Putney Friends Meeting

I was pleased to read the Brattleboro Reformer’s January 2, 2012 article “NH Group Says Vermont Yankee’s Days Are Numbered.” The only thing I would add is that the Nuke Free Monadnock’s New Year’s Eve party at Vermont Yankee also included participants from Massachusetts and Vermont. In fact, eleven of the nearly 30 participants were members or attenders of Putney Friends Meeting.

This high-level of PFM participation was an outgrowth of Meeting’s decision in November that it “firmly supports the Vermont state government’s efforts to close the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant by March 21, 2012.” In that same minuted decision, our congregation also added, “we call on all our members and attenders to consider joining the citizen’s movement working to enforce the people’s will on this matter, up to and including nonviolent protest and civil disobedience.” That’s just what eleven Putney Quakers did on New Year’s Eve.

Our hope is that more and more faith communities in the tri-state area will also consider the issue of Vermont Yankee from a moral lens and join in the movement to support the State of Vermont’s effort to close this aging, accident-prone, and leaking plant, which is currently being led by a management team that has a very unreliable commitment to speaking truthfully to the public and to our public officials. As our Meeting pointed out in our minute, “Whether through weaponization, accident, or mismanagement, the destruction of human life and the degradation of nature has been, and continues to be, an ongoing consequence of the use of nuclear technology.”

Putney Friends also encourage other religious congregations and groups like the Brattleboro Area Interfaith Initiative to take a strong stand in support of the State of Vermont, and join or form affinity groups to take part in the SAGE Alliance’s ongoing campaign of nonviolent protest and civil disobedience to close Vermont Yankee by the State of Vermont’s deadline of March 21, 2012. As we asserted in our November minute, “We are made to be an integral part of this wondrous Creation. Let us choose now to take up our stewardship commitment, fully accepting our responsibilities to care for our planet and its peoples. Let us choose now to join with other Friends, and all people of good will and understanding, to move forward through worship and through witness to accomplish our goals.”