NEWS

Left: Burlington WILPF members Jean Hopkins, Marguerite Adelman, and Jane Hendley, together with Molly Gray, candidate for Vermont’s Lt. Governor, at an August 26 Women’s Suffrage Centennial event. Photo credit: Robert Ackland. Right: Pittsburgh Branch member Susan Smith at protest to ban nuclear weapons held on August 6. 

September 2020

Burlington (VT) Branch Honors Suffragists

By Marguerite Adelman
Burlington Branch

For the past year, WILPF Burlington has been an active member of the Vermont Suffrage Centennial Alliance. Since the planned August parade for Montpelier celebrating the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment could not be held due to COVID-19, WILPF Burlington did not want to see August 26th go by with no recognition of this important day.

So our WILPF branch took the lead in planning an hour of speeches on suffrage, voting rights, women's equality, and more, featuring 13 speakers in front of Burlington’s City Hall. The event was featured on a number of television stations and is available for viewing at this public access link.

WILPF members Marguerite Adelman, Robin Lloyd, Jean Hopkins, Robert Ackland, and Peggy Luhrs all spoke during this exciting, non-partisan event that featured women candidates for office and women in office, as well as other well-known leaders in our state. We even had voting information and voter registration available.

Pittsburgh Remembers Hiroshima with Ban Nuclear Weapons Protest

By Susan Smith
WILPF Pittsburgh

WILPF Pittsburgh and Remembering Hiroshima, Imaging Peace gathered (at a distance with masks) along the street to encourage passers-by to support the ban on all nuclear weapons. The protest happened on August 6, the day 75 years ago that the US dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Passing drivers honked their support. 

Photo: Pittsburgh Branch members Peg Cammarata (left) and Mary King (right). 

In addition, on August 5 these two organizations sponsored a watch party for “The Beginning of the End of Nuclear Weapons” which tells the history of the UN treaty to ban nuclear weapons into international law and the role of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). After the movie, at 8:15 a.m. Japanese time, Pittsburghers talked to people in Japan to remember the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Our contact in Kobe, Japan, was Professor Ronni Alexander (sister of a member of Remembering Hiroshima, Imaging Peace), and some students also participated. About 30 people were on the call, including participants from Guam, Mexico, Japan, and the United States.

This annual event was modified to be fully online this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

For more information, see https://www.rememberinghiroshima.org and https://www.facebook.com/WILPFPittsburgh

Check Out Peninsula/Palo Alto Videos on Vimeo

The Peninsula/Palo Alto, California WILPF branch now has three videos on Vimeo with easy access by the public. Be sure to turn your volume up for the selections.

When you select the Paper Cranes video first (our Solidarity project for the 75th Anniversary of Hiroshima/Nagasaki, the Menlo Park art installation of over 1,000 paper cranes), the other two will automatically follow. Or select an individual video.

Please tell your friends and neighbors about the videos!

1. Paper Cranes Menlo Park August 2020:  https://vimeo.com/452923974
   The art gallery outside of which we installed over 1,000 paper peace cranes made by volunteers (Art Ventures) has arranged for our branch to co-sponsor a competition to design a sculpture that relates to the peace cranes. Towards the end of September, Menlo College has arranged an outdoor Sculpture Fair where we will hand out some of the paper cranes from our installation. The gallery director founded the Menlo Park Public Art nonprofit so it will give good publicity to WILPF.
2. WILPF Peninsula/Palo Alto 2015 Centennial Exhibit talk by Millee Livingston: https://vimeo.com/201380126
3. Listen to Women for a Change: https://vimeo.com/147970792 
    

Huge explosion in Gaza. Editorial credit: Gershberg Yuri / Shutterstock.com.

By Tura Campanella-Cook, Ellen Rosser, and Odile Hugonot Haber 
For the Middle East Committee

September 2020

The WILPF-US Middle East Committee Gaza Declaration:
 
As our own presidential elections approach, we are anxious that elections be fair and free of outside influence. We would not want the outcome of an election challenged or to be collectively punished for the outcome. This is what happened in 2007 when Israel enforced an air, sea, and land blockade on Gaza following the election of a Hamas government. That election was deemed fair and democratic by international election observers such as The Carter Center, but Israel and the US disapproved. The world community has decried the harsh economic and humanitarian impacts of the blockade, but with US backing, Israel maintains the blockade and periodically bombs Gaza with impunity.
 
