Testimony to the New York City Council Hearing on Resolution 0976 – 2019 and INT 1621 – 2019,
January 28, 2019.
Submitted by Betty A. Reardon, Founding Director Emeritus of the International Institute on Peace Education and the Global Campaign for Peace Education.
First, I thank the City Council of New York for this hearing, a clear demonstration that some of our governmental bodies still attend to the concerns of the electorate and listen directly citizens. This demonstration stands as a source of hope for our younger citizens. It is for their future that I urge you to adopt the Resolution 0976 and pass INT 1621.
I offer this testimony as a teacher, a classroom teacher who was taught the skills of the profession by the 13-16 olds who daily challenged my capacities to provide them the foundations of an education for responsible citizenship. It was with less urgency than today’s youngsters who now challenge the adults of the world to exercise that same responsibility. But it was evident that they hoped for a just world and were willing to work for it, as are youth activists now challenging adult society. All of us, whether teachers and parents or not, have a responsibility to do all that is possible in our power to meet their challenge and free their future, held hostage to the greed and power of future blind leadership, feigning deafness to their rightful demands.
We know that there are two main interrelated areas of actions to free youth’s future from the greed and irresponsible power now leading us to the “unparalleled catastrophe,” invoked by Einstein in calling us to think differently about nuclear weapons, so exponentially more lethal than any others in our varied and extensive arsenals. As noted in other testimony, these two areas, of action, integral one to the other are: Sustained, concerted confrontation of climate change, a long range and multifaceted task; And the abolition of nuclear weapons, a more directly focused task, requiring first and foremost acknowledging the truths about these weapons pointed out in today’s testimonies.
Nuclear weapons are omnicidal, threatening the viability of our planet. They are immoral, counter to the ethical standards of most philosophies and religions. And they are illegal under existing international law as noted in the ICJ Opinion and the nuclear ban treaty. The resolution and bill before you today are acknowledgment of these “inconvenient truths,” and as such, a step toward the validation of youth’s right to a future.
Others are testifying to the lethality and illegality of nuclear weapons. I want to use my time to speak to their immorality. Not the immorality cited by virtually every religious faith in the US in statements issued in the 1980s, or in recent compelling pronouncements by Pope Francis; I speak rather of the moral context in which we now raise the young, the demoralizing social/emotional climate and the lessons in social ethics arising from the possession and potential use of these weapons. The young whom we hope to educate to construct alternatives to the present nuclear armed security system are enveloped in the cynicism and fear that pervades and sustains that system. We see it in their attitudes and behaviors.
Every teenager who “acts out” or has trouble with the law is not suffering from nuclear anxiety. But all our young are coming of age in a situation with few social or political constraints on behaviors that place self-interest over any commitment to the welfare of the larger community, and in which use of the weapons becomes ever more possible. That situation is not only detrimental to their own human development, but to society in general and to the possibilities of an adequate global response to the two existential threats. Adequate responses require multi-sectoral, global solidarity, i.e. caring for each other and the future of Earth. The local and municipal actions such as those you now consider and taken in other cities manifest such solidarity and are essential to the requisite global responses. Essential also are the questions implied in the attitudes and behaviors of many of our young who so blatantly resist and reject authority, be it in the family, the schools or the community and public spaces.
Among the kinds of questions some of our young pose to authorities who have not won their confidence or respect are: “What quality of security does your present national security system and its weapons of mass destruction provide for our generation? Who or what is being made secure?”
“How can you expect us to care for and respect others when our country is prepared to “wipe millions off the face of the Earth” in the name of that national security that manifests little care, not only for our future, but for our daily wellbeing?” And some clearly are asking, “Why should we delay any available and immediate satisfaction to prepare for a future so uncertain, not only for us, but for the world itself? How can we trust that government is ‘of, for and by the people,’ when for 75 years it has let all citizens remain hostage to these weapons?”
Of course, you have often heard such questions, but I ask you to listen to them now with a focus on probable and preferable futures for this planet, as you deliberate these measures toward making youth’s future both possible and of a quality worth preparing for.
Give, some thought as well to the millions of youth throughout the world who challenge rather than simply reject authority. What they reject is the cynicism and fear of adult society, challenging us, as they demonstrate by the thousands, “If our governments and leaders do not have the foresight, courage and conscience to make the changes that might give us a chance at life, we, ourselves will take the risks that knowledge dictates to conscience. We will do it in coordination and cooperation with other youth around the world, even those of nations we have been told so threaten us that we must continue to maintain these weapons. It is not other peoples, but rather maintaining these weapons and the failure of leadership to address the truth that threatens us.” They speak truth to power. I salute any teachers who may have helped them to learn to think so clearly that courageous action must be the response. Let us all listen and manifest similar courage to face truth and act accordingly.
We live in a time when many political decisions are made within a mindset that perceives truth, not only as inconvenient, but as irrelevant, and sees facts as tools to be manufactured toward selfish, shortsighted ends. It is also a time of courage and responsible citizenship among young activists and the myriad numbers of civil society who verified the truths of nuclear weapons (blessings also on their teachers) and facilitated the nuclear weapons ban treaty. Indeed, they initiated the process that lead this hearing. With them I celebrate that City Council members are here today to consider truth and weigh facts, as hopeful a sign as is the goal of the hearings. It is a powerful lesson for the youth of our city.
During the early years of the 1980s when nuclear weapons and their consequences were part of the popular discourse, teachers were at pains to keep children from the destructive fear that for some had produced nightmares. It was recounted that one little boy sought to assure his classmates that it would be OK, because his parents were doing something about it. May there be a day when children in our city schools can say. “It will be OK, because our City Council did something about it.”
