Last month, in honor of President Jimmy Carter’s 100th birthday on October 1st, the Atlanta Hub of Back from the Brink became an officially established group. President Carter came to office determined to reduce the number of nuclear weapons and to improve relations with the Soviet Union. We are joining this unfinished task.
In a 2012 interview, President Carter said: “When I was in the White House, I was confronted with the challenge of the Cold War. Both the Soviet Union and I had 30,000 nuclear weapons that could destroy the entire earth and I had to maintain the peace.”
Ichiro Moritaki, arguably the most influential survivor of the Hiroshima bombing, pointed out way back in the 1950s that we live in a civilization of power (war culture) and, unless we can evolve to a civilization of love (peace culture), we will destroy ourselves. Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter are models of peace culture leadership. They have always used their fame and fortune to help everyone they could in whatever way they could, focusing first and foremost on those suffering the most but receiving the least help.
The Atlanta Hub of Back from the Brink believes that the first, requisite step toward peace must be the abolition of nuclear weapons. The cooperative disarming of our doomsday machines will enhance humanity’s chances of long-term survival by manifesting the level of sane collaboration we will need to solve the many other urgent problems we share.
Meet Steve Leeper, Atlanta Hub Coordinator:
My parents took me to Japan when I was a year old, and I’ve been going back and forth ever since. In 1984, I went to Hiroshima to visit some friends. After that, I lived mostly in Hiroshima for almost 40 years. I did not go to Hiroshima to pursue peace or the abolition of nuclear weapons. Caring about peace and nuclear weapons is what Hiroshima did to me. In Hiroshima, I encountered the concept of “peace culture,” and to some extent, the reality. In fact, I worked as a translator for the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation back in 1985. I started working directly for the Peace Culture Foundation in 2002, and from 2007 to 2013, I was its chairman. All of this is to explain why I now consider it my mission to help inject the concept “peace culture” into human consciousness.
I came back to Atlanta in September 2023, and recently volunteered to coordinate a Back from the Brink Hub in Atlanta. Just as we were getting started, Nihon Hidankyo (Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations) won the Nobel Peace Prize, and I thought it was good timing to get the Hub started and coordinate some virtual events that bring peace activists from Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Atlanta together.
I’m hoping that by making our campaign international, the Atlanta Hub can bring other peace-culture-related (peace, anti-nuclear, environmental, social justice) groups together to work on a surprisingly massive and fun unified campaign. Please join us.
For folks who are in the Atlanta area and want to get involved with the Back from the Brink Hub, please contact Steve Leeper at steve@peaceinstitute.org.
