Vanessa Pierce, Salt Lake City, Utah: an interview by Rob DeBirk, 7 November 2007

Transcript (42 pages) of interview by Rob DeBirk with Vanessa Pierce on November 7, 2006

Pierce (b. 1980) grew up in Colorado Springs. She attended Grinell College in Iowa. Following graduation she went into the Green Corps, a program of training and hands-on experience in how to run an environmental campaign. After training, she came to Utah to take a job with HEAL Utah - the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah. This organization was instrumental in stopping the Fernald nuclear waste from being sent to Utah. Vanessa discusses the methods used, particularly the work they did with the Utah legislature. Other topics covered include the relationship between the legislature and the L.D.S. church, plans proposed by Energy Solutions to bring more nuclear waste to Utah, and the proposed nuclear waste dump on the Goshute reservation. Interview is part of the Utah Environmentalists Oral History Project. Interviewer: Rob DeBirk

VANESSA PIERCE Salt Lake City, Utah An Interview by Rob DeBirk 7 November 2007 EVERETT L. COOLEY COLLECTION Utah Environmentalist Oral History Project U-1850 American West Center, Environmental Humanities Program, and Marriott Library Special Collections Department University of Utah THIS INTERVIEW IS WITH VANESSA PIERCE. WILL YOU SPELL YOUR LAST NAME PLEASE? P-I-E-R-C-E. NOVEMBER 7, 2007 FOR THE AMERICAN WEST CENTER’S UTAH ENVIRONMENTALIST ORAL HISTORY PROJECT. RD: Vanessa, what’s your birth date? When were you born? Um, can you tell me just a little bit about your family, where you were raised, how many siblings you have? VP: Yes, um. So I was born on June 7, 1980. I am the only child in my family. And I grew up in Colorado Springs, Colorado. So, that place is, like Utah, sort of a hotbed for religious influences. And, I grew up with a number of friends who were... whose parents worked at Focus on the Family and who were pretty fundamentalist Christians. And [ was told a lot that I was going to go to hell for not being a Christian. So, my joke about living in Utah is that I feel comfortably oppressed here, because it would just be hard to live anywhere that I didn’t feel sort of ostracized, I guess. RD: Was your own family religious growing up? VP: Um, I would call them spiritual. They... I grew up in a non-Christian, nondenominational church, um, so kind of similar to Unitarian, but not Unitarian. It’s called the Church of Religious Science and my caveat that I always say is that it’s not Christian Science and it’s not Scientology. But it’s sort of new thought based on philosophical principles that sort of resonate between most world religions. And my parents met teaching transcendental meditation. So, I definitely had more, I guess, eastern thought influences in my growing up. RD: So, what kind of a... what kind of environmental teachings did this religion impart, if any to you that you remember? VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 VP: There was no instruction on environmental issues in general. I think, just politically, most of the people who went to that church tended to be a little bit more lefty, proenvironment, pro-human rights. But one of the basic teachings of Religious Science is that we’re all part of the same creed or whatever you want to call it. Um, and that there is no separation between you and I, between a fish or a tree—that we’re all part of God, essentially. And so I guess with that you really kind of start to value the golden rule—you know, treating others the way that you would want to be treated. So I guess it kind of just inherent that you would want to treat the earth well, because it’s part of our creator. RD: So, that idea that we’re all... that modalities are the same being was extended to the environment but was that something that was explicit, or was it something that was more implied? VP: It was definitely more implied. So I just kind of... I guess grew... I just cared about the environment from a very young age. I was reading over some essays that [ wrote when [ was in, I think, seventh grade, and it was comical to read them because you’d think I was a ninety year old crotchety woman talking about, you know, women getting raped and the earth being pillaged, and the world’s going to hell in a handbasket, and it’s each of our jobs to make the world a better place. So, for some reason I just felt that from a young age. I think my dad was member of Greenpeace, but that only came up once. He never talked about it. I just remember somebody offered him tuna fish once and he said, “No, I’m boycotting tuna right now. I’'m a member of Greenpeace.” And the person said, “What, green peas?” Um, so that’s my only memory of environmental anything really coming up. My mom is not terribly political in any way. VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 RD: Did you have much access to the outdoors growing up? Did you grow up in a suburban area or... what was your access like? VP: Yeah, my folks, my dad especially really loved the outdoors, so he was always bicycling and we’d actually travel to Utah to Moab to go on trips. And when my parents got divorced, I think I was in sixth grade, um, I would spend spring break with my dad every year, and so we always went on some kind of camping trip in the Southwest. We’d go to Chaco Canyon in New Mexico or Arches in Moab here or different adventures like that. Um, and then we would go just hiking a lot. My grandparents lived out in the country, so we would go out there and go on hikes in the buttes, kind of out in eastern Colorado. So, there was definitely kind of a... My grandpa was definitely a naturalist. My dad’s dad, and I think that had some influence. But when I was a teenager, I just got really snarky about going on trips with my dad and stepmom, so it was kind of a... a tough relationship for a while with the outdoors because [ associated it with that. RD: I can’t imagine you as a snarky teenager. VP: (Laughs) I know, it’s shocking, I’m sure. RD: It’s astounding, actually. Well, now you’re the executive director of HEAL Utah, Healthy Environmental Alliance of Utah. Could you tell me a little bit about how you came to this position? What kind of training did you give yourself to get this position, meaning when you were in college what did you study? Did you set yourself at that point on a projection towards work in the grass-roots environmental sphere? VP: Yeah, when I remember as a kid thinking that you might have to be like a movie star to do environmental advocacy, I just remember thinking like what kind of amazing VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 credentials do you have to have to do that kind of work? And so fast forwarding I went to school at Grinnell College, which is a small, liberal arts school in the corn fields of Towa. RD: Can you spell Grinnell? VP: Uh-huh. G-r-i-n-n-e-l-1. And during my freshman year there I got involved with a student environmental group called Free the Planet, which ran different... Free the Planet was kind of a cool model because it was a student college kind of organizing group that was national in scope, but they would partner with different national environmental groups on various campaigns. So they partnered with Rain Forest Action Network, who at the time was working to get the home improvement industry to stop selling old growth wood. Um, later they partnered with... I’'m trying to think of other groups besides RAN that they worked with. Anyhow, they worked with a variety of organizations... Forest Ethics would be another group who was working later to try and get the catalogue industry to start using recycled paper. So it was a cool thing because this group would have really kind of sexy national campaigns that students could plug into and feel like you were part of a national movement. But then we also worked to have kind of local, campus focused efforts on, you know, reducing CO2 emissions and getting renewable energy and that kind of thing. So I got involved with that group my freshman year, and it was one of the best run student environmental groups in the country, honestly. We had at a very small school, just tons and tons of people involved where parts of lots of big actions and victories and um... generated more press ops in one year than the Sierra Club chapter of Iowa did. So, that was what really got me hooked. And there was just this amazing community of people that were involved with Free the Planet, so some of my best friends to this day are VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 guys that I did this environmental organizing with. And it was really more that experience than anything academic that I learned in college that made me... that just helped me realize that this is the work that I was going to do for the rest of my life. So after I graduated, I learned about a program called Green Corps, which is field school for environmental advocacy. And Green Corps is a pretty selective program that’s oriented mostly towards recent college graduates and they provide thirteen months worth of hands on training in running field campaigns. So, I think usually they get somewhere near a thousand or more applicants and they accept about twenty-five people into the program. And, some of my mentors in my college years from Free the Planet went on to do Green Corps or I met because we got Green Corps people out to campus to do trainings to give us some more skills. So, after I graduated, I just went straight into Green Corps. And for the first month of the program we hung out in Boston and just did kind of hands on skills training—so how to build a coalition, how to run a press conference, how to plan a campaign, how to work on leadership development and develop leaders within an organization. And then from there, Green Corps graduates go on to run field campaigns for different national environmental groups. And they usually do about, I don’t know, two to three months in the field and they’d run a pretty short campaign and then we’d come back for more skill sessions, debriefs and then people would move on to a new campaign. So it was pretty