Branch Happenings: Triangle (NC), Maine, & JA Branch

Published on October, 35 2020

Maine WILPF member Denny Dreher holds one of several large photo panels from the Japan Council against A & H bombs that was part of a 75th anniversary commemoration event cosponsored by the branch on August 8, 2020.

October 2020

Triangle Branch Active in GOTV Work and Contested Election Trainings

By Lucy Lewis
Triangle (NC) Branch

Our WILPF branch started holding our monthly second Saturday meetings via Zoom in April; we have now added a monthly informal political discussion the fourth Saturday of each month. Some members have attended in-person events around various issues including racial justice, supporting the US Postal Service, and supporting a caravan of Temporary Protected Status persons facing deportation.

We cosponsored our local Hiroshima/Nagasaki Remembrance on August 6, a virtual program that can be watched on YouTube: Remembering Hiroshima 75 Years Ago.

On September 27, WILPF Triangle was one of the cosponsors for Breaking Barriers: Women of Color and the Right to Vote, an online webinar with keynote speaker Dr. Valerie Johnson of Shaw University. Triangle member Lucy Lewis was one of the panelists, speaking as a white woman about the complex history of white women and the suffrage movement. The recording will be available soon.

As members of the Orange County Community Remembrance Coalition, a partner with the Equal Justice Initiative, we are also helping to sponsor a series of six events in October: The Light of Truth - October Virtual Series Honoring Ida B. Wells including a keynote address by Nikole Hannah-Jones on October 3, which will be linked to GOTV efforts.

Currently, our key focus is twofold:

1. Doing GOTV through phone banking, texting, and mailing postcards through one of the many nonpartisan NC groups (NAACP, Poor People’s Campaign, etc.);

2. Preparing for a contested election and possible coup. Many of us are attending the trainings by George Lakey, taking the pledge on https://choosedemocracy.us/ and developing plans to reach out to our networks re: taking a similar pledge to elected officials.  

OUR PLEDGE: 

  1. We will vote.
  2. We will refuse to accept election results until all the votes are counted.
  3. We will nonviolently take to the streets if a coup is attempted.
  4. If we need to, we will shut down this country to protect the integrity of the democratic process.

There are excellent related resources on the ChooseDemocracy.US website, including registration for the October 1 and 6 trainings and Hold the Line, a step-by-step handbook on how to prepare and what to do in case attempts are made to subvert the election results.

We strongly encourage WILPF members to engage with some of these trainings, readings, and resources.

 

WILPF Maine Commemorates 75th Anniversary of Hiroshima & Nagasaki Bombings

By Barbara West and Martha Spiess
WILPF Maine

Christine DeTroy WILPF Maine commemorated the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 8, 2020, in Payson Park, Portland, in collaboration with Pax Christi Maine, Peace Action Maine (PAM), Maine Veterans for Peace, and Peaceworks. We distributed strings of paper cranes shared with us from WILPF’s national office with the helpful guidance of Eileen Kurkoski, and we handed out copies of Peace and Planet. The event featured a self-guided tour of several large photo panels shared with PAM from the Japan Council against A & H bombs. Denny Dreher shared a statement from Christine DeTroy, and she read accounts by Hibakusha and the poem “Give Me Water”. We handed out copies of the World’s Nuclear Warheads Count June 2020.

(Photo: Maine WILPFer Christine DeTroy wearing strings of paper cranes.)

Afterwards, we shared Tsukuru Fors’s presentation: The Two Faces of Nuclear, From Hiroshima to Fukushima, which includes drawings by Hibakusha from the Japanese Peace Museums. A poem by MEVfP’s Doug Rawlings was read. We collaborated with Peace Action Maine to hear Professor Elaine Scarry speak virtually  about her book Thermonuclear Monarchy.

The next day we held a similar event in Brunswick on the green where, last year, the 15th Annual Peace Fair was held (an event long organized by Christine DeTroy). This year, tradition carried on with a COVID-distanced performance of Sadako and the Thousand Cranes.

“Never again!” has been the plea heard over these 75 years from the Hibakusha, the survivors and witnesses of those bombings, their children and grandchildren, and the many groups throughout the world that work tirelessly for the abolition of all nuclear weapons. As Pope John Paul II said when he visited Hiroshima, “To remember the past is to commit oneself to the future.” 

The Jane Addams Branch Is Gathering: Join Us!

By Dianne Blais
JA Branch Convener

The Jane Addams branch is a virtual branch made up of at-large members who don’t get to enjoy the warm sisterhood of having a local branch but work together virtually on projects and actions. We support the WILPF US issue committees and work to grow and strengthen WILPF.

At our next meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 21 at 5:00 PT / 8:00 ET we hope to learn more about the issue committees and WILPF, and to have a couple of issue committee chairs speak.

All at-large members not currently in the JA branch are welcome to join!

Contact me, Dianne Blais, at dianneblais@aol.com.

 

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