Hi.
I'm Alice Slater.
I'm living here in the belly of the beast
in New York City, in Manhattan.
I've been an anti-nuclear activist since 1987,
but I got my start as an activist in 1968,
as a housewife living in Massapequa with my
two babies, and I was watching television
and I saw old news film of Ho Chi Minh going
to Woodrow Wilson in 1919, after World War
one, begging us to help him get the French
out of Vietnam, and we turned him down, and
the Soviets were more than happy to help and
that's how he became a communist.
They showed that he even modelled his Constitution
on ours, and this is when the news showed
you real news.
And the same night the kids at Columbia University
were rioting in Manhattan.
They had locked the president in his office.
They didn't want to go into this terrible
Vietnam War, and I was terrified.
I thought it was like the end of the world,
in America, in New York and my city.
These kids are acting up, I better do something.
I had just turned 30, and they were saying
don't trust anyone over 30.
That was their motto, and I went out to a
Democratic Club that week, and I joined.
They were having a debate between the Hawks
and the Doves, and I joined the Doves, and
I became active in Eugene McCarthy's campaign
to challenge the war in the Democratic Party,
and I never stopped.
That was it, and we went through when McCarthy
lost, we took over the whole Democratic Party.
It took us four years.
We nominated George McGovern and then the
media killed us.
They didn't write one honest word about McGovern.
They didn't talk about the war, poverty or
civil rights, women's rights.
It was all about McGovern's vice president's
candidate having been hospitalized 20 years
earlier for manic depression.
It was like OJ, Monica.
It was just like this junk and he lost very
badly.
And it's interesting because just this month
the Democrats said they're going to get rid
of the super-delegates.
Well they put the super-delegates in after
McGovern got the nomination, because they
were so shocked that ordinary people going
door-to-door – and we didn't have an internet,
we rang doorbells and spoke to people – were
able to capture the whole Democratic Party
and nominate an anti-war candidate.
So that gave me a sense that, even though
I didn't win these battles, democracy can
work.
I mean, the possibility is there for us.
And so how did I become an anti-nuclear activist?
In Massapequa I was a housewife.
Women didn't go to work then.
In my junior high school autograph book, when
they said your life's ambition, I wrote down
“housework”.
This is what we believed in those years.
And I think I'm still doing global housework
when I just want to tell the boys to put away
their toys and clean up the mess they made.
So I went to law school and that was quite
a challenge, and I was working in full-time
civil litigation.
I was out of all my good works that I had
done all those years, and I see in the Law
Journal there's a luncheon for the Lawyers
Alliance for Nuclear Arms Control, and I said,
“Well, that's interesting.”
So I go to the luncheon and I wind up vice-chair
of the New York chapter.
I go on the board with McNamara and Colby.
Stanley Resor, he was Nixon’s Secretary
of Defence, and when we finally got the Comprehensive
Test Ban Treaty passed, he came up and said,
“Now are you happy, Alice?”
Because I was such a nag!
So anyway, there I was with the Lawyers Alliance,
and the Soviet Union under Gorbachev had stopped
nuclear testing.
They had a march in Kazakhstan that was led
by this Kazakh poet Olzhas Suleimenov, because
the people in the Soviet Union were so upset
in Kazakhstan.
They had so much cancer and birth defects
and waste in their community.
And they marched and stop nuclear testing.
Gorbachev said, “Okay, we're not going to
do this anymore.”
And it was underground at that point, because
Kennedy wanted to end nuclear testing and
they wouldn't let him.
So they only ended testing in the atmosphere,
but it went underground, and we did a thousand
tests after it went underground on Western
Shoshone holy land in Nevada, and it was leaking
and poisoning the water.
I mean, it was not a good thing to do.
So we went to Congress and said, “Listen.
Russia,” – our lawyers Alliance, we had
connections there – “Russia stopped,”
(you know Soviet Union after).
“We should stop.”
And they said, “Oh, you can't trust the
Russians.”
