Draft Additions to National Nuclear Disarmament Campaign Proposal 2018-2020
(From Mass Peace Nuclear Disarmament Working Group)
Dear Colleagues: We appreciate the effort put into the proposed national plans. Below are some additions. Our political and organizing analysis has a little different flavor and character, so our categories don’t always match. However the importance and difficulty of the tasks before us argue for listening to all voices.
Insert before “Campaign Outputs”
Campaign Organizing Strategy:
Changing national policy on nuclear weapons will require mobilization of far more citizens and voters than are currently represented by organizations of the Peace movement. However, we have witnessed major national mobilizations to resist healthcare cuts, protect women’s rights, and protect social security, limit climate change, and reform immigration policy. We know these groups will be active in the 2018 and 2020 elections. We need an organizing strategy that can engage, interact with and influence the platforms of these constituencies, such that nuclear disarmament is included
As noted earlier the administration call for an exorbitant Trillion Dollar further investment in nuclear weapons modernization provides a path for us. This misuse of tax dollars, increasing the danger of use, provides a key opening, to call for increased funding for the social movements above, by cutting or limiting this appropriation.
Thus our campaign organizing strategy will be to form alliances with social movements that represent hundreds of thousands of Americans, to build the political muscle needed to cut nuclear weapons appropriations. It is through the fighting side by side – for healthcare, education, housing, environmental protection, civil rights - that we will educate our allies on the dangers of the current nuclear weapons programs and policies. This will most frequently occur in working for a progressive candidate for a contested House seat in 2018 or 2020. Since cutting the weapons programs would allow greatly increased human needs programs, there is reason to believe such allies would listen.
Though they are less likely to be directly engaged in the 2018 and 2020 House of Representative primary battles, our targeted outreach should also include communities of faith, responding to the fundamental immorality of Nuclear Weapons. Many of our affiliates, such as Coalition for Peace Action (NJ) have extensive experience with such outreach.
Of course we should also explicitly contact allied organization to ask for their endorsement. For engaging other organizations of the Peace Movement we may need a short form, such “No New Nukes” as a focused national campaign: “No New Nukes: Stop the $Trillion Tax Dollar Nuclear Weapons Escalation” (“No New Nukes” for short in this document).
I. Organizing Targets relating to Electoral Battles:
We are already engaged with two movements that represented many more Americans than are currently reached by Peace Action. These are Our Revolution and the Poor Peoples Campaign;
We need both local affiliates and national PA to make explicit plans to continue to develop relationships with these groups.
a. Local affiliates to contact their state or local Our Revolution groups, to promote inclusion of a Peace and Disarmament plank into their platforms. The Mass plank provides a model.
b. Prepare a grass tops letter from leaders of local affiliates to the national OR leadership, requesting inclusion of a Peace plank into their platform, as laid out in Sanders foreign policy speech.
c. Participate in the OR endorsement processes for 2018 House elections as they develop
d. The Poor People’s campaign, already has a peace economy platform, and may avoid direct involvement in elections. Though many present will be participating in other hats. However we need to continuously promote the social justice and moral aspects of nuclear disarmament, to keep it from being pushed to the backburner.
e. Peace Action literature should continually call attention to the weapons contractors who profit from these continuing weapons expenditures, and are a main driving force behind them
II. Organizing Targets Among Advocacy Groups
Engaging advocacy groups who may not be directly involved in elections, requires focusing on their primary concerns. Thus the messages need to be tuned to the group concern. In talking with people trying to prevent being forced out of their homes because of mortgage foreclosure, it’s hard to get their attention to the problem of the Long Range Standoff cruise missile program. Much easier is to raise the question of why in the richest country on Earth there isn’t enough money in the federal budget to protect people’s housing needs, and then explain that the funds are being drained off for exorbitant, unnecessary and destabilizing weapons contracts. Thus the Message of the campaign will include "Building Housing Not Bombs", "Minds Not Missiles"; "Build Subways not Submarines" and related slogans that address lack of social and economic justice.
D. Build Homes Not Bombs! By saying No to the $Trillion Dollar Nuclear Weapon Upgrades.
E. Invest in Minds not Missiles! By saying No to a New Nuclear Arms Race.
F. Build Subways not Submarines! By saying No to New Nuclear Missile Submarines.
G. Fund Healthcare Not Warfare! By saying No to the Trillion Taxpayer’s Dollars Nuclear Weapons Escalation.
H. Fund Solar Energy Not Nuclear Winter/By increasing federal investments in science and technology for sustainability
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We cannot influence the Pentagon directly, nor do we have the strength to directly influence the Executive Branch of the federal government. Similarly, the existing form of the Peace movement does not currently have the strength to influence a US Senate race, in which millions of votes are cast in most states. However, influencing selected races for U.S. Representative, perhaps by the 2018 or 2020 elections, is realistic. This provides an opening for influencing future House votes on weapons budgets and on relevant bills, such as Markey-Lieu No First Strike.
