Friends,
I received a number of responses about working on a
divestment resolution in Baltimore from any
entity involved in the production of fossil fuels or weapons. I am
sending this out a second time to see if there are others who may be interested
in such a campaign. The Baltimore City Council on August 6, 2018 passed a
Back from the Brink resolution, which covers the issue of nuclear
weapons. So a divestment resolution would be a bookend to the earlier
one. Let me know if you might have interest in this campaign. Then
in the New Year, we can start to do some brainstorming. Let us hope that
Peace breaks out in 2020.
Kagiso, Max
FRANCES CROWE’S LEGACY LIVES ON…
Quaker peace activist Frances
Crowe (1919-2019) spent her whole life fighting for peace, justice and the
environment, and of all the causes she fought for, the one she was probably
most passionate about was the abolition of nuclear weapons.
Frances was joyously tearful
at hearing the news two years ago (at age 98) that 122 countries had finally
adopted a treaty banning everything to do with nuclear weapons under
international law. She was determined to give this new treaty all the support
she could, and so we worked together to form NuclearBan.US,
a campaign to build support for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear
Weapons, which was launched in her living room in November, 2017.
Frances
was prepared to go to jail for her beliefs (and did many times). But she was
also prepared to make enormous personal sacrifices for her beliefs. She stopped
paying her taxes because her tax dollars were going to pay for war and
preparations for war. She stopped driving her car because fossil fuels were
causing climate catastrophe. She stopped eating her favorite foods because they
were being shipped halfway round the world and fueling not only climate
catastrophe but global inequality.
She
agreed that NuclearBan.US could not expect people to take such extreme steps,
but she wanted people to do more than just “proclaim” their support for the
elimination of nuclear weapons. She wanted people to take action, to
demonstrate their commitment to this, to take personal responsibility for the
fact that we still have these evil weapons in our midst and we still have
governments who are ready and willing to use them to slaughter millions of
innocent people, supposedly for the sake of ‘national defense.’
NuclearBan.US
therefore set up a process through which individuals, faith communities,
businesses, schools, cities and states could “align” themselves with the Treaty
on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons – by divesting from any investments that
may be supporting the continued existence of nuclear weapons in this country;
by refusing to work for any of those companies, do research for them, supply to
them; and by agreeing to boycott their products (until such time as they stop
their involvement in the nuclear weapons industry).
Some
cities and towns across the country had already made such commitments when they
became Nuclear Free Zones back in the 1980s. Takoma Park, Maryland and
Berkeley, California thus became the first two cities in the US to declare
themselves “Treaty Aligned.” Frances’ own city of Northampton, Massachusetts,
however, became the first city in the US to go through the process from scratch
to become newly Treaty Aligned, which they completed in 2019.
Frances’
own Quaker Meeting, Northampton Friends Meeting, became the first faith
community in the country to become Treaty Aligned. Since then, a small but
growing number of churches, businesses, schools, colleges, cities and towns
have become Treaty Aligned or have started the process. Frances herself was, of
course, one of the first to declare herself individually aligned with the
treaty.
Since
the NuclearBan.US campaign was launched nearly two years ago, it has gone
through various transformations to keep up with the latest developments on the
nuclear front (such as the collapse of the INF Treaty and the Iran Deal, the
changing relations with North Korea, the nuclear false alarm in Hawaii, etc.) –
and to keep up with the latest developments on the Frances Crowe front! Frances
has always been concerned about many other issues apart from the nuclear
weapons issue, and as she approached 100, was increasingly concerned about the
climate crisis and its links to all the money, brainpower and international
goodwill being squandered on wars, militarism and nuclear weapons in
particular.
One of Frances’ personal
goals as part of the NuclearBan.US campaign was to get Smith College to align
with the Treaty by divesting from the nuclear weapons companies. Smith College
holds her archives and considers her one of their own, although she did not go
to college there. Last spring (at age 100), Frances helped bring together
students from the Divest Smith (from fossil fuels) campaign and the Smith
Center for Religious and Spiritual Life to talk about getting the college to
divest from nuclear weapons and from fossil fuels.
Just
a few days before she died, Frances sent a letter to the President of Smith
College, urging her to divest the college from nuclear weapons and fossil fuels
as a way of “addressing nuclear weapons, the climate crisis, and injustice in
powerful and practical ways.” The campaign at Smith will go on, as part of
Frances’ legacy. But there are other ways that the legacy of Frances Crowe
lives on through NuclearBan.US.
Partly as a result of
Frances’ persistence in seeing the links and trying to bring together the
issues of peace, justice and the environment under a single banner,
NuclearBan.US has now expanded its focus to include all three of the life and
death emergencies facing the whole planet right now. These are the climate
crisis, which threatens catastrophic consequences to human civilization and the
planet if it is not fully and immediately addressed with bold and decisive
action (ie. with implementation of a Green New Deal); the threat
of nuclear war, which could happen at any moment, on purpose or by
accident, and has the potential to destroy all life on earth; and a third
global emergency, the increasingly unsustainable levels
of inequality that threaten to tear this country – and the world –
apart at the seams, preventing us from being able to address either of the
other two emergencies.
The new “Warheads to
Windmills” campaign was launched in Congress, with the publication of a report by
the same name in Rep. Jim McGovern’s office. The campaign calls
for implementation of a Green New Deal to address the climate crisis and inequality th the scale and urgency required. It calls for the US and other nuclear
nations to sign and ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear
Weapons. This will to help pay for a Green New Deal, not
just in this country but also in the other countries that emit the most
greenhouse gases – and just happen to be spending all their billions on nuclear
weapons at the moment. It would also release all the scientists,
engineers and technological infrastructure currently devoted to
nuclear weapons, but needed to solve the remaining renewable-energy
challenges. And it would help build the international cooperation
and goodwill needed to address climate change and other worldwide
problems on a global scale.
By divesting from
fossil fuels and from nuclear weapons, by taking steps as
individuals and as organizations, faith communities, cities and states
to disconnect from these companies as far as we can, and
by declaring our solidarity with the rest of the world, we can all carry
on the work of Frances Crowe and help ensure a healthy, thriving future for our
children and grandchildren and the many generations still to come.
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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