Dean Naujoks: A Conversation with the Riverkeeper
Channel: Ed Mays
Date: 2023-05-22

The Golden Rule is the original environmental peace ship. This all started in 1958 when a group of Quaker activists set off for the Marshall Islands to try to intercede and block the hydrogen bomb tests. The crew was arrested in Hawaii when they stopped to refuel. The voyage of the Golden Rule was well publicized as was the arrest of the crew. This arrest didn't sit so well with the captain of another ship, the Phoenix of Hiroshima that was birthed nearby. And so the Phoenix set off to try to complete the mission and sail to the Marshall Islands. The ship was also intercepted and the crew arrested. But the large amount of publicity generated by these actions helped to focus the attention of a wary public on nuclear testing in the atmosphere and lead to the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963 which banned atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons.  This was also the impetus for the creation of Greenpeace in 1971.  The first Greenpeace voyage to Amchitka in the Aleutian Islands was also to try and stop a U.S. nuclear weapons test.
 As the Golden Rule sails up the Eastern Seaboard we have been documenting the large scale toxic contamination generated by the military with the help of investigative journalist Pat Elder, of militarypoisons.org.  We have arranged this conversation between Pat and Dean Naujoks of the Riverkeepers Network to give us an update on the waste sites on the Potomac and fill us in on current lawsuits that the Riverkeepers Network is pursuing.
Recorded 5/8/23