Finding a Path to Peace: from the A-bomb to Abolition
by Peace Action Cleveland | posted in: Events, Home, News |
In observance of the 79th Anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we are pleased to announce a Cleveland exhibition on loan from the Dayton International Peace Museum.
HOURS
This Hiroshima/Nagasaki Exhibition will run
Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays: 4-8pm
AUG 8-9-10
AUG 15-16-17
AUG 22-23-24
Location: Pilgrim Congregational Church UCC, 2592 W.14 St, in the Tremont neighborhood of Cleveland, OH 44113. Open to the public. Groups of 8 or more, please call ahead: 216-255-1576.
This exhibition (featuring 27 panels on loan from the Dayton International Peace Museum) offers photos and sketches by Japanese artists of the aftermath of the atomic bomb on two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki in1945. They illustrate civilians in fear and despair – with short text or Haiku. There are photos of the Atomic Bomb explosions, and survivors, Hibakusha, some working for change. One poster, “Suppression of Freedom of Press and Expression” about the bomb elaborates: the censorship by the Allied Forces “was so strict that… almost any violation would almost certainly lead to the death penalty.” A Japanese character print, “Call” translates into “It is not too late yet – Muster up your real strength – It is still not too late – To wipe the tears of those who wish for peace”…. Sankichi Toge
The exhibition in Cleveland is sponsored by Cleveland Nonviolence Network and Cleveland Peace Action Education Fund, with support from other organizations like the Cleveland Catholic Worker and IRTF.
Special program on opening night:
THU AUG 8, 7-9pm
Peace Witness at the Cleveland National Air Show – a roundtable discussion
Eight decades after the US detonated the first A-bombs, the US military continues to wreak incredible destruction across the globe (human lives, environmental contamination). The militarization of the US economy, of young people, of our society at large is costing us our future. The $800 billion war chest of the US Pentagon is one sign of the great cost we all incur.
US Foreign Policy (which is highly militarized) kills!
-roughly 2/3 of current conflicts worldwide involve one or more adversaries armed by the US
-Ukraine benefits from $46 billion of US military aid, along with weapons from stockpiles and NATO—but there is no end in sight to the war as civilian deaths exceed 10,000
-Yemen has suffered more than 19,000 civilan deaths after Trump sent billions of dollars in weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates
-US military aid to Israel has maintained the militarized occupation of Palestinian territories for decades
With strong lobbies and political donations from the weapons industry (Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics), the war machine rages on.
A new nuclear arms race
- global spending on nuclear weapons surpassed $90 billion in 2023, a 13 percent jump from the previous year and a new all-time high.
- more than half of the spending on nukes happens in one country: the United States, which spent 51.5 billion in 2023, or approximately $98,000 per minute, on its nuclear arsenal and infrastructure. This total is more than eight times
-In 2015, President Obama initiated a ten-year, trillion-dollar program to “upgrade” the country’s nuclear arsenal and delivery capabilities.
-under the pretext of “modernizing” its nuclear triad, the United States is running a new arms race, stockpiling more nuclear weapons than at any time since the Cold War ended.
- The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has moved the Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds to midnight (aka Nuclear Armageddon), the closest it has ever been to that disaster
[source: Commonweal, July/Aug 2024]
At what cost?
We live in Cleveland, OH, one of the poorest large cities in the US with a legacy of racialized poverty—a city where 45% of our children live in poverty! How could even a small portion of the Pentagon’s bloated budget be redirected to address REAL security: housing, education, child care, health care, and many other anti-poverty programs that would also bolster the middle class?
How do we respond?
As the US military comes to town and puts on its big display and entices another generation of young people to sacrifice themselves to the war machine, how do we as people committed to peace respond?
What to expect at the Air Show
Blue Angels, F/A 18 Hornets, other fighter jets, and the U.S. Marine Corps F-35B Lightning II - Cleveland National Air Show .
Cleveland connection is the F-35: Howmet Aerospace is developing a new generation of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Part of that manufacturing is happening right here in Cleveland at the former Alcoa plant on Harvard Ave (now Arconic/Howmet), with its heavy press machinery.
https://www.howmet.com/f35-speed-stealth-agility/
Built as part of the Cold War-era Heavy Press Program by the U.S. Air Force, the 50,000-ton press has been in operation since 1955. It was operated by Alcoa at Air Force Plant 47 (1600 Harvard Avenue), which eventually became Howmet Cleveland Operations. The press is hydraulically driven and can exert a maximum of 50,000 tons of pressure, equivalent to the pressure exerted by the weight of a steel ingot 612 feet high with a base of 26 feet by 12 feet. The press has been used to forge the world’s largest aerospace parts for aircraft such as the F35 Joint Strike Fighter and the Airbus A380
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/iconic-howmet-press-featured-discoverys-science-channel-/
