Paul Wehr(In Wehr, Conflict Regulation, Westview Press, 1979) The Rocky Flats National Action From time to time one comes upon an event that illustrates several of the types of conflict regulation discussed in this book. The antinuclear demonstration at theRocky Flats nuclear weapons plant near Denver is an example. This event took placein April 1978 and was successful largely because different conflict regulation processesworked well. Empowerment, self-limiting conflict through nonviolent direct action,crisis management, and mediation all played significant parts in the successfulplanning, implementation, and public response to the event. The Rocky Flats NationalAction took place within the context of a global antinuclear movement and mounting concern about the risks of nuclear war, radiation contamination, and nuclear terrorism. Our analysis of the event must first be set within this larger context. The Rocky Flats plant is a target of both the USSR's strategic priorities list and of environmental and peace activists in Colorado. It is the United States' only producer of plutonium trigger components for nuclear weapons. It was built in 1952, long before state and local involvement in such decisions was considered necessary. For twenty-three years the plant was managed by Dow Chemical Company under contract with, first, the Atomic Energy Commission, and then the Energy Research and Development Administration. In 1975, Rockwell International assumed management of the plant. The plant's history has been punctuated with a series of errors in judgment, acts of negligence, and false information given to state and local officials and citizens. That series includes: 1. Original miscalculation of prevailing wind patterns at the plant site. Readings were taken at Stapleton airport where winds generally blow away from Denver rather than at the site, where winds blow toward the city. 2. Several major plutonium fires; one in 1969 was the most costly ($50 million)industrial fire in the nation's history. 3. Open-pit burial of radioactive wastes near the plant, without accurate maps recording locations of the burial sites. 4. Inadequate outdoor storage of plutonium-contaminated machine oil, which leaked from corroding containers and saturated the soil over a substantial area. Management's solution to the problem was to pave over the plutonium (with a half-life of about 24,000 years) with asphalt (with a useful life of perhaps 10 years). 5. Seepage of radioactive material from the plant into the municipal water supply of nearby Broomfield (Figure 10). Management claimed it was not even aware that such material had come into the plant. 6. Release of detectable amounts of plutonium into the air that was blown by prevailing winds toward Arvada, Westminster, and other sections of metropolitan Denver (Figure I 0). Rocky Flats illustrates well the global nature of nuclear risks. It is at the center ofa global nuclear network. Raw plutonium comes to it by air and road fromWashington State and South Carolina plutonium fabrication plants. It is also broughtinside nuclear weapons being recycled from deployment and storage areasthroughout the world. New plutonium triggers are made, old ones are reconditioned, and all are shipped out to find their way around the globe. Nuclearhigh- and low-level wastes leave the plant by rail for storage elsewhere. Public Response By 1974, local concern about plant safety and security wasmounting. Governor Lamm and Congressman Wirth, whose district includes RockyFlats, formed the Lamm-Wirth Task Force on Rocky Flats. This panel of specialistsand public officials worked for a year, held public hearings, and produced a report(LWTFRF, 1975) assessing the hazards' of the plant for its environs. It issued a setof recommendations that included the suggestion that the federal government relocateplutonium operations out of the area. The report established that therewere significant hazards and led to the formation of the Rocky Flats MonitoringCommittee, a citizen/expert panel that meets regularly to press for implementationof the task force recommendations. Other public and private responses due to increased awareness of plant risks arenotable. The task force report encouraged state and county health officials toactively research the health risks posed by Rocky Flats. Both the director of theColorado Department of Health and the Jefferson County health director havebecome active antagonists of the Rocky Flats managers around the issues ofoccupational risks at the plant, long-range cancer risks among the million personsliving directly downwind of the plant, and the risks of a catastrophic release ofplutonium from a critical accident or major fire. State and local officials have beenforced to draft emergency response plans for use in the event of such a release,although no one seriously believes an evacuation would be possible. Owners of landbeyond the plant perimeter, land so heavily contaminated that it can no longer beused for residential or industrial development, have brought suits against the federalgovernment and Rockwell International for $7 million. Nuclear Terrorism Although accidental and negligent release of radioactive material has been fairlycommon in the past, there is growing concern that intentional release or diversionmay be a greater threat in the future as nuclear terrorism becomes more likely. Recent research into the phenomenon of terrorism (Hyams, 1975; Hamilton,1978) notes an alarming global increase not only in the incidence of terrorism butin the sophistication with which it is carried out. Furthermore, research (Carltonand Schaerf, 1975) indicates the emergence of international links between political groups employing terrorism to the point where one can now speak of aninternational terrorist network. Through such channels pass both persons andmaterial to be used in terrorist acts. Some students of terrorism (Jenkins, 1977) are convinced that terrorists willincreasingly direct their activity toward nuclear installations and materials as theyincrease in number, size, and volume. Because of their unusually destructive capacities, suchfacilities would also have greater threat and blackmail value, a primary consideration forterrorists. The risk of terrorism poses a special problem for an installation likeRocky Flats that uses and stores substantial quantities of plutonium. As a transportation hub for such high-grade nuclear material, Rocky Flats could well bea "terrorist act waiting to happen." This may be increasingly the case as international terrorism is exported to the United States in the near future-as some experts feel is inevitable. The Nature of Terrorism Simply defined, terrorism is the calculated use of terror and anxiety or threat of same to achieve an objective. It can be implemented by various means: kidnapping and hostage taking, infiltration, theft of explosive or toxic materials, blackmail,threatened or actual destruction of persons and property. Terrorism can becategorized according to the nature and motivation of the perpetrator. Insurgentterrorism is most common and normally involves a rebellious group acting against the state, often to gain attention for its cause. Idiosyncratic terrorism occurs when a psychologically disturbed individual commits an open act of violence againstsociety at large out of derangement or hope for personal attention. Criminal terrorists are motivated by expected economic gain, and are generally in pursuit of ascarce and valuable commodity like plutonium, or are terrorists for hire. State terrorism involves the application of terror by a state to a population or toanother state. This may include the use or threat of using weapons of mass destruction. The primary purpose of the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was to terrorize the population of Japan and thus bring the war to a swiftconclusion. That destruction proved both the feasibility of nuclear war and its threatpotential. The current system of nuclear deterrence rests squarely on the terror thenuclear threat generates and the credibility of that threat. The level of terrorincreases with each advance in nuclear weapons technology. The enhanced radiationweapon, for example, appears more terrible to populations because of its unique killing properties. Rocky Flats is vulnerable, as are all nuclear weapons and energy facilities aroundthe world, to all four types of terrorism--insurgent, idiosyncratic, criminal, and state terrorism. The plant is to some degree open to the first three types in spite of its elaborate security systems. It is vulnerable to state terrorism as well because it is high on the target priorities list of the USSR (and for this reason the metropolitan population surrounding it is a hostage) and because it is a key to the United States'capability to retaliate. The Risks What are the possibilities for terrorism at Rocky Flats? It should be noted thatthreats and attacks against nuclear installations are becoming ever more common. Between May 1969 and August 1975, ten known attacks in the United States andEurope on nonmilitary nuclear facilities alone were recorded (Flood, 1976:31). Incidence of such attacks has increased since that time. In the United States in 1972, airline hijackers used an Oak Ridge reactor as a bargaining chip, circlingthe facility and threatening to crash the plane into if their demands were not met. Conscious of this embryonic nuclear terrorism, we must make judgments aboutthe risks of terrorism at Rocky Flats against the backdrop of an appalling lack ofsecurity at sensitive U.S. military installations around the world. Two examples of this security lack will suffice: 1. The discovery that nerve gas weapons inventories at Colorado and Utah depots had been deliberately falsified to conceal discrepancies. The author was personally responsible for the initiation of an investigation that uncovered this practice and has resulted in a worldwide inventory check of all such weapons (RMN, 1978; BDC, 1978) .2. The disclosure that nuclear weapons in Hawaii were being routinely transported through densely populated urban areas, accompanied by skeleton crews, and that information concerning the routes and schedules of these shipments could be obtained from local police (Lind, 1976). Security at Rocky Flats is undoubtedly better than at other weapons facilities, buthow much better? If security against terrorism is adequate now, will it continue tobe so as terrorism and the illicit plutonium market expand? Several problems are of particular importance. 