From October 20-22, roughly 150 people from over 30 communities in six states gathered for the second Think Outside the Bomb youth conference at UC Santa Barbara, sharing their visions, insights, and stories in a series of panels, workshops, dialogues, strategy sessions, and community-building ("cheesy") activities.

The conference broke new ground on many fronts. It was the largest youth nuclear disarmament gathering in recent memory. It was also one of the most inclusive, participatory, and inspiring conferences I've been a part of, exemplifying the best qualities of the growing youth nuclear disarmament movement.

While I was unable to take part in as many of the sessions as I would have liked, due to my role as a "bottom-liner" of many of the logistical aspects of the event (food, housing, transportation, etc.), I was graciously filled in on a lot of what I missed by other conference facilitators and participants. Their observations greatly enrich this report.

Opening Ritual

"Stopping the construction of new nuclear power plants, ending the exploitation of the nuclear fuel chain, achieving the demilitarization of our schools and communities, and opposing the US wars in the Middle East are all intimately connected with the cause of nuclear disarmament," read one of the paragraphs on the conference promotional web page. "Nuclear weapons are not created in a vacuum. Nor will they be abolished in one."

Pilulaw Khus

To build on that idea: Nuclear weapons currently touch every dimension of human experience, and they must be addressed that way –- multi-dimensionally.

There could have been no better way to begin the conference, then, than with an opening ritual led by Pilulaw Khus, elder of the Bear Clan of the Chumash Nation, the people indigenous to what is now "Santa Barbara County." A long-time nuclear abolitionist, Khus spoke extensively regarding indigenous spirituality and land rights, the dangers of nuclear weapons and energy, and the difference between an indigenous worldview and a strictly rationalistic one.

One of Khus' main points, and an underlying theme of her talk, was this: We all have an obligation to protect the land we inhabit, regardless of whether we are native to it. In her case, that frequently means speaking out against the activities at the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant (near San Louis Obispo) and Vandenberg Space Command (in Lompoc, CA), both of which are located not only on Chumash ancestral land, but on land featuring dozens of Chumash sacred sites. She concluded by leading us in a prayer centered around a shrine featuring a vase of sunflowers (an international symbol of nuclear disarmament).

Getting Informed

The informational dimension of the conference kicked into gear on the morning of Saturday the 21st, with one of the most refreshing and compelling nuclear weapons-related panels in recent memory -- or, so I've been told by people who were actually there (regrettably -- very regrettably -- I missed most of it). Entitled "International Perspectives on Nuclear Abolition," the panel featured four of the most informative, engaging and motivating speakers currently involved in the nuclear abolition movement: Janet Bloomfield of the Atomic Mirror in the United Kingdom, Western Shoshone Nation elder Carrie Dann, Tara Dorabji of Tri-Valley CAREs in Livermore, and Hiroshima atomic bomb survivor and long-time activist Shigeko Sasamori.

From Left: Carrie Dann, Janet Bloomfield, Tara Dorabji, Shigeko Sasamori

Bloomfield's remarks focused on the campaign to end the Trident missile system in the United Kingdom -- and, by extension, end the country's nuclear weapons program entirely. Dorabji provided an overview of current nuclear weapons policy in the "belly of the beast" -- the United States. Dann discussed the Western Shoshone land rights struggle, which is characterized to a great degree by the 928 nuclear weapons tests the United States has conducted there since 1951. Sasamori reflected on the horrors of Hiroshima and on the hibakushas' (atomic bomb survivors') quest for redemption through peace and nuclear abolition.

Afterward, Bloomfield approached me to say -- and I don't think she'll mind my noting this here -- that the panel was a nice change of pace for her, being that she's accustomed to being the only female on male-dominated nuclear disarmament conference panels. Solidarity.

Most of the rest of the day on Saturday consisted of a variety of panels and dialogues broken up by topic ("Nuclear Disarmament and the Power of Place," "No More Nuclear Excuses for War," "Youth and Nuclear Disarmament," etc.). The late-morning and afternoon panels happened six at a time and were each repeated once. Because they happened simultaneously, the panels took place in relatively small groups, thereby allowing for maximum participation and engagement among participants.

The dialogues, which took place in the mid-afternoon and early-evening, were largely broken up by the same topics as the panels, with additional groups also focusing on the "UC and the Bomb" class at UC campuses, military counter-recruitment in high schools, and other themes.

The "No More Nuclear Excuses for War" panel took place at the site of the UCSB "tent city" protest (from left, panelists: Rae Abileah, Darwin BondGraham, Rebecca Griffin) .