So Bill de Wind – who was the founder of
the Lawyers Alliance for Nuclear Arms Control,
was president of The New York City Bar Association,
and was part of the Dutch de Wind’s that
had half the Hudson, you know, early settlers,
real old-wine American – raised eight million
dollars from his friends, put together a team
of seismologists and we went over to the Soviet
Union – a delegation – and we met with
the Soviet Lawyers Association and the Soviet
government and they agreed to allow our American
seismologists to be placed all around the
Kazakh Test Site, so that we could verify
if they were cheating and we came back to
Congress and said, “Okay, you don't have
to trust the Russians.
We have seismologists going there.”
And Congress agreed to stop nuclear testing.
This was like an amazing victory.
But like every victory, it came with a cost
that they would stop and wait 15 months, and
provided that the safety and reliability of
the arsenal and the cost and benefits, they
could have an option to do another 15 nuclear
tests after this moratorium.
And we said we have to stop the 15 nuclear
tests, because it would be bad faith with
the Soviet Union that was letting our seismologists
in and I was at a meeting – the group now
is called the Alliance on Nuclear Accountability
– but it was then the Military Production
Network, and it was all the sites in the US
like Oak Ridge, Livermore, Los Alamos that
were making the bomb, and I had left the law
after the Soviet visit.
An economist asked me if I would help them
set up Economist's Against the Arms Race.
So I became executive director.
I had 15 Nobel laureates and Galbraith, and
we joined this network to do a conversion
project, like economic conversion in the nuclear
weapons facility, and I got lots of funding
from McArthur and Ploughshares – they love
this – and I go to the first meeting and
we're having a meeting and we're saying now
we have to stop the 15 safety tests and Darryl
Kimball, who was then the head of Physicians
for Social Responsibility said, “Oh, no
Alice.
That's the deal.
They're going to do the 15 safety tests.”
And I said I did not agree to that deal, and
Steve Schwartz who later became editor of
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, but at
that time was with Greenpeace, said, “Why
don't we take out a full-page ad in The New
York Times saying ‘Don't Blow It Bill’,
with Bill Clinton with his saxophone.
They were all showing him with a nuclear explosion
coming out of his sax.
So I go back to New York, and I am with the
Economists, and I have free office space – I
used to call these guys communist millionaires,
they were very left-wing but they had a lot
of money and they were giving me free office
space, and I go into the head, Jack's office,
I said, “Jack, we got the moratorium but
Clinton's going to do another 15 safety tests,
and we have to stop it.”
And he says, “What should we do?”
I said, “We need a full-page ad in The New
York Times.”
He said, “How much is it?”
I said, “$75,000”.
He said, “Who's going to pay for it?”
I said, “You and Murray and Bob.”
He says, “Okay, call them up.
If they say ok, I'll put in 25.”
And in ten minutes I raise it, and we have
the poster.
You can see, ‘Don't Blow It Bill’ and
it went on t-shirts and mugs and mouse pads.
It was on every kind of merchandising, and
they never did the 15 extra tests.
We stopped it.
It ended.
And then of course when Clinton signed the
Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty, which was a
huge campaign, they had this kicker in there
where he was giving 6 billion dollars to the
labs for sub-critical tests and laboratory
tests, and they never really stopped, you
know.
He said sub critical tests are not a test
because they blow up plutonium with chemicals
and they did like 30 of them already up in
the Nevada site but because it doesn't have
a chain reaction, he said it's not a test.
Like “I didn't inhale”, “I didn't have
sex” and “I'm not testing”.
So as a result of that, India tested, because
they said we can't have a Comprehensive Test-Ban
Treaty unless we preclude the sub-criticals
and the laboratory tests, because they quietly
had their bomb in the basement, but they weren't
up to us, and they didn't want to be left
behind.
And we did it anyway over their objection,
even though you needed unanimous consent at
the Committee on Disarmament in Geneva, they
took it out of the committee and brought it
to the UN.
The CTBT, opened it up for signature and India
said, “If you don't change it, we're not
signing it.”
And six months later or so they tested, followed
by Pakistan so it was another arrogant, western,
white colonial…
As a matter of fact, I’ll tell you a personal
story.
