By Nadrat Siddique
This
past weekend, I was in Oklahoma City for a friend's wedding. Walking around the
downtown, I passed roads and a small city park named for Robert Kerr and Dean
McGee. An elementary school and a high school were similarly named for the
principles of the Kerr-McGee Nuclear Corporation. It reminded me that a heroine
of my teen years, Karen Silkwood, was murdered here in the 1970s.
While
working for Kerr-McGee, Silkwood found the corporation endangering its workers
through highly unethical and likely illegal industry practices. She became a
whistleblower, and thus the target of the company’s malfeasance. Ultimately,
she was murdered when her car was run off the road.
It
was the Silkwood case which convinced me of the importance of the labor (she
was the union representative for workers at her Kerr-McGee location); of environmentalism
(although Kerr-McGee paid a large settle ment to the Silkwood estate, they
refused to admit fault; however Silkwood and the union alleged corporate
negligence which led to the contamination of workers with plutonium; and of
activism (had Silkwood remained silent and tolerated Kerr-McGee’s abuse of its
workers, she might be alive today; instead, she insisted on investigating,
organizing and agitating for workers’ rights, despite being aware of the risks
of challenging a corporate giant).
So,
Silkwood is dead, and the Men in Black suits—Kerr and McGee—who likely ordered
her murder are honored to this day in Oklahoma City.
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