International Day of Peace Celebrated by WILPF Branches All Over the US
Published on November, 49 2020
To celebrate the International Day of Peace, the Greater Philadelphia branch helped to create a clothesline from which hung fact sheets describing how much money Philadelphia taxpayers pay towards the military in a year and the local items that money could have bought instead. Photo by WILPF member Tina Shelton, used with her permission.
By Cherrill Spencer and Margaret Pecoraro
Co-team Coordinators of the Ceasefire/75th Solidarity Event Planning Team
November 2020
Many WILPF US branches celebrated the International Day of Peace on September 21, 2020, which marked the conclusion of the “CEASEFIRE/75th Solidarity Season” that had begun in early August. Branches and individual members focused on the topics highlighted in the second segment of the solidarity season.
An article in the September eNews described the many successful WILPF events held in the first segment in August to commemorate the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.
In late August, our solidarity planning team prepared and distributed twelve more resource guides so that branches could focus on a new set of topics and arrange activities based on them between August 21 and September 21. These were the topics covered in the guides: the Global Ceasefire that was requested by the United Nations Secretary General; the founding of the UN in 1945 and its current work, especially in disarmament matters; arms control treaties; why we don’t want nuclear weapons testing to be re-started; the connections between militarism and racism, the warming climate, environmental devastation, and the COVID-19 pandemic; how to counteract militarism; two play scripts about people’s reactions to nuclear weapons; two collections of inspirational stories and poems; and celebrating the International Day of Peace on the 21st of September which was the last day of our CEASEFIRE/75th solidarity season.
If you have not received any of the above resource guides from your branch contact, or if you are a member-at-large and would like to receive any or all of the new guides by email, then write to cherrill.m.spencer@gmail.com and specify which topic you would like. Most of these resources will continue to be useful into the future.
Update on Branch Participation in First Part of the Solidarity Season
When I reported on the first part of our solidarity season in the September eNews, I wrote that 19 branches and one issue committee did activities around the topic of the 75th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I am pleased to report that I heard from about five more branches reporting their Hiroshima and Nagasaki activities since then, making a grand total of 24 branches and the DISARM/End Wars committee taking part. Fourteen of those 24 branches then carried on to focus on the new topics the planning team had chosen for the second part of the season, and many individual members took part through watching the online premiere of the film “We Are Many,” a very inspirational documentary about the millions of people around the globe who stood together in solidarity in February 2003 to reject the United States invasion of Iraq.
Some Branches Stymied by Wildfires, Others Planned Activities for September 21st
Much of northern California, where we have ten branches, and Oregon, where we have two branches, were distracted by the many huge wildfires burning in August and September, which degraded our air quality for several weeks and forced some members to evacuate or be ready to evacuate. Nevertheless, all branches paid attention to the information on the International Day for Peace and the many ideas for how to celebrate it that we sent in resource guide #20, and they came up with several ways to honor the day as described below.
The International Day of Peace was established in 1981 by the United Nations General Assembly. Two decades later, in 2001, the General Assembly unanimously voted to designate the day as a period of nonviolence and ceasefire. The United Nations invited all nations and people to honour a cessation of hostilities during this day, and to otherwise commemorate it through education and public awareness on issues related to peace.
The theme for 2020 was “Shaping Peace Together.” This year, it has been more clear than ever that we are not each other’s enemies. Rather, our common enemy is a tireless virus that threatens our health, security, and very way of life. COVID-19 has thrown our world into turmoil and forcibly reminded us that what happens in one part of the planet can impact people everywhere. As we struggle to defeat COVID-19, our voice is more important than ever. In these difficult times of physical distancing, this International Day of Peace will be dedicated to fostering dialogue and collecting ideas.
Members in our Bloomington (Indiana), Humboldt County (California), and San Jose (California) branches participated in such dialogues and “dreamed together about a world of peace.” Portland (Oregon) branch members collaborated with other activist groups on political tasks and Tucson (Arizona) members joined demonstrations outside nuclear weapons manufacturer Raytheon.
Six Branches Develop Creative Ways to Celebrate the International Day of Peace
Members in the Humboldt County (California) branch developed an International Day of Peace Proclamation that was proclaimed by the Arcata City Council. They also worked with a local group that focuses on addressing mental health issues to organize an online peace day celebration, which included a keynote by a local mental health professional, some performances by local poets and singers, and speeches about racism, the COVID-19 crisis, and peace. This was all captured in a two-hour video which you can watch here and includes two songs by the Arcata Raging Grannies.
