Sunday Vigil at Colorado Springs City Hall Honors UN Treaty’s Second Anniversary

Sunday Vigil at City Hall Honors UN Treaty’s Second Anniversary

A dozen Peace activists gathered at City Hall on Sunday, Jan. 22 to commemorate the second anniversary of the UN Treaty to abolish nuclear weapons. Responses from pedestrians ans auto traffic was overwhelmingly positive! If you would like to see what other communities are doing worldwide, visit https://www.nuclearbantreaty.org/actions/

letter sent to Colo Springs Gazette (Unpublished of course)

To the Editor:

For two anniversaries of the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons the Colorado Springs City Council has been urged to pass a resolution in support our nation’s ratifying this treaty.      The city councils of Denver and Longmont have both passed such a resolution.

To date, 92 nations have signed on and  68 nations have ratified this treaty,     Thus the Treaty has the force of international law.       None of the nuclear armed nations have signed or ratified the treaty.   The US has led the opposition  to this treaty and pressured others to reject the treaty .   To the contrary, the US has committed at least a trillion dollars to “modernizing” our nuclear weapons complex in outright violation its commitments in Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.      It has withdrawn from treaties that were part of the decades of work creating an architecture building confidence toward the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons (of mass destruction) .     These were working.   In the 1980’s there were 70,000 plus active nuclear weapons in launch on warning status.   Today there are about 13,000 between the US and Russia (the rest of the “nuclear club” total about 1300).

In this time in which the  Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has indicated an increased danger,  Colorado Springs and the Gazette should  urge our government to cease wasting huge amounts of national resources in the fools’ errand of extending our commitment to possess and threaten the use of nuclear weapons and to lead the other nuclear armed nations in joining this treaty.  The money committed to nuclear weapons production should be redirected to the addressing the real existential dangers of climate change.

Robert Kinsey,    The Colorado Coalition for the Prevention