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Reflections on Concord
On September 1, 1987 Ken Butigan was standing a few feet away from Vietnam veteran Brian Willson when he was run over by a US Navy munitions train during a protest at Concord Naval Weapons Station (CNWS). Based on documents released through a Freedom of Information request, it was established that weapons were being shipped from CNWS to Central America. Peace groups in the Bay Area organized a campaign beginning the previous June to resist and end these shipments. Below are two accounts Butigan, a peace movement organizer wit the Pledge of Resistance in the San Francisco Bay Area and later in Washington, DC, wrote shortly after this event at CNWS. Click here to see a photo of this incident published in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Reflection One: September 1987
On September 1, thirty of us gathered on the railroad tracks l just outside the Concord Main Gate. This is the only place in the entire 13,000-acre facility where trains and trucks pass through a publicly accessible area on their way to nearby piers where the weapons are loaded onto military ships. At 10:00 AM, we joined in an interfaith service to launch the action, and at 11:00 AM we conducted a press conference. At approximately 11:40, the Navy brought a weapons train from deep within the base to just outside the Main Gate.
Brian Willson, Duncan Murphy (a US military veteran and participant with Brian in the Veterans’ Fast for Life), Rev. David Duncombe (also a veteran and campus minister at the University of California, San Francisco) gathered briefly and then sat and knelt on the tracks. Behind them, two people held a banner that stretched across the tracks which read, “Nuremberg Action.”
At the time the veterans sat and knelt on the tracks, two members of the “Nuremberg Action”—Marilyn Coffy and Robert La Salle—notified CNWS authorities that people were sitting on the tracks and that they were committed to staying there in order to nonviolently block any weapons trains. This notification was a follow-up to letters sent to the commander of the installation, Captain Lonnie Cagle, including one dated August 21, detailing the plan to block the tracks and asking for a meeting with hyim. Cagle never replied.
Coffy and La Salle notified the commander of the gatehouse, a security officer communicating with the train’s engineer via walkie-talkie, and a Marine driver of a van parked near the gate.
The Marine looked at Coffy and La Salle and said, “There may be some violence today.”
At approximately 11:55 AM, the train began to roll. At no time did Navy personnel, Marines, or Contra Costa County sheriffs approach people on the tracks to ask them to leave, to warn them that they would be arrested, or that they would be run over. I was standing on the north shoulder of Port Chicago Highway—the public road which the tracks cross—a few feet away from Bryan. As the train barreled across the road, it seemed to accelerate, and I heard the motors rev up, despite the fact that the veterans were within plain view of the train engine and two observers standing on the front of the engine.
When it became obvious that the train was not slowing down people began shouting, “Stop! Stop the train!” The spotters on the engine shook their heads “no”—and the train rammed into the group on the tracks.
David Dunconbe jumped clear of the train, and Duncan Murphy managed to grab hold of the cow-catcher and swing away from the train, but the train plowed directly into Brian, dragging him twenty-five feet, tearing off his lower right leg, mangling his left ankle (both legs were later amputated), fracturinq his skull. The train never slowed down until it stopped inside the restricted area 100 foot from the point of impact.
When we rushed over, Brian lay huddled in his own blood—he looked as if he were dying. Holly Rauen, his wife, used her skirt to create a makeshift turniquet over the stump where, moments before, his leg had been. The naval station sent a half-dozen paramedics out to treat Brian, but they simply took his pulse—they brought no bandages, IVs, stretchers, and did not seem to know what to do. It took a full thirty minutes for an ambulance to arrive—even though the Navy has a medical facility only one-half mile from the spot where Brian lay bleeding.
Since September 1, the “Nuremberg Action” which the veterans launched has continued with intensity. Every day people have been arrested for nonviolently resisting the arms shipments. A large tent has been erected near the main gate which, with the nearby Mt. Diablo Peace Center, serve as a support area. Vigillers calling for peace in Central America are at the tracks 24 hours a day, every day.
