From Carol Goiburn, Back from the Brink – Fresno
Just this month, I finally found the guts to do a live radio show and talk about nuclear weapons. Why so scared? I’m not a nuclear scientist, analyst, engineer, nuclear policy advisor, or author with pages of research for an upcoming book. I’m like millions of Americans who, over the past 50 years, haven’t given enough thought to these weapons of mass destruction.
But I am now, and for the past two years I’ve been educating myself, sitting in on Zoom calls with U.S. representatives and senators, attending meetings, seeking advice, encouragement, and practicing patience with myself for not knowing enough. So when a fellow activist asked me to be his guest on Stir It Up here in Fresno, I took the leap: I accepted.
What’s more important than the show, though, is that average Americans just like me can be involved in the discussion of nuclear weapons. It’s not only for scientists and politicians to discuss and decide. All of us need to discuss and decide what needs to be done about nuclear weapons.
On May 20th, on a Zoom call with Laura Greene, Sen. Padilla’s legislative aide, I heard for myself that my senator will receive the concerns we expressed and our appeals for him to cosponsor S. Res. 323. It’s over a month out from that meeting, and Sen. Padilla has yet to do so. This is unfortunate given he represents the state of California, which passed AJR 33 in 2018, urging the U.S. to embrace the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
One of the seasoned experts on the call, a physician, closed his remarks with, “Nothing else matters if these bombs drop.”
If you think you don’t got what it takes to discuss and decide what needs to be done about nuclear weapons, I say, think again.