common for people in Green Corps to run three to five campaigns and live in three to five different cities over the course of the year. And you just work your ass off. It’s kind of like boot camp or the Marine Corps for advocacy work. VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 So while I was in the program, I did the community organizing track that they had, which was a little bit unique. I spent nine months in Hartford, Connecticut as a community organizer with a group called Toxics Action Center. And we were working on campaigns to help local community activists fight toxic threats in their backyard. So when people were concerned about water contamination, or polluting power plants or leaky landfills, they’d often first call government agencies or the Department of Environmental Quality, get a run around, have no satisfaction to their problems, and then eventually they’d call us. And we would help them craft typically a political campaign to address the issues that they were concerned about. So I worked there for nine months. While I was there I worked closely with a group called Citizen Power Alert, which was concerned about a proposed power plant that was literally going to be built in the field at the end of the cul-de-sac where these people lived. They were going to have dozens of diesel trucks running down their residential street every day. It was tons of ammonium nitrates and all sorts of other things going into that power plant. So we worked with this group to help them fight that proposal. And I think it was literally the week that I was leaving that the mayor of the town, or the head of their select board had a press conference and said that the proposal was dead. So that was a very amazing experience. And then for the second part of my time with Green Corps I came out to Utah where I ran a canvas office for an organization that does fund raising for various environmental groups. And canvassing is definitely one of the hardest jobs I have ever had in my life. [ mean going door to door to ask for money for the Sierra Club is hard enough, but then trying to motivate a staff of twenty-five people to go out and do this is VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 even more difficult. So, that was absolutely insane. I was easily working a hundred hours a week trying to, you know, do the best we could. And we had a great year; we had like the second most successful year in that office’s history. So, it was a great experience. I learned a lot about Utah neighborhoods and politics doing that. So after my Green Corps year was up and my gig in Utah was up, I was kind of faced with the question, what do I do next? And I realized through my experience in Connecticut that I really care about the intersection between the environment and human health, because I think that’s what can really help people understand how critical it is to protect and safeguard our environment. So I wanted to do work that combined those two issues. I knew that I wanted to be out west. Having lived in New England and felt totally like an outsider, I really realized how much of a mountain west girl I am. And with the skiing so close to Salt Lake City, I decided this would be a great place. So, I’d heard through a couple of different connections about this group, HEAL Utah that was concerned about nuclear waste issues. I looked at their website, felt totally intimidated because I had no idea what Class A, B and C nuclear waste was and thought I was totally out of my league, but through a series of kind of funny connections I was able to get in touch with Jason, Jason Groeneweold the head of the group and we met for lunch and talked about environmental advocacy work and stuff like that. And I basically just asked him to consider hiring me. And it took him about a week to make an offer. So it was either go work on the John Kerry campaign or work for HEAL Utah and thankfully for me, Jason called me back and said you’ve got the job. So that’s how I ended up coming to HEAL and I never wanted to be the executive director of HEAL. I thought it basically seemed like a glorified administrative job. But VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 it’s been a really rewarding experience and I had just a tremendous teacher in Jason. He was an amazing mentor. So, it’s been an honor to be in this role for the last year. It’s hard to believe it’s been that long. RD: What were some of your first campaigns working with HEAL Utah? VP: The first really kind of really intense issue that we took up was the fight against what became known as the Fernald waste. So there was this defunct nuclear weapons plant in Fernald, Ohio that I think used to be the sight for uranium enrichment for nuclear bombs. And there were certain streams for nuclear waste as this plant was actually being deconstructed and demolished. They found these streams of waste that were really radioactive, but they were mill tailings. And because of our arcane nuclear waste laws and some work that folks back in Washington did to kind of reclassify this waste, they were going to try and send it here to Utah. But because of the nature of the waste—it was highly, highly radioactive, it was not your run of the mill mill tailings which would... most mill tailings would be eligible for disposal at the EnviroCare facility in Utah. But this stuff just shouldn’t have gone there. So, I remember learning about this issue and we realized that Congressman Rob Bishop who was a former lobbyist for EnviroCare had done some work to reclassify this waste stream so that theoretically it could be disposed of here. And um, we decided that we were going to prevent this stuff from coming here. So, we had to do a lot of work with experts to first just figure out, kind of what the scientific case was against the waste coming here. And then we had to figure out what our campaign plan was to make it happen. And I very clearly remember sitting down with Jason and our other co-worker, Bethy, and saying, “I don’t think that this is a campaign that we can win and should we be investing our time in it?”” And it was really hard for us VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 to do this because we thought it was a done deal. But amazingly we were able to galvanize so much public outrage that Congressman Rob Bishop would be doing the bidding of a nuclear waste company back in Washington just to bring some radioactive crap into our state, that we made his life miserable. So we followed him from town hall meeting to town hall meeting when he was back in the state. We met with editorial boards across the state of Utah. We pitched a lot of stories to reporters who did more and more investigative digging into the issue. And ultimately, I think, just the huge chorus of outrage that resulted from the issue ultimately resulted in EnviroCare withdrawing their request to accept that waste stream. So, we nipped that one in the bud. RD: Can you tell me little bit about public perception in Utah of radioactive waste? Both... and if you’ve seen any changes from when you began working on these issues to where public perception is now a few years later. VP: I think that most of hard work and the heavy lifting that was done to really kind of change public perception about nuclear waste happened before I started working at HEAL. So, one of the original nuclear issues that HEAL tackled was the fight against the private fuel storage proposal. Which was a proposal dreamed up by a handful of nuclear utilities who were running out of space to store their high level nuclear waste. And they decided that they wanted to ship that waste offsite somewhere until a final disposal solution was found. And they targeted the Skull Valley band of Goshutes. So that’s a small impoverished tribe of Native Americans in Utah’s West Desert who were pretty desperate for economic development. And PFS brought this proposal to store forty thousand metric tons of nuclear waste on the tribe. That proposal bitterly divided the tribe and consequently we started working with the faction of the tribe that was opposed to VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 bringing that waste there. And through that work we also really kind of elevated the level of public discussion about storing that waste in Utah. Ultimately we saw Governor Leavitt stand against the waste. The Utah Congressional Delegation came out against it, so HEAL was really involved in the beginning and throughout that campaign to raise public awareness that issue. But at the same time that a lot of public leaders were starting to speak out against PFS, there was also a proposal by EnviroCare, which is the nuclear waste dump in our west desert to start accepting different streams of nuclear waste than what they were currently permitted to accept. So, the type of waste that they wanted to take is known as Class B and C nuclear waste. And here’s your quick nuclear waste primer. So, high level waste typically includes the spent nuclear fuel rods that come from inside of a nuclear reactor. Low level waste is a second type of nuclear waste and low level waste is somewhat of a misnomer. The fact that it is low level doesn’t mean that it’s low hazard. In fact, every radionuclide present in high level waste is also present in low level waste. But just by virtue of the way that nuclear waste is defined, high level waste is only spent fuel rods. So anyhow, within the low level category there are three classes of nuclear waste. There’s Class A waste, Class B waste, Class C waste and then in fact there is something called Greater than Class C waste. So actually there are four categories. And the further you go down the alphabet the more hazardous and radioactive the waste streams typically become. And I say typically because Class A waste is also somewhat of a catch-all category. So if there is some radionuclide that’s not specifically defined as Class B waste, it could still be very dangerous and very hot. It could eventually prove lethal, but there are some forms of waste like that that happen to fall into the Class A category. 