To the Editor:

April 26 was the 14th anniversary of one of the worst nuclear accidents in history, the explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power reactor in Ukraine.

This year, April 26 was also a court date for a group of African American workers who find they have suffered more radiation exposure than their white co-workers at the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site in Aiken, South Carolina. Their legal action is a response to their experience of ongoing racist harassment and discrimination in job advancement and compensation. They have made the finding that when exposed to plutonium, the most deadly of radioactive elements, black workers are less likely to be moved to a safer job than whites. Savannah River Site is part of our nation's nuclear weapons complex. In the heart of the American Super nuclear Power lies a putrid kernel of discrimination.

What does this have to do with us in (Your Town Here)? Our tax dollars--and indeed those of the Savannah River Site workers--will pay for the legal costs, not of the workers, but to defend their employer Westinghouse Savannah River Company, a government contractor. Anyone who can see that this is a crime should contact your U.S. Representative (US House, Washington DC 20515) and also Energy Secretary Bill Richardson (US DOE, Washington, DC 20585), in support of equal radiation protection and pay for black workers at the Savannah River bomb plant, and urge that our tax dollars not be used to defend their employer. The cold war is over and there never was or is ANY excuse for one race to suffer a greater burden or expense for the profit of another.

Signed --
address
phone number

(Draft prepared by Mary Olson, NIRS Southeast)

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