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Editorial: Local peace protester deserves recognition

Tribune editorialIt might seem like we're embracing an oxymoron, but: We salute Albuquerque's peace warrior, Chuck Hosking.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008

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It might seem like we're embracing an oxymoron, but: We salute Albuquerque's peace warrior, Chuck Hosking.

Most of us are familiar with and even admire Albuquerque's thousands of Cold Warriors — men and women at Sandia National Laboratories and at other facilities on Kirtland Air Force Base who have been on the front line of nuclear weapons design and engineering, ensuring that the United States was second to none.

But for about half the time that the Cold War fueled a superheated nuclear arms race that has been very costly to both the United States and the former Soviet Union — not to mention the world — the Peace Warrior has stood sentinel at Kirtland's gate.

With large banners and signs that asked simple ethical questions, the Quaker Hosking pressed his case for nuclear disarmament and global peace to all who would look and listen.

Many scoffed or, worse, ridiculed him, threw things at him or even shot him, with a BB gun. But a few, including nuclear scientist Tom Grissom and military civil engineer Lou Nicholas, came over. Mostly they were persuaded by Hosking's ethical presence at the gate — his courage, as Grissom said.

Hosking and his late wife, Mary Ann Fiske, who died in September after encouraging her husband to return to the gate and protest the Iraq war on her behalf, co-founded the Albuquerque Peace Project, which last week celebrated its 25th anniversary on Ash Wednesday. But to many, Hosking is the Peace Project and has been its heart and soul since it began in 1983.

For the most part, it's been lonely duty for Hosking, who has protested often by himself — come rain, snow or shine — at Kirtland's gate at least once a week, usually on Friday afternoons.

Tribune readers got to meet him up close and personal thanks to Carrie Seidman's sweeping front-page article, "A simple act of protest," on Saturday.

Say what you might about Hosking, his mission or his message, but his dedication, his humanity and his quite courage is without peer.

While many people went off to payday lunches, Hosking began his Friday afternoons pedaling his bike, loaded with peace banners, uphill from his South Valley home to Kirtland.

Even after the Cold War supposedly ended, while U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories still flourished, Hosking never let his guard down, never even paused.

He does it for himself, because he has "to live with" himself, because he believes designing nuclear weapons is "a crime against humanity" and because he has "an obligation to speak out against that."

Many have argued that the U.S. nuclear arsenal has kept the peace, even as its malevolent existence has sanctioned the notion of utter global destruction. And all the while over the same 50 years, U.S. foreign policy has claimed to favor nuclear nonproliferation, a comprehensive nuclear test ban and nuclear disarmament.

These, of course, are far more than idle inconsistencies to be pondered on occasion on the field of ethics and honor.

Indeed, for Hosking they are an everyday preoccupation worthy of quiet vigilance and constant protest.

So if it's Friday afternoon, that must be Hosking at Kirtland's Wyoming gate. Like us, you should at least tip your hat — if you dare.