We had a party at the NGO Committee on Disarmament,
cocktails, to welcome Richard Butler, the
Australian ambassador that had pulled it out
of the Committee over India's objection and
brought it to the UN, and I'm standing and
talking with him and everybody's having a
few drinks, I said, “What are you going
to do about India?”
He says, “I just came back from Washington
and I was with Sandy Berger.”
Clinton's security guy.
“We're gonna screw India.
We're gonna screw India.”
He said it twice like that, and I said, “What
do you mean?”
I mean India is not…
And he kisses me on one cheek and he kisses
me on the other cheek.
You know, tall, good-looking guy and I back
away and I think, if I was a guy he would
never stop me that way.
He stopped me from arguing with him but that
was the mentality.
It's still the mentality.
It's that arrogant, Western, colonial attitude
that's keeping everything in place.
This was wonderful.
We all came to the NPT in 1995.
The non-proliferation treaty was negotiated
in 1970, and five countries, the US, Russia,
China, England and France promised to give
up their nuclear weapons if all the rest of
the world wouldn't get them, and everybody
signed this treaty, except India, Pakistan
and Israel, and they went and got their own
bombs, but the treaty had this Faustian bargain
that if you'd sign the treaty we'll give you
the keys to the bomb factory, because we gave
them so-called “peaceful nuclear power.”
And that's what happened with North Korea,
they got their peaceful nuclear power.
They've walked out, they made a bomb.
We were concerned that Iran might be doing
that because they were enriching their uranium
anyway.
So the treaty’s due to expire, and we all
come to the UN, and this is my first time
at the UN.
I don't know anything about the UN, I'm meeting
people from all over the world, and many of
the founders of abolition 2000.
And there’s one very experienced person
there from the Union of Concerned Scientists,
Jonathan Dean, who was a former ambassador.
And we all had a meeting, the NGOs.
I mean they call us NGOs, non-governmental
organizations, that's our title.
We're not an organization we're “non”,
you know.
So here we are with Jonathan Dean, and he
says, “You know, we NGOs we should draft
a statement.”
And we said, “Oh yeah.”
He says, “I have a draft.”
And he hands it out and it's US Uber Alles,
it's arms control forever.
It didn't ask for abolition, and we said,
“No, we can't sign this.”
And we got together and drafted our own statement,
about ten of us, Jacqui Cabasso, David Krieger,
myself, Alyn Ware.
We were all the old-timers, and we didn't
even have the internet then.
We faxed it out and by the end of the four-week
meeting six hundred organizations had signed
on and in the statement we asked for a treaty
to eliminate nuclear weapons by the year 2000.
We acknowledge the inextricable link between
nuclear weapons and nuclear power, and asked
for the phasing out of nuclear power and the
establishment of an International Renewable
Energy Agency.
And then we organized.
I was running a non-profit, I'd left the Economist's.
I had GRACE, Global Resource Action Center
for the Environment.
So David Krieger was the first Secretariat
at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and then
it moved to me, at GRACE.
We kept it around five years.
I don't think David had five years, but there
was like a five year term.
Then we moved it, you know, we try, we didn't
want to make it…
And when I was at GRACE, we did get the sustainable
energy agency through.
We were part of the…
We joined the Commission on Sustainable Development,
and lobbied and produced this beautiful report
with 188 footnotes, in 2006, that said, sustainable
energy is possible now, and it's still true
and I’m thinking about circulating that
report again because it's not really that
out of date.
And I think we have to speak about the environment
and climate and sustainable energy, together
with nuclear weapons, because we're in this
crisis point.
We can destroy our whole planet either by
nuclear weapons or by catastrophic climate
disasters.
So I'm very involved now in different groups
that are trying to bring the message together.
Well the most positive was we drafted a model
nuclear weapons convention with lawyers and
scientists and activists and policy makers,
and it became an official UN document, and
it had a treaty; here's what you guys have
to sign.
Of course, it could be negotiated but at least
we put out the model for people to see.
It went all over the world.
And the accomplishment of sustainable energy
otherwise…
I mean those were our two goals.
Now what happened in 1998.
Everybody said well, “abolition 2000.”
We said we should have the treaty by the year
2000.
In ‘95, what are you going to do about your
name?
So I said let's get 2000 organizations and
we'll say we're 2000, so that we kept the
name.
So I think it was great.
It would network.
It was in many countries.
It was very non-hierarchical.
The Secretariat went from me to Steve Staples
in Canada, and then it went to Pax Christi
in Pennsylvania, David Robinson – he’s
not around – and then Susi took it, and
now it's with IPB.
But in the meantime, the focus of Abolition
2000 was so NPT-oriented, and now this new
ICAN campaign grew up because they never honoured
their promises.
Even Obama.
Clinton undercut the Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty: it wasn't comprehensive, it didn't
ban tests.
Obama promised, for his little deal that he
made where they got rid of 1500 weapons, a
trillion dollars over the next ten years for
two new bomb factories in Kansas and Oak Ridge,
and planes, submarines, missiles, bombs.
So it's got tremendous momentum, the nuclear
war mongers there, and it's crazy.
You can't use them.
We only used them twice.
Well there's a loophole because it doesn't
promise.
The chemical and biological weapons [treaties]
say they're prohibited, they’re illegal,
they're unlawful, you can't have them, you
can't share them, you can't use them.
The NPT just said, we five countries, we'll
make good-faith efforts – that's the language
– for nuclear disarmament.
Well I was on another lawyers group, The Lawyers
Committee for Nuclear Policy that challenged
the nuclear weapons States.
We brought a case to the World Court, and
the World Court let us down because they left
the loophole there.
They said, nuclear weapons are generally illegal
– that's like being generally pregnant – and
then they said, “We can't say whether they're
illegal in the case where the very survival
of a state is at stake.”
So they allowed deterrence, and that's when
the Ban Treaty idea came.
“Listen.
They're not legal we have to have a document
that says they're prohibited just like chemical
and biological.”
We got a lot of help from the International
Red Cross that changed the conversation because
it was getting very wonky.
It was deterrence and military strategy.
Well they brought it back to the human level
of the catastrophic consequences of the use
of any nuclear weapon.
So they reminded people what these weapons
are about.
We sort of forgot the Cold War is over.
That's another thing!
I thought the cold was over, my goodness,
you know, what's the problem?
I couldn't believe how entrenched they were.
That stockpile stewardship program of Clinton
came after the wall fell.
And then they were a group of old-timers that
felt very bad because they had brought the
World Court [into it].
I was on that board of the Lawyers Committee,
I resigned because I came to make a legal
argument.
They weren't supporting the Ban Treaty because
they were so invested in what they had done
in the World Court that they were trying to
argue, “Well, they’re already illegal
and we don't need a treaty to say they’re
banned.”
And I thought that was not a good strategy
for changing the conversation and I was dismissed.
“You don't know what you're talking about.
I never heard anything so stupid.”
So then I quit the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear
Policy because that was ridiculous.
Right.
It's like the Security Council is damaged.
It's the same five states on the UN Security
Council.
You know, these are the victors in World War
II, and things are changing.
What changed, which I love, is that the Ban
Treaty was negotiated through the General
Assembly.
We bypassed the Security Council, we bypassed
the five vetoes, and we had a vote and 122
nations voted.
Now a lot of the nuclear weapon States boycotted.
They did, they boycotted it, and the nuclear
umbrella which is the NATO alliance, and the
three countries in Asia: Australia, South
Korea and Japan are under the US nuclear deterrence.
So they supported us what was really unusual
and that never got reported which I think
was a harbinger, when they first voted at
the General Assembly whether there should
be negotiations, North Korea voted yes.
Nobody even reported that.
I thought that was significant, they were
sending a signal that they wanted to ban the
bomb.
Then later they pulled… Trump got elected,
things went crazy.
The Ban Treaty had started.
We had this meeting in Oslo, and then another
meeting in Mexico and then South Africa gave
that speech at the NPT where they said this
is like nuclear apartheid.
