Saturday will be a departure from our previous tactics of civil disobedience. We will measure our success not in terms of symbolic value, media impact, or numbers arrested. Success this time means closing down Seabrook forever. Success means doing so collectively and without violence.

We realize our peaceful actions may provoke violent reactions on the part of the authorities. They are defending their private property, their investment. They are acting to uphold the law. But human life comes before property rights. If they use violence, we will not retaliate, but we will collectively resist arrest or removal by all possible nonviolent means. We give each occupier a six-hour training session before the action to inform him or her of all possible means of intimidation, crowd dispersal and legal action that may be used against us. The police are not our enemies. Nuclear power threatens everyone, and we oppose it out of a respect and concern for all human beings and for our planet as a whole.

We realize that a successful occupation is a difficult task, but we cannot wait passively for another accident to happen. We cannot leave the responsibility to others. This winter will test all of us. Those in power are seeing how far they can push us. We must push back.

The nuclear issue is a national one, because a Seabrook meltdown would threaten residents of Newburyport and Boston as well as Seabrook itself. But it is equally clear that the occupation would fail without firm local support. In my numerous trips to the area in recent months. I have been struck by the degree of support for and clear understanding of the occupation by the local population--particularly those closest to the plant. Northern New England seacoast towns like Seabrook enjoy the peace and quiet of their unspoiled beaches, marshes, and woods. They must now put up with the imminent destruction of the delicate ecological balance of the coastline, the noise of the never-ending plant construction, the fouled drinking water due to the plant, and the frustration of having their elected representatives ignore their repeated calls to stop the nuke and to respect their sovereignty rights.

The Local Alliance now numbers between 100 and 200 members, many of whom are senior citizens, most of whom are lifelong residents of the area. Many of them and citizens from neighboring towns plan to join the occupation. Others, who cannot afford to occupy, have donated their land for camping, parking and staging uses, as well as for use as medical, information, and media centers--even though they face the threat of intimidation and harassment by local and state authorities. They have promised to be a lifeline for the occupiers once they get onto the site, raising money and providing food and supplies for as long as is necessary.

Meanwhile, contingents of occupiers are pouring in from around the country. People have driven in from California, Florida, Arizona, Indiana, Texas, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington D.C. A food brigade has arrived from Arizona; a supply wagon will come up from Pennsylvania. An antinuclear group in Scotland has sent us a message of endorsement.

All over, things are brewing. I live in the suburbs of Boston where for years there was virtually no awareness of the nuclear issue. After TMI an antinuclear group formed in my town, and now half a dozen affinity groups from the area make up the Central Massachusetts cluster. The participants range from high school students to grandmothers. An extremely diverse group of people have been calling in to offer their help and advice, including apple pickers, parents of small children, doctors, nurses and medical students, food cooperatives, Native American groups and even General Electric workers. We seem to have reached the point where the majority of Americans will understand nonviolent direct action at Seabrook, thousands will participate, and many more will support it.

Students have become a major force for the first time in the antinuclear movement. SCANN, the Student Coalition Against Nukes Nationwide, is cosponsoring the occupation and has been actively organizing and conducting preparation sessions around New England, especially in Massachusetts. The response has been overwhelming, almost too much for the fledgling alliance to handle. Affinity groups have sprung up at Boston University, UMass Amherst, UMass Boston, Tufts, Brandeis, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, Boston State, Worcester State, and Harvard, with contingents coming in from Oberlin, Kent State, and Cincinnati. Boston high school students are also getting involved. Harvard, which was rather poorly represented at the 1977 civil disobedience action, will send five or six affinity groups to the occupation.

We need all the help we can get. If you do not want to occupy, you can help by doing important support work in Boston or at the legal campsite on the coast near Seabrook. Without this work the occupation will fail. We need drivers, office staffers, medics, people to gather food, supplies and money to keep the occupation going. We need people to join the occupation to replace those who will have to leave. And we need leafletters and canvassers to explain the nature of our action to others, and to join in a mass unobtrusive picket at the plant site gates Monday morning.

Unless we all work together, Seabrook and nukes across the country will be built and will start operating, and we will be increasingly addicted to our nuclear habit. It will slowly kill us. We must make the authorities realize we will no longer allow them to manipulate our lives and our future for their profits and their power. We will not let nuclear power go on. We will close the nukes ourselves.