 Aloha, I'm Joshua Cooper and welcome to Cooper Union, what's happening with human rights around our world on Think Tech Live, broadcasting from our downtown studio in Honolulu, Hawaii, and Moana, New York. Today's episode focuses on peace on earth, abolition of nuclear weapons of war, and ending nukes and imagining nonviolence. We're looking at the important issue of peace being a human right for everyone on earth. And the recent Doomsday Clock announcement that the world stands at 90 seconds to midnight reminds us that we must build a stronger movement, more effective, more cooperative, nuclear abolition to prevent nuclear war and advance disarmament. Today I'm joined by Jackie, founder of abolition 2000. Jackie, can you explain to us the Doomsday Clock and where we are at this time in history? The Doomsday Clock was established by the Bolton, the Bolton of the atomic scientists, I think in 1947 to try to graphically convey how close the world was to annihilation. Initially they focused pretty much exclusively on nuclear weapons, which were new to the world at that time. Over the years, they have added other existential threats, notably climate change. More recently, disinformation exacerbated by artificial intelligence and things like that. In any case, the farthest it's ever been, I think, is 17 minutes to midnight. When the Cold War ended, then there was a kind of a collective sigh of relief around the planet. People thought that nuclear weapons were a thing of the past and largely forgot about nuclear weapons. But the nuclear threat never really abated and has been increasingly visible in the last few years, especially since Russia's invasion of Ukraine and now with the Israeli war on Gaza. We have two hot wars involving nuclear armed states with the dangers of greater escalation of those wars, which could lead to nuclear escalation. So last year, the Doomsday Clock was set at 90 seconds to midnight. That was the closest it had ever been. This year it remains at 90 seconds to midnight. And as the bulletin explains, this should not be interpreted as thinking that we have reached some kind of state of stability. In fact, it's a reaffirmation of how dangerously close we are. Thank you so much. It's really important for people to know where we're at. Because as you said, after the Cold War, there seemed to enter a point where people thought that all the aspects about nuclear weapons and annihilation had just been removed. I remember there was all those films and movies that were there that then captivate our imagination. Could you share with us some of the most important highlights in the nuclear abolition movement that really did pique everyone's interest, but more importantly, raise the horrors of the annihilation that humanity could easily face? I can say that if we think back to 1982, that was kind of the height, I think, the peak of the anti-nuclear movement in the United States certainly and globally in many respects. Because at that time, the United States under Ronald Reagan had begun deploying nuclear-armed crews and perishing missiles to Europe. And people in Europe were terrified that they were going to be on the battleground of World War III. It was at the height of the Cold War intentions between the United States and the Soviet Union. That was the year that there were a million people gathered in Central Park in New York City to call for the elimination of nuclear weapons. And there were demonstrations around the world that year. And the next year, I myself was arrested at the Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Weapons Laboratory in California with about 5,000 other people. So the nuclear weapons were really, I think, I think at the height of public awareness and concern. And that movement continued through the 1980s to a greater electric stand. We had the freeze movement in the United States, where we had ballot initiatives in most states calling for a halt and freeze the nuclear arms race. And then in 1989, all of a sudden, the Berlin Wall came down. The Cold War ended. Nobody was expecting that. Nobody, including the National Intelligence Services, were expecting that. And like I said, it was almost like the planet breathed a collective sigh of relief. And activists, at the time, it was a young movement. Young activists moved on, had families, got involved in other issues, Central America, anti-intervention work there, into apartheid work, environmentalism. And the issue really disappeared. It's almost like it fell off a cliff. But within the nuclear arms states, the nuclear weapons juggernaut continued. And in the United States, for example, in 1991, Colonel, not Colonel, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, said, we no longer have the luxury of having a specific enemy to plan for. We have to plan for many enemies. And that very much is being echoed now in the US nuclear war planning, which is contemplating two wars with two nuclear arms states at the same time. That would be one with Russia and one with China. So in the nuclear weapons establishment, the planners at the nuclear weapons labs continued to come up with rationales and designs for new nuclear weapons systems. The nuclear weapons