1. Diversion of fissile material by plant personnel. Although there is apparentlyno known case of such theft at Rocky Flats, diversion by either criminal or politicalterrorists is not unthinkable. In 1977, the head of security at the Rocky MountainArsenal nerve gas storage depot was arrested and later convicted as the organizerof a theft ring marketing $300,000 worth of goods stolen from federal facilities (DP,1977). Among the items he sold or offered to sell undercover agents were plasticexplosives and nerve gas. Were a similar diversion to occur at Rocky Flats, only two kilograms of plutonium would be needed to construct an implosion-type nuclearweapon (Hayes, 1977). A theft of that magnitude could conceivably go undetectedif it occurred over time, and if an insider knew how to effectively "manage" theplant's units accountability system. Ironically, each step in the accountabilityprocess-transfer and weighing, records computerization, inventory adjustment,chemical recovery-presents simultaneously an opportunity for greater system controland for system failure. 2. Interception of plutonium transport. In 1974 alone, there were 372 shipmentswithin the United States involving 1,600 pounds of plutonium (Hayes, 1977). Asignificant part of that total was raw plutonium oxide travelling to Rocky Flats fromthe Hanford and Savannah River plants, and from Rocky Flats, as weapons components, to Pantex, Texas, and elsewhere for final weapons assembly. Plutonium travels, often in strategic quantities, either by road in Safe Secure Trailersor by air transport through the Stapleton, Jefferson County, and Buckley airports. Observant terrorists with carefully gathered information about the shippingprocedures could intercept shipments at any point along the routes, though with thetrailer immobilization and penetration deterrence systems now being developed, manyof the security weaknesses noted in the past (CGUS, 1977) may be eliminated. Despite the elaborate precautions taken with plutonium shipments, a determined andsophisticated terrorist group could intercept a substantial if not strategic quantity ofit. For each safeguard system--Safe Secure Trailer irregular routing and scheduling,armed couriers, air surveillance, post-diversion location techniques --counter-techniques canbe developed. True, the fabrication of a nuclear device would requiremore plutonium than is normally carried in one shipment, but lesser amounts couldbe used for nuclear blackmail. 3. Intentional catastrophic release. A third type of risk would involve an act ofsabotage within the plant or an attack on it from the outside. Such an act could beeither politically motivated or a consequence of personal psychological disturbance. At least one major fire at Rocky Flats has already succeeded in breaching its multiplefiltration systems, and a determined saboteur could cause such a fire. A catastrophic release could be most easily brought about by aircraft penetration. While it may bethat air space over the plant is now restricted, there is no way that a guided crash intoa "hot" area of the plant could be prevented. Metropolitan Denver has one of the nation's highest aircraft-per-capita ratios and a profusion of airports and landing strips. Surface-to-surface missiles could also be fired at the plant from a distance. Knowledgeof the plant layout and location of its strategic buildings is not difficult to obtain. Infact, a resourceful terrorist could, without too much difficulty, learn the locations ofdisguised Buildings I and 2 (USERDA, 1977:1-3-28), which would yield the largestpenetration and fire releases of plutonium. Releases might range from 0. I percentof the total in the case of metallic plutonium to 40 percent of the total whereplutonium is contained in combustible contaminated waste such as machine oil. Thecrash of a large plane could release as much as 1,000 grams of plutonium into theatmosphere (USERDA, 1977:1-3-19).The risk of terrorism and other possibilities for radioactive contamination havecombined with a concern about the plant's nuclear weapons production to make Rocky Flats anathema for both environmental and peace activists.Collective Behavior in Response to Nuclear Threat The melding of religious, environmental, political, and peace organizations in the antinuclear movement makes it an unusually interesting case for students of collective behavior. What are the origins of this rapidly growing movement, andhow does the current debate among collective behavior theorists further ourunderstanding of it? The antinuclear movement, represented in Colorado by the Rockv Flats campaign,emerges from earlier phases of what might loosely be called the peace anddisarmament movement. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament of the early1960s, most visible in Great Britain, Japan, and the United States, gave way in themid-sixties to the campaign against U.S. involvement in Indochina. Once that threatterminated, the peace movement returned to a focus on weapons proliferation andits contribution to the persistence of war and poverty, and more recently the linkagebetween nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. There are exceptions to the rule (as,for example, in Japan, where groups with a socialist orientation condemn bothnuclear weapons and nuclear energy while groups with communist affiliationcondemn the former but support the latter), but generally the antinuclear movementtreats the two issues as one. The vitality of the movement is reflected in the growing incidence of publicdemonstrations and civil disobedience against nuclear facilities. The 1977occupation of the site of a proposed nuclear generating station in Seabrook, NewHampshire, produced 1,400 arrests. Subsequent