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May 2nd Anti-Nuke Rally Times Square
NUCLEAR CALENDAR
Dear friends, The
purpose here is to continue to work for nuclear disarmament by supporting the march and rally in NYC on
May 2nd. Set
up a Facebook page. Contact
religious orders to gather signatures on the petition (attached and on the web). Contact Senior groups, Board of Education, Town Council
meetings and try to get on the agenda for a few minutes, bring the petition. Distribute petition outside churches or places of
worship or wherever you can find a good opportunity Try to find groups or clubs at
a college or high school where you could talk for a few minutes, get on the campus website etc.
Prepare a mailing to Faith Leaders.
Include a letter of explanation, a flyer re May 2nd, and a petition. Schedule a meeting and invite these Faith Leaders. Try to prepare some special video and/or materials for that meeting in the hopes
that some people will accept the invitation. Here's a refection that was written about
the Trident about 30 years ago. This sums up why we are working on this issue. What
is Trident? TRIDENT is a nuclear submarine being built now which will be able to destroy 408
cities or areas at one time, each with a blast five times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.
TRIDENT is 2,040 Hiroshimas. One TRIDENT
submarine (30 are planned) can end
life on earth. How can anyone understand that? Begin with a mediation:
To understand TRIDENT, say the word “Hiroshima”. Reflect on its meaning for one second. Say and understand
“Hiroshima” again. And again. And again. 2,040 times. Assuming you are ale to understand “Hiroshima” in one second, You will be able to understand TRIDENT in 34 minutes. That is one
TRIDENT submarine. To understand the destructive power of the whole TRIDENT fleet, It would take you 17 hours, devoting one second to each “Hiroshima”. Your mediation
is impossible. To understand “Hiroshima” alone Would take a lifetime.
-from LIGHTNING EAST TO WEST
by Jim Douglass
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PETITION TO PRESIDENT OBAMA ONABOLITION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS
One
nuclear weapon exploded in one city -- be it New York or Moscow, Islamabad or Mumbai, Tokyo or Tel Aviv, Paris or Prague --
could kill hundreds of thousands of people. And no matter where it happens, there is no end to what the consequences might
be -- for our global safety, our security, our society, our economy, to our ultimate survival.
President Barack Obama, Prague, April 5, 2009 Dear President Obama, We applaud you for declaring in Prague, “I state clearly and with conviction
America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons”. We commend you for your courageous and historic recognition that "as the only nuclear power to have
used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act." We call
on you to make good on that commitment and fulfill that responsibility by announcing at the 2010 Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty Review Conference your initiation of good faith multilateral negotiations on an international agreement to abolish
nuclear weapons, within our lifetimes. PLEASE! PRINT CLEARLYNAME
ADDRESS
EMAIL
PHONE ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________In
collaboration with Peace Action NYS www.panys.orgReturn petitions to:LI Alliance, 38 Old Country Road, Garden City NY 11530516-741-4360 email: longislandpeace.org www.longislandpeace.org
A New Moment
for Nuclear Disarmament “…true and lasting peace among nations
cannot consist in the possession of an equal supply of armaments, but only in mutual trust.” Pacem in Terris, # 113 Let’s begin with an image: a beautiful blue- green orb spinning in space, made up of a complex,
harmonious web called life. That would be Earth. Yet an awareness of its beauty comes
with concern about its fragility. A terrible imbalance, human-made, threatens its health. In
our time, the consciousness of climate change and the need to move to sustainable living has entered into the popular mind.
We need to restore balance, and fashion an economy that supports life. “Go green,” we say.
But there is sister slogan that must be added if our planet it to survive. It is, “Disarm
now!” The
need to rid the planet of nuclear weapons is inextricably linked to every hope and dream we have of saving the planet and
restoring the balance of life. Although governments’ secrecy makes a precise number hard to
pin down, there are still tens of thousands of active nuclear weapons on Earth: more than 7,000 in the United States, more
than 4,000 Russia, and still more in seven other countries that possess nuclear weapons: China,
France, The United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea. As President Obama himself has
said, “One nuclear weapon exploded in one city -– be it New York or Moscow, Islamabad or Mumbai, Tokyo or Tel
Aviv, Paris or Prague –- could kill hundreds of thousands of people.” So the question arises,
how can we name and frame this issue so that people all over the world insist that nuclear weapons be abolished, once and
for all? The good news is that the issue has already been named through the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The treaty, which binds its 189 signatories to eliminate their nuclear
arsenals, is a concrete framework that could bring about disarmament. This spring, an
extraordinary opportunity for civil society—a.k.a. “ ordinary people” to participate in making the terms
of the treaty a reality will come about through the NPT Review Conference to take place at the United Nations in New York.
