NEWS

Lessons learned from U.S. Social Forum events in San Jose, Philadelphia, Jackson and Tijuana are still evolving. Activists converging to share perspectives on social justice, human rights and climate justice returned home with new contacts and ideas.

The grassroots approach drew hundreds of organizations and 1,000 participants to San Jose and 1,300 to Philadelphia for several days of workshops, plenaries, half-day People’s Movement Assemblies, music and a film festival.

One-day forums brought 150 to Jackson MI with an emphasis on climate justice and a similar number to Tijuana. Activists from all over Mexico, representing many of the country's civil society movements, convened with activists from the United States in Tijuana for work sessions on migration, workers’ conditions, mega-projects (including fracking), water and land, and gender justice.

You may watch video from various Social Forum locations and read U.S. Social Forum Put San Jose on the Map of Social Change.  

WILPF member Nancy Price reports from the Philadelphia Forum, and Anne Hoiberg summarizes San Jose highlights. Joan Simon captured videos from workshops on Haiti, Honduras, and Venezuela and Cuba.

Nancy Price reports: I attended the Forum in Philadelphia, where present-day issues of race, poverty, immigration, the system of incarceration that violates human and civil rights, food security and climate led to a very diverse attendance with a large percentage of young people. The Saturday March from Austerity to Prosperity was large even as a light rain turned into a downpour.

In Philadelphia, WILPF organized the Our Rights, Our Land, Our Health: An Urgent Case for a GMO-Free Future workshop that was attended by about 40 people, and I facilitated the Food Movements & the Climate Crisis workshop and participated in the People’s Movement Assembly Reclaim the Commons: Save Our Land, Our Water, Our Seeds! – altogether distributing about 250 of our Human Right to Health and Safe Food Infographic cards.

Fran Foulkrod (the Greater Philadelphia Branch) reports she participated in a World Beyond War workshop and emphasized the need to tie “social issues – especially economic exploitation – to the larger picture of militarism…and the need for groups to work together – to create a movement, not just repeated protest.” Marge Van Cleef spoke about drones in a workshop on militarism, and the Philadelphia Branch worked with Move To Amend on The People v. the Corporations: Whose Constitution Is It? People’s Movement Assembly.

San Jose: food justice, Latin America

Members from around California gathered in San Jose to participate in PMAs and workshops on countering militarism, defending farm workers, food safety and food sovereignty, handing out a few hundred of the infographic cards. See workshop videos by new WILPF member Joan Simon.

• Haiti After Duvalier (sponsor: Haiti Action Committee)
• Honduras: Last Gasp for Neoliberalism? (sponsor: Honduras Solidarity Committee)
• Venezuela and Cuba (sponsor: Task Force on the Americas)

Anne Hoiberg, who presented a workshop along with Anne Barron, reports on workshops and plenaries she attended in Highlights from San Jose Social Forum, concluding, “We can transform our country through the implementation of this multi-racial, multi-sectoral, inter-generational, diverse, inclusive, internationalist movement. Yes, another world is possible!” 

Photo: Windows of the Washington United Youth Center were covered with posters about changes of venue and time for various events at the US Social Forum in San Jose, CA.   Sharat G. Lin photo

by Nancy Price, Earth Democracy Issue Committee

Assert community rights over corporate rights. WILPF activists are launching, in collaboration with the Alliance for Democracy, the second round of the “We Will Not Obey” TPP-Free Zone campaign.

Now that Congress has passed Fast Track, President Obama is rushing to conclude the TPP Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations by the end of July, before the August Congressional recess. Fast Track or TPA (Trade Promotion Authority) has passed Congress, but Earth Democracy and Corporations v. Democracy have not given up on defeating the TPP: Trans-Pacific Partnership.