budget dipped a little bit for a couple of years, then it started to rise. And it is now, in inflation-adjusted dollars, the highest it has ever been on record in the United States. And there are plans and programs underway to maintain, modernize, or replace every warhead and every delivery system in the arsenal. And that kind of activity is being reflected in the other nuclear arms states, in particular Russia, where Putin, a couple of years ago, announced the development of this new generation of almost kind of like sci-fi weapons. But they are actually starting to be deployed. China, which for many years until now has had a very small arsenal, like 300 weapons, and has kept them in a de-alerted state, is now making plans to massively increase the size of its arsenal and build a lot more missiles. The UK is involved in modernizing its tried-and-submarines. France is working on a new missile. Israel, the ghost in the machine, so to speak, is, it maintains a nuclear triad like the United States, as it has strategic bombers, it has land-based missiles, and it has submarine-based missiles. And then we have India, Pakistan, and we have North Korea, which is testing a lot of missiles and is possibly preparing for another full-scale nuclear test. So we have a new generation of arms racing underway now. It's costing bazillions of dollars, and it's happening at the same time as we have these very heightened tensions among and between nuclear arms states and their allies. I mentioned the two wars. Those are not the only hotspots. There's also US, China, and particularly a potential conflict over the status of Taiwan. In the future, we have continuing tensions and political instability in India and Pakistan. And then we have the Middle East, where the Israel's war in Gaza is threatened to expand. Now we have the US bombing in Syria, I believe Jordan and Iraq. And we don't know how Iran is going to respond. I do want to say Iran does not have nuclear weapons at this point, but they do have the potential to develop them. Saudi Arabia is keeping a close eye on what Iran is doing, and it also wants to have a bomb in the back pocket. If it decides it's time to do so. We're in a very, very volatile, dangerous situation, and I do think that 90 seconds to midnight is appropriate. No, and it actually makes so much more sense now. You can almost hear the clock ticking with each example that you're providing. And then we really appreciate you connecting all the dots of how what does exist now, which is horrible and horrendous, could expand very rapidly. And I want to mention something else, too. Two other things, aspects. One is that the US has nuclear weapons deployed in five European countries, five NATO countries, and it's about to redeploy nuclear weapons to the Lake and Heath base of the UK, which it had withdrawn its nuclear weapons many years ago from there, and is upgrading the B-61 gravity bomber to give it more precision targeting. And those will be deployed in Germany and elsewhere. And other countries like Poland, other NATO members like Poland are asking for US nuclear weapons. So again, you have this modernization activity going on, not just in the US, but also among its strategic allies. And the other point I want to make, which is very important, is that this is all happening at a time when we see growing numbers of authoritarian nationalist leaders and governments around the world, in Russia, in China, in North Korea, in Hungary, in Israel, and the United States. So that's another really dangerous aspect to this because when you have growth, increasing, rallying around national identities and nationalism, and you have authoritarian leaders and they have nuclear weapons, what more need I say? It's very dangerous. But as a recipe for a human rights disaster, I agree with you 100%. One point I was interested in was, what first inspired you to dedicate your life to peace? As you went through those history and those aspects, what was it personally that brought you in and drives you to this day? Well, I have to go back to my childhood. My parents were Jewish. They had lived through World War II. They were very cognizant of the dangers of the resurgence of anti-Semitism and boy, were they right. But they taught us, me and my brother, they were also very cognizant of current events. So as a family, we would watch the news on TV together every night and discuss it. So they taught me and my brother that the Nazi Holocaust can never happen again and you need to stand up and be counted. So that was one really early influence. Another was the civil rights movement. It grew up watching Martin Luther King again on television and in the North, in New York at the time. And then my family made a couple of trips to card trips to the South and where I saw segregated bathrooms and segregated restaurants and stuff and I was just shocked. And when Martin Luther King was assassinated, I remember my family put a candle in the window and that we were mostly white families there. We were probably the only ones but that made a huge, huge difference as well. So then, and when I was in high school, the US was involved in the Vietnam War and so I was involved in student