DISARM/End Wars November 2013 Update

In November, as we approach the end of our 2013 campaign to abolish nuclear weapons by 2020, we close with a progress report. We believe we have built solid foundations for our continuing work on ridding our world of these most monstrous and immoral of weapons. We are supporting Mayors for Peace resolutions and specific legislation in Congress, all of which call for abolition by 2020. We will again have an opportunity to go to Congress with the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability in the spring and from April 28 to May 12 the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Prep Com will again be at the United Nations in New York. If our own national leaders prove obdurate we will support those working for a ban treaty.

Our members and branches will continue seeking abolition of the nuclear industry that has grown up around nuclear weapons including nuclear power, uranium mining, and transport of high level liquid waste. Our primary purpose, as always, is to end war itself. Read a brief report on what lies ahead in November on the nuclear industry, drones, and ending wars here.

PROGRESS REPORT ON NUCLEAR WEAPONS ABOLITION BY 2020

IS YOUR MAYOR A MAYOR FOR PEACE?  

The WILPF DISARM/End Wars Issue Committee has set aside funds to help your Branch bring Jackie Cabasso to your community. She can assist in utilizing the US Conference of Mayors powerful resolutions on abolition of nuclear weapons in order to save the cities.  Along with everything else, Jackie is also a Life  Member of WILPF.

Download the Mayors for Peace 2013 toolkit from our joint UFPJ Nuclear Free Future website. You can access one of those US Mayors unanimous resolutions there. You will also find a model city council resolution. It is time your community knows about this project and acts to bring it into reality. You will find many other resources in the toolkit, including information on how to bring your own city into the Mayors for Peace Vision 2020 project if none of your mayors have ever joined..

GREAT NEWS! Representative Raul Grijalva of Arizona, co-chair of the Progressive Caucus is co-sponsoring HR 1650! Thanks to Pat Birnie (formerly of Tucson) and Coralie Farlee(Washington D.C. Branch convener) for contacting him in his Washington D.C. office!

Join us as we resurrect EYE on Congress for many years edited by Val Mullen. Members of our committee will assist branches in finding more co-sponsors starting with Representatives in the Progressive Caucus. It is time to bring the call for nuclear abolition within a short time frame into the US Congress. 35 of our branches have Progressive Caucus members in their Districts. And it is time to give moral courage to other Representatives as well!

Impossible? Not if the will is there. But the nine nuclear weapons states, led by the US, are by now addicted  to their nuclear weapons and are spending billions to upgrade, rather than dismantle, them. So it falls to us, the little people, the hobbits of the world, to call forth that will in ourselves and those around us.

WILPFers Ray Acheson, Beatrice Fihn, Jackie Cabasso and Alice Slater are all doing amazing work at the United Nations. We agreed at our monthly meeting on Sunday night, October 27, to sign on to the very broad and intelligent document they and other NGO representatives have prepared for General Assembly Delegates when they consider the resolutions from the First Committee in early November.  

The NGOs support the full range of efforts to negotiate a nuclear weapons abolition treaty within the United Nations, but if the nuclear nations remain recalcitrant WILPF Reaching Critical Will and the other NGOs urge the 134 non-nuclear nations that are leading the movement for abolition by 2020—or, in the case of the nonaligned nations, at least no later than 2025—to go outside of the UN (as they did for land mines and cluster bombs) to negotiate a nuclear weapons ban treaty. It could be similar to the chemical weapons ban, that makes possession, production or use of these weapons of mass destruction illegal, requires destruction of stocks and production facilities and includes UN inspections of the process. It would not be a final solution, but could be a large step on the way and achieved within a very short time.

WILPF Reaching Critical Will, which facilitates NGO work at the United Nations, has enthusiastically joined the I CAN coalition as have most, or all, of the other NGOs seeking nuclear weapons abolition. The coalition was initiated by IPPNW, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, (also the parent organization of PSR – USA) and includes everyone from Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama to Martin Sheen and Yoko Ono. The proposal for a Ban treaty is best presented here.

Photo: Ray Acheson, Director, Reaching Critical Will