On a beautiful day outside NYC City Hall, City Council Member Carlina Rivera sparked the good size crowd with enthusiasm, conviction and truth telling about why we need to welcome the missions of Veterans For Peace and Move the Money. With the insignia of NY City Council emblazoned on the parchment being awarded, she read aloud NYC’s encouragement for the voyage of the Golden Rule.
City Council Citation
On behalf of the City of New York, the New York City Council wishes to recognize the courage, resilience, and the wisdom of the Veterans For Peace Golden Rule Project.
We concur and appreciate the uprightness of your mission connecting the grave dangers and overwhelming costs of war and the nuclear weapons industry to our deepest needs and challenges of Climate, environmental, racial, social, housing, education and healthcare justice for all.
The Golden Rule peace boat’s unique inspiring history in 1958, its vast community of support then and today exemplify the hope, joy, and leadership, as our City attempts, that embracing all cultures, peoples and nations makes us both stronger and safer here in NYC and in our wider world.
As you bravely journey onward educating our citizens, may we offer this Citation as gentle wind behind your beautiful sails.
May 26th, 2023
Only a few yards from the very bench where Dorothy Day, Edmund Hennessy, and others were arrested in 1955 for peacefully refusing to participate in the “Civil Defense Drills”, each year through 1961 until the fallacy of protection from the atomic bomb was reluctantly admitted, advocates for sustaining life on the planet gathered.
We recalled that 60 years ago in 1963 as soon as President John F. Kennedy announced his attempt to pass the first nuclear Test Ban, Councilman Mr. Manheimer urgently brought Resolution 648 to this City Council floor. Titled Requesting Speedy Senate Ratification of the Atmospheric Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, it cited the facts: “radioactive debris presently [is] being deposited in larger amounts than ever before upon the nation and the world.” This being the height of the Cold War, critically, it acknowledged JFK’s intent, “the treaty represents a first step toward resolution of the proliferation of atomic and nuclear weaponry”, and “a first step toward the peaceful solution of world problems.”
Given immediate consideration the resolution was unanimously adopted by the Council on September 10th, 1963, and sent to the U.S. Senate. The Senate ratified the Test Ban. We were on our way to a better world. Indeed for President JFK, this monumental accomplishment was only to be the beginning of the end of the nuclear weapon industry, in his lifetime. Less than two months later President Kennedy was murdered, his intentions muffled.
As our Representatives and weapon industry remain ever moving their goal posts and ignoring our international agreements, the late Daniel Ellsberg focussed much of his last decades warning us that humanity’s peril remains more urgent than ever, that we’re closer to annihilation, and offered a way to change that.
Here in the town of Wall Street, the NY City Council had again aligned itself with a renewal of that 1963 attempt toward nuclear abolition. Forty four of the Councils fifty one Members supported the 2019 Resolution 976, calling for not only signing the international law, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, but divesting NYC Pension Plans from the nuclear weapon industry. Councilwoman Carlina Rivera delivering the Citation today was one of the first to sign this legislation, calling it, “A no brainer.”
Helen Jaccard and Gerry Condon thanked the NYC Council and all present, shared VFP’s Golden Rule’s mission of education and advocacy for nuclear abolition and the TPNW specifically, and recognized the many cities and towns they have now sailed into around our nation, receiving such similar recognition and Proclamations from Mayors and Councils. The people want this. “The little boat that could!” Helen repeated. “Follow the Golden Rule “Do not threaten to bomb others, as you would have them not threaten to bomb you.”
Council Member Carlina Rivera spoke clearly from the backdrop of City Hall. “Veterans for Peace carry on a very important legacy of bravery fighting against nuclear weapons and war. The US is spending around 900 billion on its military. 40 % of the worlds total, greater than the next 10 countries combined. This does not even take into account the over 300 billion for military retirement and healthcare. As representatives in Washington argue over the debt limit, neither Democrats or Republicans had an issue with allocating tens of billions more than the Biden Administration proposed to the military budget.
Likely an underestimate, there are nearly 38 million Americans living in poverty, about 11 % of our population. As we spend this one trillion dollars on the military we must ask, what is the cost to society?
Our call to the Federal Government is simple: fund programs and services that will uplift the American people. People know what makes them feel safe; Excellent healthcare, stable good paying jobs, quality schools and decent affordable housing.
Right now in NYC vital services are being cut. This isn’t right. A 2022 survey shows 56 % of American people support cuts to the military budget. Moving the Money would make such a significant impact of the working class people of NYC and across the country.”
We celebrated that CM Carlina Rivera is a new mother with a 3 month year old son. We all agreed that we are here especially for the children and the upcoming generation, those who had nothing to do with this horror and threat.
Tara Curie, spoke for the Move the Money campaign, [insert link and activate https://www.mtmnyc.org/ ] “We thank the leadership of Councilwoman Carlina Rivera and her team to say that this military spending at the national level is pauperizing us at all levels of society.
This year 45,000 children in this city will be left out from summer programs. We have to rethink what we mean by security. When we are cutting school budgets, cutting food stamps, cutting anything that makes human life more bearable, because we need more guns, that is not security. Isn’t this the time to start negotiating to get rid of nuclear weapons instead of building new ones?! The people have to step up and say these things because those in Washington are not.
We need leaders in our government like Carlina. We can’t be silent about this. We can’t pretend this isn’t happening.”
CM Carlina Rivera adds, “I especially want to thank you for standing up to the cuts to our libraries the Mayor wants to make. For me, libraries have always been a vital community hub. Thank you for recognizing how intersectional this issue of military spending is.”
President of National Veterans For Peace, Susan Schnall, started waving her hands reaching out to those walking through City Hall Park, “I’m sorry, I just can’t stand still. Please listen to us when we say No More War!
There are a number of us here that were in the military. We have been to war! We have seen what war does! Understand what nuclear weapons will do! There will be nothing here.
We are here to say stop funding the profiteering war machine now! Move the money to life sustaining services. We want to create life. We want all life to continue. Thank you Golden Rule. Thank you Move the Money, thank you Carlina.”
CM Rivera, “Thank you Susan. We love your energy. If we just refocussed our priorities. If we just thought about people and what they are worth, and their value, and what they deserve, this world could look a lot different.”
Ellen Barfield, Veterans For Peace United Nations NGO Rep. “Nuclear weapons are not security. They are destruction and death. We have the TPNW, signed by 122 nations, with 70 nations that have now ratified it. The nuclear weapon states are trying to kill it. So lets keep working hard. The Golden Rule is so inspiring. Thank you Carlina, thank you all.”
The Golden Rule sails the country supporting local legislation but also two current U.S. Congressional actions which support the TPNW and it’s goals:
H.R. 2775 U.S. Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton of D.C.
“To direct the United States to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and convert nuclear weapons industry resources and personnel to purposes relating to addressing the climate crisis, and for other purposes.”
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/2775/text
and
H. Res. 77 U.S. Representative James McGovern of Massachusetts
“Embracing the goals and provisions of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons”
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-resolution/77/text
Warheads to Windmills This July NuclearBan.US (link and activate https://www.nuclearban.us/w2w/ ] will again lobby Congress with this updated most useful report. (The newest full version will be freely available after July, 2023:
CM Rivera wrapped “Thank you. I am honored and very humbled by your important work to shift our priorities of a government that for too long has funded the military while neglecting to meet the needs of the most vulnerable among us. Thank you.”