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Hiroshima-Nagasaki Commemoration Peace Witness at Pentagon (Aug. 6th) and White House (Aug. 9th)
Dear Friends,
To commemorate the 79th anniversary of the sinful and criminal U.S. nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker, in concert with other peacemakers from the DMV, invites you to attend a prayer vigil/witness on Monday, August 6th outside the Pentagon, and on August 9th, outside the White House.
We will remember and pray for the victims of these unspeakable nuclear atrocities and all those who witnessed the destructive power of nuclear weapons use, testing and mining–hibakusha, pacific islanders, Native Americans, downwinders, and all other victims of nuclearism–and call for nuclear abolition.
Pope Francis has declared that the possession of nuclear weapons is immoral, and 70 countries have now ratified the new UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) which entered into force on January 22, 2021, thereby making nuclear weapons illegal under International law. The nine nuclear-armed nations — the U.S., Russia, United Kingdom, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea — have not signed the treaty, nor has any nation from the NATO alliance.
On January 24, 2024, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reset the Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds before midnight, the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been. This is due to the existential threats of nuclear war and the climate crisis, bio- and cyber threats, nuclear proliferation, state-sponsored disinformation and Artificial Intelligence. The Ukraine war has further exacerbated the nuclear peril between the two foremost nuclear powers as both Russian and U.S. nuclear arsenals are now on high alert.
On June 17, 2024, ICAN released a report about global nuclear weapons spending in 2023 totaling over $91 billion. The United States’ share of total spending, $51.5 billion, is more than all the other nuclear-armed countries put together and accounts for 80% of the increase in nuclear weapons spending in 2023. The next biggest spender was China which spent $11.8 billion with Russia spending the third largest amount at $8.3 billion.
https://www.icanw.org/global_
The U.S. nuclear arsenal upgrade now underway is estimated to cost $1.7 trillion over the next several decades, while poverty increases, the climate crisis worsens, and basic human needs go unmet.
The Navy has contracted with General Dynamics to build the Columbia class nuclear subs to replace the existing Trident fleet. Twelve Columbia class subs will cost over $120 billion and the first of these subs will be named the USS District of Columbia. This is sinful and criminal! As these exorbitant resources are spent on weapons of mass murder, 90 people died without the dignity of home last year in D.C.
In case you didn’t hear about this, the USS Florida Trident nuclear submarine, now refitted with Tomahawk cruise missiles, was deployed on November 5, 2023 to the Middle East, in support of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. On July 5, 1982, the Trident Nein carried out a plowshares action directed at the USS Florida at General Dynamics/EB in Groton, CT—a witness I was blessed to be part of. We join our voice with all those urgently calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, an end to all U.S. military aid and weapons to Israel and U.S. complicity in the genocide, forced starvation and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, an end to the occupation of Palestine, and for a just peace for Palestine and Israel.
As we call on the nation to repent for the nuclear sin, abolish all nuclear weapons, ratify the TPNW, and redirect exorbitant military and nuclear expenditures to meet urgent human needs, we do so in solidarity with actions taking place around the U.S. and worldwide. In the U.S. see: https://www.nuclearbantreaty.
The Hibakusha plead to the world: “Humanity and nuclear weapons cannot co-exist.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. exhorts us: “The choice today is…either nonviolence or nonexistence.”
Pope Francis declares: “Nor can we fail to be genuinely concerned by the catastrophic humanitarian and environmental effects of any employment of nuclear devices. If we also take into account the risk of an accidental detonation as a result of error of any kind, the threat of their use, as well as their very possession, is to be firmly condemned…The total elimination of nuclear weapons is…a moral and humanitarian imperative of our time.”
Please join us and share this invitation with friends.