Editor,
In response to Sam Roth and Terry Mulcahy's letters in Tuesday's Daily Lobo, don't the two of them realize that New Mexico almost certainly would not exist without nuclear weapons?
Coming from a small northern town in which most of the citizens are employed by Los Alamos National Laboratory, it's not very hard to see that without such employment opportunities, the surrounding communities would be laden with poverty. Even the economic benefits that Kirtland Air Force Base and Sandia National Laboratories provide Albuquerque cannot be argued.
I don't agree with the wars being fought overseas, but I do realize that without the continuing need for improved military technology, New Mexico would not have much else to offer the nation.
Mulcahy says that "we will pay the price when these smaller
nuclear weapons turn up on our streets, and we lose stadiums full of people (and) small towns." We'd lose these towns just as well if people were not offered jobs at the places that produce nuclear weapons. Granted, most of these jobs are not the high-paying research jobs, but the jobs that locals fill are just as
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important.
In regard to Robert Anderson's arrest at the symposium, I believe that UNM had every right to arrest him. If he was disrupting the panel and disobeying the rules with the person next to him holding the placard, then why not escort him out? It would be just the same if people showed up to a panel that he was on and did the same thing. Obviously, Anderson did something that warranted police action. I suggest such die-hard activists and their supporters look at the bigger picture rather than just focusing on the use of weapons that UNM or any other lab in New Mexico may help develop.
Estaban Sena
UNM student
