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Amidst Rally and Bomber Noise, Satyagraha Institute Promotes Peaceful Protest

While hundreds of thousands of motorcyclists fill South Dakota jails, ERs, coffins, and tax coffers, the Satyagraha Institute is in the Black Hills for its first two-week summer institute on firmness in the truth, nonviolence, manual labor, meditation, and other things Gandhi told us are good. The Satyagrahans are evidently quieter than both the bikers and last month’s Rainbow Family gatherers who created such a stir about hippies in the Hills.

Participants in the Satyagraha Institute will do a little manual labor to stir things up on Marvin Kammerer’s Meade County ranch. Back in 1980, when Kammerer was protesting uranium mining, depleted-uranium weapons testing, the MX missile, and all the bombers from Ellsworth roaring over his land, he and several thousand fellow freedom fighters put three 40-foot circles of rock painted white on the ridge right in the Ellsworth flyway: a peace sign, an international environmental symbol (a circle with a horizontal line through it), and an Indian medicine wheel.

B-52 from Ellsworth Air Force Base flies over rock protest symbols on Marvin Kammerer's Meade County ranch. Photo by Don Polovich, Rapid City Journal staff, 1980.
B-52 from Ellsworth Air Force Base flies over rock protest symbols on Marvin Kammerer’s Meade County ranch. Photo by Don Polovich, Rapid City Journal staff, 1980.

Kammerer says a B-36 crashed on that ridge once, killing 29 Air Force personnel (one airman in the tail survived). Ellsworth planes still fly over the site, but naturally the paint has worn and the grass has grown. Satyagraha Institute participants will come out to the ranch this Saturday, August 8, starting around 11 a.m., to clear the grass and repaint the rocks to remind all those B-1B bomber crews that there is an alternative to juicing the economy with noisy engines, expensive missiles, and death.

If you’d like to support the Satyagraha Institute’s work, click on their Support page.

8 Comments

  1. Rorschach 2015-08-06 12:11

    They can have their Hare Krishna love in. I prefer the thunder of 500,000 motorcycles.

  2. Deb Geelsdottir 2015-08-06 15:38

    I like their message and methods.

  3. Roger Cornelius 2015-08-06 19:44

    The rally death toll hit 10 today with 3 days of drunkenness and recklessness still to go.

    The Institute people sound like they will be having a peaceful productive week.

  4. grudznick 2015-08-06 20:55

    Bomber pilots laughing.
    Bomber pilots laughing.

  5. jerry 2015-08-06 21:33

    It is kinda cool to see them in the campgrounds that are filthy and nasty looking. I like that very much because they do not know how badly the owners are laughing at them while they are screwing them. In the meantime, someone gets 30 million bucks collected for taxes that do nothing. So the bikers, that have put up with the crap the owners have given them, get the last laugh while saying “It is kinda cool to see them (usins) in their houses that are filthy and nasty looking because the do not know how badly the owners (politicos) are laughing at them while they are screwing them”.

  6. caheidelberger Post author | 2015-08-06 22:15

    But Rohr, the Satyagrahans will continue humming their love vibes long after the Ralliers have trailered their toys home. #Authenticity.

  7. caheidelberger Post author | 2015-08-06 22:18

    Peaceful and productive—there are two words, Roger, we won’t hear from Sturgis.

    Grudz, Gandhi would invite their laughter. But he would continue to appeal to their consciences, as will those stones on Marvin’s ridge.

  8. leslie 2015-08-06 23:08

    who is a stupid cow tonight, rohr or grudz?

    rohr, i can never remember if i don’t like you, but of grudz, i am certain.

    or maybe we do not share values? or maybe you do not have….?

    oh right, the demographic is 23 year olds.

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