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Triple Reactor Disaster: Fukushima Five Years On

Nukewatch Quarterly Spring 2016

Five years into the Fukushima-Daiichi triple reactor meltdowns and radiation disaster, officials from the Tokyo Electric Power Co., its owners, have said leaks from the six-reactor complex with “at least” two trillion Becquerels of radioactivity entered the Pacific between August 2013 and May 2014. Relentless drainage of contaminated water from the site is estimated to be about 300 tons a day and has continued for 60 months. “[W]e should be carefully monitoring the oceans after what is certainly the largest accidental release of radioactive contaminants to the oceans in history,” researcher Ken Buesseler, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, said Sept. 27.

However, Japan isn’t even monitoring seawater near Fukushima, according to The Ecologist. (“Japanese government and IAEA ignore radiation risks to coastal population,” Sept. 28.)

The Quarterly, in nearly every issue since the crisis began, has followed the deluge of accidents, leaks, faulty cleanup efforts, and widespread contamination of workers, citizens, food and water.* Our effort to inform our readers is in part a response to the lack of mainstream US news coverage of the disaster. It is also a reminder of the daily potential for catastrophic radiation releases in the United States stemming from the 23 Fukushima-clone GE Mark I reactors in this country.

Japanese media coverage of the catastrophe, along with analysis by independent scientists and researchers is mostly available online. We have relied on them extensively, along with several recent books, to analyse and report on Japan’s ongoing disaster response, water, soil and food contamination, cancer studies, lawsuits by US sailors, Japanese evacuees and others, and the government’s and industry’s ever-changing decommissioning and waste managment plans.

As Japan Times reported last October, “Extremely high radiation levels [inside the three destroyed reactors] and the inability to grasp the details about melted nuclear fuel make it impossible for [Tepco] to chart the course of its planned decommissioning of the reactors.”

Greenpeace to study disaster’s effect on Pacific

On February 26, Greenpeace International launched a major investigation into Fukushima’s effects on the Pacific Ocean. The gusher of radioactively contaminated water into the Pacific has continued unabated for five years.

In a press release, Greenpeace said its investigation will be conducted aboard a Japanese research vessel using a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) with a sensitive gamma radiation “Spectrometer” and sediment sampler.

Former Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who headed the government when the disaster began, joined the crew of Greenpeace’s Flagship, the Rainbow Warrior, on the opening day of the study, and called for a total phase out of nuclear power.

“I once believed Japan’s advanced technology would prevent a nuclear accident like Chernobyl from happening in Japan,” Kan said. “But it did not, and I was faced with the very real crisis of having to evacuate 50 million people [from Tokyo and surrounds]… Instead, we should shift to safer and cheaper renewable energy with potential business opportunities for our future generations.”

In the press release, Greenpeace noted that “In addition to the initial release of liquid nuclear waste during the first weeks of the accident, and the daily releases ever since, contamination has also flowed from the land itself, particularly nearby forests and mountains of Fukushima, and are expected to continue to contaminate the Pacific Ocean for at least the next 300 years.”

Shaun Burnie, Senior Nuclear Specialist with Greenpeace Germany said, “There is an urgent need to understand the impact this contamination is having on the ocean, how radioactivity is both dispersing and concentrating and its implications. Tepco … has no credible solution to the water crisis they created and is failing to prevent further contamination of the Pacific Ocean.”

Criminal charges leveled against reactor executives

Japan’s first criminal charges against executives of Tepco were filed February 29 against three former officials who are alleged to have refused to take precautionary measures that could have prevented the loss of off-site power (known as a “station blackout”) and the resulting out-of-control overheating and complete meltdown of reactor fuel in three units. The three are accused of professional negligence resulting in death and injury, specifically having ignored research and specific warnings about the inadequate height of the seawall protecting the reactors and about the improper location of emergency backup diesel generators which were destroyed by the surging tsunami.

Over 14,000 Japanese citizens filed the lawsuit which was initially dismissed and then reinstated on appeal.

Starting from scratch

Last October, then 4½ years into the unprecedented self-destruction of three reactors, Japan’s Atomic Energy Agency announced the opening of an institute to “develop” techniques to inspect and eventually decommission Fukushima’s three destroyed reactors.

Radiation levels inside the devastated reactor cores remain too high for workers to make inspections.

