At 5 Longfellow Park, Cambridge
Remembering 75 Years since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Atomic Bombings
We hope you will join us: to remember the past, acknowledge the present, and envision the future we want to create.
6:00 pm – Reading of Thomas Merton’s “Original Child Bomb” outside Friends Meeting at Cambridge, 5 Longfellow Park
Short procession down a small flight of stairs to Lower Longfellow Park
7:00 pm – Program featuring speakers, music, and dance at Lower Longfellow Park.
Speakers:
Karlene Griffiths Sekou of Black Lives Matter Boston
Ray Matsumiya of the Oleander Initiative
Harold Adams of the Committee of Friends and Relatives of Prisoners
Nick Rabb of Sunrise Movement Boston
Music will be provided by Boston-based rock band, Miele and by Toussaint Liberator’s Stone of Hope Drumming Circle.
8:00 pm – Procession across Mt. Auburn St.
Lantern and paper boat floating along the
Charles River.
BYO chair, food, and water. Please wear a face mask, and remain at least 6 feet apart from others. For questions, please contact eeustis@ippnw.org. If rain is forecast on the day, call 617-466-9274 to confirm plans.
On Hiroshima Day, we will gather for a night of art, learning, community, and action: to mark 75 years since the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, and to demand the end of nuclear weapons once and for all. This program is one of many taking place globally, including a similar event in Watertown on Nagasaki Day (August 9), and a Witness for Peace at Cambridge’s local war profiteer Raytheon the morning of August 6.
People all over the world will commemorate the 75th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Day, carrying forward the legacy of hibakusha – survivors – who remember the first A-bombed cities. By the end of 1945, around 213,000 people had died from radioactive blasts hotter than the surface of the sun – vaporized, burned, and crushed. Many thousands more survived; for decades, they have worked for: NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS!
Global institutions are responding. Since it was adopted by the UN in 2017, 81 countries have signed and 39 have ratified the Treaty for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. While the U.S. and other nuclear-weapon states have refused to sign the Ban Treaty, the paradigm is shifting: from the perilous ill-logics of “deterrence” and “mutually assured destruction” to truthfulness about the humanitarian consequences of A- and H-bombs.
At this time of pandemic, mass uprisings, and emerging consciousness, the fight for nuclear abolition is not abstract. Nukes siphon resources that could be used to meet human needs and live responsibly on this planet; they are built to inflict massive and indiscriminate destruction; they enforce a global system based on domination. Ridding the world of these weapons requires that we confront state and imperial violence in their interlocking forms: war, racism, the destruction of Mother Earth, prisons, hetero-patriarchy, poverty, militarism, exploitation, colonization, and so on.
Co-Sponsors (in formation): Mass. Peace Action; Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security, Friends Meeting at Cambridge – Peace and Social Justice Committee; Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility