nuclear-news

NYC: Anti-Nuclear Protest at U.S. Mission to United Nations

 https://www.pressenza.com/2022/08/nyc-anti-nuclear-protest-at-u-s-mission-to-united-nations/ 03.08.22 – US, United States – Pressenza New York

Today, on day two of the four-week 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, several hundred people marched to the US Mission from the Isaiah Wall across the street from the United Nations, passing by the Wall’s quote from the Prophet Isaaiah,

Report by Alice Slater

“He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”

Singing peace and anti-war songs, to “lay down their swords and shields” with dramatic interventions and a multitude of posters with slogans calling for nuclear abolition in every possible way, the indomitable peace activists from every continent joined together to press the governments in the coming weeks, who promised in 1970 to make “good faith efforts” for nuclear disarmament, to “lay down their swords and shields” and make their promised “good faith” commitments to restore their tattered promises to finally ban the bomb.

Despite the 2017 enactment of the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons that closed the NPT loopholes, finally saying that nuclear weapons are illegal in every way, including use, threat to use, sharing, shipping, and manufacturing– the race goes on with all the major powers expanding their arsenals and spending trillions of dollars and millions of IQ points confronting each other with their evil nuclear deterrents. Meanwhile, Mother Earth desperately needs extraordinary global cooperation to prevent a catastrophic climate collapse, a nuclear cataclysm and spreading lethal plagues. We are at a turning point, and this NPT might be the last time that people can bring their governments to their senses, instructing them to step back from the catastrophic cliff edge, towards which we are perilously and thoughtlessly careening.

Report by Anthony Donovan

When I look at the UN from the U.S. Mission today, I think of a wonderful mentor and champion for nuclear disarmament, Amb. Zenon Rossides of Cyprus. I interviewed him in 1983. He’d been challenging the nuclear countries since taking to the UN podium in 1960, to focus on common and collective security, not with nuclear arms. “Listen to the scientists!” He’d often exclaim.
I’d like to echo his public words when speaking about the negotiations for the NPT and other nuclear treaties
“The negotiations are a stagnant pretense, deceiving the people that something is being done about the nuclear arms race, a galloping reality.”

He would often also repeat
“It is not the power of weapons,
but the power of Spirit
That can save the world.”

He met and felt very close to Pres. John F. Kennedy. He said JFK was determined to end nuclear weapons and that the Herculean effort and great success of his Test Ban Treaty was meant to only be the first step toward total abolition.

My word for today’s action, when things look so dire, and heading evermore in the wrong direction, is…… community. A courageous community that sustains life, and joy.

Alice Slater is an Advisor to the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and serves on the Coordinating Committee of World Beyond War worldbeyondwar.org

Anthony Donovan. A political campaigner and activist from the age of 12, ending up in jail three times for Vietnam War nonviolent civil disobedience.

August 3, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | opposition to nuclear, USA | Leave a comment

Let’s Replicate Chicago’s Antiwar Organizing Victory Against Boeing

Asha Ransby-Sporn & Debbie Southorn, Truthout, July 17, 2022 The news released this spring that Boeing, a corporate weapons manufacturer, is moving its headquarters out of Chicago, Illinois, is a win for the anti-militarist movement and came just weeks after an even more meaningful victory for youth organizers who blocked the company from getting a $2 million tax break before they left.

It’s a victory that organizers like us hope will inspire communities in other cities to target weapons manufacturers who are sucking up public resources via tax breaks and government contracts. By forcing local government to ask questions rather than write blank checks and by telling death-dealing corporations that they are no longer welcome, our movement can undermine the business model of pillaging public budgets in order to reap profit from militarized weapons and violence.

This victory came months after a group of young people blocked traffic to and from Boeing’s corporate headquarters last May, hanging a large banner that read “Boeing Arms Genocide” over the Chicago River that was visible from the corporate offices and commercial walkways in the city’s downtown area. Following escalated assaults on the Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, which sparked protests around the world, these youth called attention to Boeing’s $735 million weapons sale to Israel, which was approved by the United States State Department in the same weeks as the assault.

In the following months, organizers with the newly formed Boeing Arms Genocide campaign presented to Chicago’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) and to Alderwoman Maria Hadden with a detailed analysis of how Boeing’s Chicago headquarters has reaped more than $60 million in tax breaks while failing to deliver on promises of job creation. (Alderwoman Hadden represents Chicago’s 49th ward, which is home to large immigrant and refugee communities.) This set in motion an OIG inquiry into the contract that had made this arrangement possible. At the end of 2021, for the first year in 20 years, Boeing declined to file for a tax reimbursement worth roughly $2 million. Then in May 2022, its leaders announced their headquarters would be leaving the city.

From the onset of the campaign, organizers had set out to ensure there would be no extension of the contract slated to end in 2021, or any new contract that would allow Boeing to continue benefiting from state and local tax breaks, after they’d received these public checks for two decades. The canvassing, petition drives, teach-ins and meetings with city officials resulted in first-time scrutiny on the company’s compliance with the minimal requirements of the contract. A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request confirmed, in the words of the Department of Planning and Development’s Financial Incentives Division Deputy Commissioner Tim Jeffries, “The term of the agreement is over and Boeing has stated they are not seeking reimbursement for the 2021 tax year. The contract is functionally dead.”

Up against a Fortune 500 company, a few hand-painted banners, a little public pressure, and the compelling research of a group of 20-somethings presented to a few city officials might not seem like much. A closer look, however, at the business model of a company like Boeing shows us how much they have to lose from a challenge to the idea that public resources can or should go toward the profits of a weapons manufacturer………………………………. https://truthout.org/articles/lets-replicate-chicagos-antiwar-organizing-victory-against-boeing/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=a0819f3e-09e9-4774-9b4a-fd30ff368bb3

July 16, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | opposition to nuclear, USA | Leave a comment