10 VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 Anyhow, Energy... or rather EnviroCare at the time was licensed to accept Class A low level waste along with mill tailings and some other types of nuclear waste. They wanted to start taking Class B and C waste. And that was concerning for a number of reasons. Number one, it’s much more radioactive than what we are currently taking. It predominantly comes from the nuclear power industry and from dismantled nuclear reactors. Number two, we don’t generate Class B and C waste in this state. So the majority of this radioactive trash that was going to be sent here was generated from other people who in our view weren’t able to take responsibility for the lethal poisons that they created. So, we started to fight the proposal at the same time that the PFS campaign was going on to allow Energy Solutions to take Class B and C nuclear waste. And I think that was a tremendous undertaking because in part it’s such a wonky issue, getting into the classifications of nuclear waste streams, just to educate the public about that was almost a Sisyphean task in itself. And then the second issue was just that EnviroCare was tremendously powerful, had a lot of money. At that time, I think that HEAL Utah only had two staff people, Jason Groeneweold and Jon Jenson, and then a great Board of Directors and advisory council members. So I think that the work that those guys did to elevate that issue onto the public radar screen so that people... your average Joe citizen could somewhat understand the difference between Class B waste, Class A waste and high level nuclear waste was pretty incredible. So since that time I think that people have retained that knowledge. And I think also Utahns are just skeptical of anything nuclear because of our downwinder legacy. And having been exposed and burned by the federal government who basically deemed us a low segment population, or a low-use segment of 11 VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 the population, I think really has colored people’s perspective about nuclear issues and we’re just skeptical about anything nuclear. RD: I want to get back to downwinders and nuclear testing and your involvement with Divine Strake and your fight against Divine Strake in just a minute, but I was wondering if you could talk more, maybe a little more specifically or concretely about the intersections between activism, the work you are doing, and the scientific community, and how with issues that are so complex involving radiation and toxins which you don’t always see, it’s a little more difficult to communicate those issues with average citizens than it is clear-cutting or deforestation—something which is palpable. So, what methods do you use...? How do you go about communicating these things and really doing both activist work and scientific education at the same time? VP: Um-hm. That definitely... RD: Can I steal your pen? VP: Yeah, yeah. It’s a real challenge to educate people about these issues. In part, like I said because, they are really wonky and technical, and people have to have a little bit of patience sometimes to get through the issues if they really want to understand them. I think one of the key things that we do is we’re really careful when we craft our sound bites in our messaging to try and make the issues as simples as possible. We... when it comes to working with the media, we tend not to get down into the nitty-gritty, talking about picocuries per gram or millirem per hour in terms of the radioactivity of the issues that we work on. And instead, I think equally important to the nuclear waste issues is the democracy piece of our work. Um, and one of the challenges that we have been faced with is that the decisions to bring nuclear waste into the state, or to detonate nuclear 12 VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 bombs or to build nuclear reactors tend to be very undemocratic and very nontransparent. And as a result, we’ve worked a lot to bring the public spotlight onto these issues and get people involved. But I think just the... I guess the sordid nature of the democratic process and the way it’s been perverted by the Department of Energy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, state regulators—some have been horrible, some have been good, but I think, and certainly state lawmakers, I think that that’s equally compelling to the public, as is the technical information behind the work that we’re doing. RD: You mentioned uh, the role in your relationship with state lawmakers? I know that HEAL’s been a very effective group but part of that effectiveness of the group has made them... As a result of that HEAL’s kind of perceived as an extreme group when it comes to these issues by state lawmakers. How... I’'m just wondering what your thoughts are on that. How you deal with that, because in your line of work you have to deal with the state legislature. You can’t not deal with it. So how do you counter that view that you are an extreme organization? VP: It’s been a really big challenge, and I think that there are a couple of reasons that we’ve been branded as an extreme organization. Which I always find funny, because if you look at any event that we do and you look at the people there, most of them are in their fifties, sixties and seventies. They have grey hair; a lot of them are professors. We’ve got a number of artists, writers; [ mean they are very respectable people. Some of them are pediatricians, OBGYNSs, so it’s hard for me to really look at that group of individuals and think, oh yeah, these are extremists. And yet that is how we’ve been branded or how people have attempted to brand us. So I think part of the reason that we are seen this way is because our opposition, EnviroCare and now they’ve morphed into 13 VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 Energy Solutions has done a lot of work to try and undermine our credibility with legislators. So sometimes Energy Solutions has told legislators outright lies about what we’re up to. Um, at other times they have just been very misleading. They have a tour of their nuclear waste facility that they like to give public leaders. And on the tour, it’s common for the tour guide to say things like, “You could eat a teaspoon of uranium mill tailings a day from our disposal sight and you would never get cancer.” Or, “You could put your mouth on that canister of radioactive waste right there and there would be no health problem.” Um, and I think that because you can’t see radiation and because as a lay person, it’s hard to go out to that sight and get a tour from their spokesperson who’s going to put their best foot forward, it’s hard to come away with a super critical response to that tour. And as a result, I think a lot of law makers have bought into the sentiment that, you know, nuclear waste is okay. It’s a safe industry, ya... da...da...da...da. So, ways that we counter this, it’s frankly our biggest challenge, and I think one of the areas where we need to grow the most, but um, we’ve had tremendous success in working with our grassroots activists, and working with the media. And I think in part that’s because we develop relationships with those people and they get to know that we’re reasonable, smart, entertaining, nice and very good looking human beings. Um, and we’re trying to do more of that relationship building with lawmakers, so I think that one of the factors that’s been bad for our work with the legislature that happens on both sides is just demonizing the other side. So a lot of Republican lawmakers try and just write us off as radical leftists. They’ve compared us with PETA and kind of implied that, you know, we’re not beyond throwing blood on people like PETA’s done, or allegedly done. By the same token it’s also been important for us to actually make time to just talk 14 VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 with these people outside of the hustle and bustle of the legislation... Uh the legislative session and to sit down with them so that they understand we know what we’re talking about. We’re principled people. We represent, you know, a lot of folks who are their constituents. And I think the more that they get to recognize us as real humans, the more that they can really take our concerns seriously. So it’s a little bit of a theoretical response right now because we haven’t actually gone through a full legislative session since we’ve started to try and get to know lawmakers on a more personal basis. But I think we’ve been so quick to reject the typical lobbying that corporations do that we failed to learn why it’s so damn successful. And now I understand why it’s critical to those groups to take legislatures out to basketball games or to fancy dinners, because that’s a good way to... you know you bond over a sports game and you get to know about each other’s family. And just like when I call up an activist of ours and can talk about with them about what’s going on in their life, so those lobbyists can do the same with the state legislature. And we’ve got to find our own, probably more principled ways of doing that with them too, because otherwise, we’re always going to be seen as “the other” and easily dismissed. RD: I think that’s really interesting that you’re wanting to look at some new methods which you can go about changing some of these lawmakers’ minds. It seems fairly innovative. Is that innovation something that you see much going on in the environmental community as a whole and... I guess I'm wondering specifically, you mentioned this as being something that’s being successfully done by businesses and corporations all the time. Um, how much do you think it’s necessary for environment groups to begin to emulate those practices that have been successful? And do you see that as kind of a 15 VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 dangerous thing? I mean are you worried that you may cross the line at some point, or you don’t think so as long as you stay principled... VP: Yeah, um, we... this is... it’s a new idea for us. And I frankly don’t know how much other groups do it. I don’t know how much other groups in the state do it. Sadly there are very