We can't keep coming back to this meeting
where nobody's keeping their promises for
nuclear disarmament and the nuclear weapon
states are holding the rest of the world hostage
to their nuclear bombs.
And that was tremendous momentum going into
the Austria meeting where we also got a statement
from Pope Francis.
I mean that really shifted the conversation,
and The Vatican voted for it during the negotiations
and put in great statements, and the Pope
up till then had always supported the US deterrence
policy, and they said deterrence was okay,
it was all right to have nuclear weapons if
you were using them in self-defence, when
your very survival is at stake.
That was the exception that the World Court
made.
So that's over now.
So there's a whole new conversation happening
now and we already have nineteen countries
that have ratified it, and seventy or so have
signed, and we need 50 to ratify before it
enters into force.
The other thing that's interesting, when you
say, “We're waiting for India and Pakistan.”
We don't wait for India and Pakistan.
Like with India we took the CTBT out of the
Committee on Disarmament even though they
vetoed it.
Now we're trying to do the same thing for
Pakistan.
They want this treaty to cut-off fissile materials
for weapons purposes, and Pakistan are saying,
“If you're not going to do it for everything,
we're not going to be left out of the plutonium
race.”
And now they're thinking of overriding Pakistan,
but China and Russia have proposed in 2008
and in 2015 a treaty to ban weapons in space,
and the US vetoes it in the Committee on Disarmament.
There's no discussion.
We won't even allow it to be discussed.
Nobody's bringing the treaty to the UN over
our objection.
We're the only country that's feeling it.
And I think, looking forward now, how are
we going to really get to nuclear disarmament?
If we can’t heal the US-Russian relationship
and tell the truth about it we’re doomed
because there's almost 15,000 nuclear weapons
on the planet and 14,000 are in the US and
Russia.
I mean all the other countries have a thousand
between them: that's China, England, France,
Israel, India, Pakistan, North Korea, but
we’re the big gorillas on the block and
I've been studying this relationship.
I'm amazed.
First of all in 1917 Woodrow Wilson sent 30,000
troops to St. Petersburg to help the White
Russians against the peasant uprising.
I mean what were we doing there in 1917?
This is like capitalism was afraid.
You know there was no Stalin, there were just
peasants trying to get rid of the Tsar.
Anyway that was the first thing I saw that
was amazing to me that we were so hostile
to Russia, and then after World War II when
we and the Soviet Union defeated Nazi Germany,
and we set up the United Nations to end the
scourge of war, and it was very idealistic.
Stalin said to Truman, “Turn the bomb over
the UN,” because we had just used it, Hiroshima,
Nagasaki, and that was terribly frightening
technology.
Truman said “no”.
So Stalin got his own bomb.
He wasn't going to be left behind, and then
when the wall came down, Gorbachev and Reagan
met and said let's get rid of all our nuclear
weapons, and Reagan said, “Yeah, good idea.”
Gorbachev said, “But don't do Star Wars.”
We have a document that I hope you'll show
at some point “Vision 2020” which is the
US Space Command has its mission statement,
dominating and controlling US interests in
space, to protect US interests and investments.
I mean they’re shameless.
That's what the mission statement says from
the US basically.
So Gorbachev said, “Yeah, but don't do Star
Wars.”
And Reagan said, “I can't give that up.”
So Gorbachev said, “Well, forget about nuclear
disarmament.”
And then they were very concerned about East
Germany when the wall came down, being United
with West Germany and being part of NATO because
Russia lost 29 million people during World
War II to the Nazi onslaught.
I can't believe that.
I mean I'm Jewish, we talk about us six million
people.
How terrible!
Who heard of the twenty-nine million people?
I mean, look what happened, we lost 3,000
in New York with the World Trade Centre, we
started World War 7.
Anyway so Reagan said to Gorbachev, “Don't
worry.
Let East Germany be united with West Germany
and enter into NATO and we promise you we
will not expand NATO one inch to the east.”
And Jack Matlock who is Reagan's ambassador
to Russia wrote an op-ed in The Times repeating
this.
I'm not just making this up.
And we now have NATO right up to Russia's
border!
