Achieving PEACE by getting rid of NATO

Published on March, 41 2024
No to NATO

 

By Dianne Blais, Cherrill Spencer and Ellen Thomas
Co-Chairs of DISARM/End Wars Issue Committee

April 2024

WILPF Waging Peace in Europe

NATO and US-bases in UK and the Nordic countries was the topic of a Zoom call on Saturday, March 23, by Global Women for peace United Against NATO(GWUAN), to which WILPF US is a partner.  Speakers made it clear that they are a minority in their countries which strongly support NATO. Sweden and Finland have recently joined NATO and signed Defense Cooperation Agreements (DCAs) with the US. 

The US already has military bases in the UK, Norway and Denmark, and Finland is set to get 15 new US bases and Norway eight more.

NATO's Secretary General Stoltenberg's statement that "President Putin started this war because he wanted to close NATO’s door" clarifies that NATO's threat to Russia has started the war and the dramatic increase of arms. In an effort to stop this increase and say "No more NATO", there will be events No to NATO/Yes to Peace the weekend (July 6-7) before the 75th anniversary of NATO official events in Washington, DC.

An East Coast Peace Walk and No to NATO events in DC in July

Please support and advertise Peacewalk2024 in any way that you can and consider attending the "NO to NATO, Yes to Peace" events in Washington DC July 6-7, 2024.

Peace Walk starts in Maine on May 7 and ends in DC in time to attend the NO to NATO, Yes to Peace events. The website's option of "View our Route" shows a map and the current schedule of this walk which is: 

Click on one of the states on the route, and the specific cities to be walked in that state appear in the format:

  • Date
  • Walkers begin in X, make their way to Y. 
  • Y sends $Z million in taxes every year to the Government for military use.

The Peace Walk's web-site option of "Get Involved" notes that besides walking any part of this route, people are needed to find places for the walkers to sleep and help organize events along the route.  

Please support and advertise Peacewalk2024 in any way that you can and consider attending the NO to NATO, Yes to Peace events in DC July 6-7.

The International Uranium Film Festival

The International Uranium Film Festival, which has been traveling around the world for several years, came to Asheville NC the weekend of March 23-24, showing a number of extremely important documentaries, which you can find listed here.  Here are some:

  • "Atomic Bamboozle: The False Promise of a Nuclear Renaissance" is about  the Small Modular Reactors that are being sought along Columbia River and around the country
  • "Silent Fallout: Baby Teeth Speak"
  • "Building Bombs" tells of the toll the Hanford Nuclear Bomb Plant had on the environment
  • "The Fukushima Disaster - The Hidden Side of the Story" is about how the nuclear accident affected the oceans (we are considering showing this film at the 2024 WILPF US Congress)
  • "Radioactive: The Women of Three Mile Island

Next stops on the film festival tour are Chicago, Spokane, Vancouver, Seattle, Olympia, Portland, Salem (OR), Las Vegas, and Santa Barbara.  See https://uraniumfilmfestival.org/en/usacanada-2024-program  

Our DISARM/End Wars Issue committee welcomes new members; we have many ongoing campaigns that need people to work on them.  Write to disarmchair@wilpfus.org to request information and to join the DISARM/End Wars Committee, which meets the second and last Sundays of the month.

 

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