few environmental groups that are really active with the state legislature and that’s really kind of the arena in which that kind of relationship building, I think, is really critical. It’s difficult to build relationships in the same way at the federal levels. Um, we’ve been unique historically in that our work is really focused on using the media to call attention to improprieties and to controversial issues with regard to public policy. And that’s been absolutely critical to our success in the past, and it will be in the future. So we’re not ever going to give that up. We’re never going to give up our principled stances which sometimes do make it uncomfortable to talk with these people as people. Because when you’ve been quoted in the paper as saying, “Representative Mike Noel and Aaron Tilton have no business making public policy when they stand to profit off of building a nuclear reactor in the state.” It definitely makes that meeting with Mike Noel awkward. So, that’s absolutely the challenge in going down that path of trying to build a relationship with a person. Because once you have a relationship, then it’s a lot more complex. You can’t... It’s harder to speak without regard to that person’s feelings. But I think that we’ve... I think critical to our work has just been relationship building. And we haven’t built relationships with lawmakers. So I don’t see this as a new, exclusive strategy. I just think of it as kind of a complement to the work that we’re already doing. And I don’t know of many environmental groups that have emulated industry in this way. So, we’ll... I guess we’ll see how it works out. But I can definitely see how it could be 16 VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 difficult to take some of those people to task once you get close to them. And I think that’s why it’s important to always stick to your principles and always go back to your mission statement and whatever; just to make sure that you don’t sacrifice any of that just for the convenience of having an easier time talking with a lawmaker. RD: A majority of the lawmakers that you deal with are men. So, how is it as a woman coming up there and advocating for the environment? So how is to deal with them as a woman coming up there and advocating for the environment? Do you feel that you’re treated differently than a... Jason would have been treated, or how do these gender politics play out? VP: Um-hm. Those are... Those are huge. Not only am I a woman, but I’'m also fairly petite in stature, and I’'m not Mormon. And so [ think the three of those things combine to really make it a challenge. I think that the advantage that Jason had is that as a six foot four guy, lawmakers often had to stand and look up to him. And I think that just gave him a little bit more presence and power in dealing with those guys. So, it’s been a challenge in lobbying and I think an interesting story that just kind of shows the sexism embedded in the legislature is when I ran into Representative Mike Noel after making those comments about him in the paper, he said something like, “Vanessa, [ saw your comments in the story and boy, I am just disappointed in you.” As if he just wanted to throw me over his knee and spank me or something. And I don’t think that he would have said that to a man. I think he would have said something different. But it almost sounded like he was a father who was disappointed that I got a bad report card or something like that. So, in terms of overcoming it, I think, one of the things that’s been helpful to me whenever I can is to just really get I guess, grounded in my own passion for the issues, 17 VANESSA PIERCE and also to really put on my BS detector. 7 NOVEMBER 2007 And to call people out when I think I’'m being told a lie. And that’s something that’s hard to do, because you really have to be kind of like in a good mental place or very centered to do that. But I do remember with one legislator, he fed me some bogus line about a bill that we were fighting. And I just looked at him and I said, “Representative, do you honestly expect me to believe what you just said?”” And he kind of blushed and smiled and sheepishly said, “Well, no, probably not.” But, yeah, I have no silver bullet for dealing with these guys. And that’s honestly why we wanted to hire a man when we were looking for somebody to be our primary lobbyist up at the state capital as we actually thought, “Well, you’d either have to have an amazingly kick-ass woman or you know... RD: Which you are. VP: Which, right... (chuckles). I honestly... Lobbying is the most difficult part of my job. And that’s the thing that makes it the hardest to get up in the morning during the session. So, we wanted a guy who could handle more of that and the first session I think was really difficult for our policy director. So, it’s a tough job. RD: Do you see this changing at all? These gender politics changing up there? VP: Not until the old guard dies. I mean (chuckles)... some of these guys are going to be in their office because they have a safe district for probably another decade at least. And I don’t know, even with a new generation that much will change. I mean one of the younger guys up there is Representative Aaron Tilton. And he’s the legislator who serves on the committee looking at utility regulation and he’s the one who’s planning to build a nuclear reactor in this state. So, he’s clearly got no respect for, you know, the rule of law 18 VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 or conflicts of interest or ethics. Nor does he per se for women as far as I can tell. I mean, he’s just as patriarchal and arrogant as the next old fogey up there, so... RD: Can you talk a little bit about the religious divide up there as well? What it’s like... you mentioned that it’s difficult not being Mormon, you know, in addition to being a woman, but not being Mormon and going up there working with legislators who are a Mormon majority. VP: I think it’s really easy for us to be dismissed because we’re environmentalists, which is somewhat of a pejorative term up there, we’re young, we’re... you know, I’'m sure any of those guys would guess that we’re probably if not registered Democrats, Democratic leaning. And then we’re not members of the dominant faith. And so I think all of that combines to just make it a lot easier for these guys to just dismiss us. And just in terms of making general conversation, um, [ don’t really know what it’s like to be a member of the dominant culture, but I would imagine it’s not uncommon for discussions about Relief Society to come up, or conversations about some gathering at the ward the other night. And I think that those are very subtle kind of cues that people can and do use to indicate, look, I’'m part of the clan. I’m part of the in crowd. And we can’t do that. So not being part of the in crowd, I don’t really know what we’re missing, but I just have sense that there’s something there. RD: Do you ever kind of try to appropriate some of that language? I mean you obviously can’t talk about what you are doing in Relief Society, but there is a certain intonation that a lot of the legislators have that kind of comes from the Mormon culture or there’s a certain kind of jargon that follows along with it. Do you ever find yourself imitating those, almost unconsciously? 1 VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 VP: I've never, uh.... I don’t know that I've picked up on the cadence thing at all. Maybe I should watch General Conference more often and try and learn from it for committee testimony. But um, there... I did conduct an experiment back in Washington when I was meeting with a Senator’s legislative director and somebody had kind of given me a couple terms. One of them was “return and report”, which apparently is kind of a term used for missionary work and you I guess return and report on what happened during the day. I don’t know, it’s just some jargon thing that I was told by a member of the Church who’s also a supporter of ours. So I did use that with this legislative director uh, when I was asking, you know, what the Senator’s stance on giving money for the bunker buster was going to be. And I said, “Sir, I need to “return and report” to our membership and let them know what the Senator’s going to do.” And I told the people I was lobbying with that I was going to try this tactic and so they were all looking. And we all agreed he kind of like turned red and looked a little bit flummoxed. And I can’t remember exactly what _his response was, but it seemed to elicit some kind of response. But I felt too... That felt too contrived, so I’ve not done it since then. RD: I think you had to follow up with the secret handshake! You really needed a one-two punch there. VP: Then they would have known. RD: Yeah, they would have just fallen on their knees. VP: Yes, yes, I've heard one of our board members, Chip Ward, kind of says that sometimes if he’s trying to play the role when he stands up from a chair, he’ll act like he’s trying to like pull something down from his pants around his knees. Because apparently, garments tend to creep up and you kind of have to readjust them so it’s 20 VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 common to see men of the LDS faith kind of pull them down. So, he’ll kind of do that on occasion (laughs). RD: Can you talk about the make-up of HEAL Utah membership? What that... I guess I’m kind of interested in more issues of gender, race and class. And you mentioned that when you have rallies, the majority of the people coming out are artists or they’re professors... they seem to be professionals. People that I would assume were middle class, upper middle class, things like that; um can you just tell me more about that? VP: Yeah, yeah. I always hate to get the diversity question from foundations when they ask about the demographics of our membership because it does tend to be middle class to upper middle class or even beyond that. More white obviously and older... I mean the generation of my parent’s age and older. We don’t have a lot of twenty or thirty somethings involved with our work. Um, and I don’t know