activism, draft counseling and efforts to, I remember at my high school graduation I organized wearing of black armbands and piece symbols on our, those hats, whatever those things are called, those graduation caps. And then in high school also, I had a very progressive set of teachers that was the first Earth Day. And so they inspired the students to organize an ecology group, which I was very involved in and learned about ecology. And at that time learned about thermal pollution to the ocean from nuclear power. At the time that I was in high school and I've collaborated this with my colleagues, they did not teach us about Ereshim and Nagasaki. Anyway, so that awareness led me to get involved in anti-nuclear power work. And then again, if I said there's a Vietnam War going on and there was that anti-war work and then that was also sort of the first wave of the recent, the modern age of feminism. So there was also an emergent feminist movement. Those three things sort of came together for me. Ecology, non-violence and feminism. And yeah, and it went on from there. Perfect. And that also brings me to the point where I remember us meeting in Tahiti with Moro Roa and the French testing there. Could you share how that Tahiti abolition to gossip was so significant and how there was a link between nuclear colonization and the importance of indigenous people's rights? Absolutely. I think I should say something about abolition 2000. Just briefly, abolition 2000 global network to eliminate nuclear weapons was established in 1995 at the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review and Extension Conference. And it was initially to demand immediate commencement of negotiations on a treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons within a time-bound framework by the year 2000. And we rapidly grew to have, to include countries, member groups around the world, but as 2000 approached and we knew we weren't gonna get our treaty, then we sought to enroll 2000 member groups. So that's why we stuck with the name. And in 19, we also explicitly in this founding statement call for the phase elimination of nuclear power. So we've always been opposed to nuclear power as well. So in 1997, we had our second annual general meeting in French-occupied Polynesia at the invitation of an indigenous-led group called Hittitao, which I think it means the time is now. And it was an extraordinary meeting because it brought together anti-nuclear activists, peace activists from North America, from Europe, and from many of the Pacific Island nations, including people who had not actually seen each other for many years. And when we were there, we really got an education about the full scope of impacts of the nuclear enterprise on colonized and indigenous people because French Polynesia had been the site of Francis above ground and underwater nuclear test explosions and the populations there were experiencing what populations exposed to nuclear testing, everywhere experience with health effects environmental impacts, intergenerational effects and so on. And also, French Polynesia is still an occupied colony. And most of the nuclear weapons tests around the world have been conducted on lands of indigenous and colonized people. So we really learned about nuclear colonialism as the term that was kind of coined. And it was an extraordinary experience for many reasons, but one was that I learned a lot about the sort of history of colonized people. So very similar to Hawaii, of course. And the fact that there were different different self-declared or recognized by some people, indigenous led monarchies and governments sort of vying for supremacy. Hittita was interesting, our hosts, because they're not a political party and they felt it was too soon to be engaged in independence activity. What they wanted to do was to reclaim and regrow a sustainable indigenous economy that would put them in a position to be self-sufficient in the future. So that was another interesting dimension of it. Oh, it was definitely one of the most powerful weeks of my life as well. It was the Nanda and Peaceful Protest with the Fafuru that they had gone into the parliament building. Yes. Exciting court monitoring that abolition 2000 did while there. It was also, as you said, really the circular economy with people, the women's co-op with the vanilla and the coconut oil, the monotony and all those different aspects, really everything coming together. And then all of us recognizing as well that nuclear course is permanent, is forever and was impacting even the fish. And you can see how people living sustainably would be directly impacted by those tests that had happened so far. Did issue the Morea Declaration recognizing the disproportionate suffering of indigenous and colonized people from the nuclear cycle and that became kind of an appendix to the abolition 2000 statement. Very important. It's true. And it also reminded me too, even I remember it was really a non-commercial week that really living there, it was everyone was there for mutual exchange, taking care of each other. And you could really see how the indigenous values were exercised and coordinated. And that week really did, I