time once again for community form and we're very lucky lucky to have back with us live in the studios this morning mary hanson mary hanson is on the steering committee she is the co chair of the steering committee of the ground zero center for non violent action and to talk with us about our local role in nuclear weapons and nuclear nonproliferation today on the seventy first anniversary of the u s nuclear bombing of hiroshima mary thank you very much for coming in and spending time with us this morning thank you mike really appreciate your attention to this really important reality that we're faced with as maybe people have been seeing  here in seattle where twenty miles west of here in seattle we are twenty miles west of the largest concentration of deployed nuclear weapons in the united states that's over the naval base kits at bangor where the tritone submarines are are based and where a lot of other nuclear weapons are stored the submarine base nuclear weapons of the united states half of them actually over half of them are twenty miles from us and so it's kind of a strange reality that in the backyard of a little town called pooles bow washington a population around eight thousand there's this enormous nuclear reality so even though ground zero center for nonviolent action is a group made up of people from all over the state of washington basically western washington with some from central washington you know where we're seen as you know a group that's based in pools ball well that's where we have our center right next to the base right next to the trident base sharing we have about four acres over there and a really good space for doing educational the educational aspect of our work and it's still overwhelming that what a relatively small group with an address in a really remote part of our state over in kitsap county has been working since the seventy's to draw attention to the reality of these nuclear weapons and to the need to get rid of them to abolish clear weapons and working since the seventy's because that's when the base was basically built yeah and the base was built before they understood what this seismic problems were in our state the base is fairly close to the seattle fault  take this tiny existing military outpost called bangor and expand it and make it into the base that it is today where if you took just  for getting a few of these facts in here if you took one submarine of the eight deployed at bangor one of those subs has a firepower equal to more than one thousand four hundred hiroshima sized nuclear bombs that's pretty incredible the nuclear warheads that are stored there and that are on the submarine space did bangor have the combined explosive power clue of violent to more than fourteen thousand hiroshima bombs that's an overwhelming but somber fact that if those weapons are ever u it's over the earth does not have the ability to at least for humans to recover from that so that's where the fact that we still exist comes in as long as those as long as those weapons are there there's a need to organize to get rid of them and we don't intend to stay small we intend to grow we intend  to attract an audience of and and also involvement of many many more people in order to accomplish that goal which is you're having multiple events that are happening this week and over there at  your home over in paulsboro near possible and by and attract more people once upon a time there were incredible protests there at the base near the base talk a little bit about that yeah well that's a little bit before the time i got here and got involved in the peace movement a little later than that but that is what happened over there and it relates  specially to what's going to happen this week on the ninth which is the anniversary of the bombing the seventy first anniversary of the bombing of nagasaki  there will be something called boats by bangor and that is going to be a water based nonviolent protest and witness for peace in hood canal at the trident nuclear submarine  base where peace activists will travel along the bangor waterfront where the nuclear warheads and trident missiles are loaded on to the submarines and where submarines are resupplied for ballistic missile patrols in the pacific ocean and  so this is the first time we've done this you can actually see much from the road when when you go over to the bangor base i mean just treason cement and well buildings and stuff so from the water side you can see somewhat more of the base itself and there's no intention to risk arrest the sailboats and kayaks will travel along the entire length of the waterfront of the naval base including the delta pier and the two explosives handling wharves where the trident submarine sermon taint and the nuclear warheads and trident d five missiles are loaded on the submarines there will the peaceful attilla will include the original peace ship the golden rule that set sail in one nine hundred fifty eight to the south pacific to stop nuclear bomb testing in the atmosphere and thank you for interviewing the crew of the golden rule a few weeks back and that's a national project of veterans for peace that the flotilla will also include members of the annual pacific northwest interfaith peace walk that's led by the banbridge gee buddhist temple and this is the first year for a large water base present since the first trident submarine the u s s ohio arrived as you were saying before quality in order to get to ground zero house or the ground zero center or it or to get to the trident base you have to really know the directions this is not something you're going to casually this kind of find and that's on purpose having it be in a rural area farms when it was established there was all on purpose so that  takes an effort to get there once you've done