quite what their religious make-up is. I mean we never ask people if they are members of the Church or not. And I’ve been very surprised by how a lot of our very passionate lefty members are oftentimes LDS. So, I’'m not quite sure on that front, but in terms of just like cultural diversity, we’re pretty white and we’re pretty kind of typical progressive stereotype. RD: What types of things is HEAL Utah trying to do to counter that, to get more diversity? I mean I noticed that something Save Our Canyons is doing is they’re trying to have things translated to Spanish now. Is HEAL Utah going to try to do something like that or more of that kind of outreach? VP: You know it’s a really interesting issue, this diversity within the environmental movement kind of question. And it’s really a tough one to grapple with, because on the one hand I think it is important that environmental groups kind of expand beyond that 21 VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 stereotype of white, upper middle class kind of person being the typical activist. On the other hand I think it’s also important to really be respectful of where other groups are at. And in the last year the Latino community has been faced with a number of horrible immigration bills. They’ve been faced with raids on sites where the INS is coming in and tearing families apart. There’s the issue of whether the state’s still going to provide money for education for scholarships for kids who are born in the U.S. but whose parents are illegally here or not U.S. citizens. So, I think that if we want to reach out to the Latino community, we need to... you need to do that in a very serious way. So it’s a lot more than just putting your literature in Spanish. I think it’s more going to those events. I think if you expect that community to support your work, you need to support their work with equal emphasis. And so far to me, the Latino community, I think, has bigger fish to fry, honestly, than dealing with our issues. We’ve got a good base of support. Nuclear waste at this point doesn’t impact the Latino community or African American community or Gay community any more disproportionately than it impacts the average Utahn. So I would say if there were a disproportionate impact to one of those communities, absolutely, we’d do whatever we could to reach out to them more. But I think that given the current climate and given that they’ve got issues that are pretty critical. And that we don’t have the resources to really support those issues, nor... I think it could be a little bit of a controversial issue among our own membership. It doesn’t feel appropriate to me to just go out there and say, “Hey, everybody. I’'m going to put this stuff in Spanish and I want you to get involved in all of our stuff.” It just feels a little bit like a fuzzy... it feels good to pretend that we’re doing something, but I don’t know how much translating your 22 VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 stuff into Spanish really does make a difference. And, you know, maybe I’'m wrong, but I think it would take a lot more serious outreach. RD: Yeah. Can you tell me a little bit more about HEAL’s relationship with the Goshutes? What that’s like? I mean, [ know a lot of that began before you were here with the PFS proposal, but how does that relationship stand now? How does it continue still working closely with people like Margene Bullcreek and. .. VP: Yeah, there are two primary members of the Goshute tribe that we’ve worked with historically. So, Margene Bullcreek is one person and then, Sammy Blackbear is the other person. And in order to really help support those members of the tribe who were fighting the PFS proposal, we did what we could to try and ease their lives and ease the economic burden that they were experiencing. So every year since I’ve been around, and even before I came on to the scene we were um... We do a fund raising drive in the fall to raise money for the propane tanks, so that we could fill the propane for at least two or three of the activists out there. We would also do a clothing drive to get warm clothing to get them through the winter, and we’d ask for food donations too, because certainly that’s been something that’s been hard for them to even buy. So, historically that’s been more of the work. We’ve also just.... We’ve done pass-through grants for Margene Bullcreek’s nonprofit which was called OGDA. And it stands for oh, a Goshute word which I don’t know how to say, so [ won’t insult the culture by butchering it. So we did work with Margene to help her raise grant money for that work and to distribute it. We’d also just kind of give money to those guys whenever they came in to Salt Lake to do work so that they could have their gas covered and that kind of thing. Since the PFS proposal has gone away it’s been... it’s really been difficult to figure out what an appropriate relationship 23 VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 between HEAL and the Goshutes is, because our mission is engaging citizens in the effort to protect public health from nuclear and toxic waste. Our mission is not to be the Goshute support center. So occasionally we do get calls asking to pay cell phone bills that have gone unpaid, or to help fix cars, things like that. And we had a long discussion with our board and have decided that now that PFS issue has gone away, we’re going to ease off of the support that we’ve been giving historically to the Goshutes, because it feels... It just kind of goes back to that awful dynamic of kind of white man’s guilt and feeling like we want to do what we can to support them. At the same time, it’s not our mission to give money to impoverished Native Americans and why would we give money to Sammy and Margene but not to say the five other people living out there. Or why is it that if one person asks for a lot more than another person, that that person doesn’t get the same resources. [t’s really... and then there’s the issue of do you even think the resources you’re giving are going to productive uses. Are they really... is the money that we give for the cell phone bill really being used to pay the cell phone bill. And it’s been just a very challenging dynamic to work out, honestly. And the tribal politics out there are so complex, and there’s so much anger even between members who were on the same side of the PFS issue that it’s... even trying to do some good out there has created anger towards us for dropping food at one person’s house first before giving food to a different person’s house. So I think... I think that we’re going to be slowly stepping away from the support that we’ve been doing for the Goshutes. RD: Often environmental and social justice issues are entwined. It seems like an obvious case of that where PFS was trying to move in... was an example of environmental exploitation of these... of the Goshutes living there, but you’ve done a lot of talks in... or 24 VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 in Hartford you mentioned... did you see also these issues of social justice and environmentalism coming together and how so? VP: Yeah, hugely. There was an amazing map that the Connecticut Coalition for Environmental Justice put together which showed all of the point sources of toxic pollution—power plants, incinerators, chemical production companies—and showed where all of those were and then it showed the population of non-white communities. And inevitably the places where all the power plants were, where all the polluters were were in the heart of the communities of color. So there’s definitely that overlap and I think it happens both with race and also with class. So whenever there were proposals to build new power plants like the power plant that I helped fight in New Britain, Connecticut was a very working class, blue collar community that I think folks probably thought would be easy to fight off. I mean nobody would ever think of proposing that in say Stanford, Connecticut which is a bedroom community for New York City. So that was definitely an issue. There was another place where a whole low income community predominantly an African American community in Hamden, Connecticut was built on a super-fund site. And people were sick, they had cancer, they were trying to get their homes moved, and that fight has been going on for probably over a decade and it’s still not resolved. RD: In your experience, how was it difficult in organizing people from Utah, or communities in Utah to fight issues of radiation or toxins vs. helping organize those blue collar communities that you mentioned in Hartford or the Black communities that were being taken advantage of? How did these different dynamics affect your organizing tactics? 