NEWS

By Marybeth Gardam, Development Chair

• As long as we continue to invest trillions in militarism and weapons systems, what we really purchase with our tax dollars is Endless War.
• As long as we invest pennies for peace, peace will always elude us.
• #MOVETHEMONEY—a new campaign of our UNO program Reaching Critical Will

Starting this month, WILPF US will institute a new SUSTAINER PROGRAM of donating to WILPF. It’s easy and painless to get involved, and the rewards for our work are enormous.

Donate now!

You can authorize automatic payments of as little as $5 a month to come automatically to WILPF. The advantage to you is that, once it’s set up, you don’t have to think about it again; you can rest easy knowing that YOU HAVE ALREADY INVESTED FINANCIALLY IN PEACEMAKING, modeling the kind of investment we want our government and fellow citizens to make.

“Many of our members already do this kind of consistent subscription donation for organizations like PBS and NPR, where a monthly donation is automatic and easy,” Development Chair Marybeth Gardam explains. “The best part is that when we can predict we have that member support coming in reliably every month, we can plan more strategically, use our dollars more effectively and get out of the crisis mode of operations that has dogged us for decades.”

The price tag for activism

With the campaign title, “Buy WILPF a Cup of Coffee a Week,” the appeal will be sent to all members and all branches early in September. Look for it in your inboxes and OPEN IT! Forward it. Then act on the instructions to participate.

Investing in peace is important. WILPF US is a complicated organization with 40 branches (and growing) across the country, staff, at-large members, issue committees, a board, and volunteers. It takes all of us paying our fair share, investing in peace, to keep WILPF moving forward.

Members will be able to contribute a small amount once a month, about equal to purchasing a $5 cup of coffee at a fancy local roaster, or a coffee and pastry at a family-owned local diner. You can choose an amount to give that’s small enough so you won’t miss it, but regular enough for WILPF to rely on!

What could $5 a week mean for WILPF?

Your $5 a week would allow WILPF to count on a total of $260 a year over the course of one year. Scaled up, if half our members buy into this campaign and become sustainers, buying WILPF the equivalent of a cup of coffee, and investing in the future of our peacemaking, we’d raise $182,000 a year just by contributing what is really our fair share to keep WILPF US moving forward.

If $5 a week is too much, consider $5 a month. That would be a total of $60 a year, and, scaled up, it could provide as much or more than $42,000 a year. There will be many options and amounts to choose from in the email appeal coming out in September. Please answer the call for support!

What do we do with all the money you contribute?

Good question. First, let’s look at DUES.

Out of your $35 dues, a full $15 goes to support International WILPF as part of our obligation to them. That leaves us with $20 to support all the activities that keep WILPF in business.

With about 1,400 members (and growing every day), each contributing $20 (after we pay International), that leaves us with only $28,000 to run WILPF US. That’s not nearly enough!

Our annual operating budget currently sits right around $300,000. That pays for all the ways we support peace and freedom around the country and across town, including:

Communications—Monthly eNews, eAlerts, two or more issues of Peace & Freedom each year, brochures, handouts, reports from issue committees, and facilitating and preparations for our new ONE WILPF Maestro ALL MEMBER CONFERENCE CALL.

Website—Maintaining and constantly updating our website content and design, maintaining security, webhosting costs, and digital graphic design that makes us look as good as the work we’re doing!

Program—Funding mini grants that support member and branch events, actions and campaigns; funding our issue committees: each issue committee receives a small stipend for moving their work forward; funding our UN programs, including the UN Practicum in Advocacy and the Local 2Global Program; preparing brochures, handouts, and reports.

Support materials—We need to design and print new recruiting materials, new donor materials, new program materials. That’s what it takes to support our work and GROW our network of peacewomen.

Administrative costs—We maintain a small staff and a Boston office. We pay utilities and computer support costs in Boston. We are obligated to maintain several kinds of insurance. And we have a part-time bookkeeper, who helps us stay in IRS compliance. These are costs we rely on our members to fund.

International support—The $15 per member we pay International WILPF helps support the international component of our organization and the UN Peacewomen and Reaching Critical Will programs. It helps support WILPF Sections in poor developing nations, too. We also pay travel for our International board members to attend their annual meeting.

Partner support—WILPF maintains working collaborations with partners in other NGOs and peace organizations, activist groups, and environmental coalitions. Many of these require annual support and travel to Board meetings and national or international conferences. We should aim to do more of this, in order to raise our visibility.

Please participate in the WILPF Sustainer Program. Buy WILPF a Cup of Coffee . . . so we can keep working all year.