Then after we boasted about our Stuxnet virus,
Putin sent a letter oh no even before that.
Putin asked Clinton, “Let's get together
and cut our arsenals to a thousand and call
everybody to the table to negotiate for nuclear
disarmament, but don't put missiles into Eastern
Europe.”
Because they were already starting to negotiate
with Romania for a missile base.
Clinton said, “I can't promise that.”
So that was the end of that offer, and then
Putin asked Obama to negotiate a cyberspace
treaty.
“Let's not have cyber war,” and we said
no.
And if you look at what America's doing now
they're gearing up against cyber war, they're
gearing up against Russia's nuclear arsenal,
and if I can, I’d just like to read what
Putin said during his State of the Union speech
in March.
We're demonizing him, we're blaming him for
the election which is ridiculous.
I mean it's the Electoral College.
Gore won the election, we blame Ralph Nader
who was an American saint.
He gave us clean air, clean water.
Then Hillary won the election and we're blaming
Russia instead of fixing our Electoral College
which is a holdover from the white, landed
gentry that was trying to control popular
power.
Just like we got rid of slavery, and women
got the vote, we should get rid of the Electoral
College.
Anyway in March, Putin said, “Back in 2000
the US announced its withdrawal from the anti-ballistic
missile treaty.”
(Bush walked out of it).
“Russia was categorically against this.
We saw the Soviet-US ABM Treaty signed in
1972 as the cornerstone of the international
system together with the Strategic Arms Reduction
Treaty, the ABM Treaty not only created an
atmosphere of trust but also prevented either
party from recklessly using nuclear weapons
which would have endangered humankind.
We did our best to dissuade the Americans
from withdrawing from the treaty.
All in vain.
The US pulled out of the treaty in 2002, even
after that we tried to develop constructive
dialogue with the Americans.
We proposed working together in this area
to ease concerns and maintain the atmosphere
of trust.
At one point I thought a compromise was possible,
but this was not to be.
All our proposals, absolutely all of them
were rejected and then we said that we would
have to improve our modern strike system to
protect our security.”
And they did and we're using that as an excuse
to build up our military, when we had the
perfect opportunity to stop the arms race.
They each time offered that to us, and each
time we rejected it.
Oh, now we can say they're illegal, they're
outlawed.
It's not some kind of wishy-washy language.
So we can speak more forcefully.
The US never signed the landmines treaty,
but we don't make them anymore and we don't
use them.
So we're going to stigmatize the bomb, and
there are some wonderful campaigns, uniquely
the divestment campaign.
We're learning from the fossil fuel friends
that were saying you shouldn't invest in nuclear
weapons, and attacking the corporate structure.
And we have a great project that came out
of ICAN, Don't Bank on the Bomb, that's being
run out of the Netherlands, of Pax Christi,
and here in New York we had such a wonderful
experience.
We went to our City Council to divest.
We spoke to the finance chair of the council,
and he said he would write a letter to the
Comptroller – who controls all the investments
for the pensions of the city, billions of
dollars – if we could get ten members of
the council to sign on with him.
So we had a small committee from ICAN, and
it wasn't a big job, and we just started making
phone calls, and we got a majority, like 28
members of the City Council, to sign this
letter.
I called my councilman, and they told me he
was on paternity leave.
He had had his first child.
So I wrote him a long letter saying what a
wonderful gift to your child to have a nuclear-free
world if you would sign this letter, and he
signed.
It was easy.
It was really great that we did that…
And also in the NATO States, they're not going
to stand for this.
They're not going to stand for it because
the people don't even know we have US nuclear
weapons in five NATO States: Italy, Belgium,
Holland, Germany and Turkey.
And people don't even know this, but now we're
getting demonstrations, people getting arrested,
the ploughshares operations, all these nuns
and priests and Jesuits, the anti-war movement,
and there was a big demonstration of the German
base, and it got publicity and I think that's
going to be another way to arouse people's
interest, because it went away.
They weren’t thinking about it.