Because of the unprecedented complexity of the disaster, the new “Remote Technology Development Center” is starting from scratch. The daily Asahi Shimbun reported that “Experts hope…the facility will lead to a reduction in the number of failures of devices deployed.” All the robots sent inside to try and locate the melted fuel have been destroyed by the thermal heat and harsh radiation.

Naohiro Masuda, Tepco’s chief of decontamination and decommissioning, told the Associated Press Dec. 18, “This is something that’s never been experienced. A textbook doesn’t exist for something like this.”

The ultimate goal of Fukushima reactor dismantling work is to remove the melted uranium fuel rods. Researchers don’t yet know how to patch up the cracks in wrecked chambers under the failed reactor, and the new institute is tasked with inventing a first-ever technique to repair the leaking container. It needs to be made watertight, because removal of the melted fuel has to be done under water.

The planners also must invent a system of possible routes by which to remove the still-unseen melted fuel. Designers also need to develop methods to reduce the radiation doses that will inevitably be endured by workers.

Two mayors agree to host waste dump sites

After first opposing the central government’s plans, two local governments in Fukushima Prefecture have agreed to Tokyo’s proposal for permanent radioactive waste disposal. The sites, one at an existing facility in the town of Tomioka, and another at Naraha, have been chosen for disposal of “designated waste” in exchange for certain economic incentives, including the construction of an industrial park. The subsidies are reported worth about $81 million.

“Designated waste” is defined as material with between 8,000 and 100,000 Becquerels of radioactivity per kilogram. Oddly, the Japan Times called this material “low-level nuclear waste,” while the daily Asahi Shimbun called the same material “highly radioactive.”

Under the plan, the Tomioka facility, now run by a private group called Ecotech Clean Center, will be nationalized, and will then bury some 650,000 cubic meters of the designated waste. This waste, mostly incinerator ash, sewage sludge and rice straw, is a tiny fraction of the estimated 22 million cubic meters of waste that’s been collected in large black bags and stored outdoors at hundreds of sites in 11 different prefectures.

Wastes with higher levels of radiation are to be kept at temporary facilities being built near the doomed Fukushima Daiichi reactor complex. (Japan Times & Asahi Shumbun, Dec. 3, 2015)

A proposal floated a week later by the Ministry of Industry is to bury high-level radioactive waste under the seabed. Asahi Shimbun reported December 12 that an expert panel made the recommendation, saying the waste could be transported by ships.

What was unsafe yesterday called safe today

Following the start of the disaster in 2011, the permissible external radiation exposure limit was dangerously raised by the government. One milliSievert (mSv) per year was raised to 20 mSv for residents in areas affected with radioactive fallout. For radiation workers in the nuclear industry the annual limit was raised from 100 mSv to 250 mSv.

Robert Hunzinker reported in CounterPunch December 14 that the Physicians for Social Responsibility complained that the 20 mSv “allowable dose” means that for children there’s a 1 in 200 risk of getting cancer; and over two years the risk increases to 1 in 100.

Cesium found in 5% of Korean and Russian seafood 

An analysis of 150 samples of fish, kelp and sea mustard sold in discount stores in South Korea found cesium-137 in eight, or 5.3%. The highest rates of contaminated fish in the survey were Russian cod (13%) and Russian pollock (11.5%). In December, South Koreans with the Citizen’s Radiation Monitoring Center called for a halt to imports of Japanese seafood.

Sea wall making matters worse

In October Tepco completed a long seawall dug into the shore between the ocean and the damaged reactor buildings. Intended to halt the flow of contaminated groundwater to the Pacific, the dam has cause groundwater levels to rise. Tepco had planned to dump less contaminated groundwater from newly dug wells into the sea, but has found the water to be so heavily poisoned with tritium that sea dumping was not allowed. Now the company is dumping the fast rising groundwater into highly contaminated reactor buildings—where the water is expected to become severely contaminated by coming into contact with the mass of hot melted uranium fuel inside. (Asahi Shimbun, Dec. 26, 2015)

2 more reactors set for restart

The Fukui District Court in western Japan has ruled that the Takahama reactor 3 and 4 may be allowed to restart, in spite of legal efforts by local residents who argued that an earthquake larger than the reactors’ defenses were built for could devastate the region much like the Great East Japan Earthquake that wrecked Fukushima. The reactors were to go back on line in late January 2016.