it once or twice i think then people become comfortable with going to our center or coming to demonstrations there but that first  that first getting getting through the invisible shields i guess of unfamiliarity can be a barrier for some people but once you're there i think i think people really find it meaningful to stand up to this ultimate danger to our country and to our world in the grounds there at the ground zero center for nonviolent action it's as you said before it's four acres it's actually really nice it's like going to you know nash went on a national local park and i believe jeezy offers you know places that you can pitch your tent if you're hanging out over the weekend is that correct yeah and on eighth well actually the way events are going to to move his sunday and monday will be having events over there and to find out more about the exact schedule you can go to our monday as we always do we will go down to the land side and have a vigil there and that there will probably be civil disobedience out at that time early monday morning so if people contact to send their would like to come out yeah and come out on sunday stay overnight or else check out the website and come very early monday to take part in that and then the boats by bangor is on tuesday so there's there's quite a lot going on and usually the best part of it in a lot of ways this is just being around other people who are also willing to take this on and to talk about it to talk about what can we do about it there's opportunities to talk with and share information and just create a sense of a boat the beloved community that king talked about that martin luther king talked about that is necessary to have the social support of other people to do this kind of work and because as is true with so many issues today that we all care about any individual issue can just seem overwhelming to to us as an individual person but when you get together with other people talk about it there is a sense of empowerment sense that you are not a you know alone in the wilderness yeah so to speak you started out and said that as people can see about the ground zero facility over there and i think you were probably pointing to the recent bus ads that the jesus center had done and the increase in local media attention from that yeah it's been wonderful we put a bus ad out a few weeks ago that shows a map of seattle and the ban base which is just north of bremerton really north of silverdale on the kids up peninsula and it says on that bus sad twenty miles west of seattle is the largest concentration of deployed nuclear weapons in the u s and that bus ad now has helped to generate conversations with the public to bring this issue to seattle bring it out of that secrecy because that's one of the biggest barriers that we face the fact that the base is so hidden from seattle is the reason why we basically laid out that reality that it is hidden and there has to be a way to bring it into people's consciousness people's awareness the cold war not only is the cold war not over it's worse right now and i've spoken here on that last fall but basically the situation that we have in the world between especially the united states and russia is much worse than it was back in the eighty's when i first came to seattle and when we had the first demonstrations against the ohio back at that time there was something called date time and there are people now i don't even remember that but that meant there was an active effort for the u s and the russians to really cooperate and  i would refer also in the seattle times just yesterday to a wonderful letter to the editor in northwest voices on the ukraine conflict by a man named ron young of everett and he's basically saying that the old cold war patterns complicated the crisis in the ukraine from the start i'm quoting him russia accused the us of a larger role in the ukrainian popular revolt than was real and the us uncritically welcomed the revolt as providing opportunity to draw ukraine away from russia closer to the u nato russian military support for russian leading rebels in eastern ukraine and u s military support for the western oriented government in kiev increased the dangers of u s russia confrontation and as young continues what's needed is tough co ordinated diplomacy by the u s and russia to support strict adherence by both sides to the cease fire and insistence on full implementation of all provisions of an existing peace agreement including constitutional reform in ukraine independent local elections more autonomy for the eastern more russian oriented region and return of the region ukrainian sovereignty ukraine should announce formally and publicly that it will not join nato ukraine should be encouraged to establish economic relations with both the european economic community and the russian backed your asian economic union that is the flashpoint that the area around ukraine is a place where  the intentions of the united states toward russia are way worse than they were in the eighty's much more aggressive and where the russian fear of and a great aggression back a trillion dollar arms build up rebuilding the entire nuclear arsenal of the united states over the next thirty years spending one trillion dollars to replace the submarines in the bombers and the land based missiles it's crazy it's really a bad situation and the public has been kind of asleep about this but i think is waking up if the response to our active anti nuclear movement seems like reality to me right now because overall we're looking at fifteen thousand nuclear weapons worldwide many of which the majority of which are in the  air are still on hair trigger alert right which includes all the ones we've got here as well as the bangor facility continues regarding outside of the one