For more information call Bill, 203-313-4438, Visit here for directions.

All are welcome, we hope you’ll join us.

Last year 170 countries voted in favor of Japan’s U.N. resolution calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons. Only three countries, the United States among them, opposed this resolution

For those of you with access to the internet, google Hiroshima anniversary; you will not find anything from any major US news source on the first two pages of the search. The New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Los Angeles Times… nothing! Not one article or mention of the anniversary of this horrendous event. By the way, the Tehran Times (yes – Iran’s leading international daily) published the complete text of Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba’s Hiroshima Peace Declaration 2008 which follows:

Another August 6, and the horrors of 63 years ago arise undiminished in the minds of our hibakusha, whose average age now exceeds 75. “Water, please!” “Help me!” “Mommy!” — On this day, we, too, etch in our hearts the voices, faces and forms that vanished in the hell no hibakusha can ever forget, renewing our determination that “No one else should ever suffer as we did.”

Because the effects of that atomic bomb, still eating away at the minds and bodies of the hibakusha, have for decades been so underestimated, a complete picture of the damage has yet to emerge. Most severely neglected have been the emotional injuries. Therefore, the city of Hiroshima is initiating a two-year scientific exploration of the psychological impact of the A-bomb experience.

This study should teach us the grave import of the truth, born of tragedy and suffering, that “the only role for nuclear weapons is to be abolished.”

This truth received strong support from a report compiled last November by the city of Hiroshima. Scientists and other nuclear-related experts exploring the damage from a postulated nuclear attack found once again that the only way to protect citizens from such an attack is the total abolition of nuclear weapons. This is precisely why the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the International Court of Justice advisory opinion state clearly that all nations are obligated to engage in good-faith negotiations leading to complete nuclear disarmament. Furthermore, even leaders previously central to creating and implementing U.S. nuclear policy are now repeatedly demanding a world without nuclear weapons.

We who seek the abolition of nuclear weapons are the majority. United Cities and Local Governments, which represents the majority of the Earth’s population, has endorsed the Mayors for Peace campaign. One hundred and ninety states have ratified the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. One hundred and thirteen countries and regions have signed nuclear-weapon-free zone treaties. Last year, 170 countries voted in favor of Japan’s UN resolution calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons. Only three countries, the U.S. among them, opposed this resolution. We can only hope that the president of the United States elected this November will listen conscientiously to the majority, for whom the top priority is human survival.

To achieve the will of the majority by 2020, Mayors for Peace, now with 2,368 city members worldwide, proposed in April of this year a Hiroshima-Nagasaki Protocol to supplement the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This Protocol calls for an immediate halt to all efforts, including by nuclear-weapon states, to obtain or deploy nuclear weapons, with a legal ban on all acquisition or use to follow by 2015. Thus, it draws a concrete road map to a nuclear-weapon-free world. Now, with our destination and the map to that destination clear, all we need is the strong will and capacity to act to guard the future for our children.

World citizens and like-minded nations have achieved treaties banning anti-personnel landmines and cluster munitions. Meanwhile, the most effective measures against global warming are coming from cities. Citizens cooperating at the city level can solve the problems of the human family because cities are home to the majority of the world’s population, cities do not have militaries, and cities have built genuine partnerships around the world based on mutual understanding and trust.

The Japanese Constitution is an appropriate point of departure for a “paradigm shift” toward modeling the world on intercity relationships. I hereby call on the Japanese government to fiercely defend our Constitution, press all governments to adopt the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Protocol, and play a leading role in the effort to abolish nuclear weapons. I further request greater generosity in designating A-bomb illnesses and in relief measures appropriate to the current situations of our aging hibakusha, including those exposed in “black rain areas” and those living overseas.

Next month the G8 Speakers’ Meeting will, for the first time, take place in Japan. I fervently hope that Hiroshima’s hosting of this meeting will help our “hibakusha philosophy” spread throughout the world.

Now, on the occasion of this 63rd anniversary Peace Memorial Ceremony, we offer our heartfelt lamentations for the souls of the atomic bomb victims and, in concert with the city of Nagasaki and with citizens around the world, pledge to do everything in our power to accomplish the total eradication of nuclear weapons.

Tadatoshi Akiba
Mayor of the City of Hiroshima

Write to or e-mail our representatives in congress to let them know how you feel:

U.S. Senator Chris Dodd
30 Lewis St Suite 101
Hartford, CT 06103
e-mail Chris Dodd

Representative Christopher Shays
10 Middle Street, 11th Floor
Bridgeport, CT 06604-4223
e-mail Chris Shays

U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman
(forget about it?)
One Constitution Plaza, 7th Floor
Hartford, CT 06103
(He doesn’t give out his e-mail address)

Old Chatham’s new film lending library is finally open and ready to serve you!

