Forum on Nuclear Disarmament
Posted on October 4, 2024, by Allison Lemons CoL
Allison Lemons CoL, resident of New Mexico and active member of Loretto’s Peace Committee, has long been committed to pursuing an end to the threat of nuclear weapons. She attended a forum on nuclear disarmament at the University of New Mexico and wrote about the experience.
The Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies USC (University of Southern California) and UNM (University of New Mexico) presented an excellent forum, “Nuclear Strategy: Disarmament and Deterrence in a Dangerous World” at UNM Saturday, Sept. 7. The organizers brought together some outstanding thinkers in ethics, theology, sociology, business, the arms race and international relations. Included were Bishop Wester of Santa Fe, a Japanese bishop who is a Hibakusha (survivor of the atomic bombing, in his case, of Nagasaki, in Aug. 1945), several university professors, a former governor of one of the New Mexico pueblos and an activist in promoting the rights of the New Mexico Downwinders (the communities in the Tularosa Valley who were downwind of the test explosion of the atomic bomb in spring 1945).
The group met privately prior to the public meeting. Without the assurance of privacy, the participants, fearful of being misunderstood by the press or the public, would be less willing to be forthright. The public was invited Saturday afternoon to hear those participants who wanted to share some of what they had learned from the earlier private discussions. Although there was disagreement on how to do it, the participants agreed on the imperative of preventing a nuclear war.
One of the first to speak was a theologian who said he thought the development of the atomic bomb was not blasphemous — a result of desiring to be like God — but rather, tragic. He noted that the impetus to make the bomb, coming from a desire to defeat Nazi Germany, was laudable, but that the results of using it, and its legacy, are horrendous.
Disarmament is a complicated process. One participant noted the difficulties of moving from the possession to the demolition of nuclear weapons. How do economies, as in New Mexico, heavily dependent on the nuclear industry, transition to something else without depriving workers at all income levels? Another mentioned that while there was agreement that Russia and China were refusing to engage in talks on reducing nuclear weapons, people disagreed on how to bring them to the negotiating table. Should the U.S. take a step toward disarmament or pressure them by building new nuclear weapons?
Another participant explained the concept of nuclear colonialism. The using of other people and the taking of their land by a governmental power is colonialism. Land was taken and its inhabitants removed to make way for Los Alamos in central New Mexico in the 1940s. Colonial powers usually disregard the health and well-being of the people whose labor they can use. The uranium miners of northwestern New Mexico, mostly Indigenous people, were not warned of the dangers from 32,000,000 tons of uranium ore mined there. Nor have some of the open mines yet been remediated. Similarly, the people living near the site of the first atomic bomb test in south-central New Mexico were not warned of the dangers of radiation from the test. Nor have they been compensated for the deadly cancers radiation has caused and continues to cause among their descendants.
Despite the calamities the development of nuclear weapons have inflicted on New Mexico and the horrors their use unleashed on Japan, despite the urgent need to avoid a nuclear war and the thorny issues involved in disarmament, the forum presented some uplifting possibilities. First, it was an example of people of diverse views coming together to wrestle with serious problems. Secondly, unexpectedly, it was a place where one could make new unlikely friends. Thirdly, as a participant asserted, the existence of nuclear weapons should not make us feel helpless and hopeless. There are more ways to establish peace today than ever before in world history. What is needed is more dialogue with people from diverse groups so that innovative solutions can emerge. The dialogue needs to include not just experts and politicians, but also people who are directly affected by what those experts and politicians do.
That is exactly what this forum did. It was a good beginning. A video of the public forum is available online.