detainment and legal costs placedthat state in a serious fiscal bind. In the Federal Republic of Germany in 1975, 28,000 persons occupied a nuclear reactor site at Whyl continuously for eight months. The protesters won a court order delaying construction of the plant, which has yetto be built. Equally significant actions have occurred in France, Holland, Denmark' England, and Spain. The 1977 Malville march to protest construction ofFrance's commercial-scale fast breeder reactor involved an estimated 60,000participants. Antinuclear sentiment combined with a desire for Basque autonomyto produce a rally of 150,000 in Bilbao, Spain. Antinuclear campaigns vary in the degree to which leaders and participants arecommitted to nonviolence. In some European countries, where radical politicalparties direct campaigns and security forces have greater license to use force,strictly nonviolent demonstrations are more rare. In the United States, wheremovement leadership is more likely to be religiously than politically motivated,nonviolence is a cardinal principle. Here, leaders and participants are often veteransof the nonviolent antiwar campaigns of the 1960s who have merely shifted theirfocus. The experience with nonviolent direct action is there and the issues remainlargely unchanged: weapons production, sales, and proliferation; corporate ex-ploitation of the third world; overconcentrated economic and political power; unmethuman needs; and economic conversion to peaceful production. One can analyze the antinuclear movement within the framework of the livelydebate of recent years among theorists of collective behavior. This debate wassparked by Smelser's (1962) book on collective action that found challenge move-ments to be nonrational, discontinuous with established institutions and norms, andmanipulated by cynical leaders who used "generalized beliefs" (i.e., myth) tomobilize followers. This characterization hardly seems to fit the antinuclear move-ment as I have observed it, and Smelser's critics offer analysis to support myobservation. Oberschall (1973) notes that Robert Merton, in his theories of social organizationand change, makes a clear distinction between the deviant and the nonconformist insociety. The former does not challenge the rightness of norms and laws butcontravenes them for personal gain. The latter, by contrast, challenges the verylegitimacy of a norm, often calling upon a "higher law" to justify the infraction. The deviant breaks the law anonymously and in secrecy, if possible, to avoidpunishment. The nonconformist, quite to the contrary, breaks the law or norm openly and is prepared to accept the punishment to the end of changing the law, as in the case of civil disobedience. Smelser would treat deviance and nonconformity as variants of the same process, while Oberschall sees them as opposing phenomena. Smelser emphasizes the nonrational elements of collective behavior, in particular emotion and generalized beliefs, which he sees as the primary motivation for mass participation. It is true that such beliefs (e.g., nuclear weapons cannot defend) aremotivating forces in the antinuclear movement. Leaders of the movement,challenging the legitimacy and wisdom of certain laws and policies, can draw uponmoral indignation and emotion to mobilize people to action. Generalized beliefs,however, need not be entirely or even primarily nonrational. They may containimportant elements of rationality, self-interest, and facts-based perception. Themajor antinuclear Mobilization for Survival, roots its program in the belief thatunless governments' policies on nuclear weapons and energy are revised, and soon,humankind will have an abbreviated future. There is considerable empiricalevidence and intuitive knowledge to support that belief. Gamson (1975) maintains that each social movement has a strategy of conflictscalculated, reflective, potentially self-correcting course charted by movementleaders. The emotional, the nonrational, and the manipulative no doubt play a partin this strategy, but no more so than they do in other social processes. Our analysisof the Rocky Flats campaign will illustrate how the rational and nonrational elementsof collective behavior are integrated to achieve movement objectives. The Rocky Flats National Action Social movements depend for their energy on dramatic public events. These eventsillustrate the collective nature of the action, clarify movement goals and principles,and encourage potential adherents to commit themselves. For the antinuclearmovement in the United States, the Rocky Flats National Action was such an event. The Action originated in 1973 within the American Friends Service Committee(AFSC) Colorado Area executive committee. A professor of preventive medicineconcerned with radiation hazards, an AFSC peace educator, and a sociologistengaged in peace research discussed the possibility of a citizen inquiry into RockyFlats. The committee endorsed the idea and the AFSC set about forming a coalitionof concerned environmental, religious, and academic organizations--the Rocky FlatsAction Group (RFAG). For three years the coalition met regularly, educated itsmembers about Rocky Flats, organized different task groups, and held publicdemonstrations. The latter were generally limited in size, with fewer than 100persons participating. RFAG organized a statewide conference on nuclear issues (Wehr and Carpenter,1976), and engaged