“With much love and wishes for a Clean Energy Future!” by Connie Hogarth

“A little reminiscing and history:

This struggle started early in the “70’s, with the mother of the movement to shut down Ind Pt, the late Irene Dickinson of Ossining , myself and Lorna Saltzman, lifetime environmentalist , I think now with Friends of the Earth….and young John Cronin!

And a little later, Richard Brodsky,in the NY State Assembly.

It was one of the bedrock issues for WESPAC,born in 1972  (and for my brief primary run for State Assembly in 1974).

Many many hearings and testimonies at AEC (Atomic Energy Commission),and then NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission); many small and large demonstrations, including one at the plant ,with former Atty General Ramsey Clark and Rep Bella Abzug who ran against each other for US Senate and both actively against Ind Pt with Union 1-2 on the other side of the barricade.

We organized (WESPAC, WRL and Mobilization for Survival) the largest demonstration every held in Westchester on August 6^th,1979, Hiroshima Day, after Three Mile Island in March of that year..with the whole metropolitan region participating and ending in a major civil disobedience in front of the plant (where we still could!) as a die-in, with several hundreds of us arrested and in the slammer, some of us for almost two weeks.

Always support from the comrades of Myohoji Peace Pagodas, Rev Cato and pagoda in No. Leverett, Ma. and  Rev Jun- san Yasuda  of Grafton,NY Peace Pagoda.

For two years, NYPIRG hired Joan Holt, envtl activist, to run a campaign in coordination with WESPAC, at an office in Ossining. Then, a period of relative  quiet except for our presence and testimony at every hearing.

IPSEC, which first started at  Riverkeeper which was still in Garrison, in 1999(?), took up the struggle with all you great  people, now still doing the work—Marilyn Elie, Gary Shaw and all, including Riverkeeper and the great leadership there of Manna Jo Greene, and the people in NYCity who came on. Harvey Wasserman, whom I first met at Seabrook, NH, Occupation and the Clamshell Alliance, has been so helpful through the years, with his knowledge, his writings, his talks and his passion.

You all have made this happen. I always said that before I bite the dust, I would want to see this work completed.  and Indian Pt shut down.  Well, we are almost there!

And I am very grateful to everyone of you making this happen.  It’s one of the very few good things, so far, in 2017!

              With much love and wishes for a Clean Energy Future!   xxxConnie Hogarth”