NEWS

In November, as we approach the end of our 2013 campaign to abolish nuclear weapons by 2020, we close with a progress report. We believe we have built solid foundations for our continuing work on ridding our world of these most monstrous and immoral of weapons. We are supporting Mayors for Peace resolutions and specific legislation in Congress, all of which call for abolition by 2020. We will again have an opportunity to go to Congress with the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability in the spring and from April 28 to May 12 the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Prep Com will again be at the United Nations in New York. If our own national leaders prove obdurate we will support those working for a ban treaty.

Our members and branches will continue seeking abolition of the nuclear industry that has grown up around nuclear weapons including nuclear power, uranium mining, and transport of high level liquid waste. Our primary purpose, as always, is to end war itself. Read a brief report on what lies ahead in November on the nuclear industry, drones, and ending wars here.

PROGRESS REPORT ON NUCLEAR WEAPONS ABOLITION BY 2020

IS YOUR MAYOR A MAYOR FOR PEACE?  

The WILPF DISARM/End Wars Issue Committee has set aside funds to help your Branch bring Jackie Cabasso to your community. She can assist in utilizing the US Conference of Mayors powerful resolutions on abolition of nuclear weapons in order to save the cities.  Along with everything else, Jackie is also a Life  Member of WILPF.

Download the Mayors for Peace 2013 toolkit from our joint UFPJ Nuclear Free Future website. You can access one of those US Mayors unanimous resolutions there. You will also find a model city council resolution. It is time your community knows about this project and acts to bring it into reality. You will find many other resources in the toolkit, including information on how to bring your own city into the Mayors for Peace Vision 2020 project if none of your mayors have ever joined..

GREAT NEWS! Representative Raul Grijalva of Arizona, co-chair of the Progressive Caucus is co-sponsoring HR 1650! Thanks to Pat Birnie (formerly of Tucson) and Coralie Farlee(Washington D.C. Branch convener) for contacting him in his Washington D.C. office!

Join us as we resurrect EYE on Congress for many years edited by Val Mullen. Members of our committee will assist branches in finding more co-sponsors starting with Representatives in the Progressive Caucus. It is time to bring the call for nuclear abolition within a short time frame into the US Congress. 35 of our branches have Progressive Caucus members in their Districts. And it is time to give moral courage to other Representatives as well!

Impossible? Not if the will is there. But the nine nuclear weapons states, led by the US, are by now addicted  to their nuclear weapons and are spending billions to upgrade, rather than dismantle, them. So it falls to us, the little people, the hobbits of the world, to call forth that will in ourselves and those around us.

WILPFers Ray Acheson, Beatrice Fihn, Jackie Cabasso and Alice Slater are all doing amazing work at the United Nations. We agreed at our monthly meeting on Sunday night, October 27, to sign on to the very broad and intelligent document they and other NGO representatives have prepared for General Assembly Delegates when they consider the resolutions from the First Committee in early November.  

The NGOs support the full range of efforts to negotiate a nuclear weapons abolition treaty within the United Nations, but if the nuclear nations remain recalcitrant WILPF Reaching Critical Will and the other NGOs urge the 134 non-nuclear nations that are leading the movement for abolition by 2020—or, in the case of the nonaligned nations, at least no later than 2025—to go outside of the UN (as they did for land mines and cluster bombs) to negotiate a nuclear weapons ban treaty. It could be similar to the chemical weapons ban, that makes possession, production or use of these weapons of mass destruction illegal, requires destruction of stocks and production facilities and includes UN inspections of the process. It would not be a final solution, but could be a large step on the way and achieved within a very short time.

WILPF Reaching Critical Will, which facilitates NGO work at the United Nations, has enthusiastically joined the I CAN coalition as have most, or all, of the other NGOs seeking nuclear weapons abolition. The coalition was initiated by IPPNW, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, (also the parent organization of PSR – USA) and includes everyone from Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama to Martin Sheen and Yoko Ono. The proposal for a Ban treaty is best presented here.

Photo: Ray Acheson, Director, Reaching Critical Will

Basu and World Food Prize.pdf

WILPF_DSM.pdf

by Cynthia Cockburn (built on Committee work started at Bolivia Congress)

WILPF International wants your feedback on this proposed manifesto for WILPF in the next 100 years!* The manifesto was compiled by Cynthia Cockburn and Cynthia’s letter introduces its content and proposed format and asks that you send along your suggestions for changes, additions or deletions. Please send comments directly to Catia Confortini (catiacc@gmail.com) who, as WILPF-US Representative to the International Board is in charge of summarizing members’ responses and forwarding them to the convener of the Political Content working group for our 2015 Congress.

Dear fellow WILPFers,

You were good enough to entrust me with drafting a WILPF centenary Manifesto for you all to consider and discuss. With some trepidation I now put foward to you this draft document. I am calling it the Second Draft, because it benefits from the guidance I received on a First Draft I put forward in May for consideration by four women who had been designated my key informants, that is: Edith Ballantyne, Madeline Rees, Felicity Hill and Kirsten Greback. 

When I was at the International Board meeting in Madrid last February, I asked quite a few WILPF members for their ideas as to how long the Manifesto should be. Some said “a couple of pages," some said “up to twenty." Difficult! Well, this document runs to almost 6000 words. I hope we might find ways of making it shorter, rather than longer during the discussion and redrafting process of the coming year. I think of it as printed in the form of an A5-sized booklet, probably running to 28 pages. Imagine 8 sheets of A4 typing paper, folded in half and stapled in the middle.

I am keeping always in mind the idea that we could preface the whole thing with an "actual," very short, one-page summary statement that would BE the actual "Manifesto"—something we could use in coming years in many ways, on many occasions. But I saw no point in drafting such a succinct statement until you have all had a chance to mull over the content of this longer document, which I see as a positioning of WILPF between past, present and future at this crucial moment in time: 2015.

• You will see that I open with three pages or so on our history and the significance of the centenary.  

• This is followed by a succinct restatement of our purposes. 

• And this again is followed by a longish section on our current programme of work, under the usual three headings. I have tried to make this clearly and repetitively  "of now", our contemporary reality. 

• Then there is the 'boxed' section on WILPF's organization. It is boxed because I don't want it to impede the flow of the narrative from present to future. Its value lies in enabling us to flag up "integration" which is a key watchword in Wilpf at the moment. 

• Finally, comes the section I see as the most creative, even visionary, part: "Looking ahead: our future tasks." You will see for yourselves what I have identified, with the help of Edith, Madeleine, Felicity and Kerstin, as the specific challenges we will face and how we may respond to them.

You will notice that I have dropped into the narrative some "text boxes" containing quotations from WILPFers of the past. I would also like to propose that the booklet contains six or eight photographs. We could start perhaps with one of the Ypres battlefield, end with one of lively young activist women of today. What do you think?

Note that there are some facts and figures in this draft that are "hostage to fortune." The world will move on in the next 12 months, so I have placed some passages in square brackets as a reminder that they will need amending in a final draft. 

I only scraped together the confidence to tackle the task of writing this draft Manifesto by reminding myself that it is going to be subject to long and rigorous review by great number of individuals, committees and working groups in WILPF, women much wiser and more experienced than I am. What convinced me to take the risk of laying my thoughts out to view in this way is that I am convinced the process of consultation that now follows must surely benefit us all, whatever the eventual outcome.

Happy reading, happy discussions! Count me in!

All the best,

Cynthia Cockburn

Member of WILPF London branch and UK Section.

Honorary Professor in the Department of Sociology, City University London, and Visiting Professor in the Centre for the Study of Women and Gender, Warwick University.

*See also Notes from ExCom members on draft 2 of Manifesto

Dear Members,

We want your input and ideas for our next 100 years! Here you will find the vision and goals created by our 4 break-out groups during our September retreat. They are Program, Finance and Development, Communications, and Personnel.  We were told to think big- focus on our hopes and dreams for WILPF-US. Our break out group visions and goals are meant to function as a working document. Nothing about this has been set in stone. Everything is open for debate and new ideas. The details will come later, now is the time to create our shared future.

It is our hope that all WILPF-US members will help shape our future by contributing. We also hope that regional and branch meetings will take the time to discuss and contribute to this collaboration. When commenting, think about all of the great promise WILPF has and the big picture ways you hope WILPF will thrive in the next 100 years.

Please take the time to share your comments. In order to prevent spam, comments will be moderated, and may take one to two days to post. If there are any problems using this site, please let us know.

Let’s make history!

To learn more, visit the WILPF: 100 Years Forward site.