Kansas City

Dear friends, thanks for waiting for an update. It has been busy and I have lots to tell you so this will be a long post. We have finally arrived in Kansas City, the main goal of our journey.
Kansas City is famous for jazz, barbeque and building bombs. Although that last bit may not be well known outside of the USA. 70 Years ago the Kansas City Plant was built on Bannister road, first to built jets and later to built parts for nuclear bombs.

The site of the old plant, partially demolished and extremly toxic.

A few years ago the plant was closed and the work moved to a new site Orwelian named the'National Security Campus'. Here 90 percent of the new nukes, the B61-12, coming to the Netherlands and Germany are being built. We came to Kansas City to protest the new bombs coming to Europe, a rather selfish reason it seems now because I had no idea how much the people working in these factories have suffered to create 'our' bombs.

Jane Stroever of Peace Works Kansas City, whom organise the yearly action against the plant organized a tour for us to both the old and new plant, guided by Maurice Copeland.

Maurice worked at the old plant for 32 years as a supervisor and is now an advocate for the many people who died or got sick from the work there. Heexplained to us that although the factory is labeled as a non-nuclear plant (wich means people have trouble proving they got sick from their work) there are many radioactive materials and other toxic materials used in building weapons. Over the years there have also been leaks and spills and the whole terrain of the old plant is contanimated. Workers have gotten al kinds of cancers and many respitory diseases. The site is being cleaned but not very well. Wind takes toxic dust to nearby neighbourhoods, two creeks nearby carry contanimated water to the Missisippi river, and rumours have it that dirty mud is used to make fertilizer and used on farmland. If you want to know more please read this three article series written by Claire Schaeffer-Duffy.
Next we wento the new plant wich looks sparkly clean and innocent. We drove around the parkinglot a bit until security stopped us because we wernt allowed to take pictures. The guards at first were a bit surly but then a voice came over their intercom (I guess they were listening in) saying: 'Is that Jane Stroevers voice?' It was and their boss then came out of the building and we all had a friendly conversation. Maurice also knew them as he used to work with them. We Europeans were quite bewildered by the whole thing. We werent even sure if we could leave the car at first, because we had heard law enforcement over here dont like it if you get out without being told to.
After that we took some pictures of the sign in front of the 'Campus'.

Jane and Susan at the National Security Campus. To our left you can see the purple line that you are not supposed to cross. Apparently they repaint it every year just for the linecrossing action...

At the entrance of the factory

Enough about that. Let me now tell you a bit about the place and the people we are staying with. We have been giving warm hospitality by the Cherith Brook Catholic Worker in Kansas City ( Cherith Brook is the place where Elijah hid and was fed by ravens as in 1 Kings 17). We sort of knew them because two people, Elisabeth and Josh, who used to live here started a new CW community in Sweden a few years ago called senapskornet.
They have lunch and evening meals with people from the neighbourhood a few times a week and offer showers and clean clothes to those who need it. They also have a big garden with bees , 40 chickens, 4 ducks and a dog.

Mural made by Elisabeth on the side of the house.

Front door of the place where they have meals and showers.

A glimps of the bees.

One of the HUGE rainwater collectors. The water is used for the garden.

Our first evening here they had a movie called 'Backs against the wall: the Howard Thurman Story' showing after dinner about Howard Thurman who inspired Martin Luther King Jr, and other students committed to social justice who would participate in the civil rights movement. He also traveld in Asia and met with Gandhi. I never heard of the man before and was truly inspired by this movie and his story.

We did many other things in the past days, too much to tell you about in this blog but Yesterday was kind of a special day. We were invited for a radio show at KKFI Community Radio Show together with Maurice and Jane and Debbie Penniston, whose husband worked at the nuke-parts plant and died very young from brain-cancer (she is also featured in the NCR article I mentioned before). In the lobby of the radiostation we not only saw a paper for the action we will join on monday but also one about Extinction Rebelion, the climatechange actiongroup that Margriet from the Amsterdam CW and Chris joined in London last year.

In the radiostation. I also liked the black sticker on top, zoom in to see it!

Before and after we went to the house of Brother Louis and Sister Teresa. Brother louis was part of the Holy Family CW for over 30 years until it closed down not long ago. We had a service there with other former Holy Family members and it really did feel like a holy(?) family meeting.

Kitchen in Brother Louis' house.

Well, this blog is becoming way to long so i will end it now. Today is a bit of a quit day, Chris is going to a museum, Ina works on her filmproject and I am writting stuff and relaxing. Tomorrow is the action day. Please pray for good weather and friendly policeman. We will report to you on the action tommorow afternoon, Deo gratias!