was needed to help protect them from harm. Clamshell had allowed a gap to grow between the local supporters and the Alliance as a whole that was exploited by the State and the Seabrook builders. The Emergency Decision was undertaken to accept the Rath proposal and hold a legal rally on site and at the same time to hold a mass non-violent civil disobedience at NRC headquarters in downtown Washington, D.C. The original intent was for a "Clamtrack" journey by train of thousands of Clams to blockade the NRC that would license the Seabrook plant. It seemed like an excellent tactical pivot at the time by those making the decision. Seabrook construction had been halted before by an NRC Board meeting in Manchester, New Hampshire, in a building surrounded by perhaps two thousand Clams. Thousands of Clams showing up in Washington for a nonviolent action at the NRC would certainly shake things up. Clam organizer Chuck Matthai in discussions of what to do after the landowners withdrew land advised Clams to reshape their imagination in response to changed circumstances. This led to what key organizers and the CC felt was a good path forward. Unfortunately, the Emergency Decision was widely considered a violation of the spirit of the consensus process that had governed Clam decision making. The rally at Seabrook took place, but the civil disobedience action at the NRC, though spirited, was small. By the spring of 1978, in preparation for the June 24 action, over 5,000 Clams had been trained in non-violence by Clamshell non-violence trainers, and organized into affinity groups of roughly 5 to 20 people, with the affinity groups organized into regional cluster groups of roughly 200 to 500 members. Each affinity group met to decide issues by consensus, and the clusters operated typically by an affinity groups spokes-council. The highly anticipated action, scheduled to begin June 24, 1978, would have been by far the largest civil disobedience action of its kind. Many Clamshell members felt that the agreement which was made as an "emergency decision" was a betrayal of the democratic consensus process that was an integral part of Clamshell's organization just at the time when the state and the Public Service Company of New Hampshire appeared at their most vulnerable. The Emergency Decision mechanism had been adopted in spring of 1978 after NH State Police were discovered by Robin Read and Cathy Wolff looking