trillion projected over thirty years which i'm sure will grow is getting upgrades is just completing the explosive handling wharf i believe is going to be completed this year that's that the second loading wharf at that trident base over twenty miles from seattle so they can load this twice as many subs and i don't know if you can touch on the some of the issues just from that facility alone oh sure yeah ground zero r washington physicians for social responsibility are involved in an environmental lawsuit against the navy second explosive handling more for bangor as a result of the lawsuit plaintiffs discovered that while the navy insisted that the second wharf pose no new safety risk at the base the federal agency responsible for explosives citing refused to grant approval if you look at these were arved an explosion on one wharf will cause the other whatever is being built or worked on on the other wharf to also explode because there are too they were cited to way too close together this case was filed in federal court in june two thousand and twelve and is currently pending in the ninth circuit court of appeals i attended that  hearing and it was wonderful i felt that the judges really showed a lot of respect toward the issues i thought they had to take them very seriously so i'm hopeful that ground zero may in fact win that case that's my hope we are concerned this concentration of nuclear weapons creates a target frankly it's horrible  we are concerned that an accident at the base would create not a nuclear explosion per se but like a dirty bomb dispersion of a common lethal combination of missile motor fuel and nuclear material that would contaminate a vast area so we've been coming that a number of issues their  safety our our environmental safety as well as our nuclear policy and there's been multiple near misses in the past accidents both there at the base accidents with the when the white trains were in use darrelle meant there that both of which went under the radar and local officials were outraged when they finally found out right  s the most recent one was that when they were doing maintenance on a missile a crew went for a lunch and left a ladder inside a missile and when that  when somebody took a crane to lift it move it the ladder pierced the skin of the one of the stages could have been a disaster came within inches of being very serious accident and it was covered up so there's a risk to having these things even if there is a risk to having nuclear weapons there's another huge area and that's the risk and that's why i was mentioning your crane the risk that a military exercise of some kind either in syria or or in the ukraine could to accidental nuclear war meaning that it would appear to one side that that the other side was attacking them when they weren't  failures of things like radar have happened in the past and we've had a whole lot of close calls very brave individuals have decided not to fire nuclear weapons and have kind of or they have ridden out situations that were apparent nuclear attacks that turned out not to be so as long as we have nuclear weapons we live with that risk of accidental nuclear war very serious problem so if it wasn't clear before and with with being the largest repository of nuclear weapons in the western hemisphere that really grounds here that really makes us the largest target for incoming nuclear of the fifteen thousand that are out there which i think five thousand are the u s says of the other ten thousand were the number one potential target for those without it it doesn't mean that they would all but yeah we would be a target i mean if there is a nuclear war the syria would be horribly burned obama spoke in hiroshima and called for an end to nuclear weapons he said that the nuclear powers and i quote must have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them obama added we must change our mindset about war itself and this is so true einstein said the same thing that the discovery or the invention of nuclear weapons changed everything except the way we think and we have to change the way we think we have to work to not just eliminate nuclear weapons but to eliminate war war isn't working at all and because of climate change we don't have all the time in the world to get rid of war and we don't have all the time in the world to get rid of nuclear weapons and recommitting to having them over the next thirty years is totally totally unacceptable all those resorts does need to be redirected to social and infrastructure needs and also to making the transition to a different energy system that doesn't cause global warming we do not have thirty years to keep plan this really stupid game that is such a threat to survival boat that we mentioned before that will be part of our flotilla you can visit them if you call two zero six nine nine two six three six four you can get a tour of the boat  it'll probably be at belle harbor marina appear sixty six good idea to call first but you can see this historic boat that back in the fifty's demonstrated against  the testing nuclear weapons testing and played an important role in ending atmospheric new nuclear weapons testing and then we hope to see many of you at hiroshima hope tonight that's the lantern floating just close to the parking lot of the bathhouse theater across that hill that's between the lake between green lake and the parking lot of the bath house it's wonderful to be floating lanterns commemorating the victims of hiroshima and nagasaki the only time nuclear weapons were used and it's  one of the most heartfelt demonstrations of peace that i've seen anywhere we're so lucky to have it here in seattle every year and we've been doing that since one thousand nine hundred four so come on by it's set from six to nine pm this evening