in and published (RFAG, 1977) the results of research on therisks posed by Rocky Flats. RFAG members gave verbal and written testimony inpublic hearings on Rocky Flats, contributed a member to the Rocky FlatsMonitoring Committee, and continued a public education program. It became a constant irritant to the federal and corporate managers of the plant. RFAG activistswere not sure precisely when Rocky Flats would command national attention, butthey were encouraged by a visible and growing concern in metropolitan Denver. By early 1977, nuclear weapons and power issues had gained substantial nationalnotice. The citizens' lobby Common Cause adopted the Rocky Flats problem as aprimary focus for that year. By mid-year, three national organizations--the AFSC,the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), and the Mobilization for Survival (MOBE)-hadagreed to co-sponsor and help organize the Action with RFAG. Additionalimpetus came from three sources: the United Nations Special Session onDisarmament planned for May-June 1978, the national debate over development anddeployment of enhanced radiation or "neutron" weapons, and an alarming three-yearincrease of 25 percent in world military expenditures to an estimated $400 billionin 1977 (Sivard, 1977). The time for the Action was right. The Action as Drama In addition to the collective behavioral framework, dramatism is a useful frameof analysis for viewing such an event. The dramaturgical perspective has been used effectively by Goffman (1959)to analyze diverse social situations and by MacCannell (1973) to study nonviolentdemonstrations. According to this frame of analysis, a nonviolent demonstration,like any other social situation, is an exercise in impression management, a crafteddramatic presentation in which all characters have expected behaviors andconsent to agreed upon forms of interaction. The presentation is rehearsed beforehand, takes place on a stage before anaudience, and reaches a wider audience through the mass media. Its successdepends on good advance publicity, adequate rehearsal, and all persons-organizers, speakers,musicians, marshals, civil disobedients, ordinary participants, police-playing the roles forwhich they were trained. Spontaneity does occur, of course, but is only a part of the event.Following thedemonstration, press and broadcast accounts are watched and read as eagerly byorganizers and participants as are opening night reviews. The Action, then, was nonviolence as an art form. As Gamson (1975) observes, challenge movements have limited economic andpolitical resources. Popular sympathy and support are potential resources thatmust be mobilized. The staging of dramatic events is one means to that end. Such events serve also to activate third parties (e.g., the Colorado Department of Health, congressional representatives) to intervene on behalf of the cause. Preparing the Presentation. Six months of planning, negotiating, communicating,travelling, and rehearsing preceded the National Action. The organizingcommittee had to secure national and local commitments to participate. Localauthorities, from police and Denver city officials to the Rocky Flats managers,had to be negotiated with for permits, space, transportation routes, and trafficcontrol plans. The committee negotiated with a four-person team from Rockwell Internationaland the Department of Energy over space near the plant that could be used forthe rally and parking, and how organizers and security would communicateduring the event. A willingness of those in power to negotiate with challengegroups is normally an indication that the group has gained acceptance. Suchnegotiation, however, must be done in good faith and with mutual respect. Although the Rocky Flats team agreed verbally to space allocation, they refused awritten agreement, claiming to be men of their word. As the rally was to begin,they betrayed the organizers and refused to open the area agreed upon. TheState Patrol finally ordered it opened for parking to relieve a massive three-miletraffic jam. A note of irony: Rockwell, one of the nation's major radioactivepolluters, constantly sent its "ecology people" around the demonstration andoccupation sites to check on the condition of its "fragile pastureland." Organizerswere asked to fill out "environmental impact" forms. During the final months of preparation, movement personalities were lined upfor on-stage participation, and relationships with mass media representatives weredeveloped to insure the fullest coverage. A specialist in training for nonviolentdirect action came to Colorado to rehearse the production. In Denver andBoulder, hundreds of marshals and civil disobedients had to be trained for their roles. This was vital because of the sensitive security problems that characterizeany event in the vicinity of a nuclear weapons facility. This planning, strategizing, reflecting, and reviewing by the organizing committee illustrates Gamson's point about the predominance of the rational overthe nonrational in social movements. Leaders had well-defined objectives theywent about achieving systematically. In addition to its rational attributes,collective behavior is, in large part, learned. Organizers had participated insimilar campaigns before and had learned, for example, the importance of contingency plans and The Presentation. There were three public events in the Action. On the morningof April 29, over 1,000 