Veterans For Peace Annual Convention Starts Today!

Veterans For Peace Annual Convention Starts Today! Today marks the start of the first-ever Veterans For Peace Online Convention. Taking place from August 2nd-9th, the theme will be "Human Rights over Nuclear Might". We have so many amazing workshops and plenaries scheduled that we do not want you to miss out!  Make sure to check out our agenda for the week!  Our Opening Welcome Session begins at 2 pm (e), 1 pm (c), 11am (p) and will start with an acknowledgement of occupied indigenous lands. Then hear from our Executive Director and other VFP leaders, advisors and guests on the intersections of current events with peace work. Immediately following our opening, our plenary sets the stage for our convention’s focus on nuclear weapons. The Nuclear Plenary will discuss the impacts of the nuclear era from the bombing of Japan to the health and environmental harm of bomb testing. You do not want to miss out on this year's convention!  Visit Our Convention Website!

Save your spot! Have questions? We have answers! Sponsor a Convention Attendee

You can register throughout the week and still have access to all the videos!

Virtual Business Meeting / Resolutions & Bylaws This year's online convention will also include our annual Business Meeting! As this will be our first on-line business meeting, we are working hard to develop a process that works best keeping in mind our desires for openness, transparency, and democracy.  VFP’s Board of Directors has drafted an agenda and a guideline for this year’s Business Meeting.  (Posted on our website here)  Please keep in mind that all of the previous guidelines were written to guide the process of in-person meetings.  We are trying our best to accommodate these guidelines for an on-line meeting.  There will be a learning curve, and this experience will inform our policies and procedures for future business meetings. All members are encouraged to register for this year's business meeting, which is separate from our online convention. Registration for the business meeting is FREE.  If your dues are current and you have NOT received the registration link for the business meeting, please contact convention@veteransforpeace.org to be sent the registration link. Members must be current in their dues to participate. If you wish to update your dues and attend the business meeting please renew your membership BEFORE August 5th. Check out the proposed resolutions here You do not need to register for Convention in order to participate in the business meeting, but it is open to active VFP members only. Click the correct button below to renew your membership or join VFP today!

Join Veterans For Peace! Renew Your Membership!

Apply for Financial Assistance We understand that many of our members have experienced financial hardship in these times. This year we have a reduced Convention registration rate of $75. Additionally, VFP is waiving the convention fee for limited number of VFP members who request assistance.  Preference will be given to Veterans: Who are already VFP members Students, unemployed, and/or homeless Members of groups underrepresented in VFP, such as women and people of color Apply for Assistance! Donate to Our Convention Fund The Veterans For Peace annual convention is online this year and we know that it means we have an amazing opportunity to widen the audience and participation of many newcomers and VFP members that are unable to travel.  We know that Veterans For Peace represents a community of like minded people and the convention every year provides an opportunity to connect and build with other veterans and allies. It is important that everyone in our community is able to attend. While our convention is greatly reduced in price this year, we know that many will be unable to afford to attend given the current economic and health crisis. With your help we can continue to offer reduced rates and scholarships! Donate! Want to learn more? Check out our full Convention website now! Visit the Full VFP Convention Website!

Veterans For Peace 1404 N. Broadway Blvd. St. Louis MO 63102 314-725-6005 vfp@veteransforpeace.org

The New Yorker: Seventy-Five Years Since the Bombing of Hiroshima

Hiroshima

This week marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. In 1946, William Shawn, who was then the deputy to Harold Ross, the editor of The New Yorker, asked John Hersey to travel to Japan and write about the horrific aftermath. Hersey’s report, “Hiroshima,” marked a radical departure from the conventional journalism of the day. In clear and supple prose, he described incomprehensible destruction on a human level. Hersey focussed on six survivors. (“Each knows that in the act of survival he lived a dozen lives and saw more death than he ever thought he would see.”) The magazine devoted its entire August 31st issue to the piece, and it was soon being read all over the world. Seventy-four years later, we’re bringing you Hersey’s celebrated work and a selection of related articles. In “Hiroshima: The Aftermath,” from 1985, Hersey revisits the survivors he profiled in his original report. In “Usher,” Eugene Kinkead encounters Paul W. Tibbets, Jr., the colonel who piloted the plane that unleashed the bomb. (“When the bomb was dropped, everyone craned his neck to watch the enormous black cloud that rose over the city—an effect quite different from anything any of them had ever seen. Then they flew back to the Marianas, eating ham sandwiches as they went.”) In “Atomic John,” David Samuels writes about a truck driver from Wisconsin who deciphered the secrets of the first nuclear bombs. Finally, in “John Hersey and the Art of Fact,” Nicholas Lemann profiles the New Yorker reporter and explores how his work helped transform magazine reporting. Taken together, these pieces offer a bracing reminder of the power of journalism to bear witness to even the most incomprehensible historical events.

