Oh, what a year it’s been! As we move into a new year, nearly three-quarters of a century into the Nuclear Age, it is sobering to know that the threat of nuclear war looms as large as ever thanks to the hubris of the nuclear high priests who refuse to recognize the folly of their reliance on nuclear weapons as the ultimate source of power.
The United States and Russia are poised to fall into the abyss of a renewed nuclear arms race that raises a new specter of nuclear holocaust. And the other nuclear-armed nations are following their lead down the rabbit hole.
President Trump continues to blunder along, building new and improved nuclear weapons while abandoning one nuclear arms treaty after another. If this seems like a recipe for disaster, IT IS!!! Russia, led by another nationalist, Vladimir Putin, is responding as expected, and it will not take long for the train to be moving at full speed.
The voices of reason and sanity in the Federal government have been drowned out. Nationalism is the order of the day, and “national security” is the watchword. Not to be branded as “unpatriotic”, the Democrats caved to pressure and political expediency when most of them voted for the compromise 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
The ancient prophet Isaiah’s timeless message seems appropriate for this moment since it is our essential task to enflesh those words as messengers of nonviolence in a world that seems to overwhelmingly introduce violent “solutions” to conflict. I will never forget standing beneath the Isaiah Wall in New York City in 2015. Across the street, at the United Nations, the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference was about to begin.I looked up and saw, marking a nondescript doorway to a building just above and to the left of the Isaiah Wall, an old, rusty Civil Defense Fallout Shelter sign, a relic of the Cold War.
In June 1955 the Civil Defense Administration held a
drill simulating a nuclear attack in New York City, and while nearly all of three million New Yorkers dutifully found their way to shelters marked by those same yellow signs, 27 activists, who included Catholic Worker Dorothy Day, refused to take cover. They sat in City Hall Park, praying and meditating, and handed out pamphlets reading:
We will not obey this order to pretend, to evacuate, to hide. In view of the certain knowledge the administration of this country has that there is no defense in atomic warfare, we know this drill to be a military act in a cold war to instill fear, to prepare the collective mind for war. We refuse to cooperate.
The resisters were all arrested since it was the law that everyone take part in the drills. Of course, all of the government’s preparations would have been futile in the event of a nuclear war. Yet the government knew, just as in the case of justifying war in general, that its nuclear agenda required a carefully designed propaganda program to convince Americans that they would be able to survive a nuclear war and that they should support the government’s massive investment in preparations to wage nuclear war.
And lest we are not clear on this – The government WAS (and still is), prepared to wage nuclear war if push came to shove (and deterrence failed) with the (then) Soviet Union. The preparations included such absurdities as plans to continue the functioning of Congress (in an underground bunker of course), and collect taxes from and deliver the mail to the irradiated survivors.
As for Day and her fellow resisters, they were treated not unlike countless peacemakers (including the most recent Kings Bay Plowshares 7) who have stood trial in Federal courtrooms. In those days of patriotic Cold War fever, the judge called them murderers, and “accused them of being responsible for the simulated deaths of three million New Yorkers.” Today a similar irony permeates the courts, though the Judges’ tones are far less inflammatory, and as solemn and independent jurists they stick to the “facts”; no Nuremberg Principles, necessity defense, rules of war, international law, or other legal mumbo jumbo. Splashing blood on the sacred symbols of our “national security” cannot be tolerated. 
All this – the failure of the (Federal) Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches – leads us to the obvious conclusion that, after nearly a quarter century, it is high time for “We The People” to continue building the case for abolishing nuclear weapons and the associated threat of nuclear annihilation from the ground up, and with a greatly strengthened and renewed will. It is time for us as citizens to work with our elected officials in our cities and townships, counties, and at the state level to establish statements, legal opinions, and legislation establishing a framework and direction for both reducing the existing threat of nuclear war and abolishing nuclear weapons.
So far, at least four states have passed joint resolutions urging our federal leaders and our nation to embrace the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, make nuclear disarmament the centerpiece of our national security policy, and spearhead a global effort to prevent nuclear war. Here in Washington State, home to the largest deployed concentration of nuclear weapons in the U.S., forty-three organizations, most of which are citizen-based, have endorsed the Joint Memorials that are poised to move forward in the Washington State Legislature.
We, as members of The Washington Against Nuclear Weapons coalition invite you to help pass the Washington State nuclear weapons joint memorials.Begin your new year by making a phone call or writing an email to your legislator (before January 13th) using the following script to educate them about this opportunity to support our work against nuclear weapons. On January 13th, these joint memorials will be reintroduced, and it is important that your legislator receives your support.
Hello, my name is [your name] and I live in [your city].
I am calling to express my support for two joint memorials that could help prevent nuclear war, SJM 8006 and HJM 4008, which will be reintroduced this legislative session. Today our treaties that prevent nuclear war are crumbling and major nuclear weapons countries like the United States and Russia are engaging in a new nuclear arms race that would bring new and dangerous weapons to WA state. This joint memorial names the many communities impacted by nuclear weapons in WA state: the Spokane Tribe, Marshall Islanders, workers at Hanford and all of us living close to the Kitsap Bangor base. This memorial would add a significant victory to a grassroots movement that is growing throughout the nation. Do you plan to support SJM 8006/HJM 4008?
Thank you!
Find your Legislators here and call now!
We invite you to download and use the Toolkit for Action on SJM 8006 and HJM 4008 produced by the Washington Against Nuclear Weapons coalition. It provides everything you need (as either and individual or organization) to support the Joint Memorials.
Thank you for your efforts in the past year. Please join us for a new year of resistance and action as citizens of this nation and of this world, to turn swords into plowshares.
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Editor’s Note: This post is from our New Year’s E-Newsletter sent out on December 30, 2019. https://mailchi.mp/cf78e8589682/turning-swords-into-plowshares-action-and-resistance-in-the-new-year If you would like to sign up for our E-Newsletters, please click here.
