WILPF NEWS
Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
East Bay and San Francisco Branches
July – August 2019 edition
Get involved! Become better informed!
Work to Advance Peace, Justice and Human Rights
OUR NEXT PLANNING MEETING WILL BE Saturday Aug 17th (date change ) 10-12 am
at La Boulangerie Restaurant
222 Sutter near Kearney S.F – 1 block Montgomery/Post BART
ONE WILPF CALLS
A good way to become involved from your home is to join our Monthly One WILPF calls on the 2nd Thursday of the month. We hope you can join us.
Next ONE WILPF Call–Thursday, Aug 8, 4pm
To register click on link below and you only need to pre-register once http://myaccount.maestroconference.com/conference/register/NW7UOTL6KBLOV3E
Past calls are available to listen here: Calls
ANTI-WAR LEAFLETING in San Francisco
Call Betty for info (415-931-1126)
Hiroshima Action 8 AM on Tuesday, August 6 at Livermore Lab:
Daniel Ellsberg to Speak at Rally, March to follow
Bay Area peace and justice advocates will mark the 74th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the Livermore Lab, where today the Trump Administration is spending billions to create new nuclear warheads.
The Tuesday, August 6, 2019 commemoration is titled, “Designing Armageddon at Livermore Lab: Rally, March and Nonviolent Direct Action for Nuclear Disarmament.” Participants will gather at the northwest corner of the Livermore nuclear weapons laboratory (Vasco Road and Patterson Pass Road in Livermore). The rally will begin at 8 AM and will feature music, speakers, art and more. There is free parking at the event site.
Daniel Ellsberg will deliver the keynote address.
Ellsberg is the military analyst and whistleblower who shone a bright light on U.S. policy and helped end the Vietnam War when he released the Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg published an award-winning memoir in 2017, “The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner.”
Nobuaki Hanaoka, an atomic bomb survivor, will be the rally’s special guest speaker. Hanaoka was an infant when the bomb fell on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. His mother and sister died from illnesses linked to radiation poisoning and his brother died at age 39 from premature aging associated with fallout from the bomb.
Immediately following the program, at approximately 9:15 AM, will be a “call to action,” in which participants will be invited to march a short distance to the Livermore Lab West Gate. At the gate, Japanese activists will lead a traditional bon dance. Everyone is invited to participate.
http://www.trivalleycares.org/new/2019AugustAction.html
Banning the bomb: July highlights
On 7 July, it was exactly two years ago that 122 nations voted to adopt the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). With 70 signatures and 23 ratifications, the Treaty is well on its way to enter into force in the near future. The next state is already very close to become the 24th ratifying party: Kazakhstan’s President signed the law on the ratification of the nuclear ban treaty! Moreover, progress can also be expected from Ireland: a priority bill to enable Ireland’s ratification of the Treaty is on this summer’s legislative agenda.
As part of the birthday celebrations, the International Campaign to Stop Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) has launched the new resource Campaigner Guide to TPNW Signature and Ratification. It offers suggestions for actions campaigners can take to promote signature and ratification of their countries. Like last year, world leaders will have the chance to collectively sign and ratify the Treaty at the high-level ceremony on 26 September in New York.
U.S. Conference of Mayors Highlights Nuclear Disarmament
“On 1 July, the US Conference of Mayors unanimously passed a resolution calling on all US presidential candidates to make their positions on nuclear weapons known, and to pledge US global leadership in preventing nuclear war, returning to diplomacy, and negotiating the elimination of nuclear weapons.” – Sunflower Newsletter (wagingpeace.org)
GLOBAL WARMING CRISIS
You can’t call something an emergency and then approve the projects causing it story was originally published by Grist.
“A group of progressive heavyweights—including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY 14th) and 2020 Democratic presidential contender Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont)—introduced a US resolution that would do just that.
If passed, the largely symbolic resolution would demand “a national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization of the resources and labor of the United States at a massive-scale,” which is not the same thing as prescribing specific responses. And yet advocates say even proposing such a resolution is an important step towards mobilizing on climate.
“This is a political crisis of inaction,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a press call on Tuesday. “It’s going to take political will (and) political courage in order for us to treat this issue with the urgency that the next generation needs in order for us to preserve our way of life and in order for us to preserve our planet as much as we possibly can.”
US progressives are far from alone in pushing a climate change emergency declaration. To date, a total of 16 countries like Canada and the United Kingdom (and 744 local governments, including New York City and Paris) have declared a climate emergency to spur action in the face of the crisis.
CALIFORNIA COAST SEA LEVEL RISE
“The Sea is rising. Can you save your town?” LA Times article 7/ 7/19
New flood maps show the sea could rise 3 feet in the next 30 years!!
Link: Calif Oceans with Climate change https://thebulletin.org/2019/07/the-sea-is-rising-can-you-save-your-town/?
WETTEST AND HOTTEST 12 MONTHS IN HISTORY
Link: temperature-records-havent-just-been-broken-they-have-been-obliterated/
Link: wettest-12-months-in-us-history
Climate change: 12 years to save the planet? Make that 18 months
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48964736
WORLD BEYOND WAR Link : worldbeyondwar.org
War Is Immoral “War is nothing other than murder on a large scale. Over the centuries and decades, death counts in wars have grown dramatically, shifted heavily ontocivilians rather than combatants, and been overtaken by injury counts as even greater numbers have been injured but medicine has allowed them to survive. Deaths are now due primarily to violence rather than to disease, formerly the biggest killer in wars. Civilian fatalities in wartime have climbed from 5% at the turn of the 20th century to more than 90% in modern wars. Suicide is now the leading killer of U.S. troops.”
War Endangers Us “There is a common perception that wars keep us safe, but in fact, war, and preparations for war, endanger more than protect. War has a history of provoking more war, not peace.”
War Threatens Our Environment “The ecological footprint of war and ongoing preparations for war cannot be ignored. Militarism is a top contributor to the global climate crisis and a direct cause of lasting environmental damage. And yet military activities are often exempted from key environmental regulations, such as the Kyoto Protocol. A major motivation behind war is the desire to control resources, especially oil and gas. In fact, foreign military intervention in civil wars does not correlate with human rights violations, lack of democracy, or threats of terrorism, but does strongly correlate with the presence of oil.”
War Erodes Liberties “War is often justified by claiming that it is in defense of freedom in the home country and is promoting freedom and democracy abroad. This is usually not the case and, in the case of the war on terror, is patently untrue. War not only denies human rights to those people in the countries directly involved in the conflict, but it also often erodes the civil liberties – including the right to freedom of speech & assembly, due process, and protection from unreasonable searches – of the domestic populations of the aggressor countries. Often this is accomplished by first removing rights from people designated as enemies, and later by applying the same standards to others.”
War Impoverishes Us
War Promotes Bigotry
We Need $2 Trillion/Year for Other Things
EXPLORE WILPF TODAY
Local branch web pages
www.WILPFEastBay.org or www.WILPFSF.org
WILPF East Bay
P. O. Box 13083, Oakland, CA 94661
WILPF-San Francisco
P. O. Box 590253, San Francisco, CA 94159
http://www.facebook.com/WILPFEastBaySanFrancisco/
National WILPF www.wilpfus.org
International WILPF: www.wilpf.org