Singapore, European Union to weaken food import rules

The government of Singapore is set to follow the European Union (EU) in weakening food and farm product import rules that had been imposed following the start of the Fukushima disaster, which sent plumes of radioactive contamination broadly across farm land and into the Pacific Ocean.

The EU had required all Fukushima food to arrive with radiation inspection certificates. The EU still restricts rice, mushrooms and some seafood items. Kyodo News reported that after Japanese diplomatic efforts 14 countries have ended their import restrictions, but several dozen others have kept them in place.

—JL

*A hard copy compilation of Nukewatch Quarterly reports on Fukushima is available for $10. 

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Twin Reactors at Indian Point, 25 Miles from NYC, Leak Radioactive Water—Again

Nukewatch Quarterly Spring 2016
By Arianne Peterson

Entergy Corp. notified the State of New York February 5 that it had found “alarming levels” of radioactivity in three monitoring wells at its Indian Point Nuclear Facility near Buchanan, New York, 25 miles from the Bronx. One well’s radioactivity had increased by nearly 65,000 percent, and initial tritium* readings from the well water were as high as 8 million picocuries+ per liter—400 times the limit for drinking water set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Entergy is the New Orleans-based nuclear utility that operates the twin, 40-year-old reactors at Indian Point, supplying 25 percent of New York City’s electricity.

According to officials with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the leak was caused by a drain overflow as workers were transferring radioactive water. A sump pump that was supposed to filter the water into another treatment system was apparently out of service. While tritium was the predominant contaminant, the leak is also likely to contain strontium-90, cesium-137, cobalt-60, and nickel-63—heavier isotopes that move more slowly.

Environmental groups, including Riverkeeper and the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition, cite the leak as one more reason to decommission the aging facility, which contains two operating and one permanently closed nuclear power reactors.

“Indian Point had seven different malfunctions since May of 2015… the next one could be a catastrophe,” said Paul Galley of Riverkeeper, a grass roots group dedicated to protecting the Hudson River from the Indian Point reactors next to it. The Hudson is used as a primary drinking water source for at least seven communities and a backup source for 9 million residents of New York City and Westchester County. The NRC and Entergy consider the facility’s periodic radioactive spills to be safe because they are diluted by the rest of the river water.

“The NRC says there is no safe level of tritium contamination,” Gallay said. “When tritium is released in concentrations as high as 400 times the standard for drinking water, it is not out of the realm of possibility that people recreating in the Hudson River will come into contact with that material, or consume fish that ingested some of this material. There is certainly a risk to the environment.”

Entergy holds a permit that allows it to regularly pour radioactive contaminants from Indian Point into groundwater, the Hudson River, and the air. In 2008, the company reported it had intentionally released 877 curies (877 trillion picocuries) of liquid radioactive effluent into the Hudson. A 2005 leak from a crack in its 400,000 gallon onsite waste storage pond prompted Entergy to dig dozens of test wells. According to a 2010 report from Beyond Nuclear, “the radioactive leaks under Indian Point have created at least two large underground radioactive ‘lakes’ containing concentrations of tritium, strontium-90 and likely other longer lived isotopes.”

“Tritium,” explained David Lochbaum, nuclear safety expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, “is just the first item reported. It tends to be the leading edge of any spill since it is the lightest and most mobile of the radioactive contaminants. The other isotopes slow down as they go through the soil. That other stuff is on its way, however. Tritium just wins the race.”

The decades of leaks and safety violations at the site—as well as the fact that there is no effective evacuation plan to help protect the 20 million people living within 50 miles of the reactors in the event of a larger accident—have caused New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to urge federal officials not to renew the facility’s operating license. Indian Point’s 40-year licenses for its two operating reactors expired in 2013 and 2015 respectively. The NRC is still considering Entergy’s 2007 application for a 20-year renewal of each. Gov. Cuomo, who in December ordered an investigation into the facility and the risks it poses to the surrounding area, has also ordered an investigation into the recent leak, saying, “This failure continues to demonstrate that Indian Point cannot continue to operate in a manner that is protective of public health and the environment.”