people gathered at Federal Building in Denver to hearCongresswoman Schroeder, Daniel Ellsberg, Stokely Carmichael, and othersspeak about the risk and waste of military spending and the need to transfer theseresources to meet domestic human needs. The second event was thedemonstration at Rocky Flats later that day. The third was a "Celebration ofLife" on the following day which included an interdenominational religiousservice and workshops to prepare participants to continue the campaign. As drama, the demonstration at Rocky Flats did in one respect suggest theaterof the absurd. A confrontation between 5,000 peaceful unarmed citizens rangingfrom babes in arms to octogenarians with the kingpin of the most awesome mili-tary machine the world has yet known does have a ring of the absurd about it. Yet there was much more high than absurd drama in the confrontation, whichbrought face-to-face two powerful forces: the overwhelming potential for nucleardestruction and the nonviolent truth-seeking process. It was, one might say, amodern equivalent of a medieval morality play, complete with audienceparticipation. The physical setting for the play enhanced the sense of drama (Figure 10). Thebackdrop in-the-round included the papier mache-like Rockies looming behind thedemonstrators, the nuclear weapons plant with its 100-odd buildings spread out amile to the east, and metropolitan Denver sprawling to the north, south, and eastbeyond that. The juxtaposition of the villain, the heroes and heroines, and thehumanity to be saved reinforced the sense of theater. Brisk winds, intermittentrain, and a turbulent sky heightened the drama as did the observation helicoptersand planes that circled continuously. No doubt the feeling of being tested underfire increased the protesters' determination. Protesters converged on Rocky Flats from every direction and by almost everyconceivable means. Delegations from mountain settlements to the west protesteduranium prospecting near their towns. Three hundred people marched the ninemiles south from Boulder, while others jogged, biked, bused, car-pooled, andeven roller-skated the distance. From the east and south, car caravans severalmiles long brought people from the Denver rally, while others from elsewhere inthe nation and world arrived by plane, bus, and automobile. A large truckcarrying mock radioactive waste barrels had followed the "plutonium path" froma South Carolina nuclear reprocessing plant to Rocky Flats. Participants were of surprising diversity. The majority were in their twentiesand thirties, but there were babies, children, oldsters, and pets. Representativesof religious organizations and political parties mingled with those from towns andcities ranging from Gold Hill, Colorado, to Tokyo. Banners, signs, and clothingreflected diverse motives: from religious pacifism ("Quaker Testimony forPeace") to political radicalism ("Only Governments Need the Bomb-Anarchy");from opposition to nuclear weapons and energy ("AtomKraft, Nej Tak") tomeeting human needs ("Stop Making Bombs: Buy Life Instead of Death"); andfrom the deadly serious ("We Have 30,000 Already") to the half humorous("Hell No! We Won't Glow"). Even pets communicated with signs ("CloseRocky Flats, I Don't Want to Be a Hot Dog"). One or two counterdemonstratorsreminded the crowd that the whole world was not of one mind. As a dramatic presentation, the Action had its costumes and props:someone dressed as Death, radiation protection suits and respirators, mockradioactive waste drums, helium-filled balloons with finder-return tags climbinginto a turbulent sky. From the stage within a stage came music and the spokenword. For four hours speakers and musicians presented reports from similarevents around the world and the Action themes: the clear and present danger ofthe plant, the need to convert such facilities to alternative energy research andproduction, and the elimination of nuclear weapons. Although the tone and demeanor of the Action was that of a nonthreatening,sober celebration, it was viewed quite differently by the Rocky Flats managers. For plant security officers and local police responsible for securing business asusual, the Action had created a crisis situation. Days were devoted to fashioninga security strategy. The sense of crisis had been dissipated somewhat by the candor and friendliness of the organizing committee, which had fully disclosed itsplans. Security forces may also have been reassured by the Action's trainingprogram, which provided for a good measure of self-policing. Despite the inevitable tension, Action/police cooperation facilitated effectivecrisis management. Both organizers and police had learned from a decade ofantiwar protests: good police command-and-control; spatial separation of policeand demonstrators; police out of sight where possible; non-inflammatoryspeakers; and crowd self-policing.The Occupation. The climax of the demonstration was the occupation of the railroadtrack over which non-radioactive materials enter the plant andradioactive wastesleave it. (Figure 10) Plutonium, except for trace amounts in the wastes, is trans-ported by road. The occupation, of which security forces had advance notice, wasto be symbolic since no trains were expected for days and there were no plans tosupport a group on the tracks beyond one night. Nevertheless, the occupation wasan illegal act since the track was off limits to unauthorized personnel. With