Gaza has been under daily fire from Israeli bombs for more than two weeks in retaliation for what the press calls “incendiary balloons” or “rockets” launched from Gaza into Israel. Rocket or balloon versus many ton-size bombs: what would be an appropriate response in war, and what does international law – or your conscience and heart – have to say about collective punishment of an imprisoned civilian population?
 
To help us visualize, consider that Manhattan (22.8 square miles including Central Park) has a population density of 71,000 per square mile, 14% of whom are children under the age of 18. The Gaza strip  (140 square miles) has a population density of 124,000 per square mile, 60% of whom are children under 18 years of age [2019 population estimates from US Census and UNRWA respectively]. Gaza youth have suffered intensely with disfiguring injuries, persistent trauma, or death. Many have known life only under siege with their homes, hospitals, schools, and water treatment facilities destroyed by repeated Israeli bombings, frequent blackout periods without electricity, and rising unemployment – 45.5% as of March, before the impacts of COVID-19.
 
Yet again the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom-US calls urgently for an international conference on Palestine to end current attacks on Gaza. Multinational negotiations must be resumed to end the Israeli occupation, and come to pragmatic and principled agreements for both Palestinian and Israeli security and self-determination. No one is safe until everyone is safe.

In addition, the peace treaty should designate the Middle East region as a Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone as has been discussed previously by Iran and Egypt. Israel, which is the only Middle East nation possessing nuclear weapons, has not been a party to these talks. Between 1967 and 2006, Nuclear Free Zones have been established successfully in Latin America, the South Pacific, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Central Asia.

Actions: Please call your representatives in the US Congress and at the United Nations, to implore them to bring attention to Gaza and find some solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Jane Addams (second from left, behind the letter P), with other American peace delegates, on the deck of a ship heading to the International Congress of Women held at The Hague in 1915. George Grantham Bain Collection / Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

September 2020

If any WILPF member would like to join the Jane Addams (JA) branch they should contact Dianne Blais at dianneblais@aol.com. Dianne is the new convener of the JA branch.

The JA branch, named after WILPF’s illustrious founder, is a way that at-large members – anyone who is not a member of a local branch – can experience the benefits of being part of a WILPF branch. JA members work together virtually on projects and actions.

The JA branch will be having a “Movie Night” to watch We Are Many on Monday, September 21 at 8 pm EDT / 5 pm PDT. (Details will be in an upcoming eAlert.) Then, on Thursday, September 24 at 8 EDT / 5 pm PDT, we’ll meet on a Zoom call to cover a range of topics including event planning.  Also, for all of us who wish to consider the value of the resistance to George W’s Iraq war, to discuss the We Are Many film.

We hope to utilize the package assembled by the Women, Money & Democracy Committee and hold another film viewing of The Laundromat on a future date this fall.

Because the JA branch has members throughout the US, out of necessity it has to meet via Zoom and communicate electronically. This means you generally won’t have to leave your house to be involved. Now, during this wretched pandemic is a good time to join us!

The peace symbol made with small peace cranes, a display made by Sacramento WILPFer Sabreena Britt. Photo taken by Sabreena Britt and used with her permission.

By Cherrill Spencer and Margaret Pecoraro
Co-team Coordinators of the Ceasefire/75th Solidarity Event Planning Team

September 2020

Nineteen of our WILPF branches organized one or more activities to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the A-bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. This was the main theme for the first part of our “CEASEFIRE/75th” solidarity season; spurred on by the 12 resource guides our solidarity planning team produced these branches carried out ten different types of activities between the 3rd  and 9th of August. This eNews article will just be a brief summary of what our branches did. I have prepared a more detailed overview of these branch activities, it has been distributed to the branch contacts by email, if you’d like your own copy please write to Cherrill Spencer at this email address: cherrill.m.spencer@gmail.com.

This photo, captioned “Boston WILPFers show one of the educational lawn signs they included in a walking 1945 timeline exhibit outside the Newton, MA, public library,” describes an “outdoor, educational” type of activity. Boston WILPFer Eileen Kurkoski “borrowed” the information in ten of the dates in the online 1945 timeline that three other WILPFers had created (which many of you will have visited here) and placed the photo and text from those 10 dates on 10 lawn sign posters, which she arranged in a walking timeline in the lawn outside her local library. Each poster has strings of peace cranes hanging from them, and at the end of the exhibit, you could pick up a crane pin and a card telling you where to sign our petition supporting the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and the hibakusha appeal. Eileen has already received requests from other libraries to show this exhibit; it can be shown on an inside wall, too, and Eileen will send you the pdf files if you’d like to display this educational exhibit in your local library or community hall. Kudos to Eileen for this innovative solidarity activity.

