Testimony to the New York City Council Hearing on Resolution 0976 – 2019 and INT 1621 – 2019,
January 28, 2019.
Dear Esteemed New York City Council re: Resolutions 976 and INT 1621
We give you gratitude for supporting these bills, for your support of the Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons of 7/7/17 and for your divestment of pension funds from any nuclear business and investments, that is, any connection with nuclear weapons.
Sister Carol Gilbert and I, Sister Ardeth Platte have traveled the United States for decades unmasking sites of nuclear weapons, corporations, universities, banks and businesses connected with the military and nuclear industrial complex. We deliver this Treaty and teach the connection with the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. We speak of the history of production, use and threats to use. We communicate the injury to Mother Earth with the use of fossil fuels, the radioactive injury to people, soil, air, water and the emergency need to change direction for survival of the planet.
For decades we have done direct, political, and judicial action to call for total disarmament. We have spent years in jails and prisons for these actions of resistance to the waste of funds for weapons of mass destruction that can never be used and by Treaty all countries promised to eliminate them and dismantle all of them.
We see your stance of the new Treaty as the way to implement the commitment of nations to abolish them and your divestment as the means added to other groups to follow the money for more positive humanitarian and infrastructure needs of nations.
We submit this testimony as members of ICAN, members of Dominican Sisters, Grand Rapids, MI and the Catholic faith with its strong position of Pope Francis and as committed Peacemakers. Thank you sincerely for accepting it as part of the record as we record our plea to continue courageous action.
Sincerely,
Sister Carol Gilbert, OP and Sister Ardeth Platte, OP
Dorothy Day Catholic Worker