At the end of July, ministers of the 12 Pacific Rim countries meet and hope to sign-off on the TPP, even though very serious differences remain between the U.S. and other TPP countries.  Fast Track requires the text be released for 60 days before the clock starts ticking on the Fast Track vote and Congress members (both the House and the Senate) have a maximum of 90 days in which to bring the TPP to a vote. Because of this and the August Congressional recess, and other Fast Track rules, it is estimated that the TPP could not be voted on by Congress until late October.

This leaves plenty time to get many more local TPP-Free Zone Resolutions passed to make clear to our senators, representatives, and the president that We the People want fair trade for the 21st Century, not more global corporate rule by free trade agreement. 

Join New York City, Seattle, San Francisco, Pittsburgh and other cities and declare your independence from corporate rule. Learn more about the campaign, model municipal resolutions and more here www.freezones.org   To learn more about the TPP, call the Alliance for Democracy’s national office 781-894-1179 for your copy of AfD’s Justice Rising: World Citizenry Takes on Corporate Global Rule. Let’s work together on a WILPF handout that shows how the issues WILPF works on will be seriously impacted if Congress passes the TPP in the late fall

It’s important to assemble a local coalition of climate, environmental, labor, health care and other groups to assess whether your city council is likely to support such a resolution and to build broad organizational and grassroots effort. You want a unanimous or at the very least a decisive majority “yes” vote by the city council. A defeat will only hand pro-free-traders and the media a victory to claim support for the TPP.

It’s worth noting that on the morning of the Seattle City Council vote, President Obama and some of his Cabinet called Seattle City Council members; such outside lobbying turned their “No” or wavering votes into strong “Yeses” and the resolution passed unanimously. 

Now’s the time to get started on local TPP-Free Zones. If you have questions about how to get started, please email Nancy Price at nancytprice39 (at) gmail.com.

Carol Urner for Disarm/End Wars Issue Committee

Hiroshima/Nagasaki days are just a month away. The world’s first atom bomb, named Trinity by hubristic males, was exploded on July 16, 1945. The two bombings in Japan followed soon afterward. We sense this 70th anniversary of the first nuclear bombs as a special year. The world seems closer now to nuclear catastrophe than since the early 1960s.

At the same time there is new hope for abolition as increasing numbers of non-nuclear states are campaigning for getting on the road to nuclear abolition NOW.

Many of us are currently involved in preparations for this year’s commemorations. Most of us will take some kind of special action like signing a petition or contacting our Congress persons even if we find no memorial to attend or significant group action to join. Here are a few actions and resources supported by WILPF which we hope can help each of us find the best ways to spend those days.

1. Among US elected officials, our mayors are WILPF’s best friends. This year the US Conference of Mayors passed unanimously another strong resolution calling for nuclear weapons abolition. So now we have two wonderful opportunities to work with our Mayors. Check the US Conference of Mayors website to see if your Mayor participated. Can you share with him/her your plans for this 70th  anniversary? Also see the Mayors for Peace Vision 2020 site. Mayors for Peace, started by the Mayors for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, continues to grow and now includes 6,733 cities in 160 countries and regions around the world. Is your city a member? If yes work with your mayor to publicize the relationship. If not, help the mayor and your city join.

2. And we still have some wonderful friends in Congress, and especially among those in the House Progressive and Black Caucuses. HR 1976, introduced in the house on Earth Day 2015 by Eleanor Holmes Norton, is the only nuclear weapons abolition bill in Congress. See our June e-news introduction to our campaign to gain new co-sponsors for the bill and to stimulate the needed dialog on nuclear abolition in Congress.  Sound impossible? Contact Ellen to join us in trying.

