I was 17 the first time I took a stand against nuclear weapons.

The US was planning to build the neutron bomb near my hometown in Colorado, and I was outraged at the risk the bomb plant posed to the health of families living near the plant. I was sickened to think that a bomb built near my home could be used to kill many thousands of people. I knew I had to do something.

These many years later, I know how important our voices were in helping to close the Rocky Flats Plant near Denver. Today it is so important we not forget our collective power to make change.

A major nuclear agreement between the US and Russia, called New START (The new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) is awaiting approval from the Russian Parliament and US Senate.

The treaty calls for reductions in the sizes of US and Russian nuclear arsenals, as well as an increase in information sharing between the two nations. The original START expired last December, along with the framework it provided for verifying that each nation was in keeping with the agreement. The new agreement will replace the expired one, and the verification measures have provided a backdrop of urgency in ensuring the treaty passes. Since December, there have been no “boots on the ground” inspecting Russian arsenals. Sen. Dick Lugar, a leading Republican in favor of the treaty, had this to say:

Friends,

Albert Einstein once said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” At a time when the President (Obama) pledges to take steps leading the way to a nuclear weapons-free world, and in the next breath speaks of the importance of a strong nuclear deterrent (and funds new bomb-making facilities) it becomes dreadfully obvious that the same thinking that got us into our current nuclear mess will never get us out of it. What’s up with $7 billion to construct 3 new nuclear weapons production facilities??? Talk about false hope!

The whopping $7 billion for nuclear weapons programs that was proposed for 2011 is just the tip of the iceberg in a huge funding increase for the nuclear weapons complex. Last year, Republicans successfully pushed to require the Obama administration to submit a special report on modernizing the nuclear weapons complex, maintaining or enhancing our nuclear weapons stockpile, and the expected costs for the next 10 years. When the New START treaty was officially submitted to the Senate, this report had to be released. Wanting to win over Republican senators’ support for the New START treaty to cut US and Russian nuclear arsenals, the administration put forward a plan that greatly increases nuclear weapons related funding to the level of $180 billion over the next 10 years. From the Washington Post:

Friends,

After nearly a month of trying to keep up with activities at the 2010 NPT Review Conference I finally decided that I needed to watch TV, but not just any TV. I’ve discovered NPT TV, a Website designed and run by a team of students from Germany. They have been running brief video interviews with a wide variety of people involved with the 2010 NPT RevCon; people like John Burroughs, Executive Director of the Lawyer’s Committee on Nuclear Policy. Check out one of the interviews with him here as he “talks about different instruments to prohibit and ban the different kinds of Weapons of Mass Destruction.”

Prohibition of Weapons of Mass Destruction from NPT TV on Vimeo.