PeaceWorks Kansas City lobbies for nuclear disarmament, noting “Nuclear weapons are illegal”

Ann Suellentrop and Charles Carney discuss activities of PeaceWorks Kansas City in working toward nuclear disarmament.  They’ve done this in various ways including nonviolent direct action and lobbying public officials.

Every Memorial Day for the past several years, members and supporters of PeaceWorks have gathered at the Kansas City National Security Campus, which makes 85 percent of the non-nuclear parts in US nuclear weapons.  A few trespass on the property of the National Security Campus and get arrested for it.

In particular, Henry Stoever is scheduled to come to trial January 26, 1:30 PM, Courtroom G, Kansas City, Missouri, Municipal Court, for his trespassing 2021-05-31. Jim Hannah, Tom Mountenany, Brother Louis Rodemann and Brian Terrell are scheduled for trial February 18, 2022, 1:30 PM, Court A, for their trespass on that date.  For information on a pretrial rally or any changes in trial dates, see PeaceWorks’ invitation to “Do ‘court support’ at 1/26 and 2/18 trials of nuke protesters” at PeaceWorks’s website.

Some of the trespassers in previous Memorial Day protests have spent time in jail.  Others merely have paid a fine and done community service while on probation.  Some have their charges dismissed when the government declines to prosecute.  Many in PeaceWorks are card carrying scofflaws.

Many PeaceWorks supporters protested drone warfare at Whiteman Air Force Base 2021-11-29, and they are planning to do that again. Charles Carney completed a “Peace Walk” from Wichita to the Kansas City National Security Campus between 2021-08-10 and 2021-09-20.

And PeaceWorks members are lobbying their elected officials in Washington, asking them to support a bill for “No first use” of nuclear weapons (S.1148 / H.R.669) and using funds earmarked to “modernize” our nuclear weapons and delivery systems instead to develop a universal coronavirus vaccine.  Under current law, the President of the US has the sole authority to order a nuclear first strike, which could easily involve over a thousand Hiroshimas lofting so much smoke into the stratosphere that it would rarely get above freezing in many parts of the world, even in the summertime, for several years.  An estimated 98 percent of humanity would starve to death if they did not die of something else sooner.  In today’s hyper-polarized political climate, each major party seems to believe that the president of the opposition party is crazy and could easily try to start a war in an attempt to stay in power, like the Argentine Generals in 1982.  Do the leaders of each party want a president of the opposition party to have that authority?

PeaceWorks members are also lobbying municipal officials asking them to follow the example of New York City in joining the ICAN Cities Appeal and divesting from companies involved in making and maintaining nuclear weapons.

AND January 22 marks the first anniversary of the Entry Into Force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.  On average one new state party has joined treaty each month since 2017-09-20, with Peru joining 2021-12-23.

This work has gained new support recently in a 2022-01-11 pastoral letter from John Wester, Archbishop of Santa Fe, in which he repeated Pope Francis’ statement that it is immoral to possess nuclear weapons.

Copyright 2022 Spencer Graves Creative Commons Attribution Share-alike 4.0 international license.

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