I participated first as a moderator in the "Nuclear Energy & Waste - Myths and Realities" panel, then as a panelist on "Education of Mass Destruction." The former panel featured presentations by Think Outside the Bomb steering committee member Tony Guzman and Kallea Matsakis of Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety in New Mexico, followed by a question-and-answer period that brought forth lots of great information and discussion. The "Education of Mass Destruction" panel focused on the miscellaneous ways that schools and universities perpetuate militarism both on campuses and in society at large. The highlight of the panel for me was that we convened it at a beach adjacent to the UCSB campus, which isn't to downplay how great the panel was -- it's only to say that the beach was magnificent.

Following both rounds of panels, I overheard multiple excited dicussions among the participants regarding noteworthy aspects of the panels they had just attended.

The dialogue session I took part in that evening, "Ending Nuclear Colonialism," basically turned into -- and this was a good thing -- an extended question-and-answer session with Twa-Le Abrahamson, a veteran of the first Think Outside the Bomb conference and resident of the Spokane Nation, a long-time site of US corporate uranium milling. Twa-Le is deeply involved in the networks of indigenous people working to stop uranium mining and milling on their lands -- and everywhere.

Skill-Building

UC Santa Cruz student Janine Carmona co-facilitated the Non-Violent Direct Action workshop.

The personal empowerment dimension of the conference came to the forefront on the first half of the third day, when seven different "skill-building" workshops took place simultaneously over the course of two sessions. The purpose of these workshops was to provide participants with the practical skills they will need to be more effective organizers upon returning to their communities to continue the work they are doing, or intend to start doing.

I was unable to participate in any of the workshops myself, though I later heard great things about many of them. I did briefly stop in at the Non-Violent Direct Action workshop led by UCSC students Janine Carmona and Aisling McIntyre, which was going smoothly at the time.

One of the workshops I heard great things about was the Organizing 101 session facilitated by Pamela Meidell and Janet Bloomfield of the Atomic Mirror featured a 15-minute video on the successful grassroots women's campaign in the '80s and early-'90s to remove nuclear-tipped Cruise Missiles from the Greenham Common Airbase in southern England.

Strategizing

I remain unclear on exactly what the different groups that met during the three-hour strategizing bloc during the afternoon of Sunday the 22nd focused on, though the initial cluser of five or six of these groups had shaked down to two by the end: a "Bombplex 2030" working group and a planning group for the direct action at the UC Regents meeting at UC Los Angeles on November 16.

That the Regents meeting was such a focus -- and it was, indeed, a major focus, with perhaps 50 people participating in the discussion about it by the end -- was fitting for a "western regional" youth disarmament conference, in a few ways. First, the University of California is one of the corporations in the western United States most deeply involved in the nuclear weapons complex. By all rights, that makes it an important site of resistance not only for UC students and alumni, but for anyone in this region who wants to work for nuclear abolition. Second, many -- if not most -- of the core members of the youth nuclear disarmament movement in the western United States are UC students and alumni. The spirit of the conference reflected that, most of all during the Regents meeting planning.

As for the Complex 2030 group, Tony Guzman summarized the plan that developed from it thusly: "Three days of action where the TOTB and its members present an alternative to their Bombplex and we present our vision for what we believe our world should look like in 2030. We hope to get people out to the hearings in key places like Livermore, Las Vegas, and Los Alamos and for those who cant attend, for a national call-in/e-mail/fax day to overwhelm them with comments from youth especially."

Next Steps

Students from UC campuses networked regarding de-nuking the University of California throughout.

During the final session of the conference, the participants who remained until the end filled out "Think Outside the Bomb commitment cards." On the cards, they wrote what they are dedicated to doing, in the weeks and months ahead, to "think outside the bomb and help others think outside the bomb."

Clearly, the folks who took part in the conference are committed to doing a wide range of things. The next step for many of them will be to continue to get informed on the issues by reading articles, browsing web sites, and viewing films. For other participants, the next step will be something more advanced -- to start a peace club at their high school or an anti-nuclearist organization at their university campus, for instance. For still others, it will be to get arrested at a direct action -- and not for the first time -- or even organize a conference of their own.

In any case, the various projects of the Think Outside the Bomb network now have many more people involved and much more energy behind them.

During the first get-to-know-you-style activity on the opening night of the conference, veteran disarmament activist Pamela Meidell, who served as a speaker, a workshop facilitator, and a respected mentor throughout the weekend, approached me to ask how I and the other organizers had succeeded in getting so many people to the conference. "We tried everything we could think of [to promote it]," I replied.

A much better answer would have been that the success of the conference resulted from the hard work numerous people have done to build a youth nuclear disarmament movement in the western region of the US in the past few years.

The possibilities for where this movement might go next, now, are fabulous.