Superblog 2 Ramy Shbaita: Land Restoration and Social Injustice of the Concord Naval Weapons Station

 

            This article from Business Insider provided some details about some of the new housing developments to be built on the former Naval Weapons Station at Concord from an outside source. While the Concord Community Reuse Project for the Concord Naval Weapons Station organization has a detailed reuse plan, it is somewhat difficult to know just how things are on the ground sites and what some of these plans entail aside from looking at a map. This article specifically is about the plan to transform 1/5^th of the land in the former weapons station into a community suburb with over 13,000 homes. This land used to be on base munitions storage sites during World War II and provided a unique large development opportunity for a city so close to San Francisco.  

Navy weapons station with bunkers to become new homes in Bay Area (businessinsider.com)

 

On the tail end of the business insider article, I found development plans from the City of Concord with 7 different land usage diagrams. These sources lack some of the finer detail but they do highlight areas of toxic makeup and how the reuse plan could develop over the course of its process. These diagrams are extremely useful in terms of visualizing the territory and where it is physically relative to the rest of the city and what is being done.

2007-10-02-CNWS-Proposed-Alt-Concepts-1-7 (concordreuseproject.org)

 

In an investigation about more history about the native tribes of the area of Concord some thing becomes clear; the Spanish wiped out any remnants of the native tribes long before the USA took control of the territories. The Chupcan Native Americans were a smaller tribe in the bay area and specifically the region of Concord who were mostly known for the name they gave to the Sacred Mount Diablo in the bay area. They had no larger territorial plans and were a tribe that mostly kept to themselves. By the time the Untied States had taken control of much of California in the 1840s, the Spanish had integrated the tribes into the Mission programs across California. Most of the Chupcan natives were forcibly intermarried into nuclear family groups with the Carquins and Tatcans. Due to these factors, the United States Government never had any treaties with the native tribes of what is now Concord, and never seized any land from tribes that were already dispersed. Thus, it was never in any American interests to return the land to any former tribes of the region, and even if they wanted to, there isn’t much tribe to return the land to now. The land of the Concord Naval Weapons Station was firmly American, and nothing was really going to change that now. 

A CHUPCAN FAMILY: The Children of Mol-le – Museum of the San Ramon Valley (museumsrv.org)

The First Decades of a New Era – Museum of the San Ramon Valley (museumsrv.org)

 

            This interview with Vietnam War veteran Brian Wilson details some of his pacifist protests he was involved in, including one at the Concord Naval Weapons Station in 1987. Wilson and others were protesting US involvement and intervention in the Central American Crisis, specifically the US shipment of arms and other weapons to the region. Some of these munitions included something called white phosphorus. This is a chemical compound with incendiary properties often used to mark areas or for the tips of tracer ammunition. Usage of this chemical munition against humans is illegal internationally as the intense burning and destruction it causes to life and the surrounding area is deemed to be too much for the laws of war to permit now. However, countries get around this by using the chemical to destroy emplacements and fortifications, which are often manned by enemy combatants unlucky enough to be in the zone. During the protest at Concord Naval Weapons Station against using weapons like these in Central America, Brian Wilson was hit by a munitions supply train that was ordered not to stop from the protests occurring on base. Wilson would go on to lose his legs and have several other injuries from this incident, furthering his political activism into pacifism. With this protest, there begins a growing trend of anti-war movements centered around the Naval Weapons Station. Many of which involve protests of usage of chemically toxic materials and/ or movements for the rights of minority groups, both in and outside of the United States.

“Blood on the Tracks”: Brian Willson’s Memoir of Transformation from Vietnam Vet to Radical Pacifist | Democracy Now!