Dagmar Searchinger Wilson (January 25, 1916 – January 6, 2011) was an American anti-nuclear testing activist, artist, and illustrator of children's books for Whitman's Children's Books. [2]
Born in Manhattan, New York City, her parents were Cesar and Marion Searchinger. Wilson founded Women Strike for Peace in 1961 to end the testing of nuclear weapons. [3]
Nuclear disarmament is the act of reducing or eliminating nuclear weapons. Its end state can also be a nuclear-weapons-free world, in which nuclear weapons are completely eliminated. The term denuclearization is also used to describe the process leading to complete nuclear disarmament.
Disarmament is the act of reducing, limiting, or abolishing weapons. Disarmament generally refers to a country's military or specific type of weaponry. Disarmament is often taken to mean total elimination of weapons of mass destruction, such as nuclear arms. General and Complete Disarmament was defined by the United Nations General Assembly as the elimination of all WMD, coupled with the “balanced reduction of armed forces and conventional armaments, based on the principle of undiminished security of the parties with a view to promoting or enhancing stability at a lower military level, taking into account the need of all States to protect their security.”
Peace Action is a peace organization whose focus is on preventing the deployment of nuclear weapons in space, thwarting weapons sales to countries with human rights violations, and promoting a new United States foreign policy based on common security and peaceful resolution to international conflicts.
Helen Mary Caldicott is an Australian physician, author, and anti-nuclear advocate. She founded several associations dedicated to opposing the use of nuclear power, depleted uranium munitions, nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons proliferation, and military action in general.
The World Peace Council (WPC) is an international organization created in 1949 by the Cominform and propped up by the Soviet Union. Throughout the Cold War, WPC engaged in propaganda efforts on behalf of the Soviet Union, whereby it criticized the United States and its allies while defending the Soviet Union's involvement in numerous conflicts.
Peace News (PN) is a pacifist magazine first published on 6 June 1936 to serve the peace movement in the United Kingdom. From later in 1936 to April 1961 it was the official paper of the Peace Pledge Union (PPU), and from 1990 to 2004 was co-published with War Resisters' International.
Women Strike for Peace was a women's peace activist group in the United States. Nearing the height of the Cold War in 1961, about 50,000 women marched in 60 cities around the United States to demonstrate against the testing of nuclear weapons. It was the largest national women's peace protest during the 20th century. Another group action was led by Dagmar Wilson, with about 1,500 women gathering at the foot of the Washington Monument while President John F. Kennedy watched from the White House. The protest helped push the United States and the Soviet Union into signing a nuclear test-ban treaty two years later. Reflecting the era in which the group's leaders had been raised, between the First-wave feminism and the Second-wave feminism movements, their actions and pleas leaned towards female self-sacrifice rather than towards their own self-interests. However, they pushed the power of a concerned mother to the forefront of American politics, transforming the mother from a "passive victim of war to active fighter for peace".
Dr. Randall Caroline Forsberg led a lifetime of research and advocacy on ways to reduce the risk of war, minimize the burden of military spending, and promote democratic institutions. Her career started at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in 1968. In 1974 she moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts to found the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies (IDDS) as well as to launch the national Nuclear Freeze campaign.
Fri, a New Zealand yacht, led a flotilla of yachts in an international protest against atmospheric nuclear tests at Moruroa in French Polynesia in 1973. Fri was an important part of a series of anti-nuclear protest campaigns out of New Zealand which lasted thirty years, from which New Zealand declared itself a nuclear-free zone which was enshrined in legislation in what became the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act 1987. In 1974, coordinated by Greenpeace New Zealand, the Fri embarked on a 3-year epic 25,000 mile "Pacific Peace Odyssey" voyage, carrying the peace message to all nuclear states around the world.
The anti-nuclear movement in the United States consists of more than 80 anti-nuclear groups that oppose nuclear power, nuclear weapons, and/or uranium mining. These have included the Abalone Alliance, Clamshell Alliance, Committee for Nuclear Responsibility, Nevada Desert Experience, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Plowshares Movement, United Steelworkers of America (USWA) District 31, Women Strike for Peace, Nukewatch, and Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. Some fringe aspects of the anti-nuclear movement have delayed construction or halted commitments to build some new nuclear plants, and have pressured the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to enforce and strengthen the safety regulations for nuclear power plants. Most groups in the movement focus on nuclear weapons.
Anti-nuclear organizations may oppose uranium mining, nuclear power, and/or nuclear weapons. Anti-nuclear groups have undertaken public protests and acts of civil disobedience which have included occupations of nuclear plant sites. Some of the most influential groups in the anti-nuclear movement have had members who were elite scientists, including several Nobel Laureates and many nuclear physicists.
A peace movement is a social movement which seeks to achieve ideals such as the ending of a particular war or minimizing inter-human violence in a particular place or situation. They are often linked to the goal of achieving world peace. Some of the methods used to achieve these goals include advocacy of pacifism, nonviolent resistance, diplomacy, boycotts, peace camps, ethical consumerism, supporting anti-war political candidates, supporting legislation to remove profits from government contracts to the military–industrial complex, banning guns, creating tools for open government and transparency, direct democracy, supporting whistleblowers who expose war crimes or conspiracies to create wars, demonstrations, and political lobbying. The political cooperative is an example of an organization which seeks to merge all peace-movement and green organizations; they may have diverse goals, but have the common ideal of peace and humane sustainability. A concern of some peace activists is the challenge of attaining peace when those against peace often use violence as their means of communication and empowerment.
More than 80 anti-nuclear groups are operating, or have operated, in the United States. These include Abalone Alliance, Clamshell Alliance, Greenpeace USA, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, Musicians United for Safe Energy, Nevada Desert Experience, Nuclear Control Institute, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Public Citizen Energy Program, Shad Alliance, and the Sierra Club. These are direct action, environmental, health, and public interest organizations who oppose nuclear weapons and/or nuclear power. In 1992, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said that "his agency had been pushed in the right direction on safety issues because of the pleas and protests of nuclear watchdog groups".
The application of nuclear technology, both as a source of energy and as an instrument of war, has been controversial.
Nuclear ethics is a cross-disciplinary field of academic and policy-relevant study in which the problems associated with nuclear warfare, nuclear deterrence, nuclear arms control, nuclear disarmament, or nuclear energy are examined through one or more ethical or moral theories or frameworks.
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) is an organisation that advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United Kingdom, international nuclear disarmament and tighter international arms regulation through agreements such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It opposes military action that may result in the use of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, and the building of nuclear power stations in the UK.
The Nuclear Freeze campaign was a mass movement in the United States during the 1980s to secure an agreement between the U.S. and Soviet governments to halt the testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons.
Harold Willens was a Ukrainian-American businessman and political activist. Known for his advocacy of a bilateral nuclear weapons freeze, he was associated with the so-called Malibu Mafia who donated to liberal and progressive causes and politicians. Willens provided the Malibu base of the group by hosting meetings at his house on Malibu Beach.