HOW TO GET THE NINE NUCLEAR WEAPONS POSSESSING NATIONS TO JOIN THE TPNW IS A CHALLENGE EQUAL TO MITIGATING CLIMATE CHANGE The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), or the Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty, is the first legally binding international agreement to comprehensively prohibit nuclear weapons with the ultimate goal being their total elimination. It was adopted on 7 July 2017, opened for signature on 20 September 2017, and entered into force on 22 January 2021.For those nations that are party to it, the treaty prohibits the development, testing, production, stockpiling, stationing, transfer, use and threat of use of nuclear weapons, as well as assistance and encouragement to the prohibited activities. For nuclear armed states joining the treaty, it provides for a time-bound framework…

SEPTEMBER 24, 2022:  A CHANCE TO DEMONSTRATE AGAINST NUCLEAR WEAPONS by Louise Lansberry As I write this article in mid-August, I can only hope the world will continue to dodge the nuclear bullet as the war in Ukraine continues….Assuming that you too may share such a fear, I want to tell you about an opportunity to express your concerns.  An ad hoc group called Citizens for Universal Abolition of Nuclear Weapons (website is www.abolishnuclearweapons.org) is organizing a march in Seattle that will take place on Saturday, September 24th.  We will gather first at Cal Anderson Park (1635  11th Ave. on Capitol Hill)  at noon for music, poster making, and general information.   Around 1 PM, we’ll head down to the Federal…

A review by John M. Repp of Michael E. Mann’s The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet (New York: Public Affairs, Hachette Book Group, 2021) (revised July 2022) Michael E. Mann [The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet (New York: Public Affairs, Hachette Book Group, 2021)] is a climate scientist who, with colleagues, published the so-called “hockey stick” graph in 1998. It was a graph of the steep rise of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere since the industrial revolution, as seen below. There the red trend line on the right is going up and shows carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and is correlated with the rise of temperature anomalies, the green dots,…

By David Lambert On Saturday, April 30th, Western Washington Fellowship of Reconciliation (WWFOR) held its annual Spring Assembly; this year again by Zoom. The Theme: Defending and Extending Democracy, Using Nonviolence. The planners of this event: Susan Donaldson, John Repp, Kerri Griffis, Mary Hanson, Jean Gant Delastrada, Joshua Otto-Liljenstolpe, David Lambert (and help from Marti Lambert).  Rick Trombley helped during the Assembly. During the planning process, we decided to include the showing of the film Love & Solidarity, a strong and compelling 38-minute documentary of Rev. Dr. James Lawson’s life and work with nonviolence in standing up to oppression and injustice. This film was directed and produced by Dr. Michael Honey, a local University of Washington, Tacoma Campus, history professor…

by Dorothy Van Soest, Coordinating Committee Member, Washington Poor People’s Campaign When society puts people’s lives in jeopardy, so they die, it commits social murder, which is more malicious than individual murder because it is rendered invisible.  It is a violence that is not seen as such. It’s only natural for us to want so badly for it to be over—this pandemic that has left so much death and destruction in its wake. Yet, if we learned one thing from the COVID-19 epidemic it is this: that all of our lives depend on things not going back to normal. The exploitative economic and social systems that created the conditions for many of the negative outcomes associated with the virus are still…

Reprinted from the The Seattle Times, March 6, 2022 Author Nicholas Mele is a retired U.S. diplomat, currently coordinates the Pax Christi USA Working Group on Nuclear Disarmament and serves on the Pax Christi International Working Group on Nuclear Abolition. He lives in Bellingham. Events in Ukraine are far from Puget Sound and, despite real-time reporting and video from the conflict, often seem just another level of anxiety. Russian President Vladimir Putin has brought the war much closer to home with his decision to put his nuclear forces on high alert. In fact, one reason for the cautious U.S. and European response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is concern about triggering any use of nuclear weapons. Residents of Western Washington…

A summary of an article in The Journal of the Whatcom County Historical Society by Dan Hammill pp 38-54 entitled “Peace Underground: Quietly Helping War Resisters Reach Safety in Canada.”  (not yet posted on the Historical Society website at this date 4/1/2022) by John M Repp This article tells us about a story from Bellingham during the Vietnam War, from 1966 to 1973. There were similar efforts in many other locations around the U.S, but the proximity of Bellingham to Canada was an impetus to the efforts described here. The article contains short biographies of some of the key figures, many of whom are now dead. Nearly 50,000 draft age men emigrated to Canada during the Vietnam war. Many had…

Bernie Sanders Opening Statement to the Senate Budget Committee: April 5, 2022 Have you heard the words below on the mainstream media? If not, why not? Bernie Sanders, still the most popular politician in the United States, is calling the United States “an oligarchy”. While millions of workers are getting paid starvation wages, over the last 45 years there has been a huge transfer of wealth, to the tune of $50 trillion dollars, from the bottom 90% of Americans workers to the top 1%. The 1% use a little bit of their wealth to control the government through their donations to politicians which is essentially bribery and corruption. The 1% also have a control over much of the news media:…

A review of Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America (New York: Viking, 2017) Is the U.S. a democracy? by John M Repp There has been a lot of talk lately about democracy in the United States. We like to think we are a democratic nation and contrast our system with the other two great powers in the world, Russia and China. Nancy MacLean published Democracy in Chains in 2017. The main story focuses on a Nobel prize-winning  economist who developed the “ideas” that the vast Koch network of organizations like ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), (the whole stealth network is larger than the Republican party) uses to undercut the will of most…

A review of James M. Lawson Jr., with Michael K. Honey and Kent Wong. Revolutionary Nonviolence: Organizing for Freedom (Oakland: University of California Press, 2022) by John M Repp This book is a transcript of recent talks by Reverend James M. Lawson, Jr. with a foreword by Angela Davis, an introduction by Michael Honey and a brief biography of Lawson by Kent Wong. Lawson is 93 and still working for justice, now in Los Angeles. Lawson was the workshop trainer in nonviolence in the campaign to desegregate downtown Nashville in 1960. The main tactic used there was the sit-in at lunch counters in the downtown stores. Lawson tells us that he spent months training people in nonviolence before the actions.…