Lovejoy Topples Weather Tower (1974)

Fri Feb 22, 1974

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Image: Sam Lovejoy at the 1979 No Nukes Concert at Madison Square Garden. Source: Montague Retreat Center.

On this day in 1974, Sam Lovejoy, an anti-nuclear activist, sabotaged a 500 foot weather tower near Montague, Massachusetts to protest a local nuclear power site. The tower had been built by Northeast Utilities to test wind direction so that authorities would know which way the radiation would blow from the plant in case of an accident.

Using a few simple farm tools to loosen the turnbuckles in the stays of the tower, Lovejoy left behind him 349 feet of twisted wreckage. At Lovejoy’s trial, historian Howard Zinn was brought in as an expert witness on civil disobedience. Zinn testified that Lovejoy’s act was in the best tradition of activists like Gandhi and Henry David Thoreau.

Lovejoy was found not guilty, and the destruction of the tower and trial brought national attention to the anti-nuclear cause.

  • CrisEnglish
    71·
    3 days ago

    It sounds like he was protesting against nuclear power, not bombs… Can’t say I’m on board with his agenda in that case