Besides the age and condition of the 42- and 40-year-old reactors, the station’s three miles of inaccessible underground piping—which cannot be inspected and have leaked in the past—are a major cause for regulatory concern.

Susan Shapiro of the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition called on the NRC to penalize Entergy for exceeding its operating license and its state discharge permit. She said, “If you have a mom and pop gas station and they have an underground leak, they would be immediately shut down until the leak is plugged. In New York State, all groundwater has to be potable and contamination is not permitted. But Entergy is getting away with contaminating our groundwater just because they are under the auspices of a government agency that doesn’t feel as strongly about our water. For me, that is shocking.”

—Beyond Nuclear, “Leak First, Fix Later,” 2010; New York Daily News, Feb. 7 & 8; and Energy Matters, Feb. 12, 2016.

*Tritium is the radioactive form of hydrogen and is produced in great quantities inside nuclear reactors and inside waste fuel rods stored onsite in deep pools of cooling water.

+One picocurie (abbreviated as pCi) is one trillionth of a curie. A curie (abbreviated as Ci) is a large measure of radioactivity, defined as radioactive decay at a rate of 37 billion atomic disintegrations per second.

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“You Don’t Need to Know”

Nukewatch Quarterly Spring 2016
By Ground Zero

The Navy is suing Kitsap County, Washington to try to stop it from releasing Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor emergency plans. The country’s third-largest Naval base is home to a nuclear shipyard, a strategic nuclear weapons facility, and eight nuclear-armed Trident ballistic missile-firing submarines. US District Court in Tacoma issued a temporary restraining order halting Kitsap county’s release of the records. In January 2015, Ground Zero’s Glen Milner asked county emergency management staff for records regarding potential consequences of a radiological accident at the base and its planned emergency response. The Navy denied the request and said it will inform residents how to respond if a catastrophic incident occurs.

The Navy is threatening to bring Glen Milner to court for receiving disaster emergency response plans that impact a wide, popuated area around Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, 16 miles west of Seattle, Washington. Graphic from the US Navy.

Last June, the US attorney’s office in Seattle, representing the Navy, threatened to sue deputy Kitsap county prosecuting attorneys Alexis Foster and Shelley Kneip. The Navy contends some of the documents have national security implications and should be protected.

The Bangor disaster “response plans are in place, and nobody knows anything about them, so they don’t really do anybody any good,” Milner said. “They’ve gone to the trouble of creating the plans, but they don’t want to tell anybody about them.”

The county and US attorney’s office continue to release information to Milner as it’s processed, though their relationship is chafed by different disclosure laws — the Washington Public Records Act and the federal Freedom of Information Act.

Because the emergency response plans were created by the county and are held by the county, state law applies. Normally the county would process Milner’s request and if the feds disagreed, they could seek an injunction. Instead, the feds are making redactions and withholding records based on federal law. The county then reviews the actions to ensure they conform to state law.

Michele Earl-Hubbard, with Allied Law Group, said Milner’s request is a county responsibility and covered by state law. The US attorney’s office should stay out of it unless it wants to file for an injunction. Milner’s request hasn’t transpired that way, however, and at this point, for timeliness, records should go straight to him without county review, which can be performed later.

“The local agency has to provide the ‘fullest assistance’ and ‘most timely response,’ and they’re not giving that when they sit on a request for nine months,” she said.  “People need to know where to evacuate, not just the bureaucrats.”

Ground Zero compiled reports from the Associated Press and the Kitsap Sun for this article.

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Great Lakes Rad’ Waste Dump Plan Stalled by Environment Minister

Nukewatch Quarterly Spring 2016

Canada’s Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, the Honorable Catherine McKenna, has issued a stinging critique of the federal Joint Review Panel’s “Assessment Report” which last year recommended that she approve the so-called “Deep Geologic Repository” proposed by the Canadian nuclear giant Ontario Power Generation (OPG) for the shore of Lake Huron.

Sent from the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency in Ottawa, Minster McKenna’s Feb. 18 letter declares that “further information and studies are required” before she can complete her formal Decision Statement regarding the proposed near-lake radioactive waste dump. Her decision had previously been due March 1, 2016, but will now be delayed indefinitely.

