(Cambridge) Today at 3:30 PM at Fresh Pond Shopping Center, Alewife Brook Parkway, residents of Greater Boston will hold a public standout to mark the second anniversary of the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The protesters will call for the urgent elimination of these weapons and highlight the extensive Massachusetts presence of Raytheon Technologies, a major producer of key nuclear weapons.
Vigils commemorating the Treaty will also take place Saturday morning in Northampton and Greenfield.
The U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) is the first legally binding international agreement to comprehensively prohibit nuclear weapons. It entered into force on January 22, 2021 and to date has 92 signatories and 68 states parties. It bans the use, possession, testing and transfer of nuclear weapons under international law. The ultimate goal of the Treaty is the total elimination of these most inhumane and indiscriminate weapons ever created.
“Some say banning nuclear weapons is a pipedream,” says Paul Shannon, an organizer with the Raytheon/Nuclear Weapons Campaign. “This is no pipedream, this is a matter of the survival of our species. These weapons undermine our national security and pose catastrophic harm to humanity. They must be eliminated urgently.”
Despite the repeated warnings of nuclear policy experts that the world is in the most dangerous moment since the dawn of the Cold War, the United States has yet to ratify the Treaty and instead has embarked on a $2 Trillion nuclear modernization program. The activists are urging that the U.S. renounce nuclear weapons, take the lead on climate, health, justice, and other global issues and begin the important work of fostering global peace and cooperation!
