Introducing the WILPF CCS Committee: Connecting Us and Moving into Visibility

March 2024

How many balls can one seal juggle over its head? Don’t we all feel like this at times? Our new committee is committed! Our WILPF Communications/Culture & the Arts/Sensitization Committee (CCS) is committed to helping us connect with each other so that we know about all of our contributions and make use of those creative gifts we all have. We also need to connect across generations. Shilpa Pandey of our membership and Development Committee said that we need to be our own time machine and link arms with the future and younger people.

Every WILPF activity might have some new push if we keep in mind: (Each one of these points could have its own article!)

• Are we connected with major media?
• What contacts do our members have?
• Can we brainstorm contacts in the media?
• How does this activity attract younger people?
• Are we being creative enough?
• Do we value creativity here at WILPF?

Communications is where many actions of WILPF could use more wind in their sails. By keeping in touch with people in the media we already know at each branch level, we establish a valuable tool for media access outside the usual peace activist internal communications. Internal communications are important to make us aware of what others are doing within WILPF and co-sponsoring organizations. We also need to look outward and make WILPF visible to those who haven’t yet been introduced to us.

We can use more mainstream corporate media to help support our points. We need to quote a variety of news and commentary sources. If we quote mostly our own peace organizational newsletters, YouTube, Zoom guests and other easily politically pigeonholed media, then those who feel non-partisan may stop listening. There are “insider” Beltway magazines and journals, such as Foreign Policy magazine, that make similar points as WILPF. This will get us “heard” by a new segment of the reading and viewing public. 

Our CCS committee can help here, too. We can look for corporate media articles and events that make our points without having to rely on what may be considered highly partisan media sources. The public who have not thought about, say nuclear disarmament, will be impressed if a corporate media article also says what our other sources say about the dangers of nuclear weapons.  Consider this August 12, 2023 piece in Forbes: Hideko Tamura, Hiroshima Survivor: “That’s When I Lost My Childhood” by Jim Clash.

Hideko Tamura, our media savvy WILPF member who was a child survivor of the Hiroshima blast was interviewed by Forbes, the Wall Street financial publication. Citing that interview in our flyers could take our case against nuclear weapons stockpiling out of the peace activist publications and into a whole different readership. People who read Forbes mainly for its news coverage may find that they are not convinced of the “wisdom” of nuclear stockpiles. If an article in Forbes or its like mentions WILPF, this may prompt the reader to inquire further.

Also note that the author Jim Clash is not a reporter of activist issues. His specialties are listed as “extreme adventure and classic rock”. Should we write him off as some “insider” uninterested in our work at WILPF? How many people read this interview in Forbes? How many  Forbes readers do not read our internal peace communications? Did anybody from WILPF thank this reporter or ask if he would like updates in Hideko? These are questions may be discussed in our CCS Committee.

Why? Because we are creative! Creative people can find creative solutions to how we work. When asked to associate two common things, creative people tend to pick a less common answer, such as, for salt and ____, they might say “ocean” rather than “pepper”. Rhetorical question: “How do new ideas come into an organization like WILPF? Through its creatives – those people who see imagery, who make music and sing, who write poetry and prose, who perform on the streets and on TV and radio (don’t write any of these off.) 

Our scope in WILPF US’s CCS Committee is to:
(C) Access to and use of major communications media, help with rhetoric; 
(C) Valuing and workshopping ideas in culture and the arts, and
(S) Sensitization to matters of difference, especially awareness of our youth audience. 

If you are curious for more information, contact Glo McMillan at scifi200111@gmail.com