In New York City, volunteer members of Peace Action NYS, Hibakusha Stories, ICAN (recipient of 2017 Nobel Peace Prize), Manhattan Project for a Nuclear-Free World and other organizations in the New York area will celebrate the historic moment by delivering roses and thank-you notes during the week of January 18 to the Permanent Missions to the United Nations of the 51 state parties that ratified the Treaty. They will comply with the CDC’s and New York State’s COVID-19 guidelines, including wearing masks and practicing social distancing, to protect themselves and others.
“We would like to express our deepest gratitude to those 51 state parties for their brave actions by ratifying the Treaty,” said Sally Jones, chair of Peace Action Fund of New York State, “despite enormous pressure from nuclear weapon states not to sign or ratify it. Right now, the Treaty does not legally bind the United States, because we have not signed or ratified it, but that does not mean we will not be feeling the moral force of the Treaty. All nuclear weapons, including the US stockpile, have been declared unlawful by the international community.”
The “Roses to Missions” in New York City is just one of many events happening around the country. At nuclear weapons production sites in Tennessee, Kansas City, New Mexico and California, banners declaring NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARE ILLEGAL will be hung on fences at the plant entrance. Letters will be delivered to members of Congress. University campuses that are engaged in support activities for weapons production will be asked to reconsider their activities.
“The entry into force of the Treaty is just a beginning of a new movement to confront nuclear weapon states and demand that they stop producing or upgrading any more nuclear weapons and agree to destroy those illegal weapons in accordance with the Treaty,” said Mari Inoue, attorney and a co-founding member of Manhattan Project for a Nuclear-Free World. “We also need to confront the states that rely on the so-called ‘nuclear umbrella’ of the nuclear weapon states that such reliance could be a form of conspiring to engage in unlawful activities under international law, because the Treaty not only prohibits nations from developing, producing, stockpiling or threatening to use nuclear weapons, but also it prohibits nations from encouraging or inducing anyone to engage in any of these activities.  If you are residents of those states that rely on the nuclear umbrella of nuclear states, demand that your government not be part of such unlawful activities.”
For more information on other activities go to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) events page at www.icanw.org/events. For more information on local activities, contact: info@panys.org.