March 19, 2007

Mary Bell, Everyone,

I talked to Pete Smyke on the phone this morning about co-ordinating opposition to La Entrada. I am going to try to coordinate with the Big Bend Sierra Club Group and the Lone Star and Rio Grande Chapters to get Funding from National Sierra Club to fund organized opposition to this HIGHWAY Trade Route.

With all respect to the Alpine City Council, I strongly disagree with the compromise strategy to offer an alternative highway route in our region. TxDot would undoubtedly take this offer of another highway route as a sign of weakness, and your great turnout of opposition in Alpine will have meant little. TxDot will say that the opponents of Alpine are willing to ACCEPT A HIGHWAY, as long as it bypasses their community.

This hypocritical "Not In my (immediate) Backyard" (NIMBY) stance only shifts the entire problem and impacts to another area and community. That is just plain wrong. It would also hurt Alpine and Marfa and our entire region with thousands of Diesel Trucks polluting our air, water, and soil. Our region and home will never be the same.

It's as if in l99l, my small group of residents in "Save Sierra Blanca" when opposing the National Radioactive Waste Dump planned for us, offered to drop our opposition if the Nuclear Dump could be placed on our neighbors at Van Horn, Marfa, or Ft. Stockton, because of some sick reasoning the geology or hydrology away from us was better suited for a hazardous nuke dump.

That nuclear dump project was also called  "A DONE DEAL"  by the State of Texas, The Texas Legislature, US Congress and the entire National Nuclear Industry,

I was deeply disappointed to read Marfa Mayor David Lanman in the NY Times Article about the Great Powerful TXDOT Public Meeting, saying:

Some here, however, doubt that the proposal can be stopped.

“They have the ability to chip away at it — a little piece here, a little piece there — and they think as the traffic increases the public will get used to it,” Mr. Lanman added. “They won’t remember when you’d pass just two or three cars for the 24 miles between Marfa and Alpine.”

How weak. What kind of  "Leader" and representative of the people would say that, especially in the NY Times?
With all due respect, the mayor sounds powerless, weak and clueless. He sounds mysteriously like Representative Pete Gallego who recently told Roger Siglin when he asked for support to oppose the La Entrada:  "It's a done deal".

Of course Rep. Gallego also said that about Sierra Blanca in l99l, l992, l993, l994.... He also voted for the National Nuke Waste Compact in the Texas Legislature that would provide $50 million of funding to Texas from Maine and Vermont to construct the dump and let their reactors dump their radioactive poison on us for 30 years or longer.

Of course, Rep. Gallego has sponsored and promoted La Entrada from the beginning. Rep. Gallego is in desprite need of some constituent accountability...

It is imperative we get our elected officials to represent us and STRONGLY OPPOSE this plan, we must make sure every elected official from the dog catcher on up is in vocal opposition to La Entrada. We do not have the luxury to take no for an answer. Ask any experienced organizer and activist...

Unless these kind of statements like the Mayor made stop, this kind of disempowering talk by our elected officials will send a message to TxDot, Craddick and Rick Perry that Big Bend and Alpine feels powerless, and will not really fight to protect their home. They will think you will be willing to sell your neighbors down the river to "save" themselves. And in the end you won't be saving anyone or anything.

I know all of you don't feel that way.

The Truth and being in the right - Our Creator Gives us unlimited power to win, if we choose to believe, we can win if we take the truth and fight for life, the earth.

This is the lesson of Sierra Blanca. Don't let the reason and lesson of how and why we stopped the unstoppable done deal of the Sierra Blanca National Radioactive Nuclear Power Waste dump lesson and history escape and be forgotten.

Please Remember this precious priceless lesson of what we learned in our 8 year "war" fighting the state of Texas and the very powerful and well funded Nuclear Industry trying to create a national radioactive waste dump, the size and scope few can comprehend. A radioactive waste incinerator by Westinghouse-Scientific Ecology Group would have been built,on the l6,000 acre Texas owned Faskin Ranch, and the plutonium processing and other hazardous waste incineration would have been built.

And we beat the this project which would have made billions (with a B) for the nuclear industry and state of Texas at our expense and of the water, air, and earth.

This power is ours .... And ours alone... The Developers, our state and federal agencies will never have this precious power.
They can only use money, and they cannot win with only money, if we don't compromise and strongly oppose to the victorious end.

The lesson is burnt into my mind and soul. The dark forces who want to destroy your and my beautiful home  for "the love of money" don't want you to ever know it or believe it. The value of the lesson cannot be measured in money. That lesson is a fact and truth of what our Creator gave every one of usif we are willing to use it.

