and the 1988 Nukewatch book Nuclear Heartland: A guide to the 1,000 missile silos of the United States were some of the results of this three-year project. In 2015, we produced the 2nd edition, Nuclear Heartland, Revised Edition: A guide to the 450 land-based missiles of the United States, co-edited by John LaForge and Arianne Peterson.
Nonviolent Protest and Resistance
Throughout human history, nonviolent direct action has played a constructive and formidable role in confronting and overcoming injustice, violence and war. Nukewatch offers workshops and training in nonviolence and conscientious civil resistance as a way of life and as a tool for creating positive social change on a grass-roots level. We define nonviolence as the avoidance of injury to other people, whether deliberate or unintentional. This nonviolence thoroughly embraces the acceptance of personal responsibility for the consequences of our actions, legal and otherwise. This acceptance of responsibility for civil resistance has led Nukewatch activists to endure the ordeal of jail-going many times.
NUKEWATCH STAFF
Lindsay Potter
We are happy to welcome Lindsay Potter to the Nukewatch staff! Lindsay is a writer, farmer, activist, and a full-time mother. After completing BA’s in poetry and journalism, Lindsay has spent several years farming and now dedicates her time to getting back to the land, caring for family, and participating in community grassroots organizing for social, racial, and environmental/climate justice. Most recently Lindsay focused on two projects: working in Osceola, Wisconsin to protect the groundwater and the St. Croix River from harmful frac sand mining practices at the North 40 Mine, particularly as a member of the Town Board Committee drafting a new ordinance limiting and regulating the mine; and working with Amery (Wisc.) United, a community group dedicated to racial justice organizing, that planned monthly rallies throughout the summer of 2020 and now focuses on building awareness of racism in rural Wisconsin by hosting diverse educational speakers, working with local school boards to address discussions and curricula around race, and creating events encouraging celebration and centering of Black American culture.
Kelly Lundeen
Kelly Lundeen is a mother of three and a staff member at Nukewatch since 2015. She is of European settler descent, living on Wisconsin land stolen from the Anishinaabe Ojibwe. She became radicalized in the late 1990s in the fight to end the sanctions on Iraq and in the environmental movement Earth First. For three years she was a live-in volunteer at Casa Maria Catholic Worker in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where she helped provide shelter to unhoused women and children while fighting the systemic causes of poverty. From 2005-2008, she lived in Colombia, South America volunteering with International Peace Observatory, an organization that accompanied peasant human rights organizations defending their land from takeover by multinational companies through the use of the paramilitary and government armies.
At Nukewatch she is thrilled to be a part of decades-long civil resistance to advance the mission of abolishing nuclear weapons as a tool of U.S. military and economic imperialism. There she finds joy working with you all to expose the dangers of radioactive violence to humans and Mother Earth, and center the voices of those who have been most impacted.
John LaForge
John LaForge, 70, has worked on the staff of Nukewatch since 1992 when he was hired by long-time co-director Bonnie Urfer (now retired). He has helped organize nonviolent civil resistance actions directed at the Navy’s submarine transmitter system Project ELF (which was abruptly shut down in 2004), the Air Force’s long-range ballistic missile system, and the deployment of B61 thermonuclear bombs at the Büchel air base in Germany. He edits Nukewatch’s Quarterly newsletter, is a regular contributor to Counterpunch.org, Peacevoice.org, and Znet.org, and with Arianne Peterson co-edited the Revised Edition of Nukewatch’s book Nuclear Heartland: A guide to the 450 land-based missiles of the United States (Progressive Foundation 2015). He has testified before British and Dutch parliamentarians on the outlaw status of depleted uranium weapons — armor-piercing munitions made of toxic, radioactive uranium-238 — which have been used widely by the United States. He is married to the peace activist Marion Küpker of Hamburg, and spends part of the year working remotely from Germany. He is a co-recipient of the 1984 War Resisters League Peace Award, the 2004 US Peace and Justice Studies Association’s Social Courage Award, and the 2004 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice.