NEWS

Inheriting Legacies of Peace and Justice Program

By Jan Corderman, Board Member, Jane Addams Peace Association

The April 27 announcement of this year' winners of the Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards and Peace & Justice program took place at Hull House in Chicago, the first settlement house in the United States co-founded by Addams. First awarded in 1953, the Awards honor exemplary children's literature that most effectively promotes peace, social justice, world community, and gender and racial equality to young readers. Book Selection Committee members Susan Freiss, Jacqui Kolar and Beth McGowan enlisted the help of fourth and fifth grade children who had read and come to greatly admire the award winners with their teachers, Friess and teaching partner Jennifer Peterson. The children joined in announcing and describing two winners and four honor books. The children also participated in conversation during the reading aloud of the winning book for younger readers. See www.janeaddamspeace.org for a list of this year’s winning and honor books and to view a fabulous new searchable data-base of previous winners.

Friess and Peterson, from Stoner Prairie Elementary in Fitchburg, Wisconsin, told of their work in the classroom with Jane Addams Children’s Books and extended an invitation to all present to talk with children about peace and justice. The morning included a book making activity for the children, led by the Chicago Childcare Collective. ChiChiCo’s goal is to have fun with kids while their parents participate in and lead organizing efforts to defend their rights and build a better Chicago.

Two members of the Jane Addams Peace Association Board were in attendance, Margaret Harrington Tamulonis from Burlington, Vermont, and Jan Corderman from Pleasant Hill, Iowa. Margaret observed after touring Hull House for the first time, “There is such wonderful enthusiasm here from both the children and adults. It’s exhilarating to be in Hull House where Jane Addams rocked the cradle of social democracy in America. It’s such a positive event and I’m committed to get the word out about the Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards.”

WILPFers from the area were in attendance along with four of Jane Addams' cousins, eight or nine times removed! They shared their pride and joy in knowing that small connection with someone they admire. A tour of the Hull House Museum, Addams’ living quarters, was included in the day. Following the program, Ria Kulenovic and Robin Lloyd met with WILPFERS to discuss the upcoming 100th Anniversary Celebrations to be held in 2015.

Branches are encouraged purchase the 2013 set of award books to donate to schools, libraries, and children's programs. The books will be available after the awards ceremony, which will be held at JAPA headquarters on October 19. To reserve a set, contact Linda Belle, JAPA Executive Director, 777 United National Plaza-6th Floor, New York, NY 10017 (japa@igc.org).

Photos: Main Photo - Susan Freiss and Jennifer Petersen with their students from Stoner Prairie Elementary School in Wisconsin. Second Photo - (from left to right) Jamie Addams, her daughter, Ruby Jane Addams Montgomery, Stacey Blair and her daughter Anna Blair, descendents from Jane Addams family and living near Chicago. Third Photo - (on the left) Ann Fleischli (on the right), Mary Sanderson of the Madison, Wisconsin branch tour Hull House Photos courtesy of Margaret Harrington.

Peace & Justice Center's racial justice coalition put together two "Making Whiteness Visible" workshops in early April led by Sha'an Mouliert. This coalition is working with Conversations on Race Now (CORN), Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and individuals who have been working for racial justice in the area for many years. One of the workshops was open to the public and the other was by invitation only for law enforcement officers and allies held at the Burlington Police Station. The public workshop had over 50 people in attendance and several people also stood as peacemakers outside to ensure the event was safe. The private workshop had over 20 people in attendance including representatives from seven police departments. Thank you to everyone who attended and supported these events!

Photo: Courtesy of Peace & Justice Center, Burlington, VT

Editorial by Maria Butler, PeaceWomen Director

This month has been another busy one with the adoption of the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) and the Open Security Council Debate on conflict-related Sexual Violence. We also saw the G-8 countries endorse a declaration on preventing sexual violence. On April 2nd, States (by majority, not consensus) adopted the first ever Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). It includes a legally binding criterion on preventing gender-based violence (GBV) which makes it part of the mandatory export assessment process. As part of the risk assessment process, States will be required to take into account the risk of the weapons, ammunition, parts, or components being used to commit or facilitate serious acts of gender-based violence or violence against women and children. This creates a platform for prohibiting the transfer of arms, if there is a risk they will be used to facilitate GBV.

From PeaceWomen’s perspective, the GBV provision is not perfect, but it is certainly much stronger than the extremely weak language in previous drafts. We, as civil society, can and will move forward with implementation. (See our summary of ATT and Gender here) I have hailed the inclusion of this GBV provision as historic. I also know without the enormous amount of work by key colleagues and bridge builders within WILPF and our partner organizations that we would not have this provision to work with going forward. I recall sitting in a café close to the UN with Ray (Director of WILPF disarmament work) and Rebecca (then of IANSA-Women Network) plotting our earlier engagement in the ATT process from a gender perspective. Right then, I committed PeaceWomen to work on this (without any funding) because I believed it was critical to link preventing armed violations against women (VAW) and implementing a women, peace and security agenda.

One step led to the next: a joint policy paper; a side event with the CEDAW Committee; one article to another; a State champion in Iceland. The small meetings and the mountain of emails continued, our campaign “Make it Binding” grew, the advocacy strategy evolved, the politics changed, and at some points we achieved great strides towards our end goal. At others, we hit dead-ends but that did not slow down our momentum, as we journeyed from the prep conferences to the first negotiation conference in July 2012 through the final negotiations last month. Together all these approaches and efforts (as well as other ones I am not aware of) resulted in the final Treaty Text including an important provision on GBV and VAW. I believe that without WILPF’s advocacy and work at the international and national level, the Treaty would have been gender-blind or worse, it would have undermined existing international law.

102 States supported our position to strengthen the GBV provision during the March negotiations. Before I walked over to the Group of Friends on Women, Peace and Security meeting last week at the Canadian Mission to the UN, I took out the list of WPS Friends (43 member states) and the list of 102 states who supported strengthening GBV in the ATT. Do you think all, or at least most, of the “friends” would have supported the ATT GBV provision? I had thought the numbers would be close. But in fact, only 70% matched up. This provides a challenge and an opportunity for WILPF to close this gap. Who are those so-called friends of 1325 who didn’t provide support? Bangladesh, Chile, Colombia, Japan, Jordan, Rep of Korea, Morocco, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Tanzania, USA, and Zambia. This requires some further analysis and is an issue PeaceWomen will take up in the upcoming weeks.

Photo: Courtesy of PeaceWomen, Maria Butler
 

Eliminate Nuclear Weapons and the Nuclear Chain: Stop Drone Assassinations and End Wars

By Carol Urner, Co-Chair, DISARM/End Wars

Thanks to all of you in WILPF who have been doing so much, and in so many ways, to make our world a better place. True we still have a long way to go, but it feels like we are making progress even in our work of demilitarizing our nation and ending wars.

In April, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton introduced HR 1650, which, for the first time calls on Congress and the Administration to help rid the world of nuclear weapons by 2020!  WILPF women also continued to challenge nuclear power and the whole nuclear chain. In this photo WILPFers and friends wearing masks of ousted  NRC chief Gregory B. Jaczko  read his parting call for phasing out nuclear power  to NRC commissioners at a Vermont Yankee hearing in Brattleboro VT. Jaczko has warned that all existing plants are unsafe. Also see news on Branch Actions to stop drone assassinations and to shift tax money from waging war to ensuring human security and human rights.

In May, we will continue our work in promoting the new version of this bill as well as supporting the creative projects of US Branches and members determined to abolish nuclear weapons and cut the nuclear chain.

In May, we will also continue to press for an end to assassination by drones, building on the successful national April campaign in which WILPF Branches and members actively participated. Contact Marge Van Cleef at mvc@igc.org with questions or event reports. Watch for more action resources later in May!

Work with us on these and other DISARM/End Wars issues about which you care most. You don’t have to be a committee member to participate, but you are certainly welcome to join. Contact Ellen Thomas at et@prop1.org and/or Carol Urner carol.disarm@gmail.com, our current co-chairs, for information and support.

Eleanor Holmes Norton, Washington, DC House Delegate, introduced her latest version of the Nuclear Weapons Abolition and Economic and Energy Conversion Act on April 18, two days after meeting with five WILPFers during the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability DC Days. Read her statement here. The bill would require the United States to negotiate an international agreement to disable and dismantle its nuclear weapons by 2020 and to redirect the funds to human and infrastructure needs. She apparently revised it further after five WILPFers met with her during Alliance for Nuclear Accountability DC Days. The bill now incorporates the same goals as the US Conference of Mayors. It also supports phasing out nuclear power as the USA switches to truly green energy. We expect to support this new bill vigorously during the coming two years and will seek help from WILPF members and Branches.

Latest word is that international NGOs at the UN for 2013 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treat meetings are inviting Delegate Norton to join Representatives John Conyers and Barbara Lee (both WILPF members), Ed Markey, Dennis Kucinich (still UN representative) and Carolyn Maloney in Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament. Members have been meeting at the UN in Geneva in person and by Skype/Internet to push forward on nuclear abolition treaty negotiations. International NGOs are delighted with the bill and it is already posted on the Basel Peace Office web pages.

ANA DC Days (April 14–19) included a two day leadership planning retreat in which the two co-chairs actively participated. Ellen Barfield (former co-chair), Coralie Farlee (WILPF-DC Coordinator), Ellen Thomas (co-chair and treasurer) and Carol Urner (co-chair) attended. We also gained a new DC member (Pam Moffat) and a renewal by an ANA member who joined in 2010. Basic 2013 ANA fact sheets can be found here.

Representative Edwin Markey has now introduced the 2013-14 SANE Act. The bill may not express the sense of urgency felt by WILPF, Mayors for Peace—or among many other members of ANA—but it supports almost all of ANA’s Asks expressed in the fact sheets and in meetings with Congress and Administration, Anyone who does not accept these basic precautions might be judged insane.
 
Coralie was able to meet with Sister Megan Rice during DC Days and she, Ellen Barfield and Ellen Thomas will update us on the Plowshare three trial for entering the top level Y-12 security site at Oakridge, Tennessee which began on May 7. Ellen Barfield and Ellen Thomas are both attending the trial in Knoxville. Read, if you haven’t yet done so, the amazing article published in the Washington Post. For background on the trial itself visit the partial transcript of the pre-trial hearing taken down by Pastor Ralph Hutchinson, the ANA affiliated "watch dog” at Oakridge Tennessee Y-12.
 
During DC Days Coralie Farlee, Ellen Thomas and Carol Urner all visited briefly with new WILPF member Charmaine White Face who was in DC seeking a sponsor for a moratorium on uranium mining on Native American lands. (We think we’ve found one to introduce the bill!). Other Lakota Sioux traveling with Charmaine are campaigning for a return to the original matriarchal Lakota Sioux culture where grandmother elders guided tribal decisions and actions. Sounds like a natural companion for WILPF! See Truth Out story on their April 9 visit to the United Nations in New York.
 
While DISARM/End Wars members were meeting in DC, WILPF life member Jackie Cabasso represented the DISARM/End Wars committee at the demonstrations seeking removal of British nuclear weapons from Faslane Trident Base in Scotland. On April 17–18 she attended the Abolition 2000 annual meeting in Edinburgh and then the Nonproliferation Treaty Preparatory Committee in Geneva April 20–May 3.The document on the civil society-parliamentarian seminar in Edinburgh on April 19 gives a good glimpse of the struggle for nuclear weapons abolition in Scotland and the wider world. See it here. We expect a report back from Jackie in May. We also expect useful reflections on these April meetings from our other two WILPF member advisers, Alice Slater and Ray Acheson.

The 2013 UN Preparatory Committee concluded on May 3 and in 2014 will again meet at the United Nations in New York. It is time now for those who wish to attend to begin saving for transport and housing and to study up on past and current history of the NPT. The best way to understand what happened at the 2013 Prep Com is to skim through the daily NPT News in Review edited by Ray Acheson and Beatrice Fihn of WILPF Reaching Critical Will.

We continue to press for the Helsinki meetings on a Middle East Nuclear and WMD Free Zone. Odile Hugonot Haber (odilehh@gmail.com), who is also co-chair of the Middle East Issue Committee, is tracking progress for all of us. The Arab nations threatened boycott of the NPT sessions if the Helsinki meetings are not held this year and Egypt’s delegate did walk out when satisfactory progress was not made. Odile has shared with us the statement of the Iranian delegate to the United Nations on this matter. In WILPF, our own experience is teaching us that pursuit of nuclear energy is a tragic mistake for any nation, including our own.

During all of May, we will be actively preparing for Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Fukushima days and August Nuclear Free Future month. WILPFer Cecile Pineda, author of Devil’s Tango: How I Learned to Dance the Fukushima Step-by-Step has offered to do a speaking tour in northern California during that month, starting with Hiroshima-Nagasaki Days. She is currently available to speak on the west coast after successful tours arranged by WILPF members and Branches in New England and the Great Lakes region.

We are proud of the work members and Branches have been doing to close nuclear power plants across the country, and to stop generation and shipment of highly radioactive nuclear waste. The frequently arrested Shut it Downers protesting Vermont Yankee this time brought masks and words of Gregory Jaczko to a public hearing of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (see photo above).

The whole month of April was designated for Drone actions around the country. Go to Know Drones. Elsewhere events are listed by state (see right hand column). Pittsburgh and Boston WILPF events are already posted on the web. However we know many more WILPFers were involved from Fresno, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Portland, Sacramento, San Diego, St Louis, Tucson and probably more, and they all have stories to tell. Please send your own reports to WILPFer Marge Van Cleef at mvc@igc.org who was a key national organizer. Continue to help Marge and her national No Drones committee investigate drone research in universities and think tanks. On April 30, the final day, at-large WILPF members Ellen Barfield and Beth Adams were arrested at Hancock CIA AFB in Syracuse. Bruce Gagnon, with whom our Branches work on Keeping Space for Peace was also arrested. Read his blog on the event here.

April 15 was Tax day and we are still getting Branch reports to put up on the Global Day of Action on Military Spending web pages for summaries of actions around the world supporting USA tax actions re cutting military spending. Go directly here and scroll down to the United States for pages of reports on US Tax Day actions. Peninsula, Portland, Santa Barbara, St. Louis and Tucson were among the Branches passing out flyers at Post Offices. They were also visiting local Congressional offices, writing letters and holding “town meetings” insisting that our tax money should be going for human security, human rights and human needs—not for drones, nuclear weapons   and other instruments of war and killing.

We are proud of all the work that WILPF women do to care for our planet, challenge corporate personhood, advance human rights, build the beloved community and preserve life on earth. And it isn’t just WILPFers who are movers and shakers. We have so many companions along the way, including Veterans for Peace, Code Pink, War Resisters League, Fellowship of Reconciliation, WAND, AFSC, FCNL, Peace Action and all those grass roots peace and justice groups, churches, colleges and communities across our land. How can our causes fail with so many wonderful peace builders in our land?

Photo 1 (top): by Mary-Ann DeVita Palmieri. From left, front, Christopher Miller and Ron Bellamy of the NRC; back, Linda Pon Owens, Anneke Corbett, Susan Lantz, and Connie Harvard of the Shut It Down Affinity Group

Photo 2: Photo courtesy of Ellen Thomas. L to R Coralie Farlee  (WILPF DC coordinator), Pamela Moffat (WILPF DC member), Ellen Barfield (WILPF at-large, Baltimore), Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (Delegate, Washington, DC) Ellen Thomas (WILPF at-large, Tryon NC), in front Carol Urner. Portland OR Branch).