Minute in support of the City of Madison “Back from the Brink” Nuclear Disarmament/Divestment Resolution
Madison Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends
April 7th 2019

We endorse the City of Madison “Back from the Brink” Nuclear Disarmament/Divestment Resolution. This Resolution is being introduced in cities and states all over the US as part of a national grassroots initiative seeking to fundamentally change U.S. nuclear weapons policy.

The Resolution embraces the 2017 United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons which calls for a multilateral, verifiable agreement among nuclear states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals. And it calls on the US to take 4 immediate steps to prevent nuclear war by:

• renouncing the option of using nuclear weapons first,
• ending the sole, unchecked authority of any President to launch a nuclear attack,
• taking US nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert, and
• cancelling the plan to replace its entire arsenal with enhanced weapons.

The Resolution also commits the City of Madison to nuclear weapons free contracts and
investments.

Friends (Quakers) have a long standing peace testimony and are deeply concerned about the threat of nuclear war. Even a “limited” nuclear exchange could lead to the death of billions of people and catastrophic climate change.

Despite huge reductions in the worldwide nuclear arsenal since the 1980s, the risks of
nuclear weapon use have not diminished.

It is said that nuclear weapons are a deterrent to war. But we can think of a far more
powerful deterrent: the elimination of world hunger and poverty.

We believe in international diplomacy, but we also believe in working at the local level to
urge our leaders to pursue nuclear disarmament.

Socially responsible investment is another way of putting our beliefs into action. By
shifting our investments from the production of nuclear weapons to constructive,
life-giving industries, we can begin dismantling the nuclear weapons industrial complex
and help ensure a future for our children.

Below are PDFs of this minute, background documents and a fact sheet with action steps from Physicians for Social Responsibility of Madison (PSR).