On the weekend of May 19 and 20, Youth Arts New York / Hibakusha Stories in partnership with members of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize winning ICAN (the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons), Rise & Resist, Clearwater Sloop, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom’s Reaching Critical Will , the Manhattan Project for a Nuclear Free World, the War Resisters League and Gays Against Guns launched a campaign calling on New York City to divest its pension funds from nuclear weapons producers. The event was organized by Youth Arts New York Founder Robert Croonquist in celebration of his 70th birthday.
“Comptroller Stringer oversees the pension fund management for New York’s police, firefighters and teachers,” said Hibakusha Stories Director Kathleen Sullivan, PhD. “We demand that NYC craft a public policy so that our pensions don’t profit from nuclear weapon production.”
On Saturday, May 19 a stormy teach-in was held onboard the Mystic Whaler for sixty artists, activists and educators. Hibakusha Stories Director Kathleen Sullivan led an interactive exercise on the nuclear fuel chain and the radioactive contamination that happens at every stage of its production.
Mitchie Takeuchi, filmmaker, second generation A-bomb survivor and granddaughter of the president of the Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital on August 6, 1945, discussed the discrimination and shame that second generation A-bomb survivors suffer and about A Vow from the Ruins, a documentary she is making with Susan Strickler about the life and work of A-bomb survivor Setsuko Thurlow.
Mari Inoue, Human Rights lawyer and co-founder of the Manhattan Project for a Nuclear Free World, spoke about the ongoing catastrophe at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
Ray Acheson, member of ICAN’s International Steering Group and Director of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom’s Reaching Critical Will and Tim Wright, ICAN Treaty Coordinator, discussed the the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and the work for its ratification.
Manna Jo Greene, Environmental Director for Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, discussed civil society’s participation in the safe decommissioning and just transition of the Indian Point nuclear energy facility 35 miles upstream from midtown Manhattan and Seth Shelden introduced the NYC Nuclear Weapons Divestment campaign and our next steps.
On Sunday a dozen members of the team began the campaign by leafleting Brighton Beach Pride as artist and activist Elsa Krajewska and her crew sailed by with sails that read, “Don’t Bank on the Bomb.”
As young people are stepping up for their right to inhabit non-violent spaces, non-nuclear weapons countries are also taking a stand to abolish those weapons that could end all life on earth.