Elated by the postponement and by Minister McKenna’s critical demands, Michael Keegan, Chair of the Coalition for a Nuclear Free Great Lakes in Monroe, Michigan wrote, “Ding dong the DUD is dead, almost!”—referring to what critics have dubbed the “Deep Underground Dump.” The Minister’s notice could be a major setback for OPG’s plan.

In what’s been called the most counter-intuitive and irrational radioactive waste disposal scheme ever proposed, OPG wants the government to allow burial of every sort of radioactive waste short of highly radioactive waste fuel, a mere 1.2 kilometers from the shore of Lake Huron. The waste materials would be from OPG’s eight-reactor Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, on Bruce Peninsula northwest of Toronto. With five operating reactors and 3,800 employees, OPG’s Bruce complex is the world’s largest nuclear site. Japan’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa complex is bigger, but has been closed since the 2011 Fukushima catastrophe.

The dump proposal has so shocked and angered local residents, environmentalists, US neighbors and even some of their Congressional representatives, that opposition has become international in scope. Some observers speculate that Justin Trudeau, newly elected as Prime Minister in October 2015, may have played a part in the Ministry’s distinctly cautionary announcement.

As many as 40 million people rely on the Great Lakes for drinking water, and in 70 years of nuclear waste generation no government has ever considered, much less permitted, the disposal of it so close to one of the Great Lakes. OPG’s “geologic” rationale for the near-lake dump has been condemned as a subterfuge for cost-cutting, since its proposed location—right next to the company’s 2,300-acre site—would save the firm the enormous expense of high-tech packaging, high-tech transportation, and highly-engineered waste management elsewhere, either monitored above ground, or underground at a less risky, less populated location.

Minister Wants New Studies of Alternative Sites,
Potential Pollution, and Clean-up Plans

The first demand Minister McKenna made in her Feb. 18 notice to OPG was that the company conduct a study of alternative locations for the DUD that are “technically and economically feasible.” McKenna explicitly directed OPG to suggest “actual locations” that would meet required feasibility specifications, and to detail the costs and risks of “additional off-site transportation of the nuclear waste.”

Minister McKenna further demanded an “updated analysis of the cumulative environmental effects of the project”—a study that could take a considerable amount of time. Thirdly, the Minister instructed OPG to produce a new “list of mitigation commitments for each identified adverse effect.”

The Minister’s Feb. 18 notice indicated some skepticism toward OPG’s previously submitted technical documents. McKenna demanded that, “OPG shall identify outdated or redundant commitments that were previously brought forward.” Ms. McKenna gave OPG until April 18, 2016 to provide her with its timeline for submitting the additional studies and information.

Dozens of communities, environmental groups and politicians on both sides of the Canada-US border have declared their opposition to the DUD, including Toronto, Chicago, and Duluth. A petition by Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Dump had gathered 93,352 signatures by Feb. 24.

“Company” towns close to the massive reactor complex, like Huron-Kinloss, tend to endorse the plan. Its Mayor Mitch Twolan supports the idea even though he is Chair of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, a 100-mayor group that has formally resolved against it.

Anne Eadie, Mayor of Kincardine, Ontario, the site of lengthy public hearings on the proposal, told the Owen Sound Sun Times she thinks OPG’s information is good. “We’re satisfied that the science is there,” she said.

Jutta Splettstoesser, a Kincardine resident, community organizer and vigorous critic of OPG isn’t surprised that mayors of towns in the sway of the area’s biggest employer endorse the dumping scheme. “They’re inside the bribery zone,” she says.

—JL 

 

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Who’s Pounding on the Door?

Through the Prism of Nonviolence 
Nukewatch Quarterly Spring 2016
By John Heid

 

…you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay.
no one leaves home unless home chases you
fire under your feet
hot blood in your belly
it’s not something you ever thought of doing
until the blade burnt threats into your neck…
—Excerpted from “Home” by Warsan Shire

The sign beside our front door reads in black and white: “US Border Patrol: Do Not Enter Without A Lawful Search Warrant.” Who knows how effective it really is? After all, the majority of house raids are carried out by Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) and most raids happen in the dark of night by its armed, aggressive agents who jackboot their way into homes forcibly removing mothers and children alike in handcuffs. The sign presents a minor legal hurdle, if that. Still, I dusted it off on Christmas morning.

The night before, the White House had announced that raids to deport Central American women and children would begin in January. A few days later, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson announced: “Our borders are not open to illegal immigration. If you come here illegally, we will send you back consistent with our laws and values.”

