by Marisa De La Villa What does it mean for a war to never fully end? In southeast Washington, along the Columbia River, there is a landscape that holds with it remnants of both World War II and the Cold War– not as a memory, rather, as its physical reality. 1 The Hanford Site is not simply a historic location: it is an ongoing environmental condition. 2 Established in 1943 under the Manhattan Project, Hanford was built with urgency and secrecy, all with the goal to produce plutonium for the atomic bomb. 3 The plutonium that was used in the bombing of Nagasaki actually came from Hanford. 4 Even the name plutonium carries a certain weight. Named after Pluto, the Roman god of the Underworld and ruler of the dead, the element was discovered only a few years before Hanford’s construction. The element was quickly tied to mass destruction– its association to death, to the god who controls it, seems somewhat prophetic. This material, drawn from the earth and weaponized, was ...
"The Earth is a Common Treasury for All." Gerrard Winstanley and the Fight to Save Common Lands in England
Gerrard Winstanley and the Fight to Save Common Lands in England By Cheryl Lo On April 1, 1649, a small group of poor men walked onto St George’s Hill in Surrey carrying shovels and seeds. They began digging into land that local landowners had long claimed as private property, planting beans, parsnips, and carrots in the soil. At first glance, the scene might have seemed unremarkable: a handful of men turning over the earth and sowing crops. But their actions carried a far more radical message. The group, later known as the Diggers and led by Gerrard Winstanley and William Everard, believed that the earth should belong to everyone. Land, in their eyes, was never meant to be owned by a select few, but shared and worked in common. At a time when England was emerging from civil war and political upheaval, this small act of digging challenged one of the most deeply rooted assumptions in society: that land itself could exist as private propert...