Here it is - On any "issue":  If one or a small group of people is willing to rise up against an injustice and fight for life and their home, they must have two things, and do one very important thing. First they must have the truth and be in the right. Then they must be willing to pick up the truth and walk down the path of righteousness and fight for their life and home for as long as it takes.

Being in the right and having the truth gives us power that money cannot buy.  But only if one is willing to pick up the torch to fight with the truth and right, no matter how long it takes.  Knowing all the time you will win, because you have the great power of being in the right, will ensure any group in the right victory.  KNOWING you will win becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But, if you allow doubt to creep in and start to believe: "It's too hard, "They are too powerful" "They have more money" "you can't beat the Government" kind of thoughts to enter and raise doubts to your work, you will lose power, your work will suffer.
Your heart and soul will not be in it, and your belief you can't win, or it's not likely you will win, will become reality - a self fulfilling prophecy.

So THAT ALSO becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. If you think you can't win,you won't be able to

My friends, great caring, loving people of the Big Bend, the future of your home is in your hands.... Your actions, not TXDOT MOTRAN or the Legislature or anyone else will determine what ultimately happens to our home, your home.

We started with three people fighting " the biggest Environmental Issue Texas Natural Resource Conversations Commission ever heard " (not my words, but Barry McBee, Chairman of TNRCC 3 Commissioners, Oct. 22, l998 unanimously denying the SB Nuclear Dump)

That small local group of  "Save Sierra Blanca" became 40 people, then became part of the Sierra Blanca Legal Defense Fund Inc. I co- founded SBLDF in l993, in a motel room in Sierra Blancawith two other people. SBLDF became the leader and organizer of all the thousands of opponents throughout Texas and Mexico. SBLDF grew to organize thousands of people in Texas, and throughout Mexico. Why did people want to work after watching us for 4 or 5 years?  Because  people saw, were touched and wanted to become a part of a movement and group of people that were willing to fight for their home, and would sacrifice much to protect their home and families.

Thousands marched in west Texas and in Mexico, and hundreds blocked the 5 international bridges of El Paso-Cd. Juarez many times. Hunger Strikes... A 89 mile march from El Paso to Sierra Blanca, with 40 of us that became 500 at the last 2 miles, chanting "hell no, we won't glow."

In l998, 25,000 people marched down the main street in Mexico City with a 40 foot banner with the name of our little original Sierra Blanca Group, "Salven Sierra Blanca" - Save Sierra Blanca....  I cried, and was very touched, after reading this story and photo of thousands with the banner of my home on the front page headline of Reforma, the New York Times of Mexico.

If we fight hard from the beginning, no one or a few will have to suffer like with some of us fighting for Sierra Blanca and west Texas.

When we win, "the forces of darkness",  those who would exploit us, thinking we are a bunch of backward, county-unsophisticated hicks who can be run over and manipulated, will think twice and more before proposing any other projects which destroy our home, heritage and way of life.

Please excuse my manifesto, my tangents, etc. These words come from my heart and soul. I offer them and open myself completely  to you, so you may understand my 20 years of fighting and along with others beating our state government trying to place a nuke dump at each of our three communities of Hudspeth County, starting in l986.

Our success and strategies can be replicated and should. It would be a shame to not observe and REPLICATE the political, regulatory, and legislative strategies and history of how we stopped the state, who spent $50 million just on Sierra Blanca.

I look forward to working with each of every one of you, my neighbors.. It is a my privileged and honor to work and fight for our land and home with each and every one of you. I have been involved in these battles and wars for a long time, 2 decades.

I don't think I am any big deal, or a "hero". I don't think I deserve any special status. But I do think I am a responsible human being walking this beautiful earth.

I can promise to you when we win and stop La Entrada Al Pacifico, and modular rail freight is moved efficiently through our region (and also in El Paso) we will become the model and example to the entire United States, changing national and state transportation funding and policy forever.

The fellowship, meeting of new friends, and camaraderie of working together on a common goal to protect our home will bring us much satisfaction and we will have a lot of fun.

And when we win, on that special day, you will feel the indescribable way I have felt four times in my life. It will be a most special high you will experience, when you win big after a long hard fought health and safety-environmental campaign. You will experience and feel a feeling you many of you may have never felt before. It is a high and feeling of satisfaction of thanks and reward from our creator.

That day, the earth will be more beautiful, the grass will look a little greener, and the air will smell a little cleaner...

And you will relive that day forever, and your names will go down in history as an example to your children and future generations

for the earth,
bill