[In mid-October the U.S. Army canceled a contract to process deadly VX chemical weapons agents in a Dayton, Ohio neighborhood. Maddi Breslin is one of the people who made it happen. Her friends know her as Maddi Bee.]

We the People stopped the Army more effectively than a hundred thousand Chinese in Tianamen Square.  The We the People I’m referring to are the folks of the Citizens for the Responsible Destruction of Chemical Weapons.

The chemical weapon we stopped from coming to Dayton, Ohio was the extremely virulent VX Nerve Agent derivative. The neighborhood to which this stuff was coming was a low-income black and white area in the western quadrant of Montgomery County.  This was Environmental Racism at its nasty best, targeting a quadrant that has been selected time and time again for hazardous waste and landfills.  Citizens have complained for years – to no avail.  The poisons kept on coming.  

Our citizens group, started by two astute black women, grew to be a fabulous model of grass-roots people-power.  The group expanded – people joined in, bringing specific talents like organizing, writing, video-taping, speaking, as needed.  The group was diverse.  We were female, male, workers, retired, low-income, not-so-low income, African American, European-American, Native American.  Fabulous Folks!  We were a potpourri of strong, unified, free and fearless human beings. All hardworking, no-showboating, glorious people.  We felt spiritually bound to each other and the cause.  There was no hierarchy, no order-givers and order-followers.  Somehow we all knew what needed to be done and did it.   Many of us hadn’t met prior to this undertaking.  We were thrown together by luck and the grace of a power bigger than all of us. 

People told us:  “You can’t beat the Army.  They have their ways.  They’ll brush you aside.  We don’t think you can win against them.  They have the power.”  We didn’t believe that for a hot second.  Once we educated ourselves and knew about the destructive nature and history of this VX substance and the unsuccessful experiments to get rid of it, we knew in our hearts we’d never quit.  We were determined and we worked daily, weekly, monthly for 11 months.  Among other things we demonstrated, petitioned, educated, leafleted, orated, conducted large community meetings with almost no money.

The Legal Aid Society of Dayton and a prestigious law firm in the city filed two lawsuits on behalf of the Citizens for the Responsible Destruction of Chemical Weapons and residents of the affected community.  The County Commissioners hired a renowned expert on destruction of chemical weapons from Northwestern University who basically validated all of the points made by our Citizens Group.  The County refused to award a permit to Perma-Fix, Inc. based on that expert report. Each community and township governmental body in the County, and other civic groups were contacted.  We secured resolutions against VX from 37 of these entities, including the County Commissioners.  We asked for and received the aid of our U.S. Representative, Michael Turner, who also served on a sub-committee of the Armed Services Committee.  The Dayton Daily News ran countless articles and many editorials supporting the People’s Cause.  And we won!

We beat the Army!  They tried to shuck and jive, push us aside, give non-answers to our many questions.  Yet and still, their best was not good enough.

Let’s look at how this all happened:

You might have seen in the movies stories about VX Gas developed during World War II by Nazis in black capes and jackboots with SS insignias on their armbands. Not much was said about the Brits and the US who also stockpiled VX.  During this past year you might also have heard our appointed president Bush and the laborers in his vineyard, Rummy and Condi and Colin and big Dick Cheney speak of VX as one of the many, many, many chemical, biological, and nukular (oops, nuclear) Weapons of Mass Destruction supposedly held in absolute readiness by Sadaam Hussein of Iraq to be used against us on a moment’s notice.  On their words, the good people of our great country sent our sons and daughters to Mesopotamia, the Cradle of Civilization, to shock and awe innocent people there with our bombs and baby nukes and landmines, all weapons of mass destruction.  Hello!    

(Sidebar:  It is interesting to note that if one or two bombs hit any stockpile of VX nerve gas in Iraq like the thousands of tons we have here in the United States, in less than 15 minutes all people weighing under 150 pounds would be dead.  All other heavyweights would die, too.  It would just take a short time longer.  Soldiers on the ground would be dead.  All administrators waiting to take over in nearby cities would be dead because of wind drift.  Yes, if that had happened in Iraq there would be no more Iraq as we “thought” we knew it.)    

No VX was found in Iraq.  We do have it here in the U.S.  One Thousand Two Hundred and Fifty Tons of it is stored in Newport, Indiana at an Army Depot.  It has been there and at quite a few other sites in the U.S. for decades!   Are you worried yet?  Maybe you should worry.  Any “accidents” with this stuff will be deadly almost instantly. 

After the Chemical Weapons Treaty of 1997 in which the U.S. joined other nations to ban the use of chemical weapons, a deadline of April 2007 was agreed upon to destroy all such weapons.   After the horror of 9/11, our Congress told the Army to get rid of all this stuff we had made – and fast!  It’s one treaty Bush hasn’t abdicated from.  

The Army selected a private national/international corporation, Parsons Engineering,  to do the job.  Parsons hired Perma-Fix, a U.S. Hazardous Waste Removal firm with one of its numerous plants in a low income, racially mixed (predominately black) area in Dayton, Ohio to get rid of the tons of VX stored for over 40 years in Newport, Indiana where it was originally manufactured.  The plan was to transport this chemical stew over 200 miles through many villages and towns, past schools and shopping centers and farms and town halls to the Perma-Fix site in Dayton.  Are you with me?  Does this make any sense whatsoever?  Duh!

This “Perma-Phew” outfit is situated in the midst of a residential neighborhood.  Any good amateur ballplayer worth his or her salt could hit a home run ball from one of the nearby homes and hit a bullseye on the side of the Perma-Phew factory-factotum in one try!  Now, why do I call this place Perma-Phew?  It’s simple.  The place stinks!  It has been grossing out neighbors for years.  Individual complaint after individual complaint was sent to the corporation and to the so-called Watch Dogs, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Regional Air Pollution Authority.  These regulatory agencies appeared to be toothless and ball-less.   Nothing ever seemed to be done because the smells continued to be spewed forth from Perma-Phew.  

We the People found out that Perma-Fix “won” the contract to deal with this ghastly weapon of mass destruction after it was turned into something called hydrolysate, which you wouldn’t want to drink with dinner or bathe in.   They were to get many millions of Uncle Sam’s greenbacks to bio-remediate this VX hydrolysate, send it to the County Wastewater facility where it would be further treated and dumped into the Great Miami River which flows on down to the Ohio River which flows to the Mississippi which flows to the Gulf of Mexico, dropping its surprise greetings from Uncle Sam along the way.      

Almost every authority, including the so-called “watchdog agencies” persisted in labeling VX Hydrolysate harmless, even though the bio-remediation was experimental with no long-term testing done.   But we knew it was not harmless.   We called a lie a lie and pushed on the powers-that-be to take responsibility and do the right thing, over and over and over again.  We were not timid.  After all, we were the employers of all of our governmental representatives, of our regulatory bodies and of the United States Army!  They were, and are, our employees!

We the People said NO to VX and that’s the way it came down!