Moving Forward, Making Peace

May has been an extremely active month for WILPF members. Since our founding, we've taken Julia Ward Howe's proclamation as a duty. "From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with Our own. It says: Disarm! Disarm!" In late April, we worked in coalition to lobby Congress and the administration for a nuclear free future. Then, we traveled to the Hull House Museum in Chicago to announce the 56th annual winners of the Jane Addams Children's Book Awards. We spent Mother's Day in DC demanding an end to the senseless occupations of Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan. We denounced the US government's policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan in a formal statement and co-signed a letter seeking funding for Afghan women's empowerment. Locally, our Santa Cruz branch is leading the way to restoring democracy and curbing corporations. On a regional and national level, we continue to work towards single payer health insurance.

WILPF works continuously to analyze current events and proposed legislation. To continue our work critiquing government and corporations from a feminist, peace perspective we need your financial support. Renew your membership, encourage your friends to join, and help us spread WILPF's message on the federal budget.

• WILPF Crashes DC
  • Celebrating the Original Meaning of Mother's Day
  • Lobbying for a Nuclear Free Future
• 5 Lessons Learned from Lobbying
• Lobby Locally: Spotlight on Santa Cruz
• Jane Addams Children's Book Award Winners Announced
• Support Funding Afghan Women-Led Non-Profits, Oppose US Military Action in Afghanistan and Pakistan
• Single Payer Health Insurance is Coming

WILPF Co-Sponsored DC Gathering on Mother's Day, led two learning circles

As Julia Ward Howe declared in the original Mother's Day Proclamation in 1870: "Arise then...women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts! From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with Our own. It says: Disarm! Disarm!" In the spirit of the true meaning of Mother's Day, WILPF co-sponsored CodePink's annual gathering in DC. We also led two learning circles during the 24-hour vigil.

Viewpoint from the Trenches:
Lobbying for a Nuclear Free Future
By Robin Rose, Y-WILPF intern

Members of WILPF's Disarm Committee spent the last week in April in Washington D.C., lobbying Congress and the Obama Administration in support of a nuclear free future. We worked under the guidance of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA), and were joined by members of nuclear watchdog groups from all over the country, most of whom live near nuclear facilities and have experienced firsthand the health and environmental devastation that can result from insufficient or irresponsible cleanup of radioactive waste. We lobbied for additional funding for cleanup operations to be diverted from weapons research and production, transparency and accountability in the awarding of cleanup contracts, ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT),
and the termination of funding for harmful programs such as reprocessing (which can lead to nuclear proliferation and produces more waste) and MOX (Mixed Oxide) fuel, which is costly and not proven to be effective. We also advocated for irreversible and verifiable dismantlement of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, with the goal of total disarmament in cooperation with other nuclear powers, and a "curatorship" program for the maintenance of a smaller stockpile that would maintain existing weapons - as a deterrent only, under a "no first use" policy - through replacement of deteriorating parts without making unnecessary changes or improvements, as long as they are needed. For more information or to get involved, please visit the WILPF Disarm Committee site, or the WILPF UN-based project on nuclear disarmament, Reaching Critical Will.

5 Lessons Learned from Lobbying
Fifteen WILPF members participated in the 21st annual ANA DC Days lobby training day and three days meeting with Congress. The lobbying foci of these days is described above. Claire Gosselin, co-chair of WILPF's Disarm: Dismantle the War Economy Committee, distilled five lessons for effective lobbying that can be applied to any grassroots lobbying effort.

Learn more out these best practices.

Historical photo of WILPF luminary, Elise Boulding, protesting.

Lobby Locally: Spotlight on Santa Cruz

Jan Harwood describes how the WILPF Santa Cruz branch began their journey to rescue democracy and curb corporations by attending a Democracy School. She also describes how the efforts of their water committee to expand local government's support for the human right to water led to a deeper understanding water's connection to corporate power.

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Jane Addams Children's Book Awards Winners

The 2009 Jane Addams Children's Book Award (JACBA) winners were announced on WILPF's birthday, April 28, at the Hull House Museum in Chicago. Booklist described our award as "[a] favored award among the books for youth editors." Planting the Trees of Kenya: The Story of Wangari Maathai, written and illustrated by Claire A. Nivola, Frances Foster Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, an imprint of Macmillan Children's Publishing Group, is the winner in the Books for Younger Children Category. The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom by Margarita Engle, published by Henry Holt Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Macmillan Children's Publishing Group, is the winner in the Books for Older Children Category.

Pictured: JACBA Committee members Margaret Jensen, Sarah Park, and Susan Griffith (chair)

Video from the announcement ceremony is on committee member Sarah Park, Ph.D's blog.

Click here for a toolkit on Building WILPF with the Jane Addams Book Awards. (pdf)

"Imagining Peace and Social Justice," (pdf) by Susan C. Griffith and Donna Barkman, an article from the American Library Association's Book Links magazine, describes the process for choosing JACBA winners.

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Support funding Afghan women-led non-profits, Oppose US military action in Afghanistan and Pakistan
On May 20, WILPF co-signed a letter to Congress seeking funding for Afghan women-led non-profit organizations providing programs for Afghan women and girls, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and the Ministry of Women's Affairs. We also urge Congress to pass the Afghan Women Empowerment Act (S229/HR2214).

This month, we also issued a statement urging the withdrawal of US and NATO military forces from Afghanistan and Pakistan. WILPF knows the path to peace lies in funding self-reliance projects, like sustainable agriculture, and by including women as equal participants in all aspects of conflict resolution, as mandated by UN Security Council Resolution 1325.

Pictured: Dr. Sima Samar, Chair of Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission

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Single Payer Health Insurance is Coming
National board member and Corporations v. Democracy co-chair Mary Zepernick puts recent developments in the national debate over health care into context, providing hope that a voluntary, single-payer health insurance system can be created with or without the help of Congress.

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WILPF envisions a transformed world at peace, where there is racial, social and economic justice for all people everywhere.

American mother's sons have died on foreign battlefields to support profiteers in their luxury living.
--Jeanette Rankin, first female member of Congress and founding member of WILPF