On Saturday, Sept. 5, 10,000 people gathered to express their outrage at this attack, and to call for an end to these deadly weapons shipments. That energy continues, and organizers expect this action to continue indefinitely. Brian’s condition continues to improve daily— in a few days he will leave his hospital bed and visit the tracks.
Reflection Two: September, 1987
On Tuesday, September 1st, I was a witness to war. I saw my friend, Brian Willson, run over by a Navy train pulling two boxcars of explosives at Concord Naval Weapons Station. I saw the train speed up as it approached. I saw it hit Brian—and keep moving. I saw it chew up his legs and peel back his scalp. I could see his exposed skull.
And I saw something else. I saw up close the war the U.S. is waging in Central America. Concord Naval Weapons Station, according to documents obtained by the Pledge of Resistance through the Freedom of Information Act—has shipped thousands of tons of bombs and ammunition to Central America. These weapons have fueled a war that has left thousands crippled. It has killed over 140,000 people since 1980—an inconceivible number until I saw one person’s maiming.
At that moment the train became a palpable, vivid symbol of the war: an uncompromising, accelerating force bent on destroying everything in its path.
I also saw the clearest response to that kind of destruction; a vulnerable, unarmed human being appealing with his body for an end to the destruction which that train represented. A few days before gathering on the tracks with other veterans and members of the Pledge of Resistance, Brian wrote:
“One truth seems clear; once the train carrying the munitions moves past our human blockade, if it does, other human beings will be killed and maimed. We are not worth more. They are not worth less.
Let us commit to ourselves and the world that we will claim our dignity, self-respect and honor by resisting with our lives and dollars, no matter what it takes, any further policies designed to kill others in our name.”
When a child is about to be hit by a speeding car, our instinct is to risk our own lives to save that child. Those who sit on tracks to stop munition trains are motivated by the same instinct. Concord Naval Weapons Station ships weapons to Central America that burn holes in people, that maim them, that kill them. Weapons we pay for. Weapons our representatives vote for. To stop the trains at Concord is, in a real sense, to “stop the war in its tracks.”
On September 5th, 10,000 people gathered at Concord. They were there because they were outraged by the attack on Brian—and -the ongoing attack on the people of Central America. And so they gathered—Jesse Jackson, Joan Baez, Daniel Ellsberq, Alice Walker, and Miriam Linder, the mother of Ben Linder, another U.S. citizen who risked—and lost—his life for peace in Central America during a contra attack in Nicaragua.. Religious, political, and labor leaders came, as did thousands of people who have never been to a demonstration before. And there we all were, standing by the tracks that led to 262 bunkers full of war material. We came together to oppose a war that is extremely destructive and that threatens to escalate.
All across this country, people have made a commitment to stop this violence by taking the Pledge of Resistance. 80,000 people in 400 local communities have taken a stand by pledging to help end this war as conscience leads them. They have lobbied, vigilled, leafleted, and participated in nonviolent demonstrations. In the spirit of Martin Luther King, over 5000 people have been guided by conscience to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience.
In the next weeks and months, we are going to need this kind of a strong, nonviolent movement for peace more than ever before. The President [Ronald Reagan] wants nearly $300 million for the contras. He’ll also be asking for hundreds of million of dollars to continue the war in El Salvador and Guatemala. And, he’ll continue the flow of deadly weapons from places like Concord Naval Weapons Station and Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois.
The Pledge is responding to this threatened increase in the war with strong, nonviolent action and activities in every part of this country. The Pledge is also launching a new, nationwide initiative which will make the war more visible: a systematic, nationwide campaign to focus on a wide-range of military installations which are connected to the war in Central America.
Brian is right: our dignity, our self-respect, and our honor can be claimed only through actively working! to stop this war. The war starts here. And so does peace.
Background:
San Francisco Chronicle story 10 years after Concord incident
San Francisco Chronicle story 20 years after Concord incident
Photo: Andy Peri. Holly Rauen seess her then-husband Brian Willson under the Navy munitions train at CNWS on September 1, 1987. It was published in the Pledge of Resistance national newspaper, Fall, 1987.