Peninsula/Palo Alto Branch Achieves Lobbying Victories

This poster for the documentary film Atomic Homefront is based on a 1976 political cartoon by Tom Engelhardt.

By Judy Adams
Member, Peninsula/Palo Alto DISARM/Nuclear Issues Committee

Our branch has successfully lobbied East Palo Alto and Menlo Park, CA, to join Mayors for Peace. The branch is also working with Palo Alto, which had belonged to MfP for 28 years, but resigned in 2013. We may expand our campaign to other nearby cities.

The awarding of the Menlo Park Proclamation[1] was particularly moving as it was presented to a branch member at the City Council meeting on August 6th—Hiroshima Day—by the Mayor, Peter Ohtaki, who is of Japanese American ancestry. The mayor had recently returned from one of two Menlo Park Sister Cities that belong to MfP, Bizen, Japan, with a group of Menlo Park students. He spoke of his visit to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and closed the Council meeting by dedicating the occasion to those who lost their lives in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the continued suffering of those who survived.

Coincidentally, on the same evening in Palo Alto, our branch hosted a community screening of the film Atomic Homefront, to bring home the dangers of radioactive waste in the US. The film portrays the fight for environmental justice in Missouri, which has been led mostly by women. We opened the program with a moment of silence in commemoration of Hiroshima Day.

Our other related news is success on the CA legislative front. Before the California State Senate recessed on August 31, it passed two resolutions and will send them to our Governor for signature: One against first-strike use of nuclear weapons and the other urging nuclear disarmament.[2] See our Facebook page for announcements and updates. We thank WILPF branches for responding to our emailed request for calls/emails supporting these two resolutions.

We have started to more closely watch our state legislature for bills that support WILPF’s values and goals, and to seek members’ suggestions for “CA Legislation Action” emails that we can send out to encourage participation in state and US government, and in the upcoming midterm elections.  

We will continue to collect signatures on WILPF’s petition for the UN Treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons, and hold protests against nuclear weapons at our weekly peaceful demonstrations.

We encourage other branches to follow their state legislatures for similar allies who will pass bills and support efforts to get signatures on the WILPF petition in support of the 2017 UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

^[1]Request a copy of the proclamation from wilpf.peninsula.paloalto@gmail.com.
^[2]Here is the text of both resolutions:
AJR-30 
AJR-33