Monthly Video and Discussion, Friday, March 31, 2023 @ 7:15 pm

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.

Monthly Meeting Tuesday, Feb 28, 2023 at 7 pm

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

Last Friday Monthly Video and Discussion, February 24, 2023, 7:15 pm

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.

Monthly Meeting Monday, January 2, 2023 at 7:00 pm

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

Monthly Meeting Thursday, December 1, 2022 at 7 pm via Zoom

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

Reclaim Armistice Day 2022

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.

Ring in Peace on Armistice Day, Friday, November 11, 2022

Ring Bells for Peace! 11:00 am at Veteran’s Memorial Park

Alaska Peace Center and Veterans For Peace North Star Chapter 146 invite the Fairbanks community to ring bells at 11:00 am at Veteran’s Memorial Park, 700 Cushman Street in Fairbanks, in celebration of Armistice Day on Friday, November 11. Bring a bell if you have one (we’ll have extras if you don’t), in any case bring a friend. The Peace Choir will be present to sing some songs.

Bell-ringing has been a traditional way of celebrating Armistice Day ever since the end of World War One (known at the time as “The Great War”) 104 years ago. It signifies the relief and joy felt around the world when the Armistice was signed on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. Bells were rung to celebrate peace and the end of four years of war that killed or wounded more than 21 million people. In the wake of so much carnage, it was then clear to millions of people that wars were not about valor or romantic ideals, but about empire, which benefits a few at the expense of many. A tradition of observing the anniversary of the Armistice by ringing bells to honor veterans and promote peace spread throughout the world.

Armistice Day was first officially recognized by Congress in 1926 as a day that “should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations,” and “with appropriate ceremonies of friendly relations with all other peoples.” It became a legal holiday nationwide by an act of Congress in 1938, dedicated to the cause of world peace. In 1954 President Eisenhower changed Armistice Day to Veterans Day by presidential proclamation, admonishing us to “re-consecrate ourselves to the task of promoting an enduring peace so that their efforts shall not have been in vain.” However, in contrast to Eisenhower’s intention, rebranding Armistice Day as Veterans Day has led to a change from celebrating peace to celebrating the military and glorifying war. Armistice Day has been flipped from a day for peace into a day for displays of militarism.

Today there are armed conflicts in 54 countries across the globe in which people are actively being killed. Preliminary statistics show a minimum of 218,290 deaths so far this year from armed conflicts worldwide. This does not include deaths from disease or starvation related to those conflicts. Concomitant with this wanton human destruction is massive environmental destruction. The number of people forced out of their homes and livelihoods and into refugee status is now at the highest level since World War II. Military Forces involved in these conflicts release huge quantities of greenhouse gases and spread pollution around the world. All this is taking place while the world is facing unprecedented problems of climate change, environmental destruction, and pollution that demand human cooperation to solve. It is time to throw “full-spectrum dominance” into the political trash can and apply ourselves to “full-spectrum cooperation!” The huge proportion of the world’s wealth dedicated to militarism and death should be applied to solving the myriad problems facing the world today.

The Alaska Peace Center, along with Veterans For Peace nationally and locally, celebrates the original intent of November 11th – as a day to rededicate ourselves to work toward peaceful solutions to the world’s problems. Peace, not war, is the best way to honor the sacrifices of veterans.

For more reflections on the significance of Armistice Day see the essay by Skip Oliver.

Bell and doves

References: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts, 4 Nov 2022

https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3977817

Monthly Meeting Thursday, Nov 3, at 7pm

The Alaska Peace Center monthly meeting will take place at 7 pm on Thursday, November 3, at our office upstairs in the College Mall building (above the Fuji Steakhouse–use the same external door as the Steakhouse). People can also connect to the meeting via zoom. All are welcome!

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

Meeting ID: 848 7386 4114
Passcode: 555264

Nenana-Totchaket Agricultural Project — Potluck, Presentation and Discussion

Friday, October 28, 2022

Potluck at 6:30, Program at 7:00 pm

Raven Landing, in the Common Room in Building 4, or online via Zoom

(See map to Building 4, and the Zoom link, at the bottom of this post)

Following on last month’s presentation about Land Acknowledgment and Land Back, this month’s presentation looks at the “Nenana-Totchaket Agricultural Project.” 

The  State of Alaska has just sold 1,975 acres west of Nenana in the first phase of the estimated 148,000 acre Nen-Tot project, in the name of food security, and transferring state land into private ownership.  

This area has always been a traditional subsistence area for the people of Nenana, who were not consulted about the project, have their own ideas of what food security looks like, and recognize the value of land preservation. This project has also been criticized for proceeding too quickly and with inadequate planning. 

One or more speakers from Fairbanks Climate Action Coalition and Native Movement will share the latest information about the project, why the local people are concerned, and what future actions might be helpful. 

Join us for a status update and discussion at Raven Landing, Building 4, Common Room on Friday evening, October 28, or join via Zoom if you are unable to come in person. Potluck begins at 6:30, program begins at 7:00.

For background information see https://fairbanksclimateaction.org/blog/nenana-land-sale.

Zoom link:

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

Meeting ID: 834 0066 7036
Passcode: 116449

Map to Building 4.

Photo: John Whipple/Division of Agriculture

Monthly Meeting Thursday, Oct 6, at 7 pm

The Alaska Peace Center monthly meeting will take place at 7 pm on Thursday, October 6, at our office upstairs in the College Mall building (above the Fuji Steakhouse–use the same external door as the Steakhouse). People can also connect to the meeting via zoom. 

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

Meeting ID: 848 7386 4114
Passcode: 555264