A Weekend at Seabrook

You went to non-violence training sessions where leaders talked about Mace and tear gas and attack dogs; but sitting in the Dunster House small dining room, who could really believe it?

At Boston Clamshell headquarters Friday afternoon, they distributed gas masks. But it didn't seem immediate, not in a third-floor Central Square walk-up office next to a rundown Woolworth's.

From Tony Santasoucci's land, though, you can see the fences and the airport-bright lights paling the mist. A man and his dog stand guarding the boundary between the Seabrook nuclear plant and the land, and as you set up tents and tarps in the drizzle, you have to think that maybe it is all going to happen.

Later that night, while you lie wrapped in sleeping bags, the state police drive trucks past the campsite again and again. In the backs of the trucks there are dogs, and the dogs howl and howl, and then you know for sure that this really is serious business, and it's hard to sleep.

* * * *

Protesters had come to Seabrook in years past--their goal to stop construction on the giant nuclear plant now one-fifth complete. Last May, the talk-is-cheap part of the anti-nuclear movement began planning a new tack in the fight. Instead of peaceful protests or acts of civil disobedience, they wanted "direct action." Cut down fences, occupy the plant, resist arrest, they said. That tactical change bred other shifts--in decision-making, in the attitude of the authorities, and the mood.

Demonstrators begin to trickle in to Santasoucci's farm Friday afternoon, meeting the organizers who surround the camp. Security and support crews arrange for campsites, make dinner, shuttle passengers in and out, and bar the door to undesirables, which in this case means the press. Inside, the rain is a nearer enemy than the power plant--tents and tarps spring up, some Himalya-proof homes, other makeshift shelters, like the "Poncho Villa" erected by four Harvard students.

There is little to do but wait until morning, which comes soon enough: 4:30 a.m. You move out en masse along a forest trail lit only by the lights of an occasional T.V. crew and the high intensity bulbs that circle the plant. The sun comes up over the tidal marsh just as you reach it, a moment much too glorious. People joke about it, and the allusions to solar energy come one after another.

But with a cheer the demonstrators leave their huddle on the edge of the marsh and move out across it, a tough passage even at low tide. The sun is up, the only sign of police is the circling helicopter, there seem to be lots of protesters, and you are high and nervous.

Near the fence, you can see clumps of police surrounding the site. The seven-foot fence, topped with three strands of barbed wire, will become a symbol--fence-cutting represents direct action against the plant; and among the happiest shouts of the weekend is the one that goes up Monday morning when one group returns from a nighttime foray with 30 feet of the tempered steel. But now, the fence is only in the way, and the goals--the rusting reactor vessel and the turbine building, each flying an American flag--stand outlined in the dawn.

Before the first assault, you can walk right up to the fence and chat with the police. They won't chat back. They won't even look at you, and orders are obviously orders, pretty much the way it stays all weekend, their inactivity ends the minute the fence is threatened. One aging flower child ("My name is earth") makes a preliminary assault, and for the first time the Mace comes out. They point the small brown bottles at your eyes and spray, and suddenly you forget about cutting any fence.

Mace is a chemical irritant--it blinds you, makes your eyes water and your skin sting. It is meant to be sprayed at the chest, where the fumes will still have plenty of effect, one Seabrook cop tells you the next day. Maybe the policemen don't know this--they spray it straight in your eyes from inches away, and the only thing you can remember is to yell "Medic." They arrive with plastic jugs of water and boric acid, and after a few pints you can stand the smarting. Your face stays red for a long time.

On the marsh, the main assault never really happens. Instead, there are sudden fence-cutting attempts: Run to the fence with wire cutters, make a few snips and then get back before the uniforms arrive with Mace and clubs. If you're sophisticated, you work in teams--someone holds a tarp against the fence to keep off the Mace, while you cut through it and the fence with bolt snippers. The police don't like the scattered skirmishes--they are caged, turning around to make sure no one is doing anything on the other side, turning their night sticks and batons over and over in their hands. It doesn't calm them down when you demand to know about their potentially mutant grandchildren and tell them, "We're doing this for you." Construction workers jeer--one hurls bricks, another pokes through the fence with a sharpened stick.