methods refined in recent years (Coover et al., 1977), 150 persons had beentrained in civil disobedience and organized into ten or more affinity groups much asin the Seabrook occupation of a year earlier. As the groups entered the restrictedarea, morale and sense of purpose were high. People spread along the track,singing, praying, and silently facing the crowd beyond the fence. The Truth Force With cold wind and rain, and with the temperature dropping steadily, by night fall a number of the occupiers had left. More did so after an uncomfortable night ofhuddling together in a few tents. The planned occupation was over, the unplannedwas beginning. During that first night on the tracks, searching discussion produceda group of forty committed to remaining for a longer period. Representing anumber of affinity groups, they reformed themselves into a new one, the RockyFlats Truth Force. The decision of the Truth Force to "continue on the right track," as they put it,was not well received by the Action organizers, who were exhausted. They heldthat a symbolic occupation had been agreed to by all beforehand and that continuedoccupation would disrupt a planned meeting with visiting President Carter andantagonize local authorities. In dramaturgical terms, further occupation couldtorpedo the successful impression the management of the Action had achieved. Prolonged occupation had not been rehearsed; spontaneity of that sort, theorganizers felt, would make it difficult for local activists when the occupation ended. Truth Force members, on the other hand, felt continued occupation to be a naturaloutgrowth of the Action--an act of conscience that could not be denied. A good part of Day 2 on the tracks was spent settling this dispute. Mediators,including the author, intervened and as tempers cooled, agreement was carefullycrafted around a clarification of positions, restatement of a common purpose, andorganizing for press liaison, support services (e.g., food and shelter), contacts withsecurity forces, and other important tasks. By common agreement, the Truth Force became a separate entity with moral and some logistical support from the organizingcommittee, but very much on its own. A tent city was quickly erected around a communal shelter of loose railroad tiesand sheet plastic installed atop the rails. This was to house frequent group meetings, a library, press conferences, and other common activities. There were,in addition, a cooking tent and sleeping tents. Each day new symbols of thecommunity would appear: an American flag, chemical toilets, a tree planted, a playarea formed, a carefully lettered mailbox tacked to a fencepost. The Truth Forcewas well supplied from the outside with hot and cold food, warm clothing, sleepingbags, press coverage, legal counsel, medical care, letters and telegrams of support,and visits from friends. Along with solid links with the outside world, the grouphad an identity and reality of its own. It was very much a community., The weather was uniformly miserable. Rainy and cold, it nonetheless kept downthe plutonium-contaminated dust and sustained the sense of sacrifice and solidaritywithin the group, which was spared the privation of two feet of spring snow onlyby arrest on Day 7. Use of drugs and alcohol was prohibited by the group, and tension release through play and humor was important. Play could create as well as relieve tension,however, in the shadow of a nuclear weapons plant. During one celebration, a group of fifty formed a human train and innocently started down the track in thewrong direction, toward the plant. Instantly, busloads of armed security police appeared in the distance and security vehicles were everywhere. This soberingexperience reinforced a pervasive sense of the danger and gravity of the situation. Truth Force members were mostly young students representing thirteen states. Two middle-aged exceptions were a local Mennonite minister and Daniel Ellsberg,the systems analyst who released the Pentagon Papers and has become a militant"radioactivist." The Truth Force chose a group of remarkably stable people-short on the personality aberrations one might expect to find in such an "antisocial"activity as a nuclear blockade. This stability helps to explain the group's effectivedecision making, reaching consensus and closure under both stressful conditions and the ubiquitous eye and ear of the media. Ellsberg, as a folk hero and elderstatesman in the group, could have tried to manipulate and control decisions. He chose instead to assume a rather low profile in decision making and seemed topurposely reinforce the democratic and consensual potential of the group. Truth Force communication with the outside world flowed through numerouschannels: press conferences, open letters to President Carter and other officials,letters and telegrams to and from other parts of the antinuclear network, anunwelcome prayer for nuclear disarmament offered at a Presidential prayerbreakfast, talks to university classes, messages to Sunday church services, telephonecalls to relatives. The group's overriding concern was that its message--stop thenuclear arms race--be heard. There was considerable continuity of life on the tracks with more institutionalizedbehavior. As Gamson and Oberschall maintain, there seems to be more continuitythan discontinuity between collective and institutionalized behavior. The civildisobedients engaged in commonplace