You can help steer the world toward PEACE and Nuclear Abolition

DECEMBER 17, 2024

Dear Friends:

Like you, we are worried about the continued horrors of human suffering and widespread attacks on healthcare providers and hospitals in the Middle East and Ukraine, and the lack of expertise and professionalism in the new administration nominees that could threaten military oversight and security, particularly around our lethal nuclear arsenal. Faced with these new challenges, we need to redouble our advocacy for peaceful resolution of conflicts through prioritizing diplomatic initiatives over warfare. And we need to continue raising our health voices in support of redirecting our military budgets toward health and social services, justly compensating nuclear test radiation survivors, and establishing guardrails on new technologies such as AI that could potentially destabilize the nuclear balance of terror we’ve been subject to for close to eighty years.

We welcome you to join our efforts and make a year-end gift! Together, we can push for a more peaceful world. Please GIVE HERE TODAY to help us reach our year-end goal of $30,000! Thank You!

One way we do this work is to raise awareness. For example, this year we co-organized events on Hiroshima and Nagasaki days to commemorate the victims of the US bombings of Japan, with some members engaging in nonviolent protest against the accelerated nuclear weapons work at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, photo above.

Also, for decades SF Bay PSR leaders have steered the Peace Caucus in Affiliation with the American Public Health Association, bringing PSR’s work on eliminating nuclear weapons and opposing militarism to the forefront of the public health community, most recently at the annual meeting in Minneapolis. SF Bay PSR continues to strengthen the capacity of the Peace Caucus by incorporating it into our fiscal sponsorship program.

In September, we were honored to host New Mexico activist Tina Cordova at our gala who reminded us of the importance of our work with National PSR to advocate for the re-initiation and expansion of The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) that would provide long-overdue compensation to generations whose health has been negatively impacted by US nuclear weapons development and testing. Left: Radiation survivors from the Navajo Nation, Laguna Pueblo, Acoma Pueblo, and Hopi tribes.

Also at our gala, J. Michelle Pierce, executive director of the Advocates, SF’s oldest environmental justice nonprofit, gave us an overview of the state of legacy environmental issues in her community, including the history of radioactive contamination. To learn more, please read this new important series, Exposed: The Human Experiments at Hunters Point, by the San Francisco Public Press.

We also hosted a talk by PSR Fellow Jack Kelly on the threats of AI to our safety and health, highlighting the risks of AI being used for surveillance and human rights abuses, nuclear weapons command and control, and warfare in general. And Dr. Robert Gould spoke at a press conference—that was covered by major TV stations and news sources—calling on Governor Newsom to sign the bill that would have required some needed regulatory limits on AI. Unfortunately, Governor Newson vetoed the bill.

We were very fortunate this past year to have two Nuclear Weapons Abolition Interns, Navreet Purewal and Kelly Lin. They supported our NWA committee and joined our leaders to give testimony to advocate for the expedited closing of the aging Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant that dangerously strides numerous fault lines and remains an expensive, false solution to our climate crisis, while extending the dangers of nuclear energy and starving out safer renewable sources of energy.

Also, we applaud Navreet and Kelly for their successful screening and discussion of the film Silent FallOut  with the Film Director Hideaki Ito and scholar Mayela Gillan. Over 70 people attended, including many students from local universities. It was so successful, we have decided to host an intern-organized film screening annually!

We also helped to promote two other important films: First We Bombed New Mexico with Tina Cordova, mentioned above, and the 40th anniversary of Dark Circle, an award-winning, anti-nuclear film by SF Bay PSR member Judy Irving, and Christopher Beaver and Ruth Landy.