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Living History Project

A Collective History of Student Engagement at UC Santa Barbara

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UCSB Anti-Nuclear Power Movement

The Anti-nuclear movement and its protests reached a peak in the 1970s and 1980s and grew out of the environmental movement.  One of the campaigns that captured national public attention involved the Diablo Canyon Power Plant at Avila Beach in San Luis Obispo County, California.

1978
Diablo Canyon Protest: 487 people are arrested, including an untold number of UCSB students, in the largest of several years’ worth of protests against the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant being built in San Luis Obispo County.  Although the protest fails to stop the construction of the 1,100-megawatt reactor, the anti-nuclear power movement as a whole ultimately proves a major success, and there has been no nuclear power plant built in the US since Diablo Canyon.

May 1981 
UC Nuclear Free: 25 people are arrested inside Cheadle Hall in May in at a sit-in to protest the UC’s management of the Los Alamos and Livermore nuclear weapons labs and call attention to the Regents’ upcoming vote on whether to continue managing the labs.  “There’s blood on the hands of the UC Regents, and they can’t hide it,” one protestor says.  

June 19, 1981
Over 100 UCSB and UCLA students speak out and protest at the UC Regents meeting at UCLA, despite its being summer, including a group of protestors who approach the table are evicted from the room by university police.  The Regents nevertheless vote to renew their contract with Los Alamos and Livermore.  

September 1981
Over 1,900 arrests took place during a ten-day blockade at Diablo Canyon Power Plant.

1982
As part of a national anti-nuclear weapons movement Californians passed a statewide initiative [Proposition 12] calling for the end of nuclear weapons.

1983 
The Cheadle Hall 57: Over a hundred students conduct a sit-in inside Cheadle Hall to protest UC of the Los Alamos and Livermore labs, as well as US military hegemony at large.  The demonstration is titled “Ban the Bomb – and Ron!” 57 of the students are cited for trespassing, so they utilize their court case for the next several months to raise further awareness about the inextricable UC-nuclear weapon link.  Several other anti-nuclear demonstrations occur at UCSB throughout the year.

1983 
Vandenberg Protest: 763 people, including an untold number of UCSB students, are arrested on or near Vandenberg Air Force Base in March, the majority of them for blockading the roads leading to the base.  The protest is concerning US military policy, particularly in Latin America and the Middle East.  Several test launches of MX missiles are canceled due to security breaches caused by protestors sneaking onto the base.

1985 
Anti-Nuke “Die-In”: Students stage a “die-in” next to the University Center in January, featuring 100 spectators and dozens of participants in an effort to dramatize what the aftermath of a nuclear explosion would be like.  Afterward, 200 students march on the Chancellor’s University House, toting the “Nuclear Bill of Rights” recently passed by Associated Students’ Legislative Council.  Once gathered, the protestors sing songs and chant slogan for several hours.

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