Above photo: Arcata Raging Grannies singing about peace, still photo taken, with permission, from the Humboldt County peace day video found here. They appear again at 1 hour 45 minutes.
Our Des Moines (Iowa) branch members had a busy International Peace Day starting with zoomed book club meeting and later they attended an observance they had organized in the town center which was livestreamed. All day a local artist worked with different seeds to create a sculpture of a dove’s eye over a map of the world. At the same time, a couple was making the same sculpture in Christchurch, New Zealand, to commemorate the 51 people who died at the hand of one gunman. Piles of feathers were sprinkled on the dove’s eye, together they represented hope. Then a young woman danced around the dove’s eye to live harp music. You can watch the beautiful 15-minute video made by a branch member here to find out how the dance progressed.
Our Cape Cod (Massachusetts) branch members put WILPF and END WAR yard signs in front of their houses, together with a photo of the Peace Rose, cultivated in 1945, and an explanation about International Peace Day, see the nearby photo. Several members wrote to various entities and to congressional reps expressing their concerns and opposition to the proposed Otis Machine Gun Range.
Photo: Yard signs in a Cape Cod branch member’s yard to inform passers-by about the International Day of Peace. Photo by Elenita Muniz, used with her permission.
The Greater Philadelphia branch developed a clothesline exhibit focussing on militarism and how it takes away from effectively addressing COVID-19 (see the lead photo at the beginning of this article). They found out how much Philadelphia taxpayers pay into the US military budget in a year ($1.96 billion) and worked out how this huge amount of money could have been spent on useful items such as 22,656 elementary school teacher annual salaries, or 541.2 million COVID-19 tests. They hung a clothesline with these facts and clipped it all in a public park. They found that passers-by were interested in the data and some wrote pre-addressed postcards to their senators in support of the amendment to the appropriations bill to reduce the military budget by 10%.
The Palo Alto/Peninsula (California) branch celebrated International Peace Day by meeting via zoom and singing the peace-related songs provided in the Resource Guide #20. We were joined by WILPF members from the Sacramento and San Jose branches, as this screenshot of the zoom meeting screen shows. We particularly liked the song “Finlandia” by Jean Sibelius and recommend you watch this four-minute rendition of it if you need a pick-me-up.
Screenshot taken by Darien De Lu and used with her permission.
The DISARM/End Wars Committee organized a webinar on September 20, 2020, with two experts speaking on nuclear weapons and relations between the USA and Russia: Alice Slater, WILPFer and Board member of World Beyond War, and David Swanson, Executive Director of World Beyond War. You can watch a video recording of this interesting webinar here.
Some Branches Held Solidarity Activities after September 21st
Although we had designated the 21st of September as the last day of the CEASEFIRE/75th solidarity season, of course most of its topics continue to be worthy of our attention and activism, and indeed some branches organized events for September 26th, the UN Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. For example, members of the Boston branch stood at a key spot in Newton center with signs about eliminating nuclear weapons and passed out flyers with peace crane pins to cars stopped at the traffic lights.
Many individual members took part in the #wethepeoples2020 online conference on September 26 at which we heard politicians, diplomats, and disarmament experts from all over the world talk about how to move forward on the elimination of nuclear weapons. It was inspiring to see so many organizations in lots of countries working on getting rid of nuclear weapons.
Finding out about the United Nations for resource guides #12 and #20 brought to my attention the vast online resources of the UN and all its agencies, and that it has its own online TV channel where important meetings of the General Assembly, the Security Council, and many committees are broadcasted live. I recommend it to you:
From this website, you can reach video recordings of meetings if they were held at inconvenient times for you.
Our DISARM/End Wars Committee will continue to work on the topics of this solidarity season and you can find out more about their upcoming events and ongoing campaigns in their article in this eNews and on their issue committee webpage.
Concluding Remarks on the CEASEFIRE/75th Solidarity Season
Congratulations and thanks to our many branches who organized informative and inspiring events, activities, and demonstrations during our solidarity season. We send much appreciation to our solidarity season planning team who worked from mid-June to mid-September to plan the format and content of the season and helped produce 28 (!) resource guides which were sent to all the branches.
Branch leaders – please make sure these guides are securely stored in your archives so they can be retrieved and referred to again in the future, as almost all of them remain pertinent to our ongoing work towards nuclear disarmament, ending wars, and dealing with the root causes of wars. In particular they will be useful in our section’s new “Call for Peace” campaign which is just starting as described in WILPF US President Darien De Lu’s email of October 1, 2020.
