MLK Day features rally with speaker Ann Suellentrop

Ann Suellentrop holds out hope as she speaks before protesting at Savannah River Site.
-- Ann Suellentrop addresses peace activists before protesting at Savannah River Site in December. Photo by Kimmy Igla

Few Kansas Citians know their neighbors make 80% of the electronic and mechanical parts for US nuclear weapons in southern KC MO, at the National Security Campus (NSC). Few Kansas Citians know the NSC is clearing land for new buildings, doubling the size of the NSC bomb factory.

Why? To help completely overhaul the US nuclear arsenal, according to federal proposals, says Ann Suellentrop, vice chair of the PeaceWorks KC Board. Ann will speak at an anti-Trump rally Jan. 20 at noon at Ilus Davis Park on 11th Street, between Oak and Locust, north of the KC MO City Hall. The Party of Socialism and Liberation is sponsoring the rally, with PeaceWorks and others cosponsoring. The rally, although held on MLK Day, is not a gathering to honor MLK but rather to voice opposition to the incoming president.

Ann plans to say that a coalition of US grassroots peace groups, opposing the plan to make 50 plutonium pits per year (bomb cores for nuclear weapons) at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, has already won an environmental lawsuit against this project, undertaken without informing/consulting the public. Ann says groups such as the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, of which PeaceWorks is a part, hopes the government will be mandated to hold public hearings in various cities, perhaps KC, to call for abolishing nuclear weapons instead of designing/creating new ones. How does this call to end the threat of nuclear war fit with honoring Dr. Martin Luther King? Dr King famously said our choice now is nonviolence or nonexistence!

Each voice, each rally, counts. PeaceWorks hopes participation in MLK events this year will help end wars in which the US is complicit, especially the devastation of Gaza through US financial/military aid to Israel.

In addition to having a presence at the noon rally, PeaceWorks will “table” at the MLK Day mass gathering, sponsored annually by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Kansas City. The SCLC event will begin Monday, Jan. 20, at 6 pm at St. James United Methodist Church, 5540 Wayne, KC MO.

We hope to see you on MLK Day!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Please share:

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Pinterest
Email