2010 NFP State Board Issue Priorities
PROGRAM I
Turn Off the Violence: Opposing the Culture of Violence at Home
PROJECT 1.1 Anti-Violence Work in the Schools
PROJECT 1.2 Violence Against Women
The home and the classroom are the frontline of peacemaking. What children learn in the household and on the school grounds often prefigures the kind of citizens and neighbors they will grow up to be. Our hopes for creating a more just and peaceful society rest, accordingly, on what happens in these formative environments. From its inception, Nebraskans for Peace has emphasized the need for nonviolence education and training in public and private school curricula. The Legislature’s newly adopted educational mandates on school bullying and dating violence was a ground-breaking first step. But follow-up efforts to ensure that these policies are enforced and that teachers — as well as students — get the instruction and tools necessary to resist the option to violence will be essential. The task of confronting violence at the primary unit of society will remain at the heart of NFP’s work so long as we are a peace organization.
PROGRAM II
Anti-War & International Law
PROJECT 2.1 Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan
PROJECT 2.2 Israel and Palestine
PROJECT 2.3 United Nations and International Law
Nebraskans for Peace is committed to the creative, nonviolent resolution of conflict and views war as a practical failure at peacemaking. Confronting violence with violence, we believe, will never create the conditions for peace. Wars and military ventures that harm the lives, health and welfare of countless innocent civilians are not only destined to fail, they foster anti-American sentiment and foment terrorism.
As the recent ‘Wars on Terror’ in Iraq and Afghanistan have readily shown, however, our government’s military policy is more and more being guided by corporate economic interests. From efforts to seize control of Mideast oil resources, to the sale of armaments on the global market, to the contracting of war-fighting duties to private firms like Halliburton and Blackwater, the collusion of the Military-Industrial Complex has never been greater. Through our educational outreach efforts, media events and public demonstrations, NFP seeks to cut through the political spin and fear-mongering about our national security, critically examine our government’s true intentions and work to change our foreign and military policy.
PROGRAM III
StratCom & Nuclear Weapons
Today, U.S. Strategic Command represents a greater menace to the planet than ever before. Although for more than half a century, it has had the capacity to destroy the earth multiple times over with its nuclear ‘deterrent,’ in the wake of 9/11, StratCom has now been given the additional missions of offensively waging the international ‘War on Terror’ (with conventional as well as nuclear weapons) and dominating outer space. Responsible now for a total of eight missions (Nuclear Deterrence, Space, Cyberspace, Full-Spectrum Global Strike, Intelligence / Surveillance / Reconnaissance, Missile Defense, Information Operations, and Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction), StratCom is the linchpin for the U.S.’s entire war-fighting machine.
Living as we do in StratCom’s shadow, it is the special task of Nebraskans for Peace to alert the world community of this new and even more ominous threat. In this same vein, it is our hope that we can instigate an international dialogue about StratCom to consider what the role and mission of this unprecedented military weapon should now be.
PROGRAM IV
Civil Rights & Economic Justice
PROJECT 4.1 Whiteclay Alcohol Sales
PROJECT 4.2 Immigration
PROJECT 4.3 Racial Justice in Nebraska
PROJECT 4.4 Equitable Access to Health Care
PROJECT 4.5 Employee Free Choice Act
As our organizational motto states, “There is no peace without justice.” Unless we are laying the foundation for a society based on equality before the law, economic sufficiency and democratic participation for each of its members, peace will be elusive. A commitment to civil rights and economic justice for all has been a guiding principle of Nebraskans for Peace since its founding in 1970 and remains so today.
Although we annually designate issue priorities to focus on for the coming year, NFP’s support for justice and fairness ranges from Lesbian / Gay / Bisexual / Transgender rights to abolition of the death penalty and prison reform.
For 2010, we are continuing our decade-long effort to halt the illegal alcohol trade in Whiteclay, Nebraska; working to oppose discrimination against immigrants; promoting increased dialogue between African Americans and whites in Omaha; promoting a single-payer public option in health care; and lobbying for the “Employee Free Choice Act” to strengthen the ranks of organized labor.
PROGRAM V
Environment
PROJECT 5.1 Military Degradation of the Environment
PROJECT 5.2 Climate Crisis Education and Advocacy for Renewable Energy
PROJECT 5.3 Civilian Nuclear and Environmental Hazards
PROJECT 5.4 Support a Positive U.S. Position at the Copenhagen Conference
For half a century after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there was no greater environmental threat to the earth than nuclear weapons. This threat to life as we know it made nuclear disarmament a central theme of NFP’s mission during the first 35 years of our existence. As the tragedy of Chernobyl demonstrated, however, nuclear power in and of itself represents a needless danger to the planet, not only through the danger of generation, but also through its mining, storage, transport of spent fuel and reuse as depleted uranium weapons.
With the onset of global warming from the burning of fossil fuels, protection of the environment has become a pillar of the Peace & Justice movement in its own right. The earth’s ecosystems face catastrophic changes in the coming decades from this threat, all of which will heighten social tensions by increasing the potential for conflicts over scarce resources. Protecting the environment is now central to the work of peacemaking, both to reduce our carbon footprint and to end conflicts over foreign oil. Our advocacy for renewable energy development here in Nebraska — particularly wind and solar — is a natural outgrowth of this new issue priority.