You know, war was over, and nobody really
knew that we're living with these things pointing
at each other, and it's not even that it would
be deliberately used, because I doubt if anybody
would do that, but the possibility for accidents.
We could luck out.
We've been living under a lucky star.
There's so many stories of near misses and
this Colonel Petrov from Russia who was such
a hero.
He was in the missile silo, and he saw something
that indicated that they were being attacked
by us, and he was supposed to unleash all
his bombs against New York and Boston and
Washington, and he waited and it was a computer
glitch, and he even got reprimanded for not
following orders.
In America, just about three years ago, there
was Minot Air Force Base, in North Dakota,
we had a plane loaded with 6 missiles loaded
with nuclear weapons that went to Louisiana
by accident.
It was missing for 36 hours, and they didn't
even know where it was.
We're just lucky.
We're living in a fantasy.
This is like boy stuff.
It's terrible.
We should stop.
I think we have to broaden the conversation,
that's why I'm working in World beyond War,
because it's a wonderful new network that's
trying to make the end of war on the planet
an idea whose time has come, and they also
do a divestment campaign, not just nuclear
but everything, and they're working with Code
Pink which is wonderful.
They have a new divest campaign that you can
join.
I know Medea for years.
I met her in Brazil.
I met her there, and I went to Cuba, because
she was then running these trips to Cuba.
She's a fabulous activist.
So anyway World beyond war, is www.worldbeyondwar.org.
Join.
Sign up.
There’s a lot of things you can do for it,
or with it.
You can write for it, or talk about it, or
enrol more people.
I was in an organization called The Hunger
Project in 1976 and that was also to make
the end of hunger on the planet an idea whose
time has come, and we just kept enrolling
people, and we put out facts.
This is what World beyond War does, the myths
about war: it's inevitable, there's no way
to end it.
And then the solutions.
And we did that with hunger, and we said starvation
is not inevitable.
There is enough food, population is not a
problem because people automatically limit
the size of their families when they know
they're being fed.
So we had all these facts that we just kept
putting out all over the world.
And now, we haven't ended hunger, but it's
part of the Millennium Development Goals.
It's a respectable idea.
When we said it was ridiculous, and saying
we could end war, people say, “Don't be
ridiculous.
There will always be war.”
Well the whole purpose is to show all the
solutions and the possibilities and the myths
about war and how we can end it.
And looking at the US-Russia relationship
is part of it.
We have to start telling the truth.
So there's that, and there's ICAN, because
they are working to get the story out about
the Ban Treaty in different ways.
So I would definitely check that out www.icanw.org,
the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear
Weapons.
I try to get into some kind of local energy,
sustainable energy.
I'm doing a lot of that now, because it's
ridiculous that we're letting these corporations
poison us with nuclear and fossil and biomass.
They're burning food when we have all the
abundant energy of the Sun and the wind and
geothermal and hydro.
And efficiency!
So that's what I would recommend for an activist.
Well, first of all tell them to make sure
they register to vote.
They don't have to take care of nuclear weapons,
just take care of being a citizen!
Register to vote, and vote for the people
that want to cut military budgets and want
to clean up the environment.
We had such a fabulous election in New York,
this Alexandria Cortes.
She lived in my old neighbourhood in the Bronx,
where I grew up.
That's where she lives now and she's just
had this extraordinary turnout against the
real established politician, and it's because
people voted.
People cared.
So I think, speaking as an American, we should
have required Civics to every senior in high
school, and we should have only paper ballots,
and as seniors they come to the election and
count the paper ballots, and then register
to vote.
So they can learn arithmetic, and they can
register to vote, and we never have to worry
about a computer stealing our vote.
This is such nonsense when you can just count
the ballots.
I think citizenship is really important, and
we have to look at what kind of citizenship.
I heard this fabulous lecture by a Muslim
woman in Canada.
In World beyond War, we just did a Canadian
conference.
We have to rethink our relationship to the
planet.
And she was talking about colonialism that
went all the way back into Europe when they
had the Inquisition, and I never thought of
it going back that far.
I thought we started it in America, but they
were starting it when they threw the Muslims
and the Jews out of Spain.