To influence an incumbent Congressperson – who is able to tap the enormous fiscal resources of the military/industrial complex – requires being able to support a viable challenger who makes the votes for nuclear weapons modernization a campaign issue. The No New Nukes Campaign’s intermediate goal will be to be able to influence the Congressional elections in a subset of Congressional districts by the 2018 or 2020 Congressional elections.
Our Revolution and other progressive groups are planning to field challengers to incumbent Congresspersons in 2018 in ~ 100 districts. This process offers us an unusual opportunity to promote the No New Nukes campaign and to find candidates who will incorporate it in their platforms.
Though the Peace movement has very little influence over the Republican budgets that have been submitted in recent years, we do have a toe in the water in the development of the alternative People’s Budget, developed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Since this has the prospect of being introduced and debated, it opens up a window to ending the silence on the military budget appropriations.
Thus one legislative goal will be to press members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus to include “No the $Trillion Taxpayers Dollars Nuclear Weapons Escalation” in the FY19 People’s Budget (to be developed February 2018 – April 2018). That means building the movement in selected districts across the country.
Some Particular Tactics:
a. The People’s Budget: In order to engage organizations with significant memberships, we will need to join in their battles. The People’s Budget gives us an approach if we follow the theme of addressing human needs (first), financed by cutting weapons spending (second). An important factor is that a People’s Budget National Network is in place: In the past year a national network was formed to promote the People’s Budget. Organizational participants include the Coalition for Basic Human Needs, Progressive Democrats of America, People Demanding Action, US Labor Against the War, and National Alliance of HUD Tenants.
Note that the Progressive Caucus People’s Budget cuts on the Pentagon side are not limited to nuclear weapons. However, given the small number of jobs involved in nuclear weapons development, and the advantages gained by raising of the moral and use dangers, there are political advantages of focusing on nuclear weapons.
b. Don’t Bank on the Bomb: It is unlikely that we will succeed in winning many votes in Congress. The campaign needs targets that are closer to home. One highly educational campaign that can be used on campuses, in City and Town Councils and State Legislatures, is to call for divestment of investments in corporations involved in the manufacture of nuclear weapons. Passage of such a resolution constitutes a true a local victory.
c. Campus organizing: The best path for recruiting a younger generation of concerned citizens, will be continuing and expanding the current efforts in Mass and New York to build campus Peace Action clubs.
How Do We Build Locally for Above National Campaign?
1. Call for and participate in meetings to discuss campaign with potential allies.
2. Organize Local Forums with theme dependent on target audience “Invest in Minds Not Missiles” or Healthcare Not Warfare” etc. Invite relevant organizations to co-sponsor or at least provide a speaker. “No to Trillion Dollar Taxpayers Nuclear Weapons Escalation”. Focus initially on representatives of potential organizational allies, rather than mass audience.
3. Develop People’s Budget for Your State that makes clear the benefit that would come back to the state by adopting the People’s Budget with No New Nukes budget cuts. Such a document provides the means to forming alliances with groups already organized to fight for human needs investments – in housing, public transit, environmental protection, education, and healthcare.
In forums, develop all three fronts; Economic; Moral and religious; Dangers to humanity. We have literature developing these themes.
4. Propose to allies in other states and Representative districts that they organize similar forums, and offer to provide speakers free of cost to them. And of course invite their member of the Progressive Caucus as their keynote speaker.
5.Recruit a few State Reps or State Senators to introduce and promote a “Taxpayers Information and Transparency Act (see below) ” in which state residents would be informed as to how their federal tax dollars were allocated in the previous years Congressional. Such a mild bill has possibilities for broad support (though the hawks will mobilize against). Introduction of such a bill allows us to launch a mobilization that is more local, asking people to call their State Representative or Senator, following the model of the Budget for All bills. If taxpayers learn where their tax dollars are spent, that will be a significant chink in the armor of the nuclear weapons cabal.
Further Planning:
1. We will need a national coordinating committee to guide priorities, identification areas of cooperation and division of labor, identify campaign needs, etc.
