WILPFers All Over the US Celebrate Nuclear Treaty’s Entry into Force

The Golden Rule showing a banner announcing the EIF of the TPNW sails past Oahu, Hawai’I between Kaneohe Bay and Honolulu, on January 22, 2021. WILPFer Helen Jaccard on left, Connie Durant on right. Photo by Captain Kiko, used with his permission.

By Cherrill Spencer
Coordinator of Resource Preparation Team for the Call for Peace Campaign

February 2021

Our enthusiastic members braved the snow and rain to celebrate the entry into force (EIF) of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) and to inform their communities about it as part of the ongoing WILPF US Call for Peace Campaign.

WILPF US recently started a Call for Peace Campaign which you can read about in this October 1st 2020 President’s Corner. This campaign has two demands: to the United Nations Security Council to extend the current Global Ceasefire and to the United States Congress to cut all military spending by 50% and move the money to fund human needs. Three related action-oriented themes have been chosen for WILPFers to work on, the first being to celebrate the Entry into Force (EIF) of the new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) with outdoor demonstrations to bring the TPNW to the attention of our legislators and the general public,

Three Action-oriented Themes of the Call for Peace Campaign

We have a team of volunteers researching and writing resource guides to inform and encourage WILPF members to take action on these three themes: (i) the new TPNW treaty; (ii) Move the Money from the military budget to programs that help US residents and (iii) advocate for the continuation of the UN Secretary General’s call for a global ceasefire.
 
Our first four resource guides focused on the Entry Into Force on January 22, 2021 of the TPNW. The guides are linked to an eAlert sent on January 18. This treaty is a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading to their total elimination. It is a legal contract between the states party (=countries) that have ratified it. This treaty has 20 articles and the first article is the most important one, it lists everything a country must not do with nuclear weapons. One article declares that 90 days after 50 countries have ratified the treaty it comes into effect, making nuclear weapons illegal in those countries; that date was January 22, 2021. No surprise: the USA has not even signed this treaty and has tried to persuade ratifying states to revoke their ratifications (none has bowed to this pressure).

Why Celebrate the Entry into Effect of the TPNW?

This TPNW is a win for civil society and forward-thinking governments over the traditional power structure. Eighty-sixty countries have signed the TPNW and many of those, beyond the first 50, are going through their treaty ratification process, so an increasing fraction of the world’s population will be living in totally nuclear-weapon-free regions.

Furthermore, one of the 20 articles prohibits assisting anyone to engage in any of the prohibited activities. So it could be that nuclear weapons manufacturing companies, such as Raytheon, which have offices and factories in ratifying countries (even though those factories do not make parts for nuclear weapons) could be affected by the TPNW, and their directors could be arrested if they visit that country. “Assisting” could also be applied to investing capital in a nuclear weapons company and so banks such as Chase could be found guilty of assisting companies to make nuclear weapons and the missiles that deliver them. Two of the five largest pension funds in the world have already divested from the nuclear weapons industry.

All these wins are worth celebrating and so we asked WILPF branches and members-at-large to get out on the streets on Friday, January 22 and let their local communities know about the TPNW and its coming into force. We provided them with banner and lawn sign designs, sample letters to the editor and to our newly-inaugurated  President, op-eds and warning letters to the CEOs of nuclear weapon companies, to hand in after gathering outside their local offices.

WILPFers Celebrate the TPNW’s Entry into Force in 20 Places

I am pleased to report that our members turned out (masked and properly distanced) at 20 different places from sunny Hawaii to frigid Vermont, a noticeable fraction of the 150 Treaty EIF events that took place all over the world on January 22, 2021.

Photo by Pam Richards, used with her permission

For example our Milwaukee, Wisconsin branch gathered outside the Chase Center in downtown Milwaukee, with lots of banners, signs, and flags to celebrate the TPNW’s entry into force.

And our Boston branch descended on the Raytheon BBN Technologies offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts where they left letters of alert about the TPNW for Raytheon’s CEO, Gregory J. Hayes, and its Senior Scientist, Dr. Talib Hussain. Eileen Kurkoski of WILPF and Susan Mirsky of MA Peace Action formed a Treaty Compliance Unit; they dressed in mock HAZMAT outfits and delivered the alert letters.

Photo by Eileen Kurkoski, used with her permission.

We have made a slideshow of 14 more photos from different locales where WILPFers demonstrated on January 22, 2021, shown in reverse alphabetical order by state.

Three of our branches—Des Moines, IA, Pittsburgh, PA, and Peninsula/Palo Alto, CA—have written their own reports on their EIF actions which appear elsewhere in this newsletter.

Many thanks to our enthusiastic members who braved the snow and rain to celebrate the entry into force of the TPNW and to inform their communities about it!

This is just a step along the way to nuclear disarmament. Now we need to be contacting our Congressional reps about all the arms control treaties the USA should be following and the new legislative acts regarding nuclear weapons being introduced into the 117th Congress, such as the one described in Ellen Thomas’s article.

All our “outstanding” members sent several photos of their events and you can see them in our WILPF SMART website.