activities like writing letters to the editors oflocal newspapers, calling political representatives, and other routine processes. Track-sitting was a point on a spectrum of challenge activities that hundreds of thousands engage in each day. The Arrests. On Day 7, a train came and the Truth Force was arrested for the firstof many times. In a blinding snowstorm, the group locked arms and stood in silentmeditation as police approached. Jefferson County sheriff's deputies, af ter a thirty-minute warning, walked the protesters and their belongings to a waiting bus. Someembraced deputies as they were led away. In the bus, an assistant district attorneyapologetically informed them that their right to protest was recognized and thatRocky Flats managers, not the county, had requested their arrest. They werethanked for their peaceful demeanor and were taken, singing, to the countyfairgrounds. They were photographed, fingerprinted, given citations for criminaltrespassing and blocking a passageway, told to report for arraignment, and releasedon personal recognizance. The arrest of a group dedicated to nonviolence and truth seeking to prevent it from"impeding normal plant operations" that produce weapons of mass destructionclarified the moral issues involved. Such civil disobedience clearly illustrates thedistinction between deviance and nonconformity discussed earlier. The civildisobedients disclosed their plans to authorities well in advance, accepted arrestwillingly, clarifying at each step precisely why they were disobeying the law: tochange policy and the law protecting it. Following the release, the Truth Force used a Boulder church center to relax, holda press conference, and strategize. Reoccupation of the tracks occurred, but insmaller groups. New persons would join some current members, while those not returning to the tracks would form a truth squad and work on public education about Rocky Flats hazards. Still others would return to final exams at their universities. There followed a series of reoccupations that had involved over 250 individual arrests at this writing. The Truth Force and its supporters also conceived numerous alternative events on the tracks at Rocky Flats: a graduation ceremony at which a score of University of Colorado graduating seniors and faculty in academic gowns participated and alternative diplomas were awarded; weekly ecumenical religious services; and various seminars and solidarity rallies. A social movement must end each public event before it loses its dramatic potential and the force of its message dissipates. The occupation and arrests at Rocky Flats could not continue indefinitely, but how to end them meaningfully and gracefully? Conclusion Terrorism and other risks posed by nuclear installations are likely to increase in the future, and the antinuclear movement will continue to develop in response to those risks. The Rocky Flats National Action, as part of that movement, succeededin achieving its more realistic objectives. The environmental contamination and warrisk issues were well dramatized. Antinuclear sentiment along the Front Range of Colorado was given a new visibility and the coalition was strengthened. The Action is no doubt a benchmark on the path of the developing antinuclear movement. The impact of the Truth Force occupation is more difficult to assess, in partly because it has not yet ended. Once it was clear that the Truth Force was taking civil disobedience seriously, it generated the support of many people. It may also have alienated many, but on the whole, the Truth Force punctuated the National Action and probably strengthened the larger movement. As examples of collective behavior, the Rocky Flats National Action and the civil disobedience it spawned support the theory that collective action is primarily rational and purposeful social behavior in pursuit of well-defined values and interests. It was carefully planned and well executed. Nonrational elements were important but no more so than in routinized behavior. As nonviolent direct action, the Action was exemplary. It demonstrated that a large public expression of concern and dissent could occur without violence, with good planning and participant training and with security forces who are disciplined and informed of demonstration plans. The success of the Action was in sharpcontrast to many recent European antinuclear demonstrations where large crowdsof untrained protesters, edgy officials, and brutal police responses have combined to produce chaos. Action organizers learned anew that the movement must and can make peace within itself. Internal peacemaking skills were continually being discovered and sharpened. Conflict avoidance is one of these skills; the emergence of the Truth Force illustrated the importance of precluding conflict by providing for the spontaneous and unexpected. A nonviolent dramatic presentation may well move some participants to initiate new forms of protest. Here is where dramatic nonviolence departs from theater: the curtain in the former may not drop on cue. Finally, the Action suggests the increasing refinement and cumulative learning ofthe methodology of nonviolent protest as a means of purposive social change. With ever-increasing concentrations of political, economic, and military power in governments around the globe, that methodology will continue to grow in sophistication and significance as a tool for the less powerful.