On my mid-January visit to see my mom in Peterborough, I enjoyed reading about Wilton’s Ken Jacobus being “On a mission to help others” in Poland” and erstwhile Sierra Club president Aaron Mair’s upcoming Jaffrey-Rindge MLK Day talk on environmental justice. 

With Vladimir Putin threatening to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, we all realize another aspect of potential “environmental injustice.” Nuclear bombs do not discriminate between military and civilian targets, and radioactive fallout from even one modern “tactical” bomb would cause even more casualties in the huge off-target plume area, as well as render many hundreds of square miles of land uninhabitable for decades or longer.

The U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) became enforceable law on Jan. 22, 2021. It declares nuclear weapons “always immoral,” and now also illegal. I salute the 68 nations that have already ratified the treaty. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., like former President Dwight Eisenhower, frequently decried the spending of tax dollars on nuclear weapons and overpreparedness for war while domestic needs (including U.S. national debt reduction) went comparatively unaddressed. 

We can all help others, and ourselves, by urging our congresspeople to co-sponsor Rep. Jim McGovern’s House resolution “embracing the goals of the TPNW and of the Back From The Brink campaign” to end anachronistic Cold War policies and our out-of-control love affair with Daddy Warbucks and our military-industrial complex, the one and only winner in the Ukraine war.  It’s easy and the right thing to do. 

Call 202-244-3121 and the Capitol switchboard will connect you to Reps. Ann Kuster or Chris Pappas, or U.S. Sens. Jeanne Shaheen or Maggie Hassan. Tell them to put people, planet and peace ahead of partisan politics and war profiteering.

Lou Curran

Baltimore, Md.

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