Alaska Peace Center Committed to nonviolent conflict resolution, working for peace within ourselves, our community, and our world

You can view or download it here. Look for it soon in your inbox, and if you have provided us with your USPS address, in your mailbox. A big “Thank You” to editor Maia Genaux for putting it all together.

Saturday June 3, Noon to 2:00 pm

Square Dance Pavilion, Pioneer Park

Celebrating Peacemakers in Our Community
Come Help Us Celebrate!

Free barbeque! Please bring a dish to share and eating utensils if possible.

The Peace Feast is an opportunity for people working to make Interior Alaska a better place to live to come together, relax in the summer sun, share ideas and interests, and find out about each other’s activities. Our community is blessed with a multitude of small organizations working quietly to make all our lives better. We’ll be featuring short presentations from a sampling of these organizations that are improving the quality of life in our community.

The Square Dance Pavilion (aka picnic shelter) is between the Dance Hall and the Pioneer Air Museum.

Fifth Annual Peace Feast, May 2017

The Alaska Peace Center works for peace, justice and sustainability – individually, in our community and globally – with a commitment to nonviolent conflict resolution. For more information, contact info@alaskapeace.org.

In-person at the office, or via Zoom

The office is in Suite 203 of the College Mall Building, 3535 College Road, up the stairs at the west end of the building just inside the outer door for the Fuji Steakhouse. Or connect via Zoom:

Via Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84389719538?pwd=dDdJVnZzSXM5SWdXd0pWcWdpdUtxdz09

Meeting ID: 843 8971 9538
Passcode: 149078

There are many things to discuss: putting out the newsletter and planning for the Peace Feast on June 3 are primary among them.

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84389719538?pwd=dDdJVnZzSXM5SWdXd0pWcWdpdUtxdz09

Meeting ID: 843 8971 9538
Passcode: 149078

The Alaska Peace Center monthly meeting will take place via Zoom at 7 pm on Tuesday, April 4. All are welcome! Everyone is welcome to join in to help determine and shape upcoming APC actions. 

Also we need at least two more board members at this time, as well as a new volunteers coordinator.

If you have a vision for achieving well-being for all, achieving Peace, Justice and Sustainability, and helping remediate damages done locally and globally, please show up. 

Or if you just would like to help move in that direction, please show up. 

We have a lot of opportunities for interacting with the public coming up in the next few months. A draft agenda is here.

Please consider attending our presentation, about abolishing nuclear weapons this Friday. 

We will meet in person at our office (Room 203 of the College Mall Building at 3535 College Road, upstairs above the Fuji Japanese Steakhouse) and via Zoom. 

Join Zoom Meeting:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83400667036?pwd=aEtvQXU2cUwyZER4NUZqQ0taUEh1UT09
Meeting ID: 834 0066 7036
Passcode: 116449

We will be showing a 20-minute video interview with Beatrice Fihn, the recently retired director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). She describes the campaign that led to adoption of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Her discussion is both insightful and inspiring.

Also, we will consider the existing 1986 AK State policy for reduction of nuclear warheads, and how we can continue advocacy for Alaska as a nuclear weapons free zone. We will also look at what circumpolar efforts already exist for establishing an Arctic Nuclear Weapons Free Zone.

(from https://www.un.org/nwfz/sites/www.un.org.nwfz/files/nwfz-postcard-2010_page_1.jpg, 29 March 2023)

Hope to see you!

Background Information:

Although we have been living under the threat of nuclear annihilation for almost 80 years, the dangers have greatly increased recently with two nuclear powers facing off over Ukraine. Considering the tensions extant in the world today it is appropriate for the citizenry to become concerned about nuclear weapons again, especially since we now have tools to eliminate them entirely.

1) TPNW

A little over a year ago, on 22 January 2021, the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons entered into force. Currently, 92 of the 193 UN member nations have signed the treaty and 68 have taken the further step of ratifying it to become states parties to the treaty. This treaty is largely the result of intense effort by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), of which the Alaska Peace Center is a partner organization. Although the nations holding nuclear weapons are reluctant to acknowledge this treaty, they can be shamed by world opinion into following the treaty’s protocols and eventually accepting the treaty. This has happened before with respect to land mines and chemical weapons. One of the tools available to support ICAN is the Cities Appeal, by which local governments pass a resolution declaring support for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and calling on the national government to sign and ratify it. Anchorage has passed such a resolution, joining 70 other cities and 5 states by doing so. Other Alaskan communities should consider this action.

2) Alaska Statute for reduction of nuclear weapons

In the 1980’s there was a great deal of concern about nuclear weapons. In Alaska, as the result of hard work by many people, a voter initiative concerning nuclear weapons was passed in 1986 by 57% of the vote. This initiative is now codified as Alaska Statute Sec. 44.99.120 and 125.

