Concord Protest and Injuries
On September 1, 1987, while engaged in a protest against the shipping of U.S. weapons to Central America in the context of the Contra wars, Willson and other members of a Veterans Peace Action Team blocked railroad tracks at the Concord, California Naval Weapons Station. An approaching train did not stop, and struck the veterans. Willson was hit, ultimately losing both legs below the knee while suffering a severe skull fracture with loss of his right frontal lobe. Subsequently, he discovered that he had been identified for more than a year as an FBI domestic "terrorist" suspect under President Reagan's anti-terrorist task force provisions and that the train crew that day had been advised not to stop the train. In 1988 a music benefit was held in San Francisco to help raise funds for Willson. Performers who turned out in support were Nick Gravenites with guests Jerry Garcia and Pete Sears, Jackson Brown played a set, and Ed Asner and Wavy Gravy spoke. Mimi Farina and Pete Sears later played a folk set for protesters just outside the barbed wire surrounding the naval base. They built the stage on some old railroad tracks using a generator for power. Their show was filmed by police from a tower just inside the base.
For years after the Willson incident, anti-war protesters maintained a 24-hour-a-day vigil at the weapons depot, which shipped between 60,000 and 120,000 tons of munitions each year to U.S. forces and allies, a Navy spokesman said.
Willson filed a law suit contending that the Navy and individual supervisors were given ample warning of their plan to block the tracks, and that the train crew had time to stop—which the subsequent official Navy report confirmed. The train crew filed a law suit against Willson, requesting punitive damages for the "humiliation, mental anguish, and physical stress" they suffered as a result of the incident, which was dismissed. U.S. District Judge Robert Peckham said Willson did not plan to cause the railroad workers any distress, because he assumed the train would stop before hitting him.
Willson later agreed to settle his lawsuit against the government and train crew for $920,000. He now walks with prostheses.
Read more about this topic: Brian Willson
Famous quotes containing the words concord, protest and/or injuries:
“All our Concord waters have two colors at least; one when viewed at a distance, and another, more proper, close at hand.... Walden is blue at one time and green at another, even from the same point of view. Lying between the earth and the heavens, it partakes of the color of both.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“You may decry some of these scruples and protest that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in my philosophy. I am concerned, rather, that there should not be more things dreamt of in my philosophy than there are in heaven or earth.”
—Nelson Goodman (b. 1906)
“The only thing of weight that can be said against modern honour is that it is directly opposite to religion. The one bids you bear injuries with patience, the other tells you if you don’t resent them, you are not fit to live.”
—Bernard Mandeville (1670–1733)