and then again ground zero for the whole weekend has got going and for that and for a list of the times go to our website z centered out award she can find out and would love to see it they're all right well with that we are unfortunately out of time i want to thank you very much for coming and going to dine with us again this morning thank you my time once again for community form and we're very lucky to have with us live in the studio is this morning tarek darwood character would is a software engineer and community activist he is the president of the washington state chapter of care the council on american islamic relations the nation's largest muslim civil rights advocacy group he also serves as the president of the interfaith and outreach committee at the muslim association  puget sound mosque in redmond terek thank you very much for coming in and spending time with us smart thank you for having me so start out tell us a little bit more about your two organizations care and the and maps  anniversary it started in a small facility in redmond and grew very fast due to a large community support it's a very open and engaged community that tries to reach out to the broader community and welcomes o in it's been a great success two thousand and eleven we moved into our own facility which is the current address of the facility right now and it's a very vibrant and mazing community friday as you'll see a thousand people wearing the friday pray three aid prayers and each one is a thousand plus and it's just amazing and beautiful it was covered even recently in the news here the end of ramadan because of all the recent events there's a spotlight on muslims in the  programs and cooperate together we cooperate either intellectually basically we do presentations of what is islam will come talk to me about your faith what can we do to what are common ground what are you know common points between us and judaism christianity or other faiths and then also what can we work on together so issues of social justice even community service cleaning the street together things like that so that's been my focus over the last nine ten years this year was also our tenth interfaith if tower which was beautifully attended by various communities from you know officials state officials city officials even federal officials in washington so we have to amazing staff members arsalan and jasmine who are doing most of the work i just do supervisors direction stuff like that and we are concerned with the civil rights of muslims or people who are persecuted for looking muslim so for example christian arabs sikhs in the hindus who might look brown and just people pick on them because they think they're muslim will defend anybody rights are basically violated  we are partially blessed to be in a more or less progressive state overall that does not mean we do not have a lot of cases of common misconceptions people think  in the northwest there's a lot of us or there's no no need as much to worry about hate crime i think that we actually have over four hundred cases a year about half of these are harassment  so americans muslims are fairly new as an immigrant community large numbers so muslims have been coming to america since the beginning that's something people tend to forget muslims have been here for the fifteen hundred this came as part of the early communities that were coming to america more as were muslims from spain and over time smaller communities were founded in the sixteen hundred families in the seventeen obviously sort of the sixty and hundreds african slaves started being coming to america and about a quarter to a third of them were muslim so there were very very early muslims here who are practicing obviously african to slaves were put under a lot of pressure not to practice their religion that they came with what you have evidence of african slaves who were muslim you know three generations later after coming conversations there but the larger immigration waves came in in the seventy's and this is one of the community shifted from being predominately african american community which it wa migration waves started coming in as technical workers just visa workers as immigrants and so forth green card lottery all that stuff and this has built into now the current most american which is actually the most diverse religious group in america today so muslims today are actually almost equally twenty five percent african american twenty five percent white twenty five percent south asian so like they're just looking for beautiful out who are muslims not counted by the census bureau we don't have our own internal good measuring systems as a muslim community as to we we tend to have very rough estimates based on friday prayers it's often that there are a lot of muslims don't come to the mosque so it's not exactly in my opinion at least it's not clear that it's only three and it's likely that greater than six somewhere between and then the m there tend to be above average income above average education i think talk about the many issues that muslims are having to face in this country obviously with a kernel lection cycle and some of the people running i'm imagining the number of hate crimes  s jumped dramatically yes so overall most of them facing issues in america obviously even before the current election cycle before the ground zero mosque thing of arabs in mainstream media as hollywood movies from the forty's right and a lot in the ninety's and all the stuff and even well meaning movies than that to portray arabs in very poor light and muslims in general so but since nine eleven there has been greater hostility towards muslims in the media and then since the recent election cycle started it has been getting worse this is documented nationwide but also we can speak locally