August, 04 2021, 11:06am EDT

For Immediate Release
Contact:
West Coast: Carley Towne, carley@codepink.org
East Coast: Cole Harrison, cole@masspeaceaction.org
Peace, Religious, and Community Groups Call for 'No First Use of Nuclear Weapons' Policy
As the mass deaths caused by the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are commemorated in towns across the U.S. from August 6th through 9th, thousands are demanding that such a holocaust never be allowed to happen again.
A broad coalition of peace groups, religious leaders, and community organizations has formed to launch a national campaign urging the U.S. Congress and President to adopt a policy of No First Use of Nuclear Weapons. Organizers see the policy as a step on the road to the eventual abolition of all nuclear weapons by all nations.
WASHINGTON
As the mass deaths caused by the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are commemorated in towns across the U.S. from August 6th through 9th, thousands are demanding that such a holocaust never be allowed to happen again.
A broad coalition of peace groups, religious leaders, and community organizations has formed to launch a national campaign urging the U.S. Congress and President to adopt a policy of No First Use of Nuclear Weapons. Organizers see the policy as a step on the road to the eventual abolition of all nuclear weapons by all nations.
"As long as the nuclear-armed nations maintain thousands of nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert, the danger that these weapons of mass destruction will be used continues to increase," said CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin. Cole Harrison, Executive Director of Mass Peace Action, noted: "Our own Congress is funding an upgrade of our nuclear weapons triad, increasing the danger of an inadvertent or intentional nuclear exchange."
According to MIT Professor Jonathan King, launching even a small number of these weapons risks the destruction of human civilization on our planet. Mass. Senator Edward J. Markey reported to a recent peace conference that: "The risk of inadvertent nuclear war has risen to a level that is simply unacceptable."
A first-use nuclear strike is defined as an attack using nuclear weapons against an enemy that did not first launch a nuclear strike against the United States, its territories, or its allies. "The United States has never agreed to a No First Use policy and has nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert, ready to strike first and begin a nuclear war that could result in the deaths of billions of people around the globe," said Steve Gallant of Mass. Peace Action.
Not only does the United States currently lack a pledge or policy of No First Use, but the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review actually expands the range of significant non-nuclear strategic attacks - whether they be cyber, chemical, or biological warfare - to which the U.S. may respond with the use of nuclear weapons.
Professor Elaine Scarry, author of "Thermonuclear Monarchy", points out that the President of the United States has the sole authority to order the launch of hundreds of nuclear warheads within minutes, without consultation or agreement from any other sector of U.S. government or society: not the Cabinet, nor the Congress, nor the Joint Chiefs of Staff, nor the Supreme Court. Princeton's Professor Zia Mian notes that this power holds even though "any threat or use of nuclear weapons in the present day constitutes a crime against humanity and a crime under international law."
Legislation has been introduced into both the House and Senate restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons. Representative Adam Smith (D-WA), Chair of the House Armed Services Committee, and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, introduced the "No First Use Act" in the House (H.R. 2603) and Senate (S.1219). President Biden is on record supporting a No First Use nuclear policy and should sign this legislation when it passes.
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) introduced the Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act of 2021 (H.R.669 and S.1148). It prohibits the use of federal funds to conduct a first-use nuclear strike unless Congress expressly authorizes such a strike pursuant to a declaration of war.
Pamela Richard of Peace Action of Wisconsin makes clear that "while we urge the passage of these bills as a first step, what is needed is the universal acceptance of the recent UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, banning the development, testing, production, stockpiling, stationing, transfer, use and threat of use of nuclear weapons. Our long-term goal is total nuclear disarmament."
The Coalition will be carrying out educational campaigns on college and university campuses, on law school campuses, and among major social organizations such as the Rotarians and other civic groups. Organizations promoting the "No First Use: Decreasing the Dangers of Nuclear War" Campaign include CODEPINK; Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security; Chicago Area Peace Action; Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility; Institute for People's Engagement; Massachusetts Peace Action; Peace Action Maine; MIT Radius; Peace Action of Wisconsin; Peaceworks of Kansas City; and other nuclear disarmament advocacy groups.
CODEPINK is a women-led grassroots organization working to end U.S. wars and militarism, support peace and human rights initiatives, and redirect our tax dollars into healthcare, education, green jobs and other life-affirming programs.
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"I saw body parts flying everywhere, and bodies cut and burned," said one eyewitness to a strike on the popular al-Baqa Café.
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Israeli forces ramped up their genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip Monday, killing at least 95 Palestinians in attacks including massacres at a seaside café and a humanitarian aid distribution center and bombings of five school shelters housing displaced families and a hospital where refugees were sheltering in tents.
An Israeli strike targeted the al-Baqa Café in western Gaza City, one of the few operating businesses remaining after 633 days of Israel's obliteration of the coastal strip and a popular gathering place for journalists, university students, artists, and others seeking reliable internet service and a respite from nearly 21 months of near-relentless attacks.
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Warning: Photos shows image of death
Survivor Ali Abu Ateila toldThe Associated Press that the café was crowded with women and children at the time of the attack.
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Another survivor of the massacre told Britain's Sky News: "All I see is blood... Unbelievable. People come here to take a break from what they see inside Gaza. They come westward to breathe."
Eyewitness Ahmed Al-Nayrab toldAgence France-Presse that a "huge explosion shook the area."
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"We were targeted by artillery," survivor Monzer Hisham Ismail told The Associated Press. Another survivor, Yousef Mahmoud Mokheimar, told the AP that Israeli troops "fired at us indiscriminately." Mokheimar was shot in the leg, another man who tried to rescue him was also shot.