Development Committee Members include:

Dixie Hairston (At Large – Dallas, TX), Robin Lloyd (Burlington, VT), Ellen Kurkoski (Boston, MA), Brandy Robinson (Portland, OR), Marie-Louise Jackson-Miller (Boston, MA), Nancy Price (At Large – Davis, CA), Mary Hanson Harrison (Des Moines, IA). Advisors:  Randa Solick (Santa Cruz, CA), Lamia Sadek (WILPF US Managing Director – staff), LaShawndra Vernon (WILPF US Treasurer, Milwaukee, WI).

Spraying crops in Hungary. Credit: Péter Czégény; Creative Commons.
 

By Nancy Price, Earth Democracy

Currently, it’s impossible under law to bring criminal charges against a company like multinational agricultural and chemical giant Monsanto or against its management for its crimes against humanity and ecocide. The Monsanto Tribunal, October 15-16, in The Hague will invoke international law to get a ruling.

The purpose of the Monsanto Tribunal is to get a ruling—even a symbolic one—against Monsanto by a bench of real judges, after verifiable proceedings in an international court, and to contribute to the establishment of international mechanisms to bring justice to victims of multinational corporations.

Plan an event now and order our Human Right to Health and Safe Food cards to receive them in time.

Get busy planning a local event and make use of these resources.

The Monsanto Tribunal has a flyer available, in both English and Spanish versions:

• English front
• English back
• Spanish front
• Spanish back

Look at the “Campaign Board” for materials to use that include a PowerPoint presentation, a template for submitting testimony, and the Tribunal web TV for live-streaming the Peoples’ Assembly and the Monsanto Tribunal (coming soon).

Explore the Monsanto Tribunal website, for there is a wealth of material. For example, check out:

• Why a Tribunal?
• How will it be carried out?
• About the people organizing and participating as judges
• Sign as a person or as an organization

Cynthia Bennekaa placing candles for the candle-floating ceremony during the Greater Phoenix memorial. Credit: Barb and Mike Taft.
 

By Barbara Taft, Greater Phoenix Branch Treasurer; and Robin Lloyd, Burlington VT WILPF

Greater Phoenix WILPF organized a memorial for Hiroshima Day at the home of member Marge Thornton. Her home has a Japanese garden atrium at the entrance, complete with a pond area, where we could set candles afloat after dark. Our program featured a film clip of "I Come and Stand at Every Door" (a song about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by Nazim Hikmet), and excerpts from the documentary, "White Light, Black Rain," plus a slide presentation about Hiroshima, all prepared by Mike Taft, Branch videographer. We also sang folk songs about peace, accompanied by Branch chair, Floris Freshman, and a couple of Raging Grannies songs. And we heard a reading of the words of Nagasaki survivor Toyomi Hashimoto, which were taken from the play, “Most Dangerous Women.”

We also received regrets from several friends who were unable to attend, including Japanese folk singer Ken Koshio, who was in Japan for the Hiroshima commemorations there, and author Susan Southard, an Arizona State University professor who has recently published a book on the hibakusha of Nagasaki. She had been invited to attend a similar memorial in New York City. Attendees included Branch members, a representative of the Phoenix Japanese Garden, and members of other peace and justice organizations. We also enjoyed Japanese crackers and cookies as refreshments, along with a sherbet punch.

Burlington VT WILPF held a Mayors for Peace press conference with the mayor of Burlington, which was attended by some 25 citizens. The high point for the commercial TV station was the act of the mayor of Burlington, Miro Weinberger, and the mayor of Montpelier, John Hollar, signing the Proclamation declaring renewed membership in the Mayors for Peace organization and declaring August Nuclear Awareness month. None of the footage appeared on the evening news, but CCTV, the cable access station, videotaped the event in its entirety. Big news from our perspective was that one more city in Vermont is going to join Mayors for Peace: Winooski! Hurrah, Winooski! The event also gave citizens the opportunity to ask the mayor how he can be for nuclear disarmament and also for stationing the F35 nuclear-capable bomber at our airport, where it may force the relocation of an elementary school due to extreme sound levels. (Bernie Sanders also supports the F35!)

Our tabling went pretty well. We gathered signatures for the 1976 Prop One petition and for the International Mayors for Peace petition. On Saturday, vaudeville thespians performed a skit with us at the Farmers Market, which depicts a doctor trying to calm a citizen suffering from flamboyant “Lack of Arms Control.” View the two-minute video on Youtube. (Judy Yarnall and Robin Lloyd are holding up the backdrop “Never Again!”)

