We need to talk about nuclear war

We need to talk about nuclear war

People don’t want to talk about the threat of nuclear war. In late September I did two book talks, one in Bellingham at Village Books and one in the local public library of Cashmere, WA. Both were poorly attended in spite of extensive phone calls, postcards, and media to folks who paid attention to this issue of Washington State being a major target of nuclear aggression in the 1980s. The multimedia slide show was the program at the Cashmere United Methodist Church in 1985. Reaching out to them in 2019 yielded nothing. In Bellingham, the anti-nuclear folk had exhausted their energy on the topic at a rally a few days before my appearance.

What is going on?

  1. Immediate problems are taking up all the social justice bandwidth. People working for a better world are preoccupied with homelessness and immigration and the results of income inequality.
  2. So far so good. The present nuclear stockpile has kept up from going into a nuclear war. Right? Peace Through Strength must be working.
  3. We’ve forgotten or failed to notice or gotten used to the presence of massive nuclear fire-power headquartered on Hood Canal at the Bangor Trident Submarine Base.

Get out of our silos of concern. Three conditions hold us hostage:

  1. Global disaster
  2. nuclear disaster
  3. extreme income disparity

Where is all the money going? To the military.

We need conventional weapons. We don’t need nuclear weapons, especially not new “usable” low yield nuclear weapons. No nuclear weapon is safe to use. Ever. That money could help solve the other two conditions.

You, dear reader, you can make a difference. Talk about nuclear weapons and why we don’t need them. Make the connection between nuclear weapons, the devastation of our environment and the extreme income disparity. Tell your Members of Congress what you think.

Need inspiration? Read Open Borders. Amazon has a copy. So does your local library in you live in the Seattle area. Wherever you live, if you and two friends ask your library for the book, they’ll buy it and put it in circulation.

Invite me to come talk. I have a good slide show to go along with the reading.

Betsy