Alice was originally a New York school teacher. In 1968 she was watching TV and saw a program about Vietnam becoming a communist country, and on that same night the students at Columbia University were rioting in protest of the war, which terrified her. The very next day she went down to the Democratic Club and joined, and within a month she was the co-chair of Eugene McCarthy’s campaign on Long Island. Once her youngest child went to college she attended to law school and eventually wound up getting involved in the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. She’s now a United Nations representative working to ban nuclear weapons.
Alice tells us there are 17,000 nuclear weapons on the planet, and 16,000 of them are in U.S. and Russia. A nuclear bomb is made out of the waste of a nuclear reactor. We are currently developing a whole new warhead, and we are not even being threatened. This is a huge waste of time and money.
Segment 2: Military Industrial Complex. Eisenhower warned us about the Military Industrial Complex. When Kennedy stopped the atmospheric testing, the testing went underground. Clinton finally stopped the underground testing (the Soviet Union halted it first) but then the industry went into the labs.
There was a Non-Proliferation Treaty signed in 1970 between 5 nuclear weapon states: U.S., Russia, England, China and France. They promised to give up their nuclear weapons if all the other countries in the world promised not to use them. Everyone signed except India, Pakistan and Israel. The treaty was supposed to expire in 1995, but many non-governmental agencies showed up at the United Nations to lobby the governments to make good on their promise of disarmament. The treaty was renewed indefinitely and the Abolition 2000 Network was formed to draft a nuclear weapons treaty and international renewable energy agency treaty, which is in effect.
Segment 3: Government is not Going to Save Us. Iran wants the technology to make nuclear power. There’s been a move to control the proliferation of materials, so a number of countries want to get their hands on the technology. There is no way to handle the waste. Nuclear power is highly technical and there is only a select group of people who know how to handle it. There is no rational reason for engaging in the development of nuclear weapons. What’s in our favor is that the earth can’t take it anymore and people are becoming more aware of the issue. Government is not going to save us. Citizens need to take steps to change this themselves.
Segment 1: War is Not Inevitable. War is not inevitable. It’s time to think about different possibilities. Alice thinks NATO should be disbanded, as she views it just as an old military alliance. We need to work locally but also look after foreign policy and make sure the policy makers stay on task. To find out more about Alice’s work, please visit www.abolition2000.org.
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