Statute 44.99.120 states, among other things, that it is the policy of the State of Alaska “to promote a mutual and verifiable freeze followed by reductions in nuclear warheads, missiles, and other delivery systems in order to halt the nuclear arms race and to reduce the risk of nuclear war.” Statute 44.99.125 directs the governor to “conduct the affairs of state and carry out state programs in conformity with this policy.”

3) Nuclear Weapon Free Zones

Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zones are another tool by which people of a large region of the Earth have eliminated the use, threat of use, and transport of nuclear weapons within specified boundaries. There are 5 of these, 7 counting Mongolia and Antarctica, that cover most of the Southern Hemisphere as well as a large part of central Asia. In addition, there are international treaties prohibiting nuclear weapons on the sea floor and in outer space. Canadian Pugwash, led by Adele Buckley, has been working toward an Arctic Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone for years, with support from the Inuit Circumpolar Council (see page 16) and others. Using the 1986 Alaska Statute, can we work toward creating an Alaska nuclear-weapons-free zone? This would add momentum toward an Arctic NWFZ.

The Alaska Peace Center monthly meeting will take place via Zoom and in person at the APC Office at 7 pm on Tuesday, February 28. All are welcome! This is actually the March meeting, but several of us are out of town on March 6 so the meeting is being held a week early.

Everyone is welcome to join in, to help determine and shape upcoming APC actions. 

Also we need at least two more board members at this time, as well as a new volunteers coordinator.

If you have a vision for achieving well-being for all, achieving Peace, Justice and Sustainability, and helping remediate damages done locally and globally, please show up. 

Or if you just would like to help move in that direction, please show up. 

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84389719538?pwd=dDdJVnZzSXM5SWdXd0pWcWdpdUtxdz09

Meeting ID: 843 8971 9538
Passcode: 149078

The documentary movie “The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks”, directed by Yoruba Richen was released in 2022. It is based on the book of the same title written by Jeanne Theoharis. Last October, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now interviewed both author and director. Though not a substitute for seeing the film itself, this 47-minute interview provides much insight into Rosa Parks’ life beyond her refusal to move to the back of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955. Please join us as we watch the interview over Zoom this Friday evening.

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83400667036?pwd=aEtvQXU2cUwyZER4NUZqQ0taUEh1UT09

Meeting ID: 834 0066 7036
Passcode: 116449

From the Democracy Now website about the interview:

The new documentary “The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks” gives a comprehensive look at the legacy of the woman known for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in 1955, a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement. Beyond helping to inspire the Montgomery bus boycott that ended Alabama’s bus segregation law, Parks was also a lifelong supporter of the Black Power movement and organized in campaigns to seek justice for wrongfully imprisoned Black people, political prisoners, and Black rape survivors like Recy Taylor, whose case Parks investigated for the NAACP in 1944. We speak to the film’s co-director, Yoruba Richen, who says Parks paid a price for her activism, including having to leave Montgomery for Detroit to escape public backlash. “We often think of these civil rights leaders as heroic, and [they] make these stances, and then everything’s fine. But the risk and the danger that they face is often not explored,” says Richen. We also speak with Jeanne Theoharis, author of the best-selling biography “The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks,” on which the documentary is based, and a consulting producer. “She shows up for everything,” Theoharis says of Parks’s activism. “She is looking for all different kinds of strategies to challenge the kind of racial injustice in this country, the social injustice, poverty, war.”

The movie itself is available to members of Peacock.

The Alaska Peace Center monthly meeting will take place at 7:00 pm on Monday, January 2. At the December meeting we changed our meeting day from Thursday to Monday because more board members could attend on Monday evenings. This month’s meeting will be via Zoom only. The office will not be open. All are welcome!

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84873864114?pwd=RTN3Z0xNNkFpNlhhOGJlcDRURjNxUT09

Meeting ID: 848 7386 4114
Passcode: 555264

The Alaska Peace Center monthly meeting will take place at 7 pm on Thursday, December 1. This month’s meeting will be via Zoom only. The office will not be open. All are welcome!

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84873864114?pwd=RTN3Z0xNNkFpNlhhOGJlcDRURjNxUT09

Meeting ID: 848 7386 4114
Passcode: 555264

Thanks to all those who came out for the Armistice Day celebration on Friday. We joyfully rang our bells and rededicated ourselves to peace. Afterward, the Fairbanks Peace Choir led us in singing “Dona Nobis Pacem” (Give Us Peace) and “Finlandia” (Song of Peace) by Jean Sibelius. We are very grateful that the Peace Choir could join us on this day. Later, each person gave a brief perspective on what Armistice Day means to them. We are glad to have had this opportunity to gather together and rededicate ourselves to working toward peace.

Haley Lehman from the News-Miner was present and wrote up a nice story about the event, with photos.