By Cherrill Spencer, WILPF Peninsula/Palo Alto Branch
WILPF Peninsula/Palo Alto Uses Weekly Vigil to Celebrate Disarmament and Oppose ICE
WILPF’s Peninsula/Palo Alto Branch holds a weekly one-hour vigil at a busy intersection in Palo Alto, California. On Friday, Jan. 23, branch members were joined by the Pacific Life Community from Redwood City to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons’ entry into force.
To engage the thousands of drivers passing by, we displayed several banners and signs. One large banner, reading “LOCKHEED WEAPONS TERRORIZE THE WORLD,” belongs to the Pacific Life Community. The group sometimes unfurls it outside the Lockheed Martin factory in Sunnyvale. Another banner featured a new design from Warheads to Windmills, with the headline, “TIME TO DIVEST FROM ILLEGAL WEAPONS.” Our WILPF branch members paraded this banner across all four crosswalks multiple times, making sure it was visible to people stopped at the traffic lights.
The branch used its weekly vigil on Friday, Feb. 20 to protest ICE, holding signs to express our opposition and share our message with drivers passing by.
WILPF Peninsula/Palo Alto Joins Global Action to Close US Military Bases
The Peninsula/Palo Alto Branch participated in the Global Days of Action to #CloseBases from Feb. 21-23, 2026.
Military bases—especially foreign ones, both existing and proposed—fuel global conflict. The United States has used bases in Latin America and the Caribbean to launch attacks on Venezuela and has even threatened to take over Greenland to establish more installations. Iran is surrounded by seven nations hosting US bases. Countries to the south and east of China, as well as Europe and Israel, are densely packed with US military presence. Africa hosts foreign bases from multiple empires, and Russia is increasing its military activity in Belarus.
Closing military bases is an essential step toward shifting the global security paradigm to a demilitarized model that prioritizes common security—no one is safe until everyone is safe. Learn more about this campaign.
