By Winona LaDuke
On the opening night of the Minnesota State Fair, I ate my approved amount of deep-fried goods and settled into my seat with a couple of friends to see my old friend Bonnie Raitt . As she carried a crowd of 12,000 or so through a wide-ranging set list, it was hard not to hang my head at history and then smile and clap again for the courage of those who stand up for what’s right. That’s Bonnie Raitt.
I can say we are old friends because we have known each other for almost 50 years as advocates for justice and Mother Earth. We first met in 1978, at an anti-nuclear rally at Seabrook, a proposed nuclear power plant in Maine which was never built. I was an undergraduate at Harvard University and had done a lot of research into uranium mining – the stuff that feeds nuclear power plants – and it was killing people. Bonnie dropped out of my alma mater, Harvard-Radcliffe, a decade before to become the musician she is. I stayed for economics class but spent many of my weekends joining with people across this country to oppose nuclear power. Why? …because it kills you…leave that stuff in the ground.
Musicians and community members like me poured our hearts out and faced arrest for the water and future generations. We traveled to many places and stood until projects were cancelled. Literally, all the nuclear power plant projects in this country were cancelled by the 1990s, but they are just more expensive and dangerous now. No Nukes then, and No Nukes now, I say…time to use less and be smarter.
Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Browne were co-founders of Musicians United for Safe Energy, and they were and remain great humanitarians. At 19, I braved crowds of 5,000 to share the history of uranium mining with “end users” at nuclear plants. Bonnie did as well. We came together at the Musicians United for Safe Energy Anti-Nuclear concert at Madison Square Garden in September of 1979. Just prior to that, Bonnie and Jackson came to New Mexico for Diné and Pueblo community members fighting a big uranium mining proposal at Mt. Taylor, one of the four sacred mountains of the Navajo. Bonnie has always been there for us.
Back in the 1970s, then-President Richard Nixon wanted to have a thousand nuclear power plants in the US by 2000. There are about 160 now. With no way to mine uranium without widespread radioactive contamination, and no way to safely dispose of nuclear waste, the idea was a bad one from the start. The anti-nuclear movement sprang up in response to such proposals, and no more nuclear plants were built for about 40 years. Then came three big nuclear accidents: Three-Mile Island (1979), Chernobyl (1986), and Fukushima (2011). Cancers are just getting more prevalent…. Keep that uranium in the ground.
Bonnie raises her voice to sing for people and water. At Standing Rock, she played in the Prairie Knights casino, and later at a Moorhead concert in 2017 to support the legal defense of hundreds of people charged as Water Protectors in the DAPL Conflict.. We appreciate her deeply.
These are crazy times we are in. AI Data Centers are demanding huge amounts of energy and water… the new Wiindigoos, I would say. Three-Mile Island, Unit One, is being reopened by Microsoft, as Crane Clean Energy is sucking literally 835 megawatts of power directly to this data center project. More mini-nuclear power plants are being proposed, and still, there’s no plan for nuclear waste…after all, you make that stuff, and it doesn’t just disappear; it hangs around for 10,000 years to give you cancer.
At the State Fair, Bonnie brought back some anti-war songs from the Vietnam era just as President Trump proposes a mandated registration for the military, maybe as early as December. As wars rage all around, and corporations continue to get more passes and approvals than ever, it’s hard not to hang your head in sorrow.
Bonnie reminded us to do our part. In The New York Times, she commented:
“You just do what you can…. As long as I’ve got a mouth, somebody’s going to be hearing about it. I’m just glad I won those Grammys, so now I get on a better page when the newspapers cover these things.”
With the moon hanging large over the fairgrounds, Bonnie chose to play several cover songs, including Dylan’s “Standing in the Doorway.” I kept mouthing the words, though, of “Not Dark Yet.” But maybe we should change the darker lyrics of both songs because you and I can still drink the water, see the herons and monarch butterflies. And I know that despite the insanity, life is still here and worth protecting.
An almost complete eclipse came at the close of her show. I stood and watched in awe, and thought, I’ll still see you again in the morning. All of us will be here, and we’ll strive once more to do better, like Bonnie Raitt and beloved Dolly Parton. They led with their hearts. That’s a good lesson for all of us to be good people. Just do what you can, but do something. That’s why we need to keep our hands and hearts together to make that change, because it’s not dark yet.
