Anti-Nuclear Protesters Charged--Four Months Later

Three anti-nuclear activists have been charged with malicious mischief and vandalism for painting silhouettes on a Seal Beach street more than four months ago to dramatize the effects of a nuclear holocaust, one of the defendants said Tuesday.

Elizabeth Crawford of Santa Ana, Richard Hamel of Santa Ana and Marion Pack of Corona, president of the Orange County chapter of Alliance for Survival, were summoned to appear before an Orange County Harbor Municipal Court judge on Jan. 10, Crawford said. She said they will plead not guilty.

Crawford said she was surprised that the summons arrived more than four months after the August incident, and she accused the Orange County district attorney’s office of filing the charges “purely for political reasons.”

No one was available at the district attorney’s office Tuesday to explain why the charges were filed four months after the incident. A Seal Beach police spokesman also said he did not know why the district attorney took so long to process the case against the three anti-nuclear activists.

Whitewashed Drawings

At about 2 a.m. on Aug. 6, the three adults and a teen-age boy whitewashed silhouettes on the street in Seal Beach, Crawford said. The teen-ager was arrested but not charged.

The silhouettes were painted as part of an international “Shadow Project” designed to remind the world of the bombing of Hiroshima and of the potential for further holocausts, Crawford said.

Crawford also said that the mixture used to paint the shadows left a chalk-like substance on the street and could be easily cleaned.

“We did not deface or damage any public property,” she said.

Crawford added that during their court appearance next month, the three will ask the judge to drop their case “because we were only making a political statement.”

But before that court appearance, Crawford and 10 other members of the Alliance for Survival must appear on Jan. 7 on misdemeanor charges of obstructing a public sidewalk last February during the weeklong 26th Annual Winter Convention on Aerospace and Electronic Systems (WINCON).

Forty-seven people were arrested at the Westin South Coast Plaza Hotel in Costa Mesa, site of the convention, for blocking the path of several buses carrying the 300 people attending the conference.

But 36 of those arrested later pleaded guilty or no contest to the charges and were released from the Orange County Jail. The other 11 refused to enter pleas.

During a court appearance last July, Harbor Municipal Judge Christopher Strople denied their request to make nuclear weapons an issue in their trial, the reason the defendants said they had refused to enter pleas. The judge then ordered them to appear again in his court on Jan. 7.