IDF troops have killed nearly 600 Palestinian aid-seekers and wounded more than 4,000 others over the past month, with Israeli military officers and soldiers saying they were ordered to deliberately fire on civilians in search of food and other necessities amid Israel's weaponized starvation of Gaza.
Another 13 people were reportedly killed Monday when IDF warplanes bombed an aid warehouse in the Zeitoun quarter of southern Gaza City, according to al-Ahli Baptist Hospital officials cited by The Palestine Chronicle. IDF warplanes also reportedly bombed five schools housing displaced families, three of them in Zeitoun. Israeli forces also bombed the courtyard of al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, where thousands of forcibly displaced Palestinian families are sheltering in tents. It was reportedly the 12th time the hospital has been bombed since the start of the war.
The World Health Organization has documented more than 700 attacks on Gaza healthcare facilities since October 2023. Most of Gaza's hospitals are out of service due to Israeli attacks, some of which have been called genocidal by United Nations experts.
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The intensified IDF attacks follow Israel's issuance of new forced evacuation orders amid the ongoing Operation Gideon's Chariots, an ongoing offensive which aims to conquer and indefinitely occupy all of Gaza and ethnically cleanse much of its population, possibly to make way for Jewish recolonization as advocated by many right-wing Israelis.
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Gaza officials have reported that hundreds of Palestinians—including at least 66 children—have died in Gaza from malnutrition and lack of medicine since Israel ratcheted up its siege in early March. Earlier this month, the United Nations Children's Fund warned that childhood malnutrition was "rising at an alarming rate," with 5,119 children under the age of 5 treated for the life-threatening condition in May alone. Of those treated children, 636 were diagnosed with severe acute malnutrition, the most lethal form of the condition.
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Since launching the retaliatory annihilation of Gaza in response to the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Israeli forces have killed at least 56,531 Palestinians and wounded more than 133,600 others, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which also says over 14,000 people are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble. Upward of 2 million Gazans have been forcibly displaced, often more than once.
On Sunday, U.S. President Donald Trump reiterated a call for a cease-fire deal that would secure the release of the remaining 22 living Israeli and other hostages held by Hamas.
In addition to Tlaib, the letter to Rubio was signed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Democratic Reps. Greg Casar (Texas), Jesús "Chuy" García (Ill.), Al Green (Texas), Jonathan Jackson (Ill.), Pramila Jayapal (Wash.), Henry "Hank"Johnson (Ga.), Summer Lee (Pa.), Jim McGovern (Mass.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Chellie Pingree (Maine), Mark Pocan (Wisc.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), Delia Ramirez (Ill.), Paul Tonko (N.Y.), Nydia Velázquez (N.Y.), and Bonnie Watson Coleman (N.J.).
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"Jake Sullivan's been a critical decision-maker in every Democratic catastrophe of the last decade," said one observer. "Why is he still in the inner circle?"
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Amid the latest battle over the direction the Democratic Party should move in, a number of strategists and political advisers from across the center-left's ideological spectrum are assembling a committee to determine the policy agenda they hope will be taken up by a Democratic successor to President Donald Trump.
Some of the names on the list of people crafting the agenda—named Project 2029, an echo of the far-right Project 2025 blueprint Trump is currently enacting—left progressives with deepened concerns that party insiders have "learnt nothing" and "forgotten nothing" from the president's electoral victories against centrist Democratic candidates over the past decade, as one economist said.
The project is being assembled by former Democratic speechwriter Andrei Cherny, now co-founder of the policy journal Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, and includes Jake Sullivan, a former national security adviser under the Biden administration; Jim Kessler, founder of the centrist think tank Third Way; and Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress and longtime adviser to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Progressives on the advisory board for the project include economist Justin Wolfers and former Roosevelt Institute president Felicia Wong, but antitrust expert Hal Singer said any policy agenda aimed at securing a Democratic victory in the 2028 election "needs way more progressives."
As The New York Times noted in its reporting on Project 2029, the panel is being convened amid extensive infighting regarding how the Democratic Party can win back control of the White House and Congress.
After democratic socialist and state Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani's (D-36) surprise win against former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo last week in New York City's mayoral primary election—following a campaign with a clear-eyed focus on making childcare, rent, public transit, and groceries more affordable—New York City has emerged as a battleground in the fight. Influential Democrats including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) have so far refused to endorse him and attacked him for his unequivocal support for Palestinian rights.
Progressives have called on party leaders to back Mamdani, pointing to his popularity with young voters, and accept that his clear message about making life more affordable for working families resonated with Democratic constituents.
But speaking to the Times, Democratic pollster Celinda Lake exemplified how many of the party's strategists have insisted that candidates only need to package their messages to voters differently—not change the messages to match the political priorities of Mamdani and other popular progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
"We didn't lack policies," Lake told the Times of recent national elections. "But we lacked a functioning narrative to communicate those policies."
Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez have drawn crowds of thousands in red districts this year at Sanders' Fighting Oligarchy rallies—another sign, progressives say, that voters are responding to politicians who focus on billionaires' outsized control over the U.S. political system and on economic justice.
Project 2029's inclusion of strategists like Kessler, who declared economic populism "a dead end for Democrats" in 2013, demonstrates "the whole problem [with Democratic leadership] in a nutshell," said Jonathan Cohn of Progressive Mass—as does Sullivan's seat on the advisory board.
As national security adviser to President Joe Biden, Sullivan played a key role in the administration's defense and funding of Israel's assault on Gaza, which international experts and human rights groups have said is a genocide.
"Jake Sullivan's been a critical decision-maker in every Democratic catastrophe of the last decade: Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Israel/Gaza War, and the 2024 Joe Biden campaign," said Nick Field of the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. "Why is he still in the inner circle?"
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