At least clubs are familiar; you've seen local cops with them. The police see groups massing, they fear a charge at the weakened fence, and out comes the tear gas. Tear gas isn't as personal as Mace--as a matter of fact, clouds of it drift back on the police, who struggle to find their masks. But it is effective, tearing your eyes, stinging your nose, leaving a taste of burned chemical in your mouth. And everyone is shouting, "Walk, Walk," but it's awful hard not to run because this is tear gas. Sporadic fence-cutting continues, and the police don't like it. They've been on duty all morning, and they want to disperse this crowd, not Mace them one-on-one and listen to taunts.

So the fire captain brings out the water cannon, but there isn't enough pressure for it to be really effective. People get wet, one person gets flipped, and the skirmishes continue, so the police come out from behind the fence, and now what do you do? You can't rush by policemen, you just don't do that, and besides, would it be non-violent? Would everybody follow? So you retreat to a high spot and wait for the tide to come in while you hold some meetings.

A peaceful march ends Saturday's action, and an inconclusive meeting ends Saturday night. After five hours, you decide to meet at nine the next morning and start from scratch. The basic split is emerging here. Some people want to keep attacking, keep cutting fences. Others don't like Mace, don't like wearing gas masks, fear that real violence may break out. "What did you come here for--to occupy or not?" one man shouts, and people around the circle really wonder.

The fence still protects the plant, but there is, some joy in the soggy camp. "The press," acting in its capacity as judge of the event, seems to have ruled in your favor. There are lots of pictures of policemen swinging and throwing and macing and sneering, perhaps because a number of reporters were among the victims. You watch the black-and-white set on the Santasoucci's front lawn, and you cheer and hiss at the right moments and make appropriately snide comments, and when the Pope comes on the screen you leave.

Sunday, just because you have to do something, you decide on another assault, this time through the woods and across a road. It's chaos and no one knows who is going where, and so everyone goes the wrong place, down a suicide alley where the police wait with two cans of Mace apiece. A little fence is cut, a few people even reach the other side, and pretty soon you're retreating backwards, trying to doctor Mace victims and to keep singing and hold hands and walk-not-run, and the police are right behind you. They have their sticks out and they're using them, and they don't care that you're shouting "the whole world is watching." They are more than willing to go after the press people, and before the 15-minute retreat is over, CBS News is one camera poorer.

The weekend's most non-violent confrontation is along the access road. The cops stop for a minute at the end of the storage area, long enough that people have time to sit down. You're sitting in a small circle, 20 people arms around each other, singing. "Kumbayah," and "This Land is Your Land," and if there ever was a clearer picture of whistling in the dark you haven't seen it, but it helps. Too soon, the cops are coming again, but you don't get up, you just sit there. They reach the edge of the circle, and hesitate a moment, and the singing goes on and they move in. One of you gets picked up by a pigtail and tossed. Another, who goes limp, is clubbed until his hand is fractured and he is rolled down the hill. The glasses are ripped off one of you, and your eyes are sprayed with Mace. They kick and they shove and they are strong, and then everybody is retreating and every available water bottle is above somebody's face, and you know there is no way on God's green earth that you'll ever get near the plant. It starts to rain, and the Mace on your hair washes down into your eyes and starts to sting again.

Seabrook has this moldy strip of hamburger restaurants and Hawaiian motif motels and shopping centers, and that's where you march now. Soon you're at the main gate, and despite the copters, there aren't any police there, just two security guards. After a couple of minutes the state police and the Guard come screaming over, and they don't know for sure that this demonstration is legal and peaceful and what the heck, you seem to be blocking Route 1, so the firehoses get turned on again. But people know by now not to fear the portable hoses, and there is dancing in the water. They knock down a guy holding an American flag on a branch, and every photographer in the area has his picture for the front page.

Back in camp, even the rumors are kind of boring. People have been arrested, and some have been injured, but you know it's really all over. Sure there will be action tomorrow--a march and a rally and some meetings and a little Mace, and some independent fence-cutting. But they'll keep building Seabrook, at least until next spring when you and your affinity group come back to shut it down again. So you talk with friends, for a while and listen to the spokes meeting, and then, in a gusty 45-degree wind you crawl into your sleeping bag. The Guard are down on the railroad tracks--30 of them 20 yards away--in helmets. They don't want to talk, they just want to stand there, and you sleep. You believe now; but in a way you still don't, and in a lot of ways you'd rather forget.