WILPF NEWS
Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
East Bay and San Francisco Branches
Work to Advance Peace, Justice and Human Rights
FEBRUARY 2023
Major Victory for Tri-Valley CAREs
by MaryLia Kelley
The Federal District Court has just ruled in favor of Tri-Valley CAREs and its three co-plaintiff groups – and against the Department of Energy and its National Nuclear Security Administration – in our plutonium bomb core litigation.
As you may know, the government had filed a Motion asking the Court to dismiss our entire case. Moreover, the government tried to challenge our individual and collective “standing” to bring the lawsuit. Motion denied in full.
In her ruling, Judge Mary Geiger Lewis thoroughly rejected the government’s arguments, writing that her decision “was not a close call.” Now, Tri-Valley CAREs, Savannah River Site Watch, Nuclear Watch New Mexico, and the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition will be able to move forward and argue our case on its merits.
If successful, we will force the government to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act and to halt activities while it prepares a nationwide Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement and holds public hearings at all of the sites playing major roles in the scheme to ramp up production of plutonium bomb cores, also called pits. This would include Livermore Lab, which is slated to conduct plutonium “materials testing” for expanded pit production among other dangerous activities.
Resolution in U.S. Congress: Get members of Congress to sign on to the TPNW Resolution being introduced into Congress– H.Res. 77
Recently the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved their iconic Doomsday Clock ahead to 90 seconds before midnight, the closest it’s ever come to a symbolic global catastrophe. This is due in part because the terrifying threat of nuclear war grows agonizingly close. The possibility of nuclear war is being talked about now as a more serious possibility than it has been since students were doing nuclear drills under their desks. Vladimir Putin has issued threats to potentially use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, and tensions are rising between the United States and China. A renewed arms race and Cold War with Russia, China, and the US, is unfortunately already underway. In short, the risk of catastrophic nuclear war is all too real, putting all of humanity at risk. It’s time for bold, pro-peace leadership from Congress, who can help shape U.S. nuclear weapons policies and the decisions of the President.
Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) and Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) have just introduced legislation in the House of Representatives that does just that. It demands the United States embrace the goals and provisions of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) and adopt a comprehensive package of policies to reduce the nuclear risk and prevent nuclear war. Specifically, it calls for:
- The President to embrace the goals and provisions of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and make nuclear disarmament the centerpiece of the national security policy of the United States; and
- The Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, all other Federal and congressional leaders of the United States, and the American people to lead a global effort to move the world back from the nuclear brink and to prevent nuclear war by:
- Actively pursuing and concluding negotiations on a new, bilateral nuclear arms control and disarmament framework agreement with the Russian Federation before 2026 and pursuing negotiations with China and other nuclear-armed states on an agreement or agreements for the verifiable, enforceable, and time-bound elimination of global nuclear arsenals
- Renouncing the option of using nuclear weapons first
- Ending the President’s sole authority to launch a nuclear attack
- Taking U.S. nuclear weapons off of hair-trigger alert
- Canceling the plan to replace the nuclear arsenal of the United States with modernized, enhanced weapons.
Following the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons on January 21, 2021, nuclear weapons activities are officially illegal under international law. Sign on to the ICAN Cities Appeal of support for the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
The Future in Our Pockets Webinar February 23rd, 5pm PST
WILPF Women, Money & Democracy Committee is hosting a webinar that explores how our money system itself is designed to keep people mired in debt, oppressed by it, and feeling that they are a failure if they don’t have huge savings,, stocks, and can’t contribute to retirement accounts or college funds. Insider glimpse: it’s not an accident most Americans are caught in this situation.Learn how our money system undermines peace, equity and the environment in the US and internationally, and how we can fix it.
Virginia Hammon, author of How We Pay For A Better World and Lucille Eckrich, founding president and Board Member of Alliance for Just Money (www.MonetaryAlliance.org) , will be our presenters for this brave and necessary conversation hosted by WILPF’s National Women, Money & Democracy Committee.
Register in advance here to participate in this enlightening webinar.
Season for Hope, Season for Struggle
excerpt from article by Harry Targ
To Everything (Turn, Turn, Turn)
There is a season (Turn, Turn, Turn)
And a time for every purpose, under Heaven
A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep
(repeat chorus)
A time to build up, a time to break down
A time to dance, a time to mourn
A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together
(repeat chorus)
A time of love, a time of hate
A time of war, a time of peace
A time you may embrace, a time to refrain from embracing
(repeat chorus)
A time to gain, a time to lose
A time to rend, a time to sew
A time to love, a time to hate
A time for peace, I swear it’s not too late
(Words from Ecclesiastes; text adapted and music by Pete Seeger)
This season progressives are debating whether we have been betrayed by this or that politician, how to revitalize the peace movement, fight climate change, combat racism, and defeat fascism.
But then “Turn, Turn, Turn” reminds us that “to everything there is a season.” The song suggests that the ebbs and flows of history are not bound by calendars, dates and times, and heroes and villains. A “season” is defined by its historic projects. Our projects, our seasons, entail defeats and victories, tears and laughter, but the seasons go on and encompass “a time to love” and “a time to hate.” And in the end the song declares, “I swear it’s not too late.”
So if we are inspired by the song, as we were in the 1960s, we remember that the struggles for peace and justice are not about individuals, political parties, and calendar deadlines but about the continued commitments which we have made to create peace, save the planet, put people back to work, and provide secure health care for all.
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