from our own experience within the care chapter here in washington we've seen an uptick of fifty to sixty percent of a crimes the most vulnerable communities tend to be women out on the amazing examples of this can be happening to bullying cases we've seen a case where a middle school girl finally decided to wear her scarf just around we've been encouraging or she's been shy about it and you know she doesn't want to stand out among her friends and family she decided on her own i'm going to ask are starting a new school year so you know new friends over is going to ask me why do you change whatever school so she goes to school first day with a scarf on her head and the first class our friends are fine first class the teacher looks at her and says what is the thing that you had taken off you would never imagine this would have happened to a jewish student coming in with her head so clearly like there is a perception that you trouble legally or something but happened there's a case where a mother had a son who was being bullied at school several times so she said i'm getting concerned she's an immigrant she's comes from a society or a community where she was not used to you know complaining to officials about anything you just of all the trouble all together and so she thought about it twice three times a night she finally decided enough is enough i'm going to complain and the administration office somebody before the principal now the principal or the principal's office somebody in the in like you know secretary of something she came in and she's described the problem and the person told her i wouldn't do that if i were you because if you start this thing it might show up in  immigration record and it might mess up your immigration paperwork that is completely false there is no connection between the education system and the immigration system we know that you know even undocumented immigrants can put their kids in the school systems fine and yet this person said that to scare her and she's free to and we cannot til today six months later we cannot get her to pursue a case because she's afraid she's going to get deported if you start this this kind of thing makes you outraged i have seen i see the reason you're either not actually are putting up with that and it's unfortunate but what we're talking about are levels of bullying and discrimination that are much higher than this we had a family come speak at a banquet in june there from washington state  western washington but further from seattle and the mother and her son excuse me came to speak our banquet and they described his bullying and we just agreed is that it took six months to the point where he's just started wanting to change classes that's the kind of thing you worry about that the kid no longer cared about what her favorite hobbies were what his favorite subjects were he was not trying to just get away from the bullying that's altering the child's future basically and the school did not take it seriously for six months until we got engaged me brought in a lawyer there or a letter to the school and thankfully in this case actually just to give the audience kind of a full picture of the school and the district attorney very quickly and they actually investigated the whole thing and on the whole collection of boys up until then they were just wag a finger at one child and saying it's a bullying your friend and that's it this took a lot more seriously they talked to the kids and their parents they did their verse returning for the teacher and so forth so it was that's the kind of seriousness you would like to see to see this approached with and it did happen in this case but just one of the only some of that is not just fifty sixty percent of rising up people yelling at muslims from the windows of the cars we've seen a case where someone run over example the united church of christ which is as a very good history with the civil rights movement in general they came to us in the suggested hey why don't we feel bad about what's sign that says a blessing ramadan to our muslim brothers and sisters or neighbors and it was such a beautiful thing that i even my wife saw it next to a church kirkland and she was very moved by it and the muslim surprised when i was scanning in for that you had sent me that that had already fallen off my radar and it was just a month ago so talk about the  of different rights and for instance the surveillance that has happened since nine eleven and increased significantly since then phobia starts to feed into an angry tone in the media and horrible for troublesome in the media which is and in my opinion starts to lay the ground for making it easier to erode muslim rights basically treats muslims differently more suspect than others and so some of the things we've seen is that after nine eleven there have been a set of  on muslim communities right and then when donald trump on the other side suggested that we register most muslim in america to keep an eye on them and see where they're going with i think they said that the most effected a program called and sears and s e r s which was to register aliens who are here legally on their way in and out of the country and you will so basically if you are an immigrant you you just don't come home for that interview just stop deportation proceedings and then on the way in and out you'd also be registered and that program lasted for four years from two thousand and three to two thousand and seven the program targeted fifteen and forty that's it and that's what all the no no women there's no no creativity just very very great profiling is basically this profound clear profound profound what donald trump wanted exactly and they gave up on it just for the record if six thousand they pick sixteen thousand to be suspect and