2004 Letter to Friends and Supporters
17 December 2004
Dear friends and supporters around the world,
Thanks to you, the Atomic Mirror this year celebrates ten years of invoking art and spirit to transform our nuclear world. We are grateful for each and every one of you. Yes, we still live in a nuclear world, but the good news is that fresh energy and new initiatives enliven our work as we approach 2005. We have many things to celebrate from 2004: official status with the United Nations as an affiliated organization, and our new website launched on UN Day, October 24, in New York.
Today, we still feel the same urgency to abolish nuclear weapons that gave birth to our first project, the Atomic Mirror Pilgrimage on the 50th anniversary of the Nuclear Age, ten years ago. Nuclear issues dominate the headlines, and awareness about weapons of mass destruction is reawakening after a long post Cold War lull. Through our work in Britain as a founding partner of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Awareness Program, we know that people are concerned and want to know and do more.
If you continue to share our vision, we ask for your support as we enter the Year of Remembrance and Action for a Nuclear Free World in the 60th anniversary year of the Nuclear Age. This year, the Atomic Mirror, as a founding member of the Abolition Now! Campaign, is partnering with Mayors for Peace in a renewed call for nuclear abolition.
We invite you to join in the many events and initiatives planned for the year. In 2005, the Atomic Mirror will focus our efforts on two key events: the May 2005 Review Conference of the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT, the centerpiece of global disarmament and nonproliferation efforts), and the Nuclear Age 60th anniversaries in July and August. We will:
- Bring the message of Nobel Peace Laureate, Professor Joseph Rotblat, to the NPT delegates and the world, including translations into all official UN languages. (Professor Rotblat is the only Manhattan Project scientist who walked away from the project and called for abolishing nuclear weapons.)
- Create a local model for bringing mayors and citizen delegations to New York in May, by working with the only US mayor to participate in the international delegation of Mayors for Peace to the United Nations last April. Dr. Gabino Aguirre, Mayor of Santa Paula, California, joined 30 mayors from around the world to bring the voices and concerns of people and local communities to UN nuclear decision-makers.
- Support the participation of Motarilavoa Hilda Lini, former Minister of Health of the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu, in the NPT Review Conference, through our Testimony Fund.
- Host Atomic Mirror salons during the NPT meeting, bringing together delegates and activists for off the record gatherings.
- Continue our trainings for dialogue with nuclear decision-makers.
Our efforts, joined by millions around the world, will culminate in the nuclear anniversaries of July 16 (Trinity Test in New Mexico) and August 6 and 9 (the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki).
We are already planning for 2006. On the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident, we will use our reader’s theater script, Mother, What Ails Thee? Imagining Chernobyl, to continue efforts at grassroots and diplomatic levels to bring attention to the need for sustainable energy.
Please help us keep nuclear issues alive in the public’s mind and heart and on the agendas of the nuclear decision makers. In our first ten years, we have operated on the principle that small, focused, creative efforts can be an antidote to nuclear fear and can have homeopathic, healing effects on the body politic. Please help us to enhance these healing energies in this challenging time. To celebrate this birthday in the USA, we are seeking 10 individuals willing to donate $1,000, and 60 people willing to donate $100. All financial birthday gifts and contributions are tax-deductible and very welcome. In the UK we are seeking 60 individuals from the UK willing to donate £100. All financial birthday gifts and contributions of whatever amount are very welcome.
“It’s all about flowers and song, flowers and song,” says Mayor Gabino Aguirre. In our latest report, As Time Goes By: Making the Case for Love in a Time of Fear, An Annual Assessment of our Nuclear World, we offer you both: the theme song of the classic movie, Casablanca, conjures up the necessity of love and courage in a time of war, danger and uncertainty; the cherry blossoms raining down on a signing ceremony at the UN to get rid of nuclear weapons offer a possible outcome of the May NPT meeting. Could it happen? With your help, we believe that it can.
Yours for a nuclear free world,
Pamela S. Meidell, Director
Janet Bloomfield, British Coordinator
