Seabrook: The Vegetable Garden War

So this is war.

At one end of the stubbly field, a crowd in gas masks and padding masses, many carrying shields with "NLF" spraypainted on the front. Across the clearing stand uniformed men with four-foot super-nightsticks in their hands, their backs to the towering construction site that will someday be the Seabrook Nuclear Generating Station. Shields in hand, protesters charge, slashing at the fence with boltcutters, tugging at it with grappling hooks. A stream of mace comes from the other side, where National Guard and state police beat at the shields and try to grab the cutters. Within minutes, a pepperfogger arrives and tear gas clouds the field; but most have gasmasks and they posture and pose in symbolic resistance, some running up to be in the front line where the gas is thickest. The battle rages for more than an hour--neighbors watch the action from their kitchen windows, and throughout the fight demonstrators and police alike politely walk around a large vegetable garden in the middle of the battle, a freshly-turned plot guarded only by one strand of white twine.

The first skirmishes in the battle of Seabrook came early Saturday morning. The night before, while most sat by campfires, protest organizers erected a narrow bridge across a pond near their campsite, a bridge essential for the next day's march toward the fence. Police arrive at 8 a.m. sharp to take it down, a crew of 30 watching while two cops pull apart the crude span. And no sooner do they march away through the woods than a few of the protesters, out for an early morning walk, lay planks back across the trickle of brackish water and cross--their goal to collect as many "No Trespassing" signs as possible. Before long the police return, and tear up the new bridge, and force the three revolutionaries they capture to wade the marsh. "I had eight signs, and they took them all," one moans.

By noon, everyone tires of caucusing; the time has come to march. The NLF troops,--"we are fighting in solidarity with oppressed Third World peoples," one explains--best-organized of all the protesters, take the lead, chanting "Cut the Fence and Go Right In, NLF is Gonna Win" as they walk past the Dunkin' Donuts on the corner of Rte 1 and Railroad Ave. Their leader tries to shout orders back down the line--"When we start to fight, one honk and a green flag means hit the fence, two honks and a red flag means retreat," he explains. "Pass it back." They head for the west side of the plant, and approach decided on after hours of agonizing parley. Those that the western majority couldn't convince are at this moment marching to the south, toward the marsh that lies across the once-again-rebuilt bridge. For some, this is a sentimental journey--the south marsh saw the heaviest action in the battle of Seabrook/1979, "The tide adds a different dimension," one afficionado says.

Helicopters circle above the marching line--two carry "authorities," including N.H. Gov. Hugh Gallen, who shakes hands with police and townspeople all weekend and smiles benevolently at the protesters. The police, it is said, have trained for months, and been personally briefed by top state officials on the use of force. Late Saturday afternoon, a police dog without benefit of the training chases a television crew that has been allowed inside the fence and then bites a trooper on the leg. Gallen personally orders that the dog be removed.

At half past one, and after lunch (considerably more protesters opt for hotdogs and Coke than the mashed bean and sprout spread the Clamshell food tent is dishing out), the main body heads out through the woods to the field. Like old European battles, both sides have the decency to wait for the other to prepare--more police arrive by the minute. On signal, the demonstrators hook one section of fence and pull, and glory be to God it comes down, allowing access to a twenty-by-thirty foot storage yard surrounded by another fence. Before the demonstrators can claim this modest territorial gain, however, a squad of troopers and policemen emerged from behind the fence. More by psychological force than any physical display, the uniformed men push the crowd back--even those who are not afraid seem unsure.

Domestic landmarks dot this battlefield: a cop pulls a protester from the treehouse he had climbed into; a trooper stands guard duty in front of an above-the-ground swimming pool; two men sit in lawn chairs sipping Michelob until the tear gas gets too thick and they retreat to their glassed-in-porch. After the first rush, there seems little hope of gaining the site, but scattered charges at the fence continue. As fast as the grappling hooks are attached, troopers with bolt cutters cut them off the fence, often sending those on the other end reeling backwards, losers in a one-sided tug of war. One hook is cut loose and comes flying off the fence straight at the head of a New Hampshire trooper--he is knocked unconscious. The authorities, with the press repeating the allegation dutifully, blame the demonstrators for hurling missiles at the police. Demonstrators fall too, giving the Clamshell medics a chance to show their stuff. "BP 160 over 90, pulse rapid," one doctor, his white coat emblazoned with a Magic Marker red cross, intones until his patient decides to get up and walk away.

Back at the plant's main gate, on Rte 1 next to the Hawaiian Garden Motel, other demonstrators attempt a "blockade." For the most part, these are the people who think fence-cutting is too militant. From nearby woods they have gathered limbs and rusting metal appliances, which they pile neatly in front of the gate, offerings to the god of civil disobedience. True to their part of the script, police come out from behind the gate, from a cordon, and let bulldozers push debris inside the fence, where dumptrucks haul it away. Across the street, Seabrook police--small town cops not prepared by experience or temperament for a weekend like this--try to arrest one young man for flattening the tire of a parked patrolcar. A crowd circles the men, and through a narrow gap between a parked cars a swarthy man dashes. He leaps on the back of one cop and wrestles him to the ground. When his partner comes to the policeman's aid, he too is jumped, and all the assailants get away. It is perhaps the most personal violence of the weekend, and certainly the most unprovoked, but the crowd doesn't seem shocked--"Pigs suck," one group yells. A more ideological element at the other end of the parking lot chants, mysteriously. "We're non-violent--how about you" at the policemen, who are finally rescued by a dozen National Guardsmen.

The Coalition for Direct Action at Seabrook ("C-Dass" as the cognoscenti call it) is vehement about shutting the plant down through direct action--by cutting down the fence, getting inside, and occupying the construction site so work will have to cease. One of the most prepared groups in the effort, the cryptically-named Fanshen Armadilloes, occupies center stage for a time Saturday afternoon. Earlier that morning, while photographers clicked wildly, the Fanshen crew practiced cutting fences while pretend policemen battered their shields with branches. Now it's the real thing--in a drainage ditch next to the main gate, while 400 curious picketers watch. Up a little hill they charge, again and again--on the other side at least twice as many cops wait, poking with their sticks, some as long as seven feet, and spraying water from a high pressure hose. In October, at the first occupation attempt, protesters danced and sang in the spray when police turned on the hoses; now, there is only grim determination. "Fall back, Fanshen." "Charge Fanshen," over and over. It seems less than likely that, should they succeed in tearing down the fence, they would be able to get very far against the phalanx of police and national guardsmen. But, to the delight of the network cameramen, they keep charging.

On Sunday, there is less organization. Scattered through the woods, small bands of demonstrators continue their assault on the fence, never getting near the reactor. The real action is on Rte 1, Seabrook's main artery, where large crowds of protesters attempt to block traffic. Some are skeptical of the effort--"These are residents that we're holding up, and it's not going to help us any to get them mad," one young woman opines. "They're not locals--they're probably just fucking summer people," another protester responds. Small bands block traffic for about an hour until police decide they've watched long enough. A cooperative motorist follows a vanguard of cops as they push and club through the crowd. What the officers start the driver finishes, driving through the last clump of blockaders at 15 mph with a half-dozen screaming protesters clinging to his hood.

The battle of Seabrook is breaking up, and the troops of both flags are heading home, perhaps to fight again another day. Public Service Company still owns the Seabrook plant, and the police still own Route 1. For 48 hours, it has been a very curious war; in honest-to-God battles people die. At Seabrook the NLF walked around the vegetable garden.