think, build and bring life into the anti-nuclear movement. As you said, nuclear colon colonialism really became a more recognized term. And if you do look around at the history of nuclear testing, it is always on indigenous people's sacred homelands and brought it all together. One other important aspect of the amazing work you do is Mayors for Peace. And I remember seeing you a couple of years in Honolulu at the Mayors for Peace Conference. Can you share a bit about that? Sure, well, Mayors for Peace, going back to that seminal year of 1982 was founded during the United Nations second special session on disarmament where the mayors at the time, the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki announced the formation of this international mayors movement to call for the abolition of nuclear weapons. And that movement has grown now to include about over 8,200 cities and 166 countries and territories and has been very active carrying the message that the Hibakusha's message, the A-bomb survivor's message that nuclear weapons and human beings are incompatible and nuclear weapons must be abolished. But over the years, they've also, well, actually they've come full circle because in their original covenant, Mayors for Peace did recognize the linkage to a lot of other issues, poverty, refugees, and so on. And in the last couple of years, last 10 years, they've been developing now kind of a three-pronged approach which is calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons, promotion of safe and resilient cities and creating a culture of peace in which peace is a priority for every individual. And those three things they see as being the essential components of achieving a sustainable, lasting world peace. And so this in different parts of the world, this city's member cities are encouraged to link up their nuclear abolition advocacy with whatever other issues of local concern to them such as in some parts of the world, terrorism, refugees certainly, poverty certainly, environmental issues certainly, and so on. So it's another somewhat holistic approach. I do think that before we run out of time, we should mention, and maybe you were gonna bring this up, we just had our 28th annual general meeting of abolition 2000 virtually, we've done them virtually since the pandemic and it allows for a lot more international participation from all over the world. But we were really excited to have the participation of a youth group from Tahiti, which has gave a fantastic presentation, a youth group which focuses on nuclear abolition and climate change. And we had another fabulous presentation from a youth group from Kazakhstan, which was the site of the Soviet Union's principal nuclear test site. And they're called STEP, S-T-E-P-P-E, step organization for peace stop, and they gave a fabulous presentation focusing on the need for nuclear abolition and compensation to victims of nuclear testing, but also calling for Soviet decolonization of Kazakhstan and a feminist foreign policy for Kazakhstan. So I'm just really impressed with these new emerging movements of young people picking up the work of their parents and grandparents in these directly affected communities. And it's a great example really, because abolition 2000 movement does draw on the experience of longtime activists and the energy and innovations of young campaigners. And as you said, it was a celebration of the 28th, but it also links many of the issues that you're talking about, of sustainability, resilience, we know that Maui, as well as Kauai, Hawaii and Honolulu are all signed on to mayors for peace. We also, though, as you made the connections, the recent UN Human Rights Committee review of the International Covenant on Civil Political Rights and its general comment it just released and the campaigns have been done around universal periodic review of climate change, nuclear war and human right to life. Maybe you can share a bit about this interconnectedness and how abolition 2000 is going forward to make sure that we can realize UN Sustainable Development Gold Number 16 for peace and justice around our globe. Well, it seems that people who are working on a variety of issues are all sort of grasping for the idea of how to work together more effectively to build a more powerful unified movement. That seems to be a very broad scene. And I will say about the Sustainable Development Gold 16, I think we need to see that peace and human security or whatever the term used in that article are kind of buried in this other article. It's not a full point itself. And I think that in the next iteration of Sustainable Development Golds, it really needs to be a point on its own peace, you know, because otherwise the other ones are always at risk. In the United States and Hawaii is, you know, like it or not part of the United States, but there is an emerging movement which is also trying to seeking to bring everybody together, which is called the Poor People's Campaign, a national call for moral revival, which I think has a great deal of potential. A year before it was killed, Martin Luther King gave a speech called, Beyond Vietnam, a Time to Break Silence, where he identified the triple evils