Nevada activists have themes at convention

Benjamin Grove

Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2000 | 9:49 a.m.

LOS ANGELES -- Protester Susi Snyder leaned out the window of a beat-up white van as it tugged a mock nuclear waste cask through downtown on Monday.

"We want people power, not nuclear power!" she said through a bullhorn, startling pedestrians on the sidewalk. "You don't want nuclear waste coming through the streets of your town!"

Snyder is with a group of 14 Nevada activists here this week at the Democratic National Convention for ongoing protests in the streets around the Staples Center. They represent Food Not Bombs, Black Mesa Indigenous Support, Nevada Desert Experience, Nevadans Organizing to Better Address Diversity and the Shundahai Network.

Snyder, at 23, is an emerging leader in the relatively small activist community in Las Vegas. Her story offers a colorful sketch of one protester among hundreds from across the nation who seek the attention of a national audience.

After growing up in Queens, N.Y., and graduating high school, Snyder hitchhiked to San Francisco and spent a year in California. Three years ago she moved to Las Vegas to take up Shundahai causes. Now she is a full-time organizer for the group.

Shundahai is a Las Vegas-based organization that advocates nuclear disarmament and promotes indigenous people's land rights. The group also opposes a federal plan to bury the nation's nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Snyder and activist Reinard Knutsen drove Shundahai's aging van to Los Angeles toting the mock waste cask, which looks like a giant barbell adorned with banners that read "Nuke Waste No Way" and "Nuke Waste Everybody's Back Yard." They plan to drive the streets of Los Angeles and drive home a point: Waste will travel through your state on its way to Nevada if the federal government approves the Yucca Mountain plan.

" 'Mobile Chernobyl' isn't quite a a household phrase yet, but every once in a while a local news station will carry a program, and that's a step," Snyder said. "I like to be able to tell people to stay away from this stuff. Get off the road. Take a different route. Boycott the highways."

She chuckles. "Wouldn't that be great?" she says.

Snyder smiles often, wears a cowboy hat and often spills her drink on her T-shirt, which was a gift that says "Nevadans say nuclear waste no way."

Over an avocado, tomato and lettuce sandwich she describes her protest style, which stresses never getting into physical confrontations with police. She employs humor to diffuse tense confrontations with cops -- or offers them cookies or water.

"These cops out here are not bad people," she said of the army of officers swarming downtown. "They are not sure how we are going to act, and we are not sure how they are going to act."

But standoffs with officers are an inevitable part of protesting.

"You know you have a right to be there and you know you are doing good, doing something you believe in," Snyder said. "But then you see all these cops. And they are just itching, you know?"

Snyder has been jailed several times for protesting nuclear waste transport.

The hassles of an activist's life -- arrests, crashing at a friend's place in Los Angeles, parking a mock nuclear waste cask, sunburn -- are worth it, Snyder said.

"I think about, 'How will I look my kids in the eye if I don't at least try to do something?' "