NEWS

Carol Urner, Disarm/End Wars Issue Committee

April is WILPF’s hundredth birthday. Let’s join the rest of the world in waving goodbye to nukes as one of the best birthday presents ever.  And keep the birthday celebration going – check out the calendar of events.

Of course the very best would be to end war, and in April we are working hard on that, too. On April 15 WILPFers traditionally vigil and leaflet on US tax day and once again we will have rich resources from GDAMS to draw on. April 24 is the big Peace and Planet conference, march, and festival on the eve of the NPT sessions at the United Nations. WILPFUS is an endorser and participant in the planning. Go to New York City if you possibly can or watch the events live on your own computer at home. On April 27 the UN begins its five year review conference and on April 28 is WILPF’s hundredth birthday. Eleanor Holmes Norton is introducing her bill on nuclear weapons abolition. Join us in finding co-sponsors. May is another big month so we also are giving some information on nuclear weapons abolition and ANA D.C. Days educating Congress and the Administration on eliminating nuclear weapons. 

In April we celebrate WILPF’s hundredth birthday in The Hague and around the world. We will join the rest of the world in waving goodbye to nukes  in a global action on April 26. Take photos or short videos and send them digitally to Abolition 2000 on that same day. They will be shown to Ambassadors and government delegates in the UN NPT Plenary on Tuesday, April 28. That is also the hundredth anniversary of WILPF’s beginnings in The Hague where women from both belligerent and neutral nations had gathered, determined to end that war. For us, at least, the Global Wave is like a birthday present to WILPF, honoring the visions of our foremothers, and promising to continue their work and ours until militarism and wars are ended and all of us can continue building the better world we seek.

HERE IS A CALENDAR OF KEY EVENTS IN AN APRIL DEVOTEDTO ABOLISHING NUKES AND ENDING WAR.

At our monthly meeting on March 29 we asked the development committee to seek funding so that Branches can host community meetings where those of us who have attended The Hague Centennial Congress and conference can share from that experience as well as from our own resources for action.  We hope other Issue Committees can do the same.

April 1: Abolition of nuclear weapons bill to be introduced in Congress this spring. We just learned this on April 1 but we and our Whittier College Peace Research Fellow were already organizing for an all-out campaign to enlist co-sponsors in hopes that she would do so. Branches will soon hear from us!

April 1: Registration is now open for D.C. Days,  May 17 to 20.  Arrive by Saturday evening, May 16, for the obligatory Sunday training followed by three days of intense meetings with Congressional staff and legislators. There will also be opportunities to meet with Administration officials. We have low cost condominium housing available with the option of staying until Saturday morning, May 23^rd for additional Congressional meetings or sightseeing.

April 13-15: Stopping autonomous weapons such as fully automated killer drones is being considered at a United Nations meeting of experts in Geneva. This is welcome fruit of a Reaching Critical Will initiated Campaign launched in 2014.

April 13: Money wasted on war and militarism: SPIRI annual report on global arms production issued in Stockholm and Global Day of Action on Military Spending (GDAMS) again just in time for US tax day.

April 15: GDAMS rich resources are available for US Tax Day.   Resources include WRL pie chart on where our taxes go, fliers, fact sheets, videos, webinars, model letters to send, banners. National Priority Project, WAND materials and more.

April 22-25: WILPF Centennial Congress for WILPF members.

April 24-25: Peace and Planet Conference. An international conference in New York City open to all peacemakers. Attend if you can.

April 26: Peace and Planet mobilization. Rally, march and festival. WILPF will have a booth at the festival. Let Ellen Thomas et@prop1.org  know if you are coming. You can help with the booth and distributing materials if you wish. And sign the petitions if you have not yet done so.

April 26: Wave goodbye to nukes in a global action Take photos or short videos and send them digitally to Abolition 2000 on that same day. They will then be shared with Government Ambassadors, Delegates and staff at the NPT Five Year Review Conference.

April 27-29: WILPF Centennial International Conference open to all peacemakers.

April 27-May-22: Five Year Review Conference of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. Contact Ray Acheson  and watch for news on Reaching Critical Will

Middle East Issue Committee

Copies of Hamas at the Middle East Peace Table: Why? by Barbara Taft and Ellen Rosser, have gone out to branches, and you can read it here or order copies from the national office at $5 each.

The committee’s first action item is for all branches and allies to read the booklet, discuss its contents and, once you are familiar with it, help us to get it out to other individuals and groups. See the suggestions on Page 19.

We expect it to generate fervent discussions and study groups; there will be agreements and then also dissents. We hope that our members will take the time to educate themselves about the issue, then mobilize into a campaign to create more peace in the Middle East – to insist on the participation of everyone relevant to the Peace Table and negotiations.

We also need to get it to our members of Congress, using personal delivery as our main methodology, either to local or D.C. offices, with feedback to us so that we know which offices have been contacted. Contact the co-authors with questions:
Barbara Taft 
Ellen Rosser  

Photo: Barbara Taft and Ellen Rosser (l to r), authors of WILPF’s new Hamas booklet, chat at the Detroit Congress.   Credit, Joan Bazar

Randa Solick, Earth Democracy Issue Committee

The Santa Cruz Earth Democracy Team is making progress on Guardianship of Future Generations and the Precautionary Principle.  We would like to know what other branches and members are working on for Earth Democracy. …

Guardianship of Future Generations got a boost when, after a presentation by Mathilde Rand and Randa Solick, the Santa Cruz Desal Alternatives group adopted the following a statement based on the Precautionary Principle, both framing principles of Earth Democracy, as a guide in their decision-making and evaluation of water supply alternatives:

         “Where there is reliable scientific evidence that a product or practice may cause serious harm to either humans or the environment, the product or practice should not be used unless or until there is proof of its safety.

         “Those who advocate adopting the product or practice bear the burden of proof to demonstrate that it is safe before it is put on the market or otherwise put into use.

          “The Precautionary Principle also requires democratic public participation as well as full transparency on the part of governing agencies regarding scientific evidence that informs a policy decision.” For more information contact Randa at rsolick@gmail.com

The Human Right to Water. Santa Cruz’s Earth Democracy team is represented in the local organization Desal Alternatives' efforts to find alternatives to the energy-intensive and expensive desalination plant proposed by the City of Santa Cruz. 

Now the struggle has expanded to protest plans to use recycled water for irrigation and eventually for potable use.  One of the members gathered extensive research on the nanoparticles, endocrine disrupters, medical byproducts and other chemicals that we don't yet have the technology to remove, even with reverse osmosis and UV treatment.  Thus using recycled wastewater could contaminate our drinking water and our aquifers through irrigation and injection wells, with long-term disastrous results. 

One alternative Santa Cruz ED and Desal Alternatives is proposing is culling more water from the winter flow of the main river in Santa Cruz, storing the extra gallons which can be legally taken out every day flows exceed a certain amount. Even in a dry year like this one, that would give us much more water than the desal plant - almost half a million gallons this year alone –  for much less money (just needed to build and maintain appropriate pipes)  --  and still leave the required water for the fish and habitat, and for the city uses.

The water could be stored in our aquifers and transferred back when needed in times of drought, meanwhile fighting salt water intrusion and replenishing aquifers that have been drastically lowered over the last 30 years.  The water can also be stored in our local reservoir to be released when needed in dry months. That this system can work even in such a dry year as 2015 is strong evidence that this would be a good alternative to provide the city needed water.
 
Earth Democracy and The Caring Economy: I’d like to report that I’ve already met with the convener for the United Way environmental goal, talked to her about “guardianship,” water storage and other issues.  Caring Economy team, loosely linked through the United Way to the ED committee, formed after our Riane Eisler fundraiser a year ago.  Eisler broke new ground in her book The Real Wealth of Nations, Towards a Caring Economy, and has shown, through her Caring Economy Campaign, that valuing and paying for care leads to prosperity. Our Caring Economy Team is putting our efforts into trying to influence the 2020 goals that the United Way’s Community Assessment Project (CAP) will be setting during 2015.

We plan to meet with the conveners of the environmental goal, the economy goal and the social environment goal to point out the importance of the Caring Economy Campaign’s findings and to influence them to apply Social Wealth Economic Indicators (SWEIs) in their assessments of Santa Cruz County’s environmental, economic and social health.  In communicating with those responsible for setting the United Way’s Community Assessment Project goals for 2020, we will ask them to include such indices as unpaid work and its contributions to our economy, as well as to assess whether workers are being made aware of and are taking advantage of the CA parental leave act.

New Soil Not Oil Campaign:
Earth Democracy signed on to a public letter to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization to endorse the 2015 the International Year of Soils

The Biosafety Alliance has launched a new “Soil Not Oil” Campaign and is organizing an international conference in Richmond, CA for Sept. 4-5 and a mass march in San Francisco on Sept. 6 to demand urgent, large-scale action addressing climate chaos and dangerous agricultural practices that threaten our soil, air, water, and way of life.  This new campaign complements our Global Warming/Sustainable Energy subcommittee work

Read Vandana Shiva’s new book - Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis.

Hamas at the Middle East Peace Table

• Letter from Barbara Taft, co-chair of the U.S. WILPF Middle East Committee
• Booklet “Hamas at the Middle East Peace Table: Why?”

Copies of the Hamas booklet by Barbara Taft and Ellen Rosser, have gone out to branches, and you can read it here or order copies from the national office at $5 each.

The committee’s first action item is for all branches and allies to read the booklet, discuss its contents and, once you are familiar with it, help us to get it out to other individuals and groups.
We also need to get it to our members of Congress, using personal delivery as our main methodology, either to local or D.C. offices, with feedback to us so that we know which offices have been contacted. Contact the co-authors with questions:
Barbara Taft  beejayssite@yahoo.com
Ellen Rosser   ellen.rosser@gmail.com

Photo: Barbara Taft and Ellen Rosser (l to r), authors of WILPF’s new Hamas booklet, chat at the Detroit Congress.   Credit, Joan Bazar