On Hiroshima Day we showed “The Ultimate Wish: Ending the Nuclear Age.” Maggie and Arnie Gundersen moderated the discussion and gave a highly disturbing report on the radioactive situation in Japan. One unforgettable anecdote is that the pro-nuke authorities—the Japanese government and the national energy company—are telling its citizens that the radioactive dirt has been removed and that it is safe to return to Fukushima, whereas the truth is that much of the radioactive dust was carried to the mountains and flows down into town with every rain. The Gundersens are seen as heroes in Japan for telling the truth about the impact of Fukushima. Check out their website Fairewinds: Energy Education.

People were happy to fold peace cranes and willing to sign a petition, but we do not feel that we have raised awareness in any significant way, much less sparked a movement. Willful blindness holds sway on this issue more than any other facing us in the twenty-first century.
 

Above photo: Still from the skit “Dr. Disarmament.” Credit: Greg Guma, Youtube.

Map illustrating the next Nuclear Free Future tour.

Submitted by Carol Urner and Ellen Thomas, Co-Chairs of Disarm/End Wars

We’ve begun planning for the next Nuclear Free Future tour, and have received a $2,500 mini grant. We have invitations now from WILPF branches in Pittsburgh, Ann Arbor, Detroit, Madison, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Des Moines, and St. Louis, and from Physicians for Social Responsibility in Kansas City. (See map above.) We would appreciate more invitations and places to stay along the route, people to meet with, and representatives’ offices to visit with constituents. Carol is not able to come this time, so we want others to help. It’s a wonderful way to express your support for nuclear disarmament. Ellen invites people from the branches to join her for parts of the tour, especially those working on nuclear issues: contact her at et@prop1.org.

Members of the Disarm/End Wars Committee were very busy with Hiroshima/Nagasaki days in August, and many of our branches were involved. We haven’t collected all the reports yet, but very large events were organized by Marylia Kelley and Jackie Cabasso with East Bay and San Francisco Branches involved at Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Labs and Lockheed Martin, which is a leader in the corporate support of nuclear power, weapons, and policies, making a lot of money. A number of reports of the Hiroshima events have been posted on the WILPF-US Facebook page.

In Portland, the Branch shared the US Conference of Mayors’ Resolution, which Jackie Cabasso helped to write. All cities over 30,000 people are members of this organization, and since 1994 there’s been an annual strong resolution for abolition of nuclear weapons. This year’s is a very powerful statement. The only weakness is it doesn’t mention the ban treaty, which is the most exciting thing in the UN right now. But they mentioned it last year. The mayors passed it unanimously. In Portland, OR, the mayor issued an excellent proclamation on the US Mayors’ Resolution, urging all Portland citizens to honor Hiroshima/Nagasaki Day and support nuclear weapons abolition.

The mayors need help in making their communities aware. We need to remember our mayors are our best friends, and we must make it possible for them to speak out. They do these wonderful resolutions each year but most of the mayors are afraid to speak of them in their communities because of the domination of military industries.

We also received a grant from JAPA to bring our international president to the World Beyond War conference in Washington, D.C., September 23 to 26, and we encourage all branches to get representatives there. It’s a wonderful opportunity to build an End War effort and to work on all of our issues.

JAPA also gave us an additional $3,000 for our ongoing projects, so we will have some welcome funds for WILPF work on banning militarized drones, for shutting down nuclear power plants, and for the work Charmaine Whiteface and about six of our committee members are doing to support a moratorium on uranium mining. We also received a grant for our annual mailing on Keep Space for Peace Week. We are now preparing the packets with posters and other information for Branch contacts and for our committee. International WILPF has co-sponsored this week for a dozen years, through Reaching Critical Will. This year communications failed, so WILPF is not listed on the poster, but we expect it to be again next year.

We also encourage our members to submit their own disarmament projects to JAPA. Branches should also feel free to do so.

We need to put more emphasis on common projects we can all support at the same time. We already have some that many of our Branches support every year, such as Hiroshima/Nagasaki week, Keep Space for Peace, and Tax Day. We just have to communicate and share resources more efficiently. A top example is Human Rights Day on December 10, and another is International Women’s Day in March. Some Branches also celebrate women’s suffrage day in August: Portland has had some great events on this day in past years.

In Disarmament, we know that at least a couple dozen Branches are already involved in Hiroshima/Nagasaki events urging nuclear weapons abolition. And for the past three years, we have had a tremendous increase in support and resources because Branches in other nations are now supporting us in the new GDAMS Movement. This is a Global Day of Action on Military Spending, with creative actions worldwide. It deliberately coincides with U.S. tax day, because it is our military expenditure, military sales, and military adventures that are making progress toward sustainable peace impossible. We think it is tremendously important that we cooperate fully with this GDAMS movement, and they offer terrific resources for us to use.

There are other dates we would like to see developed, like September 26, the new UN day for complete elimination of nuclear weapons.