In Palo Alto, a Global No to Nukes

Members of WILPF’s Peninsula/Palo Alto Branch and Fridays for Future stood at a busy intersection in Palo Alto with disarmament themed signs on August 4.
 
By Judy Adams
Peninsula/Palo Alto Branch

September 2023

During the month of August, our branch’s silent vigils every Friday from noon to 1 pm on a busy intersection in Palo Alto were dedicated to the Hiroshima/Nagasaki commemoration and calls for peace in Ukraine. Since community members were flocking to premieres of the Oppenheimer film (which our members leafleted), we decided to invite members of the Fridays for Future (FFF) environmental action group to stand together with us on August 4 to “Say No to Nukes.” In the past, our branch and FFF have co-sponsored a program of speakers on the anniversary of the TPNW and a “die-in” representing a direct hit by a nuclear weapon on Palo Alto.

Recognizing that Oppenheimer has created opportunities to raise awareness, for our first August vigil we jumped into the controversies around nuclear weapons with our FFF colleagues. On August 4, 2023, we unrolled our WILPF “End the Nuclear Era” and our “Say No to Nukes” banner, and others held our two-sided signs to communicate with both directions of traffic at the busy intersection. We hung garlands of colorful paper peace cranes at the street-crossing poles. Pedestrians were free to take some of the small cranes from a basket at our information table, to sign a TPNW petition, to take a copy ‘End the Whole Nuclear Era” pamphlet, and to carry a sign they brought or use one of ours. An intern from independent radio KPFA interviewed several of us.   

Every Friday in August we continued with this theme, which included a variety of signs such as “End Nukes Before They End the World.” We will resume standing for other pressing peace and justice issues in September but will not give up the struggle for an end to the nuclear era. We hope to also continue to sponsor other community art projects to represent peace and justice issues as we have done in the past. 

In 2020, aiming for the traditional 1,000 paper peace cranes to display outside a local art gallery, we created 2,000! The next year (2021) at the gallery-sponsored sculpture fair the “peace” entry was a large handmade wood Japanese Torii temple gate that we decorated with garlands of 1,000 of the cranes in our dedication ceremony. The following year (2022), the sentiment shifted when the peace sculpture by a Japanese artist was wire and paper creations of deformed/dying fish, representing the danger to ocean fishing grounds posed by the planned release of waters from the Fukushima disaster. Our project was to make ink block prints decorating a banner placed with the entry, mirroring the sculpture’s dying fish among a healthy few. We note that International WILPF has in fact posted on August 22, 2023, a request for branches to join the protests of our Sections in the Asia-Pacific region to protest the release of those potentially deadly waters.