25 VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 VP: Uh, it’s a little bit tough to say in part just because we have a very different... HEAL has a very different style from Toxics Action Center. So as a community organizer with Toxics Action Center, we’d get a call from one local person who wanted help. And we would go out and literally sit with that person and eat with their friends around the kitchen table and the goal was to first just figure out, “What do you guys want? Do you want your community to be moved from the superfund site? Do you want restitution?” And so it was much more a process of helping to facilitate the community itself planning their campaign and giving them the skills set that they need to do that work and be more of a project manager. So certainly that was... each community is different because each group has its own dynamics, and the group dynamics really determined how successful the group is going to be. But those people have a lot at stake because it’s literally their backyard they’re fighting to protect and it’s their health that’s on the line. So, even those blue collar low-income community folks that we were working with, I mean they were some of the hardest working people who, you know once a week would commit to a fivehour sit down strategy session and then they would work throughout the week to execute it. So, those folks were generally just amazing and highly motivated. The work that we at HEAL do is a little bit different in that we’re an advocacy organization as opposed to a community organizing group. So we have our own campaign plan and our own agenda, and it’s more about enlisting people to help us execute the plan that we as a staff and board have come up with. But the strategies and tactics are generally the same. It’s working with the media, working to pressure legislators and policy makers and it’s much more, I think all grassroots advocacy has to focus on a political arena rather than on a regulatory arena, because in my experience, 26 VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 regulators exist to give polluters permission to pollute. And so if you don’t want the pollution to begin with, you have to look to the people who ultimately have to say, “yes or no, you can or can’t exist.” Regulators, even the best ones, their hands are somewhat tied. They have a list of boxes that have to be checked off if they are going to grant a permit and if all the boxes are checked, they somewhat have no choice but to say “Okay.” So, that’s why working in the political arena, I think no matter what type of organizing you’re doing is critical. RD: I’'m wondering, and this is going to be a vague question so go anywhere you can. VP: I’ll give you vague answer. RD: Please. So I’m just wondering more about these intersections between environmentalism and social justice, specifically the class issues and race issues. And I’'m wondering what your thoughts are on what role environmental organizations should have and also... in either supporting organizations or unions or something like that that agitate for economic situations to change—if there should be any intersection there between the environmental organizations and those ones that are doing economic work or organizations that are organizing people of color like that... I don’t know the best way to ask that question. I’m sorry. VP: Uh, It’s a great... it’s a great question. It’s one that I think nobody has figured... there’s not an easy answer to it, so from a very abstract perspective, I think absolutely we’re all, T guess comrades in the same trench fighting the establishment. And it really boils down to, I think, the fact that often there’s a small concentrated group of people that have the power and it’s the power to determine how much workers are going to make, what the minimum wage is going to be, whether nuclear power plants are going to come 21 VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 in, how much nuclear waste can be dumped here, how much wilderness is going to be preserved, or how much is going to be allocated to the logging companies to go in and log and the mining companies to drill for oil. So, we definitely are in the same fight in a lot of ways. But figuring out really meaningful opportunities to support each other’s work is a huge challenge, because it’s one thing to say there should be cross-cutting collaboration and cross-issue organizing, but I think a lot of the time people say that because it feels good, but they don’t know what it would take to really make a meaningful alliance. And unless there’s like a concrete way that groups can come together and advocate on these issues, I that it’s more talk than action. So [ don’t... I'm on the board of the Utah Progressive Network, and we actually did talk about having them organize a happy hour for the folks in the state who are doing these... or this kind of work, in part, just because we oftentimes don’t know each other. [ mean [ work a lot on environmental issues and know most members of the environmental community but I couldn’t tell you the name of one labor organizer because I’ve just never met them. And I only know one or two of the Latino leaders who are working on immigrant rights issues. So I think part of it is just we haven’t had occasion to get together and talk and then we all become really myopic and kind of focused on our own issue, which has its good and bad sides to it. I guess on one hand we’re really strategic, we’re really focused and HEAL has had one of the most amazing track records of victories of any group I’ve ever worked with, and I think part of that is because we are so focused. At the same time, we are part of a broader movement, and so it’s good to know what else is going on to see if there are ways that we can collaborate or support each other’s work. 28 VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 But I think it goes back to that relationship building and sometimes you might not understand how your issue fits into another person’s... and it might not even dawn on you, but if you know that person who is kind of directing that work, and you just care about them as a person, maybe you’ll go and be more involved with that work and through that process figure out ways that your work really does combine. RD: You said that you see yourself as part of a broader movement. I wonder if you can articulate that a little bit more. What do you mean by a broader movement? I mean, do you see your boundaries as extending merely among environmental organizations or, I mean you spoke a little bit about economic or social justice organizations, but I’'m wondering how you define movement? Do you see yourself as part of this anti- globalization movement, for instance, which has been prevalent for the last ten years or so? What are your boundaries here? VP: [ mean [ use “movement” in a very, I guess, casual way. So when I just said the broader movement I... Who knows what social change movement really means, but I would say, [ would include in that anybody who’s working to change the status quo so that people of color have greater rights, so that gays and lesbians have greater rights, so that women have greater rights, so that environment is equally protected and that all of these interests, which I think have often been marginalized have broader representation at the table. RD: All right. Thanks, I was just curious about that. I want to get back to one more question about the membership of HEAL Utah? You spoke a little bit about class and race, how about gender? How does that membership break down on gender lines? 29 VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 VP: It seems... for a long time it was much more heavy on the woman’s side? And I think we probably have a slightly stronger core of support from women, in terms of the people who are really, really active on a regular basis. But, I’d say we’re actually moving away from that into a very... it feels very balanced to me in terms of the involvement of the males and females. RD: Okay. Can you tell me about... You mentioned what a successful organization HEAL has been. Can you tell me about one of your greatest disappointments with HEAL? What is something you really thought you were going to win and ended up not winning, or... an instance of that. VP: Yeah, I think the biggest frustration for us was just during the last legislative session and the fight against Senate Bill 155, which was a bill that changed existing laws so that no longer would Energy Solutions have to receive approval from state lawmakers for significant changes at their site. And it was a really wonky bill, even to explain it to legislators, you have to have a good amount of time to just sit through and read one part of state statute which then referred to a different part of state statute and you’d have to read it about five times to really understand what the bill did. And as a consequence of its complex nature, Energy Solutions had a huge amount of success in persuading legislators that it wasn’t really much of a change, and it was just codifying into law the existing practice. Anyhow, it was a very bitter fight. Energy Solutions had over a dozen lobbyists working on this issue for them. And we had, you know, three staff people who were up at the capitol a lot. So... and they had former Speakers of the House lobbying for them. I mean it was just ridiculous the power dynamics there. We were hoping that the governor was going to veto the bill and oftentimes our fights at the state capitol have boiled down 30 VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 to trying to get a gubernatorial veto and then swing enough people to our side so that we could prevent a veto override. So it’s not about directly defeating legislation with an up or down vote. It’s just making sure that we get a third of the legislature on our side. And I think Huntsman was able to read the political landscape and realize that chances are, his veto would be overridden. It was going to be a very narrow count. And he ended up allowing the bill that we were fighting to go into law. It was... it’s the only bill during his time in the governor’s mansion that he did not sign into law as his kind of soft protest against it. So we were devastated that he didn’t take the principled action of vetoing the bill. But the interesting thing is later it came out that he had brokered a sort of back room deal to ultimately prevent the impact of the bill from occurring. So part of the reason they were pushing this bill was because they wanted to double the height of their waste cells. And in order to do that they would have to get permission from regulators in the legislature to do so. So we were really concerned about one specific expansion request, not about the process itself. But whenever they try and weaken the process, obviously that’s problematic. So what Huntsman did, was he said that he was going to use some other channels that nobody had really explored to prevent them from doubling in size. And as a result, Energy Solutions ultimately withdrew their expansion request. Now they can come back once Governor Huntsman is out of office and they can submit all of that and go through that whole process again. And it would be another big nasty fight. So he didn’t solve the process in perpetuity, but he definitely mitigated, I think, the impact of that legislation. So it wasn’t an all out defeat, but it was definitely the most frustrating, kind of sad campaign experience that we’ve had. 31 VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 