Group rallies at Weld silos

Melissa Cassutt
October 3, 2004

Nuclear weapons are hiding a lot closer to your home than you might think.

Or so said Loryn Cesario, a sophomore English major at the University of Northern Colorado.

"I don't think people are aware," she said. "It's in everyone's back yard, basically."

Cesario is a member of the Greeley Greens, a Green party political group that helped organize a convergence at UNC's Garden Amphitheater on 10th Ave., which immediately followed the Adopt-a-Silo protest Saturday.

Adopt-a-Silo is a yearly demonstration to encourage the disarmament of nuclear weapons in the United States, specifically in Colorado.

Most of the sites at which the protesters gathered Saturday are near New Raymer, east of Ault on Colo. 14, in northeastern Weld County.

There are 150 missile silo sites clustered along the borders of Wyoming, Colorado and Nebraska, 49 of which are located in northern Colorado and Wyoming. Silos are underground missile shelters that are usually equipped to launch missiles.

Two years ago, three Dominican nuns were charged with obstructing national defense and destruction of government property after they cut the chain-link fence around the compound, poured blood over a silo cover that protected a 300-kiloton high alert nuclear missile and pounded the case with hammers in a display of symbolic disarmament.

The opening of a first appeal began Friday for Sisters Ardeth Platte, Carol Gilbert and Jackie Hudson, who are serving prison sentences in county jails in California, West Virginia and Connecticut. The court is expected to have a decision on the appeal within two months.

The rally on Saturday featured skits and speeches supporting nuclear disarmament and encouraging protesters to vote and become more active in rousing political leaders to make disarmament a top priority.

The only protesters to the demonstrations was a small, quiet group that sat along 10th Avenue, away from the demonstrations, holding signs supporting American military troops and waving an American flag.

Cesario said that demonstrations such as Adopt-a-Silo help create awareness of the presence of nuclear weapons that are intimately affecting people more than most realize.

"Just the potential that they have if they're ever detonated," she said. "Really, the threat is our own country."