Journalist Karl Grossman interviews Bruce Gagnon

 

Enviro Close-Up:  Bruce Gagnon and Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space interviewed by Karl Grossman.

The Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space is the leading group internationally working to keep space for peace. In this Enviro Close-Up, Bruce Gagnon, its coordinator since it was established in 1992, details his impetus in challenging the turning of space into a war zone. He tells of hearing Lt. General Daniel O. Graham, head of the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative, nicknamed “Star Wars,” declaring as nearly a million people protested in New York City against nuclear weapons, “we are moving into space. They don’t have a clue.” 

Now with the U.S. Space Force having been formed, the push by the U.S. to “control space and dominate space” continues intensely, says Gagnon. And this despite the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, put together by the U.S., the former Soviet Union and Great Britain, setting aside space for peaceful purposes. 

Gagnon speaks of the aerospace industry seeking to get the money to pay for the U.S. moving into space militarily by taking it from “entitlement programs—Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and what’s left of the social safety net.” He speaks of the links between space weaponization and the use of nuclear power in space. He discusses the many activities of the Global Network and how people can join in. 

And although from a military family, he tells of how he became an organizer for the United Farm Workers Union under Cesar Chavez leading to his decades as a peace advocate and organizer.

~ Journalism professor Karl Grossman (New York) and Bruce Gagnon have been working together on space issues since the late 1980's.