3. WILPF’s biggest international project is the proposed Nuclear Weapons Ban treaty that would make nuclear weapons totally illegal. We in the US are told little about this, but there is much all of us need to learn.  Every one of the nuclear powers is enlarging and/or modernizing their nuclear arsenals with the US far in the lead. Two recent WILPF publications give us the background. Assuring Destruction Forever, 2015 edition shows us that, rather than working toward nuclear disarmament as expected under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, every one of the nine nuclear powers  is spending vast sums to enlarge and/or modernize their arsenals. (Actually North Korea, which as yet has very few weapons, is not included as the ninth but that country is also involved in this new arms race.) The second new publication, Filling the legal gap: the prohibition of nuclear weapons makes clear the problems WILPF, and our friends in the international community, are trying to solve. Ray Acheson points out that the key legal gap is the lack of a treaty which, as in the case of the chemical and bio-weapons treaties, specifically bans such weapons for any purpose and provides a framework for their elimination. The chart (produced jointly with the British NGO Article Six) shows 22 other legal gaps which need to be closed if a treaty is negotiated.

4. You can also sign the petition in support of the Marshall Islands and their courageous suit in both the US Federal and the World Courts. The suit and petition are aimed at moving the nuclear weapons states to actually start negotiations on the comprehensive nuclear weapons abolition treaty. Take time to explore the site and learn about the nuclear bombs the US dropped on those islands as part of our nuclear testing in the 1950s and 60s. It is hard to accept that our own military, condoned by the State Department and the Dulles brothers, could have participated in anything so barbaric and inhumane. (The most recent version of this website is here. On it you can also find the petition and the story of the restoration of The Golden Rule in which WILPFers also have a stake via JAPA.)

5. Peace and Planet is a new international peace movement coalition based in the USA. It was formed to plan for and carry out significant NGO actions on the eve of the May four week long UN Nuclear Non Proliferation Review Conference. These weekend events included a large march beginning at Union Square and culminating in a festival in Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza across from the United Nations buildings on Turtle Bay. The Peace and Planet website in June was devoted to follow-up of those events, but their success has led to its transition to a continuing nuclear abolition movement now stretching across the summer months with resources for Hiroshima/ Nagasaki observances.

It will then move on into the week beginning September 21 (United Nations International Day of Peace) and culminating in September 26 (the new United Nations Nuclear Weapons Abolition Day).

WILPF is listed as member of the original international planning committee with both Ellen Thomas and Carol Urner on the international Advisory Committee, Joe Gerson of the American Friends Service Committee, Kevin Martin of Peace Action and Jackie Cabasso of Western States Legal Foundation, UFPJ and Mayors for Peace (and life member of US WILPF) are at the center of this new coalition. Its goal is nuclear weapons abolition, but it ties this abolition into the net of other pressing concerns that need resolution if this abolition is to succeed and humanity is to survive into another century. (WILPF has also taken this same integrated approach and has done so again in its 2015 Manifesto and in its 2015-2019 Program of Work which was agreed upon but which has not yet been publicly posted.)

Photo: 7,500 gather in Union Square, Manhattan, including over a thousand Japanese activists and 80 Hibakasha, before marching with Peace and Planet to the United Nations for nuclear weapons abolition. Courtesy of Massachusetts Peace Action.

STATEMENT OF THE
WOMEN’S INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE FOR PEACE AND FREEDOM,
UNITED STATES SECTION,
ON THE DECISION OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES IN
Obergefell v. Hodges, REGARDING MARRIAGE EQUALITY,
JUNE 26, 2015

In its decision of June 26, 2015, in Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court of the United States of America clarified civil and human rights around marriage, confirming the basic principles of marriage equality throughout our nation.

We, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, United States Section, celebrate this major milestone for all – those directly affected and all of us whose lives are touched by this change in a myriad of ways – while continuing our collaborations toward securing human rights universally.

Unfortunately, as we know too well from our collective experiences in other civil rights arenas, now more ground-breaking work must take place in order to implement those legal rights.

This Supreme Court decision was a necessary legal step, but not a sufficient step, to assure human rights or universal equality under the law or in actual life, nor to assure freedom for all. Our work is surely not done.

We welcome those who would work with us in moving forward.

Photo by Matt Popovich (public domain)
Obergefell v. Hodges Decision Announced — June 26, 2015
“The celebration in front of the United States Supreme Court upon the announcement of the Court's decision in Obergefell v. Hodges that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right under the 14th Amendment.”