By Merrill Eisenberg
[Merrill@u.arizona.edu]
University of Arizona

Merrill Eisenberg

As your new President I want to first thank you all for your support. I am indeed very honored to be sitting in this position and promise you that serving you and the Society will be my highest priority over the next two years.

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By Paul Shackel
[pshackel@umd.edu]
University of Maryland

By Michael Roller
[mroller@umd.edu]
University of Maryland

By Kristin Sullivan
[sullivank@umd.edu]
University of Maryland

Dr. Paul Shackel, Michael Roller, and Kristin Sullivan

September 10, 1897, in Lattimer, Pa. marks one of the bloodiest labor strikes in US history. The Lattimer massacre is the result of a conflict between immigrant laborers and coal operators in the anthracite region of northeastern Pennsylvania. It left 25 immigrant men of eastern and southern European descent dead and nearly forgotten. Not surprisingly, the event is missing from the official memory of our country, and it reflects the control capital has over the memory of the industrialization of America. In remembering the massacre Howard Zinn’s (1980) “people’s history” is overshadowed by the accomplishments and paternalistic behavior of the coal operators. While the massacre has been erased from national attention, local community historians, clergy, community leaders, and a handful of academics have kept the story alive. In 2009 the Anthropology program at the University of Maryland committed itself to help raise the profile of the event with the goal of making it part of the national public memory.

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By Barbara Rose Johnston
[bjohnston@igc.org]
Center for Political Ecology, Santa Cruz, CA

SfAA Newsletter Editor Tim Wallace sent a note to me awhile back asking if he might reprint one of my commentaries on Japan’s nuclear disaster. He wanted to be sure that the next issue of the SfAA Newsletter included a focus on events unfolding in Japan following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. I suggested he include the article below, prefaced by an update on the nuclear disaster and a brief review of what some SfAA members have been doing to help shape and further stimulate public dialogue on the nature of this disaster and what it represents in terms of public health, energy policy, and disaster response.

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By Barbara Rose Johnston
Truthout (http://www.truthout.org/waking-nuclear-nightmare)
A shorter version of this article appeared in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on March 18, 2011 (http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/nuclear-world-what-the-meaning-of-safe)

As Japan’s nuclear disaster continues to unfold, a growing number of its citizens and residents are beginning their transition, becoming the newest members of the world’s radiogenic community. Like the hibakusha, downwinders, uranium miners, atomic vets and the many who live in towns and cities that hosted the nuclear enterprise, they find their lives profoundly altered by a hazardous, invisible threat, where the fear of nuclear contamination and the personal health and intergenerational effects from exposure colors all aspects of social, cultural, economic and psychological well-being.

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