from Tony Palomba (Peace and Common Security Working Group | Watertown Citizens for Peace, Justice, and the Environment)
This past fall, our working group decided that one of the best ways to raise awareness about the existential dangers of nuclear war was to use a citizen petition to place a resolution on nuclear disarmament based on the five policy solutions of the Back from the Brink campaign in front of the Watertown City Council.
Thoughts on this type of action began percolating the previous year, when we sat around a table at the local Dunkin’ Donuts discussing nuclear weapons and the Back from the Brink campaign. We had also hosted Denise Duffield, Associate Director of Physicians for Social Responsibility – Los Angeles, on a Zoom program titled, “Can Nuclear War Be Prevented?”
Once we committed to the citizen petition, the real work began! We drafted the petition and shared it with Anna Linakis, Executive Director of Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility (which also serves as a local Back from the Brink Hub), as well as others before finalizing the language. Then, the task was to collect a minimum of 150 signatures from registered voters. However, our ultimate goal was to collect 500!
We stood at our local library and the entrance to the CVS, at the weekly summer concert series, and reached out to folks from our table at the city’s annual September Faire on the Square. We also got a boost of volunteers from Greater Boston PSR.
One final effort at the Dr. Martin Luther King Unity Breakfast in January pushed us over our goal of 500 signatures. What was particularly important about signature gathering was the opportunity to talk to residents about nuclear war and to distribute our trifold, which explained why we wanted Watertown to join 17 other cities and towns in Massachusetts that had passed a local resolution in support of nuclear disarmament.
What’s Next!
We currently have plans for a television program on the citizen petition on our local cable station. We will also send copies of Annie Jacobsen’s book, Nuclear War: A Scenario to the nine members of our City Council. Additionally, we will write an Op-Ed and Letter to the Editor to appear in our daily online news outlet, and we hope to have a member of the National Steering Committee of Students for Nuclear Disarmament speak to students at our high school.
We are still discussing when to submit the citizen petition to the city clerk, and need to consider how long it takes for the council to hold a public hearing. It is likely that we will submit the petition in the spring with the hope for a public hearing in early summer. In the meantime, we will continue the difficult but necessary work to get more residents behind our effort!
Interested in getting involved locally? See if there’s a Back from the Brink Hub near you.