— David Remnick

From The New Yorker’s Archive

A Reporter at Large Hiroshima A hundred thousand people were killed by the atomic bomb. Survivors wonder why they lived when so many others died. By John Hersey | August 31, 1946

A Reporter at Large Hiroshima: The Aftermath Survivors’ stories. By John Hersey | July 15, 1985

The Talk of the Town Usher The pilot who dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. By Eugene Kinkead | January 5, 1946 A Reporter at Large Atomic John A truck driver uncovers secrets about the first nuclear bombs. By David Samuels | December 8, 2008 Books John Hersey and the Art of Fact Hersey pioneered a radically new form of journalism. But he grew convinced that his higher calling was fiction, and nobody could persuade him otherwise. By Nicholas Lemann | April 29, 2019

All Souls Unitarian (DC) and EngageAsia Hiroshima & Nagasaki commemoration events

All Souls Heiwa Peace Project will be hosting a vigil on the steps of All Souls on Wednesday evening.  This will require face coverings with social distancing.  We will begin to gather at 6:30 and mark a moment of silence at 7:15.  All Souls new interim minister Rev. Kathleen Rolenz will join us.

For those not able to come to All Souls please Wednesday evening, there is also a special webinar that same evening on Zoom featuring the Hiroshima Children’s Drawings with All Souls panelists (Judith Bauer, Mel Hardy, and Gretchen Jones).

EngageAsia + Aligned Center Film+Makers Series Pictures from a Hiroshima Schoolyard:  Turning Horror into Hope Presented in Partnership with MIT Japan U.S.: Wednesday, August 5 - 7:00 to 8:00 PM Japan:  Thursday, August 6 - 8:00 to 9:00 AM On the occasion of the 75th Anniversary of the Atomic Bombings of Japan, join EngageAsia for a discussion of the documentary film, Pictures from a Hiroshima Schoolyard and a ceremony to remember and honor this event. Panelists include Producer Shizumi Shigeto Manale, Director Bryan Reichhardt, Gretchen Jones, Judith Bauer, and Melvin Hardy.  Register Here U.S.: August 5, 2020 (Wednesday) - 7:00 to 8:00 pm Japan: August 6, 2020 (Thursday) - 8:00 to 9:00 am On the 75th Anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, join EngageAsia, MIT Japan Program, and the Aligned Center, for a live interactive discussion with Pictures from a Hiroshima Schoolyard Producer Shizumi Shigeto Manale, Director Bryan Reichhardt, and Colleagues. We encourage you to watch the film for free prior to the webinar. Link here. All Souls Church Unitarian in Washington, DC is also hosting a free screening on the evening of 7/31. Details here. About the Film: A collection of surprisingly joyful drawings created by school children living among the ruins of Hiroshima in 1947 becomes the heart and soul of this true, inspiring story about an exchange of gifts between Americans and Japanese after a devastating war. This powerful documentary about reconciliation and the power of gift, introduces the children artists (now in their late 70s) who reflect on their early lives amidst the rubble of their destroyed city and the hope they shared through their art. In 2010, the newly restored drawings, buried for decades deep inside All Souls Church in Washington DC, are taken back to Japan where they are reunited with the artists and exhibited in the very building where they were created. Running With Cosmos Flowers Filmmaker Shizumi Shigeto Manale is also the author of Running with Cosmos Flowers: The Children of Hiroshima, which will be available on August 3, 2020. This webinar will be held via Zoom on Wednesday, August 5 @ 7:00 PM EDT (Thursday, August 6 @ 8:00 AM Japan Standard Time) for one hour and is free (suggested donation of $10). Register Now

EngageAsia is Co-Sponsoring The Heiwa Peace and Reconciliation Foundation of New York's Interfaith Peace Gatherings on the 75th Anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Atomic Bombings. Details and registration is here. 

NEIS NIGHT WITH THE EXPERTS: Hiroshima to Fukushima 75th anniversary

Email from Dave Kraft, NEIS, Chicago:

Greetings All --

Thank you again for attending the Night with the Experts session on July 30th.  We hope you will join us for future sessions.

Below you will find the link to the ZOOM session.  This link will also have the complete Chat Box material:

Share recording with viewers:

https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/9_x1LIPO3TpORNbwyn_mVrc7PqO9T6a803cYqfYJyE6gko31H3UPY570p6Oxa1Xz 

Password: %JgmDnL2

The links are not active, so you will have the copy and paste them into your browser to get to them.

I also [link to] an edited version of the Chat Box, which is a text file.  I edited out all the non-comments and info.

Feel free to share this link with others, and post it.

Thanks again for making this an auspicious beginning to our NWTE program.

