Last month, the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) Board unanimously voted to endorse Back from the Brink and our five policy solutions.
The MTA represents 117,000 teachers, faculty, professional staff and education support professionals working at public schools, colleges and universities across Massachusetts. Founded in 1845, they are currently the largest labor union in New England.
Kevin Young, a member of the MTA, shares:
There are few things more important to our students’ future than abolishing nuclear weapons. As educators we’re in a unique position to promote knowledge and action toward that goal. I look forward to working with my fellow MTA members to incorporate resources on nuclear weapons and the antinuclear movement into our classroom teaching. In the meantime, I hope other US unions will join us in demanding that our government lead the way toward global nuclear abolition.
Read the full text of the MTA resolution endorsing Back from the Brink below:
A nuclear war would kill most of the global population either directly or through starvation resulting from the “nuclear winter” that would follow [1]. Our world has come within a hair’s breadth of nuclear destruction on multiple occasions. We have avoided that fate through a combination of sheer luck and the courage and wise judgment of a handful of individuals.
In the estimation of many informed observers, the danger of a nuclear war – intentional or accidental – is currently as great as it has ever been. The heating of the planet due to carbon pollution further increases the risk of nuclear confrontation, as nuclear-armed states compete for water and other resources [2]. Yet the world’s nine nuclear powers continue to oppose disarmament. The US government is the most powerful of that group and also bears more moral responsibility for this problem than the others. As such, it has an urgent duty to take the lead in preventing nuclear war.
The Massachusetts Teachers Association endorses the platform of the Back from the Brink campaign, which calls on the US government to:
- Actively pursue a verifiable agreement among nuclear-armed states to eliminate their arsenals;
- Renounce the option of using nuclear weapons first;
- End the sole, unchecked authority of any U.S. president to launch a nuclear attack;
- Take U.S. nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert; and
- Cancel the plan to replace the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal with enhanced weapons. [3]
The MTA also commits to the following actions between now and December 31, 2025:
- Disseminating K-12 curricular resources to all MTA locals and members, starting with the materials developed by WGBH that are available at https://mass.pbslearningmedia.org/collection/nuclear-weapons-and-security-policy/
- Sharing this resolution with all sibling unions in National Education Association (NEA), with the board of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, with all members of the Massachusetts Congressional delegation, with MA state legislators, and with the union’s press contacts.
Notes:
- Lili Xia, et al., “Global Food Insecurity and Famine from Reduced Crop, Marine Fishery and Livestock Production Due to Climate Disruption from Nuclear War Soot Injection,” Nature Food 3 (2022): 586–96.
- Asha Asokan and Ira Helfand, “Climate Change and Water Scarcity Will Increase Risk of Nuclear Catastrophe in South Asia,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 78, no. 4 (2022): 214–17.
- https://preventnuclearwar.org/
Rationale:
The US labor movement has a special role to play in the fight for nuclear disarmament, just as it did in the powerful Nuclear Freeze movement that culminated in the 1980s, when over two dozen national unions and the AFL-CIO endorsed the “freeze.” In 1982 the MTA itself issued a resolution urging “all nations to declare a moratorium on nuclear weapons” (I-12: Nuclear Weapons Moratorium).
As a union of 117,000 educators, the MTA occupies a vital position in any effort to raise awareness of the need for disarmament and to force our government to pursue it. The ongoing possibility of a nuclear war and its horrific consequences receive shockingly little attention in US politics or news media. Most of the US public is therefore unaware of the magnitude of the danger. MTA and other educators’ unions can help change that.
