GRATITUDE: People Are Making the Difference in Eliminating Nuclear Weapons

Human Peace Sign ("ND" for Nuclear Disarmament)
Ann Arbor, MI, 2003

This is a week for thanksgiving.

This year I'm using this week to lift up the names of some of the people to whom I am grateful -- specifically, for their work in trying to bring about the elimination of nuclear weapons.

There are so many people to thank . . .

Through the visual arts ... photography ... film ... teaching ... activism ... publishing ....

So many people are making a difference in eliminating nuclear weapons . . . . 

To whom are you grateful? Please click on the #NoNukesTuesday stream, retweet some of the expressions of gratitude there, and add some of your own!

And feel free to add your comments to this post as well.

Happy Thanksgiving,

Joe

#Thanksgiving #NoNukesTuesday - to whom are *you* grateful
for their work towards elimination of #nuclearweapons?

My top ten list in progress . . . .

Trident NO Sc☮tland YES

#1 - Faslane 365, and all the other people who have worked to make the elimination of Trident submarines from Scotland and the UK a reality.

Confronting the Risk
PAX asked "What if a nuclear
bomb exploded in Rotterdam?"

#2 - Susi Snyder and her colleagues at the No Nukes team of PAX: research, political lobby and public campaigning to achieve one goal: a world free of nuclear weapons.

Kennette Benedict and the "doomsday
clock": "It's five minutes to midnight!"

#3 - Kennette Benedict, Executive Director and Publisher, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists for keeping the message alive: the science tells us we need to disarm!

Shōmei Tōmatsu,
A Bottle that Was Melted
by Heat Wave and Fires
(from the series Nagasaki 11:02)
Nagasaki, 1961
(View larger version)

#4 - Shōmei Tōmatsu - photographer - for efforts to help us stop, look, and try to imagine the consequences of the use of atomic weapons.

Prof. Norma M. Field

#5 Norma Field (professor emeritus, Robert S. Ingersoll Distinguished Service Professor in Japanese Studies in East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago): through her scholarship and teaching she has shown a generation of people the power of language to convey the horror of injury atomic radiation and blast. Moreover, Norma Field's organizing efforts brought about the creation of a series -- The Atomic Age -- to continue the work of building a movement to prevent that injury.

Roger Brown,
End of the World
(See related exhibition)

#6 Roger Brown - Chicago "imagist" artist - frequently created works explicitly referencing the nuclear threat (e.g. Chain Reaction (When You Hear This Sound You Will Be Dead)), and nearly every one of his paintings features an ominously glowing horizon. Brown's public art in downtown Chicago poses the question: "Who will bring us down to earth?"

Gerald Finley in
Doctor Atomic
(Click for aria
"Batter My Heart")

#7 John Adams and Peter Sellars - who provoked America by creating a full-length opera from the story of the creation of atomic weapons -- Doctor Atomic, which premiered in 2005. (My takeaway from Doctor Atomic: "You've created this monster; you're not done 'til you figure out how to get rid of it.")

Carol Urner
(Click for full-size image of Carol
with Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton
and other colleagues)

#8 Carol Urner of Womens International League for Peace and Freedom and WILPF DISARM! chair: because she is a force of nature!

Hiroshima by John Hersey

#9 John Hersey - author, Hiroshima - for insisting that the truth of the fire and blast of nuclear weapons is something we must come face to face with.

Kazashi Nobuo

#10 Kazashi Nobuo - NO DU Hiroshima Project/ ICBUW Hiroshima Office - for inviting me, through his example, to become a "peace worker."












Related posts

In light of the upcoming review of the NPT (Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons) and the fact that organizations throughout the country and worldwide are organizing to press the U.S. to substantially reduce its stores of nuclear weapons, it seems like a good time to use social media to get EVERYONE on board!

(See 5 Ways YOU Can Make a Difference on #NoNukesTuesday )

"It's not enough to remember this just once a year; it's not enough that we make a single book -- Hiroshima -- required reading, and never go beyond that. There should be a whole canon that people study progressively, year by year, to grasp and retain the horror of this."

(See FIRE AND BLAST: A Curriculum that Confronts Nuclear Danger?)

Make no mistake: the powers that be have know that they have cowed most of the public into being afraid to talk about what's wrong and protest and resist, and that suits them just fine. Our power to act starts with talking widely -- beyond just our usual circles -- about the way in which we're being scared ... and why a government would possibly want to scare its own people.

(See Pentecost, Guantanamo, and the Moment When Talk Becomes Priceless)