Photo credit: WILPFer Eileen Kurkoski, used with permission.

Peace Crane Displays

The most popular type of activity our branches did was an “outdoor crane display.” These branches assembled such displays: Burlington, VT; Fresno, CA; Humboldt, CA; Minneapolis Metro, MN; Peninsula/Palo Alto, CA,  and San Jose, CA.

This photo of “Twenty-foot-tall trellis and nearby tree filled with 1,000 cranes” shows the Peninsula/Palo Alto branch’s outdoor crane display. Many of these cranes were made by local children and are larger than the ones we received from the Ehime Co-op in Japan.

Another popular crane display activity was to place them inside a bookshop window with posters explaining their significance, so passers-by could see them, even if the pandemic prevented them from entering the bookshop. These branches assembled such window displays: Corvallis, OR (see the August eNews for a photo); East Bay, CA; San Francisco, CA and Santa Cruz CA.

Photo credit: Becky Fischbach, used with permission of Peninsula/Palo Alto Branch.

Outdoor, In-Person Events

The pandemic notwithstanding, many of our branches held solidarity events outdoors at which they could interact with the walking-by public. These branches held outdoor tabling events: Cape Cod, MA – eight different towns!; Greater Philadelphia, PA (see photo); and Santa Cruz, CA.

Some branches held outdoor rallies, marches and street demonstrations. They included: Boston, MA; Burlington, VT; Milwaukee, WI and Peninsula/Palo Alto, CA. During their outdoor event on August 6, the Des Moines, IA, branch helped to strike a large Japanese peace and friendship bell 75 times and heard a proclamation from their Mayor.

Photo: Greater Philadelphia, PA branch members staffing their outreach table in Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia, on August 9, 2020. Photo credit: WILPFer Tina Shelton, used with permission

Online Solidarity Events

On account of the COVID-19 pandemic, many of our branches arranged activities and events using the World Wide Web and the Zoom platform. The silver lining in the pandemic cloud is that people all over the world could take part in these online events or watch online films at their own convenience. These branches arranged for films made by others to be shown online with discussions afterwards: Burlington, VT; Monterey County, CA; and Peninsula/Palo Alto, CA.

WILPF US has joined with 165 other anti-nuclear organizations to form a coalition to amplify our common nuclear disarmament voice in order to reach a much wider public on this 75th Anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. The coalition arranged for 19 hours of livestreamed events to be shown on August 6th and 9th via https://www.hiroshimanagasaki75.org/events (where they are still available to be watched). These branches provided content for this well-watched event (over 25,000 accumulated views): Monterey County, CA; Sacramento, CA; Tucson, AZ; and the Disarm Issue Committee (see their eNews article). 

Two branches held Zoom meetings to light candles, hear poems written by hibakusha, and reflect on the terrible attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Greater Phoenix, AZ, and Tucson, AZ. The latter invited any other WILPFer to join them, which I gladly did.

Inspired, I hope, by our resource guide on media outreach, these branches managed to get their local TV stations to attend their events and report on them during their news broadcast: Burlington, VT; Des Moines, IA; and Greater Philadelphia, PA. 

Twelve New Resource Guides Sent to All Branches for the Second Part of Solidarity Season

Congratulations to our many branches who put on the above described activities and I hope all our members took advantage of the many resource guides we sent out for the first part of this solidarity season.

Now it’s time to focus on a new set of topics and the solidarity planning team encourages even more branches to look through the twelve resource guides we have recently sent to you and arrange some events to inform the general  public and your congressional reps on these topics: the Global Ceasefire that was requested by the UN Secretary General and is in force until at least September 30th; the founding of the UN in 1945 and its current work, especially in disarmament matters; arms control treaties; why we don’t want nuclear weapons testing to be re-started; the connections between militarism and racism, the warming climate, environmental devastation, and the COVID-19 pandemic; how to counteract militarism; and celebrating the International Day of Peace on September 21st which is the last day of our CEASEFIRE/75th solidarity season.

If you have not received any of the above resource guides from your branch contact or you are a member-at-large and would like to receive any or all of the new guides by email, write to cherrill.m.spencer@gmail.com and specify which guide by topic.