Hope to see you Aug 27th, when we will discuss "Nuclear Power as an Environmental Justice Issue" with Dine activist Leona Morgan from New Mexico.

Be well, stay safe, keep on doing, 

--Dave Kraft--
--

David A. Kraft, Director

3411 W. Diversey #13

Chicago, IL  60647

(773)342-7650

neis@neis.org

www.neis.org

SKYPE address:  davekhamburg

NEIS is a member of EarthShare Illinois

No more Chornobyls!  No more Fukushimas!

Invest  in a nuclear-free world -- today!

Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security: Hiroshima and Nagasaki 75th anniversary events

Message from Joseph Gerson, CPDCS:

Friends,

This is the promised follow up with links to Hiroshima and Nagasaki 75^th anniversary webinars, events and resources.

Let me begin with two resources that will take you more deeply into the human meetings of the Atomic Bombings than almost anything else.

First is Sumiteru TANIGUCHI’s memoir, The Atomic Bomb on My Back. Translated from the Japanese and edited by yours truly, it provides the painful history of one of the most tortured A-Bomb survivors, his courageous commitment to live a loving and full life, and the story of the creation and activities of the Hibakusha movement for nuclear weapons abolition and to secure government assistance. The book can be pre-ordered online. But you can get two blessings with one payment, by making a $100 contribution to the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security. It will help us to keep on keepin’ on. Donate at https://www.cpdcs.org/donate/

The other is the searing 17-minute Hiroshima Nagasaki 1945 is comprised of film footage taken by Japanese photographers and locked away in a Pentagon vault for 20 years to prevent the Soviet Union from using it for propaganda purposes. It’s upsetting to watch, but like the video of George Floyd’s murder, it documents truths that we must know:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arONMWblvG8&has_verified=1

A fact sheet that you can use for writing letters to the editor and op-eds can be found at https://www.afsc.org/document/remembering-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-fact-sheet

You can sign and circulate the Hibakusha Signature Appeal at: https://www.hiroshimanagasaki75.org/hibakusha-appeal

For those of you in Massachusetts, you can find a listing of local events at:

https://masspeaceaction.org/commemorate-the-75th-anniversary-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki/?emci=0e9112ec-3bcc-ea11-9b05-00155d03bda0&=&

You can join the 2020 World Conference against A and H Bombs (Online):

August 2, 6 and 9,

all at 10:00 am-12:30 pm (JST)/03:00 am-05:30 am (CET); 09:00 pm-11:30 pm (EDT, previous day)

The 2020 World Conference has moved online with the International Meeting on August 2; Hiroshima Day Rally on August 6; Nagasaki Day Rally on August 9. Please join live with many grass-roots Japanese peace activists and important international speakers, including: Nakamitsu Izumi, UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs; Amb. Syed Hasrin Aidid, Permanent Representative of Malaysia to UN; Setsuko Thurlow, Hiroshima Hibakusha; Hiroshima/Nagasaki Mayors; Kate Hudson, CND Secretary General; Philip Jennings, IPB Co-Chair; Beatrice Finh, ICAN Secretary General and many others. English translation is available for registered participants online. For details and registration: http://www.antiatom.org/english/world_conference/

Contact: World Conference Organizing Committee: intl@antiatom.org

Also, on August 6 and 9 you can join Hiroshimanagasaki75.org’s nationwide 8 hour virtual commemorations at https://www.hiroshimanagasaki75.org/events

The recording of our excellent webinar with Sueichi Kido, Secretary General of the Japanese Confederation of A- & H- Bomb Organizations, the historian Gar Alperovitz, and Poor People’s Campaign Co-Chair Rev. Liz Theoharis is at https://youtu.be/uWf--Qkh35Q

A “fabulous” Massachusetts Peace Action (MAPA) webinar, “Fund Health Care Not Nuclear Warfare,” featuring me, Elaine Scarry of Harvard University, Bill Hartung of the Center for International Policy, and Shally Gupta Barnes of the Poor People’s Campaign can be found at:  https://youtu.be/5AMW7RSGUPk

Finally, my friend and long-time organizing partner, Rieko Asato of the Japan Council against A- & H- Bombs, who organized the translation of Taniguchi-san’s memoir, and I will be doing a webinar with Greater Manchester (Britain) CND, which will focus on the lives of courageous Hibakusha and the Hiroshima Signature Appeal.  The link to the webinar will be posted on the CPDCS Facebook page.

The Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security advocates for peace and disarmament with justice. Our priorities include working for Common Security diplomacy among the great powers, as well as serving as a bridge between peace and nuclear disarmament movements in the U.S., Europe and Asia, and contributing to intersectional organizing.

We depend on your contributions. You can donate at: https://www.cpdcs.org/donate/