Friends,
As a former Peace Corps volunteer
in Botswana, I am pleased to let you know my country of service became the 40th
nation to ratify the UN Treaty Ban. Ten more and nuclear weapons will be
illegal under international law.
If this needless spending on weapons
which can’t be used upsets you, join the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Commemoration
Committee in its annual commemoration on August 6 from 5 to 6:30 PM, on August
9 from 1 to 2:30 PM and also from 7 to 9 PM. Details are forthcoming.
Kagiso, Max
Wednesday, July 15, 2020
Funding
Nuclear Weapons at a Time of National Crisis
Nuclear
weapons represent the greatest imminent existential threat to our very
existence and to every social, racial, environmental and economic justice
movement that we are working for, since ultimately it is all connected.
This time of awakening has drawn attention to the connection and
challenges we face as a nation and world. (Photo: Ralf Schlesener/ICAN)
Today, July 15, we fund our nation’s priorities. This year, the
nation is awakening to the problems of systemic and institutionalized racism
while simultaneously grappling with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic which has no
end in sight. The Black Lives Matter movement is receiving its due attention
and communities are demanding demilitarization of police forces and tactics and
reprioritization of funding to address the needs of communities to bring forth
a socially just, environmentally sustainable and peaceful community. City
councils are taking a close look at police budgets and many citizens are
calling for participatory budgeting with input in the budgets of their cities
as they move to determine their own priorities. Nationally, with our massively
bloated defense budget, it is also the time we fund the nuclear arms race even
as nations around the world work to pass a nuclear ban treaty, the “Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons”, similar to those banning all other weapons of mass
destruction.
Nuclear weapons represent the greatest imminent existential
threat to our very existence and to every social, racial, environmental and
economic justice movement that we are working for, since ultimately it is all
connected. In the words of Vincent Intondi, author of African Americans Against
the Bomb: Nuclear Weapons, Colonialism, and the Black Freedom
Movement, “These were not separate issues. Jobs, racial equality, climate
change, war, class, gender, and nuclear weapons were all connected and part of
the same fight: universal human rights, with the most important human right
being the freedom to live…live free from the fear of nuclear war.” Our country
must reassess our priorities through the lens of caring for one another to
address these inequities.
The expenditures spent on nuclear weapons deprive communities
across this nation of the finite dollars needed to fund critical social programs.
Each year, Physicians for Social
Responsibility Los Angeles publishes our Nuclear Weapons
Community Costs Program. Now in its 32nd year, the
project, unlike many other nuclear cost determinations, seeks to calculate the
full costs to our nation of nuclear weapons programs encouraging conversations
on the fiscal inequities in our communities while building support in the U.S.
for nuclear abolition and divestment from nuclear weapons. As our nation
grapples with the health and economic impacts of COVID-19 and racial injustice,
we continue to fund nuclear weapons programs in the amount of $67.595
billion for fiscal year 2020. Large states like New York are spending in excess
of $4.5 billion and California is spending over $8.7 billion on nuclear weapons
programs. From our poorest to richest communities, these are dollars that could
be better spent.
In this political season there are calls from both major parties
for a return to the past. Realistically, it is the policies of the past that
have brought us to this point in history. As our nation awakens and begins to
address the realities of systemic racism and evolving global pandemics we
simultaneously need a fundamental shift in U.S. nuclear policy to address the
threat. This policy is articulated in “Back from the Brink:
The Call to Prevent Nuclear War." This
grassroots initiative calls on the United States to lead a global effort to
prevent nuclear war by:
1. Renouncing the option of using nuclear weapons first
2. Ending the sole, unchecked authority of any U.S.
president to launch a nuclear attack
3. Taking U.S. nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert
4. Cancelling the plan to replace its entire nuclear arsenal
with enhanced weapons
5. Actively pursuing a verifiable agreement among nuclear-armed
states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals
This time of awakening has drawn attention to the connection and
challenges we face as a nation and world. COVID-19 with its disproportionate
effects on the poor and people of color, and the Black Lives Matter movement
have made this eminently apparent. It is time to respond and for all of us to
come together to address and rectify these issues while simultaneously working
to abolish nuclear weapons.
Robert Dodge, a frequent Common Dreams contributor,
writes as a family physician practicing in Ventura, California. He is the
Co-Chair of the Security Committee of National Physicians for Social Responsibility and also serves as the President of Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles.
Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share
Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.
Donations can be sent
to Max Obuszewski, Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 431 Notre Dame Lane, Apt. 206,
Baltimore, MD 21212. 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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