Chain Reaction Peace Sculpture Public Rededication Ceremony

'Chain Reaction’ Peace Sculpture Created by Late 3-Time Pulitzer Prize Winner Paul Conrad to be Rededicated at June 26 Public Ceremony in Santa Monica Civic Center After Years of  Testing, Refurbishment and Community Fundraising Efforts to Save the 26-Foot Tall Nuclear Mushroom Cloud Warning Monument
 
Santa Monica , CA- “Back By Popular Demand” will be the event theme as Santa Monica Mayor Ted Winterer and Mayor Pro-Tem Gleam Davis join with former S.M. Mayors, City Commissioners, peace and anti-nuclear group leaders and activists from the broad-based ‘Save Chain Reaction’ Campaign, to rededicate the refurbished and now landmarked monumental 26-foot tall nuclear mushroom cloud peace sculpture and warning monument ‘Chain Reaction’ and its new sustainable plant landscaped ‘Peace Garden’ and solar powered uplighting that will encircle it. The free-to-the-public ‘Chain Reaction Peace Sculpture Public Rededication Ceremony’ program will be held from 6:00pm until 7:00pm (with an early informal viewing time at 5:30pm) on Monday, June 26, the evening before the late 3-time Pulitzer Prize winning political cartoonist and ‘Chain Reaction’ creator Paul Conrad’s birthday. It will be held in the Santa Monica Civic Center located on the 1800 block of Main Street (just north of Pico Blvd. and the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium). 
 
The public event will be held to rededicate the sculpture but also to acknowledge and thank everyone who assisted in the ‘Save Chain Reaction’ effort. Speakers at the event will also address the issue of promoting peace and eliminating the threat of nuclear weapons.
 
Paul Conrad created and gifted the unique public art sculpture to Santa Monica in 1991. The sculpture’s construction cost was funded (anonymously at the time) with a $250,000 donation made by peace philanthropist Joan Kroc.
 
‘Chain Reaction’ was unanimously designated a City Landmark on July 9, 2012 by the seven-member Santa Monica Landmarks Commission.
 
The message Paul Conrad inscribed at the base of ‘Chain Reaction’ reads: “This is a statement of peace. May it never become an epitaph.”
 
Along with Mayor Winterer and Mayor Pro-Tem Gleam Davis on the speakers program will be Paul Conrad’s son David Conrad as well as former Santa Monica mayors Rev. James Conn, Judy Abdo and Paul Rosenstein, who had once been arrested at the Nevada Nuclear Weapons Test Site during a peaceful protest. Also speaking will be members of the Committee to Save Chain Reaction "Chain Gang” team including Santa Monica art gallery owner Robert Berman, environmental scientist Elena Christopoulos and Robert Scheer, the noted journalist, editor of TruthDig and longtime friend of Paul Conrad. The ‘Chain Gang’ team was instrumental in raising more than $100,000 to assist the City in the ‘Chain Reaction’ refurbishment cost.
 
Other guest speakers will be: Leslie Lambert, former Santa Monica Landmarks Commissioner and current member of the Planning Commission; Carol Lemlein, President of the Santa Monica Conservancy, Charles Andrews, columnist for the Santa Monica Daily Press; Cris Gutierrez, Santa Monica anti-nuclear and environmental activist; Denise Duffield, Associate Director of Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles; and Lisa Napoli, author of ‘Ray & Joan’, the recent book about late peace philanthropist Joan Kroc.
 
Representatives from the groups who did the ‘Chain Reaction’ refurbishment and ‘peace garden’ design and landscaping will also be on the speakers program, including Rosa Lowinger of Rosa Lowinger & Associates Conservation of Art + Architecture; Jeremy Klemic of SWA Landscape Architecture Group; and a representative of BrightView Landscape Design.
 
An opening welcome will be given by Santa Monica peace activist Jerry Rubin.
 
The event will conclude with event participants joining hands in a ‘Circle of Peace’ around ‘Chain Reaction’.
 
Parking is available in the City surface lot next to ‘Chain Reaction’. Alternative transportation is available via Santa Monica Big Blue Bus and Metro Light Rail. Bicycling or walking is also a positive travel option.
 
The event is being sponsored by Save Chain Reaction and Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles.
 
For further information call: 310-399-1000.