Gaining allies for nuclear-free future

By Carol Urner and Ellen Thomas, co-chairs of WILPF National Disarm/End Wars Issue Committee

We are now in the midst of our West Coast tour campaigning for abolition of nuclear weapons and an end to war. We are actively promoting HR 1976, the only bill in Congress calling for abolition of nuclear weapons. 

It calls for President Obama and this present Administration to live up to those Prague promises and to provide leadership toward a nuclear weapons free world. Instead of the positive leadership we expected; however, our nation is now leading a new nuclear arms race toward doomsday and the probable extinction of humanity and all we love about our planet home.

You can read the bill, HR 1976, and its background on the website of Ellen Thomas. You can also take a few minutes to send a letter to your own Congressperson from that site, asking him/her to co-sponsor the bill. But don't stop there. One form letter -- and especially if you take the time to edit and personalize it -- can be an important first step, but actual visits with even our friendliest legislators will usually be needed to gain their co-sponsorship for HR 1976.

We are also reporting on the exciting new developments within the United Nations as the non-nuclear nations take matters in their own hands. They have participated in three special sessions on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear war, inspired in part by the Red Cross/Red Crescent call for abolition of nuclear weapons. They have since initiated unprecedented new actions within the General Assembly. One of these is an open-ended working group, proposed by Mexico, to meet during 2016 to seek ways to close the legal gaps and make possession and production of nuclear weapons -- even for alleged purposes of deterrence -- totally illegal. All nations are invited to participate, including the nine nuclear powers, but no nation can veto the decisions of the majority as an overwhelming number of governments seek ways to completely eliminate these arsenals from our planet.

Although we officially launched our tour on January 21, a Disarm/End Wars committee member from Los Angeles Branch, Sheila Goldner, and Carol Urner started a few days earlier on January 15 and 16 at the Rotary World Peace Conference in Ontario. California. The Disarm/ End Wars committee had decided at its December monthly meeting to spend $250 for a WILPF display booth at the conference. We could not afford the conference sessions themselves, but two days spent with exhibitors -- many of them Rotary clubs from around the world (including Russia) -- was a rich and positive experience. How can we fail to end war when so many of us, from very different backgrounds, are working so diligently to create a world without war?

When with Rotary we also met a Peruvian American volunteer with World Beyond War who had seen notice of the bill HR 1976 and had already decided that is the positive project for which we must all work. He joined us on January 21 for our teach-in at the Whittier Peace and Justice Center. He has taken on organization of the search for co-sponsors in his own county.

Another plus from those two days with Rotary was the enthusiastic response of a former WILPF staff member from Ojai valley, Nuri Ronaghy. We ended up staying with her on our way to Santa Barbara, and she is now determined to start a WILPF branch in her own village, which is bursting with hosts of young mothers and their families. We have promised to give her every support we can.

On January 23 we met at the Culver City Peace Center in Los Angeles, a city with many progressive representatives who we believe should become co-sponsors of the bill. Carol will help with the process when she returns to Whittier, near Los Angeles, in late February.

In San Diego on January 25 we visited offices of both representatives with WILPF constituents from the struggling branch there, and left them to continue the work in that beautiful city now overwhelmed with military bases.

By January 27 we were able to meet for an hour with Rick Wayman and David Krieger at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in Santa Barbara.  NAPF was among the 18 endorsing organizations for our Nuclear Free Future tour, and David and Rick have always been very good friends, advisers and partners in our WILPF work to abolish nuclear weapons and end war. While at NAPF we also recorded a radio interview with Jean Hays of Fresno Branch which we will post on our websites when it becomes available.

January 27 was also a wonderful evening with the Mothers for Peace in San Luis Obispo. These fantastic women are concentrating on shutting down Diablo, the last nuclear power plant in California. They are doing a great deal of legal work and fighting the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the courts. Carol especially enjoyed staying the night with longtime WILPF member Liz Apfelberg. The last time we had met was at the  WILPF Triennial Congress in Chapel Hill, NC, hosted by the Triangle Branch.

By January 28 we were in Fresno and we presented our program to a room packed with Fresno WILPFers.  Fresno is a huge industrial city created by developers out in the middle of nowhere, and still run by them. The city politics are not progressive, but the WILPF Branch -- one of our strongest -- is always a challenge to them and helps make the city a more livable place.

On January 29 we reached Santa Cruz in time for a wonderful dinner for 10 hosted by Patricia Schroeder, who attended the Hague Centennial Congress as an alternate delegate. On the 30th we participated in an hour-long community TV interview with Mathilde Rand.

On January 31, we presented our program at the Santa Cruz library to another roomful of engaged WILPFers. We sought to give them new hope and incentive to add work for nuclear weapons abolition and an end to war to all the other wonderful work they already do through WILPF to create a better and more just society for us all.

We are having a busy week, visiting Nancy Pelosi’s office on the 3rd, the offices of four South Bay representatives on the 4th and 5th, a program in Los Altos (San Jose and Peninsula WILPF) with Jackie Cabasso on the 4th, another on the 6th in Oakland (San Francisco and East Bay) with Jackie and with Marylia Kelley from Tri-Valley Cares and Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, then on to Sacramento, Arcata and Eureka  CA, and Ashland, Corvallis and Portland, OR, then Seattle, WA, and Ground Zero Trident Submarine base near Seattle, all before we have to turn in the car on the  22nd of February and Ellen flies home.

People have been marvelous all along the way, and we’re hopeful that this trip will lead to some strong allies in this beautiful part of the world which is threatened by Fukushima and Diablo Nuclear Power Station and the government’s shift to the Pacific Pivot, which makes the West Coast vulnerable.
 
How tragic if we cannot step up and use our purported power to stop war now. The opportunities for progress are so great in these days. The three gatherings on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear war have resulted in so much good fruit and so many men and women in the non-nuclear nations who are now determined to proceed with nuclear weapons abolition and an end to war. Surely we can join and support them, and also support our many members in WILPF who are working their hearts out to achieve these goals for us all.

in peace, Carol Urner    cell: 503 320 9108
Ellen Thomas    cell 202-210-3886  etprop1@me.com (on tour)