Truly the conference matches that held in Copenhagen Conference on climate change. “Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference” or NPT Review for short. That
tongue-twisting title and bland acronym pose a challenge those eager to popularize the event. The treaty
itself is a complex legal structure; only specialists could master the whole. Nevertheless, as the best
hope of achieving nuclear disarmament it behooves us ordinary people to learn its essential elements. We
must press our hesitant governments if disarmament is to become a reality. The NPT is not new. It
was signed in 1970 by 190 countries, and ratified the U.S. Congress. (North Korea withdrew from the treaty
in 2003, bringing the signatories to 189.) The core of the agreement, known as “Article VI” is this:
Non-nuclear nations promised not to acquire nuclear weapons. In exchange, those who already
possessed them-- U.S., Russia, France, Great Britain and China, agreed to negotiate in good faith to eliminate their nuclear
arsenals. “Eliminate” and “good faith” are key words. If
the five nuclear weapon states had heeded them, we’d have a much safer world now. But decade by decade,
fear trumped common sense. The United States did not seriously pursue nuclear disarmament, North Korea
withdrew from the treaty, and three nations who never signed on-- India, Pakistan and Israel--now possess nuclear weapons.
Yet
the NPT still exists as a framework of hope. Every five years, U.N. member nations send delegates to review
its terms and see what forces of persuasion might be brought to bear so that they fulfill the terms they set for themselves
four decades ago. The 2010 review holds more hope than any that preceded it, for at least three important
reasons. First is President Obama position as stated in his major address in Prague, “Today I state
clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”
The support of the American president is seen as crucial to progress in disarmament, since the U.S has
the greatest number of nuclear warheads and remains as the major military power on the planet. Put simply,
other nations are afraid of us, and our nuclear posture functions as a provocation for other nations to acquire these terrible
weapons. Second, the asymmetrical threats-- rogue actors, unknowns in former times are
reasons for the nuclear weapons states to rethink their positions. Both scholars such
as Jonathan Schell and hardened statesmen such as Henry Kissinger agree that world leaders can no longer control nuclear weapons.
Our best hope is to eliminate them. Third, and perhaps most important of all, a global
citizenry is awaking to its role in holding its leaders accountable. An international movement composed
of hundreds of peace organization is alerting this citizenry to press for progress. Plans for a mass rally,
conference and festival in New York City, are well underway. A petition available on the website
www.peaceandjusticenow.org seeks to gather one million names. The Japanese peace movement alone
will send one thousand representatives to New York to partake in the events of May 1st and 2nd.
But
there is a dimension just beyond the NPT Review itself that must understood if the threat to our planet is to be overcome.
It is possible to turn away from the nuclear issue because it is too frightening, too complicated, or too abstract.
In fact, it is all those things. And a threat, no matter how dire, is not as compelling as the here-and-now
reality of suffering. So we must rouse ourselves to connect the dots: there is
great suffering caused by our failure to disarm. We are now 6 billion human beings on the planet. One billion of us go hungry every day.
It is urgent that the resources of our planet be allocated to human needs and the future of Earth. Our
very souls are corroded by the skill and imagination invested in destruction. As long as resources are
tied up in death, all that we hope for is dying too. The U.S. defense budget of 2010 will approach one
trillion dollars when all categories are added together. It is any wonder that human
needs—education, healthcare, housing, employment—are neglected? Is surprising that creative
solutions to climate change are not funded and carried out? Yet every survey of ordinary people affirms
that these are the priorities we would choose if given the chance. We know that safety based on weapons
of mass destruction is a delusion. The international planning committee for events around the May NPT Review
urges “disarm now!” in this elegant statement: “Nuclear disarmament should serve as the leading edge of a global trend
towards demilitarization and redirecting of resources to meet human needs and restore the environment. “
The fate of our beautiful blue-green orb, and all living creatures upon it, rests on the hope that such a global trend
will prevail. Our governments have proven far too cautious and distracted to accomplish this so far.
The NPT Review presents an extraordinary opportunity to harness the political will for the Treaty’s provisions
to be fulfilled It is not too soon to become involved. We must make our voices
heard this May as the nations of the world consider nuclear disarmament. We must disarm now.
Mayors anti-Nuke sign on
Nuclear Disarmamnet
Letters on Nukes
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