We’re loaning films shown in our monthly film series over the past three years and offering our assistance to Meetings wishing to set up your own film series. It’s simple.

Go to http://terdix.googlepages.com/home and check out this NEW Quaker film lending library.

Celebrate with us: Take out a film to enjoy at home. Share our Quaker concerns and values by hosting a public showing or film series in your Meeting or community.

Questions or suggestions? Email quakerfilms@gmail.com. We’d love to hear from you.

Peace from,
Members of the Old Chatham Outreach, Peace & Justice Committee.

Good paperbacks for ages 8-18;
packets of crayons;
coloring/activities books for children under 7;
baby wipes, disposable diapers and clothing for infants;
mini-size toiletries (for $1.00 at K-Mart, CVS, etc.), tooth brushes for mothers and teenagers.

Substantial clothing of good quality and in clean condition, including jackets, boots, hats and mittens/gloves. (Thrift shops are a good source of these items. Wool and fleece garments are preferable to polyester.)

Alison and Cecily Coleman will have room in their car for boxes and bags to take back and save donors the expense of mailing. If there is an overflow, Housatonic will ship it.

Many thanks
Housatonic Peace & Social Action Committee

http://prisonfamiliesofnewyork.org/

Ashley Casale and Michael Israel are two determined teenagers who chose to spend their summer walking from San Francisco to Washington, DC to protest the war in Iraq. Ashley will be a sophomore this fall at Wesleyan University. She came up with the idea of a cross-country march for peace last year and set up a website to invite more people to join her. The only person who stuck it out was Michael Israel, an 18 year old just out of high school. Michael joined Ashley after reading about her project on the internet and has been walking with her since they began their journey almost three months ago. – from Democracy Now!

The Democracy Now article page also has a full transcript of the interview with Ashely and Michael.

Eyewitness Reporting and Discussion on the Mideast Conflict

Wednesday, September 20
7:00pm
Warner Hall
WCSU, 181 White St in Danbury

Two of the speakers are back from recent visits to the Occupied
Territories:

-Mazin Qumsiyeh, author of Sharing the Land of Canaan

-Justine McCabe, clinical psychologist and member of the Green Party
International Committee.

Also speaking are Khalil Iskarous, Secretary of the Middle East Crisis
Committee, and Stanley Heller, host of The Struggle TV News.

Western Connecticut State University will be hosting the forum at
Warner Hall at 7:00pm on Wednesday, September 20. The event is
sponsored by Students for Progress, The Muslim Student Association,
Danbury Peace Coalition, and the Middle East Crisis Committee.

For more information contact:
Danbury Peace Coalition
(203) 417-3590
DanburyforPeace@yahoo.com

Robin Lloyd, videographer, peace activist and chair of the Toward Freedom board, recently spent three months in prison for ‘crossing the line’ (committing civil disobedience) at the School of the Americas (renamed WHINSEC – Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) ) at Fort Benning, Georgia. She says “the setting of the Danbury Prison Camp in rural Connecticut is beautiful, the food was OK, and meeting a lot of new people was enlightening, but encountering the prison-industrial complex up close and personal was awesomely upsetting.

What types of indignities and humiliations do Americans consider as human rights abuses? Overcrowding? Overzealous incarceration? Lack of medical care? Or do we have to have a case of prison officials pulling out someone’s fingernails before Americans protest this gulag in our midst? Below is an article Robin wrote about her last days in prison.

Read the full article here.

PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 13 /U.S. Newswire/ — Five years after 9/11, Americans are growing weary of approaches to fighting terrorism that only seem to heighten bloodshed and fear, rather than healing wounds and forging unity. Friends Journal, the leading Quaker magazine, has released an important volume of principled responses to the threat of terrorism, titled “Answering Terror: Responses to War and Peace after 9/11/01.”

Quakers, who for centuries have been defined to the world by their pacifist refusal to take up arms, responded to Sept. 11 with an astonishing diversity of thought. Over a period of several years, through the pages of Friends Journal, a frank and spirited dialogue developed about appropriate reactions to evil and violence in the world. “Answering Terror” chronicles that dialogue.

Read more of the article at the U.S. Newswire

Information on ordering the book can be found here.
https://secure.serve.com/friendsjournal/subscribe/bookorder.html

Click here to read the full article http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,71511-0.html?tw=wn_index_25

In 2004, three men distributing leaflets opposing the Iraq war near a Japanese military base were arrested, interrogated, held for 75 days and then convicted and fined for trespassing.

Many people believe that the prosecution of these men, who came to be known as the Tachikawa Three, was heavy-handed and discriminatory. The Tachikawa Three have become a rallying point for two movements: Japanese pacifists opposing constitutional changes that would free the nation to join military actions, and a nascent pro-privacy movement that’s gaining surprising ground in a country with no native word for “privacy.”