And they were doing it then and we have to
re-think this.
We have to get in touch with the land, with
the people, and start telling the truth about
things, because if we're not honest about
it, we can't fix it.
Well, I think I said at the beginning.
When I first became an activist I won.
I mean I captured the whole Democratic Party!
It's true that the media defeated us.
We went to Congress and we won.
We got them to do a moratorium, but we're
always losing while we're winning.
I mean it's like 10 steps forward, one step
back.
So that's what keeps me going.
It's not like I haven't had successes, but
I haven't had the real success of a world
without war.
It's not just nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons
is the tip of the spear.
We have to get rid of all the weapons.
It was so encouraging when these kids marched
against the National Rifle [Association].
We had a hundred thousand people marching
in New York, and they were all young.
Very few my age.
And they were registering people to vote online.
And this last primary that we had in New York,
there were twice as many people voting in
the primary as the year before.
It's sort of like the 60s now, people are
getting active.
They know they have to.
It's not just getting rid of nuclear weapons,
because if we get rid of war, we'll get rid
of nuclear weapons.
Maybe nuclear weapons is very specialized.
You really have to know where the bodies are
buried, and follow the ICAN campaign, but
you don't have to be a rocket scientist to
know that war is ridiculous.
It's so 20th century!
We haven't won a war since World War II, so
what are we doing here?
The money.
We have to rein it in.
We used to have a Fairness Doctrine where
you couldn't dominate the airwaves just because
you had money.
We have to take back a lot of these utilities.
I think we have to make our electric company
in New York public.
Boulder, Colorado did that, because they were
shoving nuclear and fossil fuel down their
throats, and they wanted wind and sun, and
I think we have to organize economically,
socially.
And that's what you're seeing from Bernie.
It's growing…
We did public opinion polls.
87 percent of Americans said let's get rid
of them, if everybody else agrees to.
So we have public opinion on our side.
We just have to mobilize it through these
horrible blocks that have been established
by what Eisenhower warned; the military-industrial,
but I call it military-industrial-congressional-media
complex.
There's a lot of concentration.
Occupy Wall Street, they brought out this
meme: the 1% versus the 99%.
People were not aware of how mal-distributed
everything was.
FDR saved America from communism when he made
Social Security.
He shared some of the wealth, then it got
very greedy again, with Reagan through Clinton
and Obama, and that's why Trump got elected,
because so many people were hurt.
There's one thing I didn't tell you that might
be interesting.
In the 50s we were so terrified of communism.
I went to Queens College.
That was the McCarthy Era, in America.
I went to Queens College in 1953, and I'm
having a discussion with somebody, and she
says, “Here.
You should read this.”
And she gives me this pamphlet and it says
“Communist Party of America”, and my heart
is pounding.
I'm terrified.
I put it my book bag.
I take the bus home.
I go directly to the 8th floor, walk to the
incinerator, throw it down without even looking.
That’s how scared.
Then in 1989 or whatever, after Gorbachev
came in, I was with the Lawyers Alliance,
I went to the Soviet Union for the first time.
First of all, every guy over 60 was wearing
his World War II medals, and every street
corner had a stone monument to the dead, the
29 million, and then you go to the Leningrad
cemetery and there's mass graves, big mounds
of people.
400,000 people.
So I look at this, and my guide said to me,
“Why don't you Americans trust us?”
I said, “Why don't we trust you?
What about Hungary?
What about Czechoslovakia?”
You know, arrogant American.
He looks at me with tears in his eyes.
He says, “But we had to protect our country
from Germany.”
And I looked at the guy, and that was their
truth.
Not that what they did was good, but I mean
they were acting out of their fear of invasion,
and what they had suffered, and we weren't
getting the right story.
So I think if we're going to make peace now,
we’ve got to start telling the truth about
our relationship, and who's doing what to
who, and we have to be more open, and I think
it's happening with the #MeToo, with the Confederate
statues, with Christopher Columbus.
I mean nobody ever thought about the truth
of that, and we are now.
So I think if we start looking at what's really
happening, we can act appropriately.