of systemic racism, systemic poverty and militarism. And he was assassinated exactly one year later, and I don't think that was a coincidence. So his work has been picked up now by the New Poor People's Campaign, led by Reverend William Barber II and Reverend Lucio Harris. And they've added to the triple evils of systemic racism, systemic poverty, militarism of the war economy, environmental devastation, and a distorted moral narrative that blames poor people for their own poverty. And they say these things are all intertwined and are woven together through a moral fusion campaign. So I think that moral fusion is a very good way to think about the path to building this broader, more unified movement that we need to survive. Really important, and while we're talking about the civil and political rights under the Human Rights Committee and how they've had that new general comment, it really is important to look at the economic social and cultural rights, which has never been addressed or recognized as much in our country. And I really appreciate you bringing those economic social and cultural rights together because it is environment, it is economy, it is ecology, it is equity. And we have to bring all that together to be able to understand what matters most. What would you say would be the next steps for abolition 2000 after this important AGM? Well, we have to go through, we the coordinating committee has to go through, we have to go through the chats and we have to go through our own notes and the report backs from the breakout groups and really pull out things. There are a lot of good ideas that were expressed. And so I think the first thing is, we need to take the energy that was evident during the weekend and the theme was keeping the network connected and really think about how to operationalize some of these ideas. I mean, I just want to stress that abolition 2000 is a network and the work is done by the member groups that our job is to put those groups in touch with each other and give them the kind of support they need to carry out these projects. We will be working towards a series of events in July in Geneva during the nuclear non-proliferation treaty preparatory committee meeting there. And we'll do some street art, we'll do some workshops, we'll make statements to the official governments and have some informal meetings there. So that's our next big event. We're also looking at then the next meeting or the third meeting of states parties to the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons which will be in March of 2025. But we'll be, we have a couple of working groups. For example, there's one called nuclear weapons convention reset which is saying it's taking a fresh look at the model nuclear weapons convention that abolition 2000 produced or came out of abolition 2000 and 1997 originally which focuses again on the nuclear weapons states, the nuclear arms states and their legal obligations and moral obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and customary international law to actually implement nuclear disarmament. The countries without nuclear weapons have done their part by negotiating and ratifying the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons. However, as long as no nuclear arms state or its ally joins that treaty, it cannot be a disarmament treaty. So we still need a disarmament treaty. That's what we'll be working for. But I think abolition 2000 will be seeking to, we are going to be attempting to rebuild our youth network, our youth fusion network with the energies from these new youth groups that I mentioned, and that will be a priority. And we'll also be continuing to seek ways to make common cause with the climate movement in particular. If I have time, I mean, there's one thing that really has struck me because we've been trying for years now to approach the climate change activists and say there are two existential threats. Let's work together. And that argument doesn't seem to have stuck. It doesn't seem to have been very effective. And something that occurred to me during the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons meeting of states parties in New York in November was it was happening at the same time as COP 28. When the U.S. in about 20 other countries went into COP 28 with a commitment to pledge to triple production of commercial nuclear energy over the next 30 years. And here we were listening to the testimonies of uranium miners and their families and their communities, the victims of nuclear testing, the people who've been affected at all nuclear waste at all parts of the fuel chain. And I think that we need to get those testimonies into the climate movement so that young activists who may be bamboozled into thinking that nuclear energy is solution to climate change, understand what that means in terms of its human impacts and its effects on indigenous and frontline communities. So that's one thing I'd like to see a lot more, developed a lot more. So thank you so much, Jackie. And we appreciate your insights and more important your dedication to peace and human rights. We thank everyone for watching Cooper Union. I'm your host, Joshua Cooper and Aloha. Aloha.