RD: Can you tell me about your greatest success? VP: There are probably two. The first one that [ experienced was when we were actually successful in banning the disposal of Class B and C waste. And it was a lengthy process that I came in to the organization when it was about half way through its course. There’s a long legislative task force that looked at the issues and... It was really tough to say whether we were even going to get the ban through, because the chairman of the task force that were investigating the issue, one ran the campaign and the citizen group that was backed by EnviroCare to fight the ban. So clearly he was not without bias. The other state legislator had expressed interest at one point in building a high level nuclear waste dump in Southern Utah. So, we thought well, we don’t have a very good chance of getting these guys on our side. But amazingly we did with one of them. And through a two year legislative process, we ultimately were successful in getting the ban through and it was a very bizarre experience where the legislator who ran the campaign for EnviroCare ended up carrying the legislation to ban Class B and C waste and he’s still not a friend of ours by any means. And I think he only carried the ban as kind of a... I don’t know... I think a way to kind of say, well, screw you guys. You won, but I’'m going to get credit for doing it, even though I fought you every step of the way. And the sponsor of the bill in the House was so against us, in fact, that he sponsored the bill... He had questions planted during legislative debate on the floor that really sabotaged the bill, so people would ask him questions that he didn’t know the answer to and it made it sound like it was a really ill-formed piece of legislation. And he ultimately voted against his own bill! It was just remarkable. Nonetheless, it did pass. And sitting in the observation room, or in the peanut gallery and watching all of that happen, and sitting next to Energy 39 VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 Solutions’ lobbyists and watching them watch it, I mean it was just amazing. Because here’s a billion dollar company that somehow could not stand up to the passion of a small group of committed people, general outrage from the public, and we beat them. So, that was truly remarkable. And then the second experience was a campaign that very recently we won. I think it was in February of this year, 2007. We succeeded in defeating the Divine Strake test. So this was a test proposed at the Nevada Test Site that was going to emulate the impact of a small nuclear weapon. And they were going to dig a huge hole in the desert at the Nevada Test Site, fill it with seven hundred tons of ammonium nitrate fuel oil and detonate this enormous bomb. So it wasn’t a nuclear blast, but there were certainly concerns that it would resuspend radioactive fallout from past tests and that those radioactive materials would potentially go into the air and expose people downwind. And certainly we know that with radiation, there’s kind of a linear relationship between your risk of cancer and the amount of radiation that you’re exposed to. So every time you’re exposed to more, your chances of getting cancer are higher. So we were concerned about, you know, downwind populations being re-exposed to radiation. But even, I think, more significantly this, I think, was a litmus test to see how comfortable people are with the concept of renewed nuclear weapons testing. And how close the federal government. .. how close could they bring us to renew testing without the people freaking out. And this was again one of those instances where we saw that the federal funds had been appropriated for this program, so it was virtually impossible to get the money taken away. It was already planned. The hole was already dug for the test. And after some initial protests and work to publicize this issue in terms of the regional, state and national 33 VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 media, we just... we really stopped to think of okay, we delayed the test, but is there a way to actually stop it. And again, it was one of those unwinnable campaigns that I was thinking might just be a waste of resources and might exhaust our membership and really dishearten them. But there were so many people who called us and said, “I am outraged at this.” We got calls from Kanab, from people who wanted us to teach them how to organize rallies. We got called from people down in St. George who had never been involved in politics and who wanted us to teach them how to do a press conference and to help them draft petitions that they could get signed at the local beauty parlor and bakery. So it was just truly amazing, the grassroots outrage at this test. And for that reason alone we said, we’ve got no choice but to give this everything we’ve got. So, I mean we worked with just regular activists, with downwinders, with the media, with tons and tons of people to fight this test. And I remember talking with a dear friend of mine, Michelle Thomas, who’s a downwinder from the St. George area, and she and I had met with Senator Hatch’s office back in Washington a number of different times and talked with those different staffers, and so we were chatting about this particular individual, and she said, “Well, I was on the phone with him the other day and I asked him why his boss, Orrin, wasn’t going to be down in St. George for the hearings that are coming up. And Bill Castle was very apologetic for his boss and he said, “You know, Orrin’s had some shoulder surgery and some problems and couldn’t make it down there.” And she tells me, “Do you know what I said, Vanessa? I told him, well, maybe if Hatch wasn’t so damn busy patting himself on the back all the time, he wouldn’t have thrown his shoulder out!” I mean, these people just won’t take it from anyone. And it was ultimately Bill Castle 34 VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 who called both Michelle and myself the day that the test was cancelled to tell us that they had cancelled the test. And that was just amazing. RD: That’s really incredible. Can you tell me more about Divine Strake? So how did the first organizing begin? Who began it? Was HEAL Utah there at the very beginning? What was going on? VP: Yeah, the way that we learned about it is, I have a pretty good relationship with one reporter for the Salt Lake Tribune. And he just forwarded me some article that he had come across which he does from time to time about the DOD’s plan... a branch of the DOD called the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. And their acronym is D(i)TRA. So D(i)ITRA had plans to have this nuclear simulation blast and somebody made a very glib statement about “It’ll be the first time that Las Vegas can see a mushroom cloud in decades.” And it was really seeing that just was mind blowing to me, and I said to this reporter, “You’re going to do a story on this aren’t you?” And he said, “Well, [ don’t know. Do I have to?”” And I said, “Hell, yeah, you have to! What are you thinking?”* So he begrudgingly did the work and it ended up being on the front page above the fold on the Salt Lake Tribune, and that really sparked a whole firestorm about this issue. There had been one or two, one or two guys who also did a lot of work in terms of exposing the budget documents about this test because that was really what raised the biggest concerns. This test being funded through the Department of Defense, but it’s the Department of Energy that funds nuclear programs. But the budget justification for this test was to identify the smallest proper nuclear yield to destroy an underground target. So seeing that word “nuclear” in a DOD budget really implied to us that this was an end-run around congress who had rejected budget requests for things like bunker busting weapons 35 VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 and it was really a way to kind of promote the tactical use of nuclear weapons without raising a firestorm in terms of politics. So this one particular guy, Andy Lichterman, is a big nuclear wonk. Spends his free time reading the DOE and the DOD budgets which are each easily nine hundred pages long if not more, and he found this. So he got that out to a small group of the disarmament community and that combined with Robert Gehrke’s piece in the Salt Lake Tribune, I think, really started the firestorm that they were hoping to avoid. So we did some press work around that. One of our advisory council members and a dear friend, Mary Dickson, did a ton of work around this issue. And, honestly, the people that did the most work were the people of Utah. There was some organizing in Nevada, but the group there—the watchdogs, Nuclear Issues, was just in the process of falling apart at the time that this test was proposed. So I think they had about twenty people who came to the hearings that DTRA did in Vegas. We easily had three hundred people who came to our DTRA hearing, plus we asked the governor to hold his own hearing and five hundred plus people came to that event. RD: What were those hearings like? VP: It was like doing the Energy Solutions tour. I mean you hear, “Radiation isn’t dangerous. This won’t hurt you. It’s very simple. It’s needed for our national defense” I mean it’s just all the propaganda that you heard back in the Atomic Energy Commission days. And its... you’ve got to have, I think, a lot of strength to not just buy into their assurances that it will be safe, and to kind of keep your resolve, because once you leave, then everything kind of comes back into perspective again. But, they had put out an environmental assessment about the impact of the test. And the first assessment said, “No radiation will go beyond the boundaries of the test site.” And we raised a bunch of 36 VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 concerns about this. And there was a law suit that was also filed, so it was a fight on many, many fronts that involved some downwinders, the Western Shoshone whose land has been taken over by the Nevada Test site, and a couple of other folks. And I think both that Jawsuit