Laws and values? Who’s values and what laws sanction nighttime raids on families? The policy and strategy of house raids runs roughshod over the rule of law, let alone ethics. Not since “Operation Return to Sender” in 2006, has such a tidal wave of shock washed over immigrant communities in the US. Around the country, day-laborers vanished from worker centers before New Year’s. English-as-a-second-language classrooms witnessed an abrupt drop in attendance. Grocery stores and streets in Latino/a neighborhoods became ghostly quiet.

Within a week, over 100 people—families and children—were rounded up in Georgia, Texas and North Carolina, and 77 were summarily deported. The Deportation Defense Hotline [1-844-363-1423] of United We Dream received 316 calls reporting ICE activity by mid-January.

On January 4, the Dallas Morning Star reported, “ICE focuses its enforcement resources on individuals who pose a threat to national security, public safety and border security.” Yes, at-risk mothers and their children in the southeastern US are now deemed a threat to national security.

Who are these people that pose such a formidable risk? And why are they fleeing their ancestral lands in the first place? The poet Warsan Shire writes: “No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.” Why then are these families not recognized as refugees seeking asylum?

Thich Nhat Hahn, the Buddhist monk, poet and refugee, says that we must call things by their true names. It is critical to recognize the circumstances that people are fleeing for what they really are: torture, rape, kidnapping and murder—systemic violence. Only then can we understand the circumstances, if not the root causes, of the forced dislocation the world has witnessed in the last two years. International observers report levels of violence in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador not seen since the 1980s.

The Obama Administration, which has deported more than two million people in seven years, says its deportation strategy prioritizes those who have come to the US since May of 2014, and have exhausted all formal avenues for legal status here. It is noteworthy that nearly 80 percent of the targeted families do not have attorneys. Most families coming into the US seeking asylum have a limited understanding of their legal obligations, let alone the complicated immigration process. Many have been pressured by government officials into signing documents without access to counsel. The court process that people are hustled through is nicknamed “the rocket docket” because it is so rapid that there is little time for people to find legal assistance and to compile the evidence required to substantiate their asylum request. It is frontier justice on crack.

Casa Mariposa, our community near downtown Tucson, has seen hundreds of women and children come through the front door over the past couple years (see the Fall 2014 Quarterly). The stories we have heard are as painful as they are consistent. People are fleeing direct, personal violence. These families are seeking safety, refuge, asylum. They grieve the loss of their loved ones and their homeland.

The house raids must stop. Entirely. Their use is a stab to the heart of civil society. The tactic reawakens the ghosts of not-so-distant atrocities that still scar the face of humanity. We cannot be silent. Nor can we wait for our government to find its moral compass. While we employ the avenues of education, petition, vigil and legislation, we must also pursue more immediate measures to address the acute severity of this humanitarian crisis. The raids are happening now.

United We Dream is among the humanitarian organizations on the front line in this crisis. Managing Director Cristina Jimenez reports: “We are exposing where Obama’s immigration agents are, what they are doing and we are ensuring that our community knows what to do. The days when immigration agents can conduct their raids in anonymity are over. Everywhere they go they will find a child with a camera and everywhere they go they will find a mother who knows her rights.” This struggle will be a long one. People will not abide injustice lying down.

Old, familiar allies are rising as well. Pastor Allison Harrington of Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, where the 1980s Sanctuary movement gained traction, said in response to the raids: “We feel as we are once again living through a nightmare all too familiar to us.” Harrington’s church and other faith communities have resurrected the Sanctuary Movement. Today over 300 churches in more than 30 states are considering sanctuary. These efforts rekindle the memory of a banner that hung in a church sanctuary in the 1980s. It read: “When they come for the innocent without walking over your body, cursed be your life and your religion.” ICE agents will have to walk over some bodies because communities are taking their backs away from the wall and putting them in front of the church doors. At Southside Presbyterian, there’s no need for a sign like the one that hangs on our front porch.

How far would any of us walk to find safety for our children? Where will we stand as our government raids the homes of immigrant families and deports them back to what poet Warsan Shire calls the “mouth of a shark?”

—John Heid lives and works at the Casa Mariposa Community in Tucson, Arizona.

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