put them in person and deporter proceedings sixteen thousand and fifty ok the next program was implemented so they that those sixteen thousand that were flagged by the by human judgment of character were horribly off target and all these people got deported these families were ruined obviously kids got separated from their parents all that stuff and so we tried that already and that's something that's not told a lot and then also the telcos the suggestion new york police was found guilty and they actually dropped the program where they were surveilling muslim communities in new york city for people to pass these laws specifically target muslims or to these prices specific terror groups and what i want to say that they don't work it's not like they produced all look we found all these terrorists as a result of that there's no documented proof that any of this helped me the country any more  another big problem so we see signs of this in the muslim community even here we'll have clients who come to carol complained to us that you know law enforcement came to them they have been local seattle police something they came to them and they told you know they were having a conversation with them and they would tell them oh that explains you know they'll be answering some question about the kind of job they do in their law enforcement personnel that explains why we see so much so many cash deposits in your bank account a warrant to get this person's stuff but it's a secret court so you don't get to be represented your lawyer doesn't know nobody knows from your side and the judge just evaluates the thing between them because it's a national security issue and they then get a warrant server to the organization the bank your bank or something that holds your records your email provider and they say give us all this information we need it and this is how stuff like this bank national security issue and that one is the one that a lot of the internet providers like the googles of microsoft apple's have been under a lot of pressure to show more visibility into how much of this is happening and many of them have been unable to because the nature of the national security cannot tell the client that this is have you cannot even give them a signal so they even try to give numbers like ok we've got four thousand and s l s here or four hundred or four million we can't say and so it's very difficult even for the internet providers so they're actually i think microsoft is suing the federal government here in washington to just be able to say the number of and as the receive an honor every year because it's ruining the cloud providers of reputations in general that everybody investigating it after thousand or so we don't even have visibility into oh they've got a few minutes left and as well as we don't really have time to go into the numerous things that the f b i has set up these suppose it's things that they come out with later and do a dog and pony show about this you know terrorist was going to attack such and such and it turns out that the f b i basically were the ones that instigated the entire thing and quick this is one of those things where i just feel what happens is they'll be able find someone who's not really stable maybe even has violent tendencies and they will set up the whole entrapment process so they will have a  somebody and from her muslim community who will offer this person hey do you think you want to bomb this place and the new offering the money the resources the guidance on how to do it and then the last minute they will blow up this thing together and when he pushes the button nothing happens and then as soon as you push the button you show their desire to do something horrible and then the rest the kid and the problem is most of the sound on his own he would have never gotten anywhere close to being this way some people argue well it shows that he could have become maybe he would have become an isis recruiter something that maybe but maybe we're spending too much time of this guy you know bring him up to speed on being a terrorist while there's someone out there was already doing something is the right to use of resources are we it's kind of like going to a young is that across on the right use of our time to find car thieves that's the whole point it's not that yes it's a wrong thing that he did no doubt about it right but is that the best way to find the car thieves gangs are actually stealing a car i don't think that's the right way t o all right so just two minutes left so what what would you like people who are listening to you do support your local muslim community and the ways we you can support us to work with us first of all not you know locally we have the care chapter what about civil rights if you want to do interfaith outreach map's does interfaith and outreach stand up for your own rights be aware that we are at the forefront of your rights not just our right when the famous hitler story right when they came for the jews let them do it when they came for the polish i let them do it in the family when they came for me there was nobody to defend me so we are at the forefront of everybody else's rights so we work with a lot of organizations we appreciate their cooperation of japanese american citizens they for example has been constantly preaching the story today about the internment back in the forty's to say this could happen with the muslims which donald trump probably suggested so we appreciate any collaboration because we are we understand that this is our turn to fight for everybody civil rights just like in the african americans that in the sixt contact us link very good all right well with that we are unfortunately out of time i thank you very much for coming to spend time with us this morning thank you very much enjoy