and our concerns forced... And some of the concerns that Hatch and his people back in Washington passed on because of the pressure that they felt, so all of those concerns forced DTRA to do another environmental assessment and in the second assessment they said, “Oh, well some of the radiation probably will go offsite.” I mean they did a one eighty. Which I think just shows how willing they are to minimize the problems with these things. And, you know, if you ask me am I really afraid that people are going to get cancer as a result of that test, I'd say the chances are very, very slim. But the larger philosophical question of, are we willing to bring ourselves closer to the days of blasts, I think that’s the real question. And the answer that the people of Utah gave was, “Hell, no.” RD: How were people responding at the meetings to these lines that they were being fed about... at the DTRA meetings... these lines people were being fed about radiation not wandering offsite? VP: Um, I think it was a mix. Some people were just quiet and would just listen. Other people would argue with the folks from the DOD and the DOE. But it was a tough thing because you’re putting your average civilian in the position of having to go toe to toe with someone who’s a paid engineer for the Department of Defense and, you know, that power dynamic is really profound. So, I think a lot of people didn’t really go toe to toe with them and, you know, probably just thought, well, this is a load of crap and they’d 37 VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 leave and be outraged that they didn’t have the ability to day no to those people, from an engineering perspective even though they still didn’t want the test to happen. I mean, I think... part of this just goes back to a larger issue that you confront a lot in the environmental movement, in the peace movement, in the disarmament movement or what, I don’t know, in those arenas is that the role of emotion and of values is greatly discounted. So, we often hear people saying, “Don’t be emotional about these issues. Let’s focus on the facts.” The amount of radiation in a banana is greater than the amount of radiation disposed of at such and such a site. Or Energy Solutions will say we can’t even take bananas and they’re radioactive. So, our emotional response to not wanting nuclear waste to be dumped here and not wanting to go back to the days of bomb tests is greatly discounted. And yet this is a pro-family, pro-values kind of state, so I think that there’s a real disconnect between when values are valued and when they’re not. But I think that’s largely also because of the patriarchy that we live in, right? Emotions tend to be seen as a feminine thing and certainly the only emotion that’s allowed in these discussions is anger. You have a lot of angry male legislators who kind of yell and bash their gavel, or whatever, but anybody who acts out of tenderness, or concern, or compassion, or fear for future generations is just kind of discounted. And I think that that’s probably emblematic of a larger social issue of just the role of emotions not being valued in these discussions, and a devaluing of women and what femininity embodies. RD: Um-hm. That’s interesting. What things did you learn from Divine Strake that have maybe helped you as you’re organizing later campaigns? I mean, did you really see much out of a lot these spontaneous groups coming together out of St. George or Kanab, or whatever, did you see many lessons for HEAL Utah in that? 38 VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 VP: Divine Strake is just kind of its own animal. I feel like it’d be amazing if we could replicate what happened with that. Getting events and protests and petitions organized all over the state I think would be an incredible thing on any issue. And I think if we can replicate that I think that it certainly increases our chances of success. But I think it is also just telling of the real, palpable fear that people have of returning to the days of nuclear testing. I mean we saw more people come out of the woodwork on that issue than we ever had in the fight against allowing EnviroCare to take Class B and C nuclear waste. So I think some of it is just going to be impossible to replicate because it really was an organic thing that happened. And it’s like these little brush fires were lit and we blew on them and gave them fuel, but I can’t tell you what it was that really lit those fires. I think it was just fear for their own survival for a lot of these people. And that’s certainly... I mean this whole notion of fear is a hard one to grapple with too. Because I think fear is a great motivator, and so a lot of people are afraid of radiation, they’re afraid of nuclear things, and so they act. At the same time, I think a lot of us despise this culture of fear that we’re living in and I think it’s really unhealthy. So it’s difficult to figure out how to work on these issues without being a fear monger, but still encouraging people to act. I mean we certainly don’t enlarge the dangers of waste streams that we’re fighting, or... We already live in a toxic hyperbole. We don’t have to be hyberbolic about the issues we’re working on. But anyway, that’s a tangent, just to say that if you don’t like the fear culture but you’re still working on an issue that’s just riddled with, you know, with concern and with fears it’s hard to figure out how to work with that dynamic. 39 VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 RD: Can you tell me just, in closing, maybe some of the people that you have worked with that have really influenced you, or maybe not even people that you have worked with but just people that have influenced you and what their role has been? VP: Yeah, uh... Well, working at HEAL there are probably four or five people that have really just been tremendous role models and mentors, so one of them is Chip Ward, who is on our board, and he was really kind of like the founding board member of HEAL Utah. He just has such great moral clarity and such conviction that at times when I’ve been kind of confused or unsure of what to do, he just always has such wonderful advice. And he’s just so.... I admire him so much because his wisdom and passion and work has transcended so many issues from nuclear issues to homelessness issues to wilderness and ecosystems in general, [ mean... he’s just amazing. So he has been a big influencer and role model and he’s definitely a media guru. [ mean this man comes up with some of the meanest sound bites you ever heard. Obviously, Jason who was my former boss is a great role model—just a bundle of energy and passion and vision. I think he’s a much greater visionary than I am, and just... God, he’s got so much passion and drive too. He’s very easily able to just lock horns and call people out on their bullshit and just engage in that fight. And to me that takes a lot of courage. But he does it in a way that is always respectful and he never makes enemies that he shouldn’t make. I’1l say it that way. Mary Dickson is also a very close friend and a role model. And she and I worked a lot on HEAL’s work to stop renewed nuclear testing and to give better compensation for downwinders which is a somewhat hopeless task, it seems. The more I’ve worked on it, the more difficult that task seems to be. But she... God, talk about a bundle of energy 40 VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 and passion, too that I can’t believe what that woman does. And she being one of the few women that I really work with also just kind of understands that emotional piece which is really refreshing and comforting. So she’s been an amazing role model for me. And then Claire Geddes is another one from our advisory council who has done a lot of work at the state legislature, doesn’t take crap from anyone and always reminds me that, Vanessa, it doesn’t matter if these people like you. All that matters is that they respect you. And even when you call them out, ultimately that garners some respect. And then Michelle Thomas from St. George, who’s battled so many different cancers and debilitating diseases as a result of her exposure to radiation. And she just keeps going, keeps fighting, doesn’t take crap from anyone... There’s a lot of those people here in this state, which is amazing. And she... talk about just a symbol of strength. The battles and the physical struggles that this woman faces and knowing that she gets up every day and will still call Orrin Hatch’s office and give him a hard time is just totally inspirational. So in terms of my work here, those have been probably my biggest sources of guidance and inspiration and mentorship. And then I just say... I always look to the civil rights movement, too. To think about what happened in that movement and the thing that is amazing to me is not per se what Martin Luther King did or who he was, or even him. What was really moving to me was just the shear numbers that it took to accomplish what that movement accomplished. And having focused more on some of the movements that happened like in Mississippi, with the Civil Rights movement, it wasn’t about one charismatic leader doing amazing stuff. It was really about the hard work that it took for a whole community of people to give the skills and the training to a huge number of people 41 VANESSA PIERCE 7 NOVEMBER 2007 that they needed to do the marches, to do the sit-ins, to do the bus rides, to do what it took to... I don’t know that we won the Civil Rights Movement, but you know what [ mean, to desegregate schools and win blacks the right to vote, and that kind of thing. So that’s been... I mean that’s been an amazing thing and when [ think of the struggles here in Utah and how hard it can be to fight these fights feeling like such an underdog, I always go back to thinking about those students at the sit-ins who had dogs sicked on them, who had tear gas in their faces, who were faced with fire hydrants, whose friends and families were killed, and it really kind of makes me grateful for how easy my job is. RD: Thank you very much. I appreciate your time, Vanessa. VP: Yeah. Thank you. 42