TEXT A Police fired tear gas and
arrested more than 5,000 passively resisting protestors Friday in an attempt to
break up the largest antinuclear demonstration ever staged in the United States.
More than 135,000 demonstrators confronted police on the construction site of a
1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant scheduled to provide power to most of
southern New Hampshire. Organizers of the huge demonstration said, the protest
was continuing despite the police actions. More demonstrators were arriving to
keep up the pressure on state authorities to cancel the project. The
demonstrator had charged that the project was unsafe in the densely populated
area, would create thermal pollution in the bay, and had no acceptable means for
disposing of its radioactive wasters. The demonstrations would go on until the
jails and the courts were so overloaded that the state judicial system would
collapse. Governor Stanforth Thumper insisted that there would
be no reconsideration of the power project and no delay in its construction set
for completion in three years. "This project will begin on time and the people
of this state will begin to receive its benefits on schedule. Those who break
the law in misguided attempts to sabotage the project will be dealt with
according to the law," he said. And police called in reinforcements from all
over the state to handle the disturbances. The protests began
before dawn Friday when several thousand demonstrators broke through police
lines around the cordoned-off construction site. They carried placards that read
"No Nukes is Good Nukes," "Sun power, Not Nuclear Power," and "Stop Private
Profits from Public Peril." They defied police order to move from the area. Tear
gas canisters fired by police failed to dislodge the protestors who had come
prepared with their own gas masks or facecloths. Finally gas-masked and helmeted
police charged into the crowd to drag off the demonstrators one by one. The
protestors did not resist police, but refused to walk away under their own
power. Those arrested would be charged with unlawful assembly, trespassing, and
disturbing the peace. With whom were the jails and courts overloaded