The Advocate - May 2005 Index

May Day Events Call for End
to US Nuclear Proliferation
Andrew Kennis

Heckscher Ballfields, Central Park: Tens of thousands of demonstrators came from different parts of the country and the world this past Sunday, to protest the war in Iraq and the continued existence of nuclear weapons in a march and rally organized by United for Peace and Justice.

The May Day event began when protesters first started gathering at 11am and after an unexplained delay by police officials, finally arrived near the United Nations by around 12:30pm. After the march arrived to the Heckscher Ballfields at Central Park, an enormous human chain was formed that took the shape of a giant peace symbol, and the event ended with a rally that included emotional speeches and music.

Kate Pichel, a college student from New Jersey, described the march as “musical and upbeat, and producing a great happy feeling, especially when the weather got better and after the police had stopped caging us in and stopping the march from beginning.”
Other area activists included Elena Pousada, 44, who came to protest “the whole insanity of nuclear weapons, war in general and the hypocrisy of the Bush administration, that is, this whole “peace from war” mindset.” Pousada is involved in a local campaign that is an ongoing decades-long struggle against the presence of a nuclear power plant called Indian Point, located not far from New York City.

The event’s attention was captured most strongly by over a thousand protesters who came all the way from Japan, including survivors from the only nuclear attacks ever waged. During speeches given at the rally portion of the event, some of the Japanese survivors gave chilling first-hand accounts of their experience of having survived a nuclear bomb. Others lambasted the claims of the Bush administration and the war in Iraq.

The dual-theme demo was staged in the midst of what was revealed this past Monday to be a historic low in terms of support for the war in Iraq, according to a recently released USA-Today/Gallup poll that showed 57 percent of Americans agreeing that the war was not worth the costs at this point. Similarly, an ABC poll taken in late March this year found that over two-thirds of Americans oppose any nation having nuclear weapons in the post-Cold War era.

The event was scheduled to coincide with the start of a conference set to reconsider the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) at the United Nations. The conference is held once every five years and continues for one month. 188 nations are currently signed on to the treaty, which calls for nation-states with nuclear weapons to move towards eliminating them through clear and consistent reductions, while other nation-states who do not have them pledge not to pursue them. Only four nations are not currently signed onto the NPT, including India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea. Many protesters speculated that the US could become the fifth country to withdraw from the treaty.

Notable speakers at the UFPJ rally included long-time anti-war activist and the Pentagon Papers whistle blower, Daniel Ellsberg, as well as veteran anti-nuclear activist Dr. Helen Caldicott. Calling Russia and the United States the real “rogue nations,” Dr. Caldicott criticized the fact that both countries have nuclear arsenals more than capable of ending human existence and pointed out how many of the warheads are on “hair trigger ready-alert.” Mayors from Nagasaki and Hiroshima also were attendees, as Mayor Akiba from Hiroshima called nuclear weapons “a deadly cancer on the planet that needs to be removed.” But it was the large and moving Japanese presence as a whole that captivated fellow demonstrators and spectators alike.

“We are the only people who survived from the nuclear bombs; we are the hibakusha (Japanese for “survivors” from Hiroshima and Nagasaki). So we have a personal responsibility to show to the human race why this is wrong,” said Yutaka Tagawa, 36, who was born in Hiroshima and now resides in Tokyo. Tagawa came from the Tokyo Council against A&H Bombs and represented just one of the dozens of activist groups and non-governmental organizations that came from Japan to attend the march and rally.

Included amongst such organizations, was the Graduate Center’s own Japanese student group. Naoko Kumagai, who is president of the group, was on hand at the protest and stated the need for graduate students to “persuade the scholars who wrongly believe that nuclear weapons preserved the peace during the Cold War.” The treasurer of the group, Shiomi Kasahara of Political Science, served as a volunteer for the event and was happy to see a healthy progressive presence of so many of her countrypeople.

At least 35 hibakusha attended the event and gave moving accounts of their personal experiences. One 80-year-old survivor from Hiroshima spoke of her still-vivid memories:

Suddenly, I felt a blinding crush, too intense to describe. Next , the blast blew us off and when I regained consciousness, I found my little sister and nephew with blood all over. I gave her water and she said it tasted so good, but then she died. My brother was crying, “I don’t want to die,” and then afterwards he died. My mother died as well.

While emotional accounts such as the one above were given several times at the rally, the long-time peace activist Ellsberg articulated to The Advocate what he felt the movement’s essential demands were: the need for a stop to further nuclear proliferation, a re-implementation of the comprehensive test ban, the destruction of 1st use/1st strike weapons and major reductions from both the US and Russia. Ellsberg railed against the fact that “no US President has ever even accepted those basic premises,” and that while President Bush may represent an “extreme,” he nonetheless considered current administration policies to be “continuing a long line of US foreign policy that has contributed to proliferation.”

Converse to US governmental claims against proliferation, most activists perceived just the opposite to be the case. “It’s a hoax,” continued Ellsberg. “US foreign policy on nuclear weapons has always been to maintain our superiority and limit and/or eliminate the nuclear capabilities of our enemies.” Instead, Ellsberg argued, “we’re doing nothing to stop the black market and we’re throwing fuel on the fire by invading and occupying Iraq. Now other countries are more pressured to obtain nuclear capabilities then ever, as they realize that the US would not have attacked Iraq if they had had 10 nuclear warheads. Just look at North Korea, why didn’t we attack them?”

Many protesters agreed with Ellsberg in his questioning of the motives of the US government, such as Dulce Fernandes, a nuclear abolition activist originally from Portugal who currently resides in Brooklyn. She stated that the US invaded Iraq so as to control the Middle East and its most valuable resource, echoing a sentiment voiced by many other demonstrators. Speakers argued that the American public has been lied to in a manner comparable to the period of the Vietnam War.

Kim Bergier, from the Michigan Stop the Bomb Campaign, spoke of her feelings about the upcoming NPT conference: “We anticipate that the Bush administration will try to undermine the NPT conference by either watering it down or by pulling out of it altogether. They’ve pulled out of the ABM treaty and the comprehensive test ban treaty, so this would be the last straw. They are also trying to refurbish nuclear warheads to make them last for more than a century as opposed to only 25 years,” she said.

Activists at the rally doubted the sincerity and effectiveness of the NPT, such as Singrid Dale, who stated that, “at least [the NPT] has kept things from going totally ballistic and the other 188 countries from having a nuclear free fall. I think this treaty stops us from absolute madness.”

Other NYC May Day events included the Troops Out Now Coalition, which held a “Jobs, Not War” rally in Union Square. Originally planned to funnel into the UFPJ march, the two coalitions wound up having separate and divided rallies. There was also a Mayday Festival in Tompkins Square Park that featured mostly musical performances and there is a Marijuana March scheduled for Saturday, May 7.

Andrew Kennis is a student in the PhD program in Political Science and a freelance journalist.