Sept. 21: Peace 1, Nuclear Missiles 0

I just got word that the US Air Force has postponed the planned test of a Minuteman III nuclear missile. It was originally scheduled for September 21, the International Day of Peace. The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, together with organizations around the world and many thousands of our supporters, worked hard to register our ardent opposition to this test.

Of course there has been no government statement saying, "We were wrong to schedule this test on the International Day of Peace and now recognize the problems inherent in our continued reliance on missile testing and nuclear weapons." Nor will there ever be such a statement. But we should all be proud of our work against this test, and we must continue to spread the message that the only to stay safe from a nuclear attack is to implement a Nuclear Weapons Convention for the phased, verifiable, transparent and irreversible elimination of all nuclear weapons worldwide.

A Struggle for Democracy

Big things have been happening in Kansas City, Missouri over the past few months. For decades, the Kansas City Plant has manufactured the vast majority of non-nuclear components for the US nuclear arsenal. For the first time in the long history of nuclear proliferation around the world, a new plant was proposed that would be effectively owned by a city, financed through $815 million in municipal bonds. An inspiring group of citizens, calling themselves the Kansas City Peace Planters, has resisted this proposal with a welcome degree of success thus far.

The Peace Planters have engaged in civil disobedience at the construction site of the new plant, calling for the new plant to engage in green energy work instead of destructive nuclear weapons work. This has brought media attention to the issue and has increased public awareness of the outrageous proposal to build new nuclear weapons facilities 20 years after the end of the Cold War.