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Minute Supporting the U.N. General Assembly Nuclear Weapons Ban

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We, Quakers of Multnomah Friends Meeting in Portland, Oregon, United States, support the new United Nations General Assembly’s Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty. (A copy of that treaty is available at: http://undocs.org/A/CONF.229/2017/8 )

In accordance with the Quaker Peace Testimony, Quakers have worked tirelessly for abolition of nuclear weapons ever since United States airplanes dropped two of these secretly produced bombs on August 6 and 9, 1945.  The bombs destroyed both Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, and the world has not yet recovered from all that those two bombs destroyed.
This treaty may seem imperfect to many Friends because it does not seek the elimination of nuclear energy as well as weapons.  It is, however, the longest step world governments have taken toward the actual elimination of these weapons from our already wounded earth.

There is much work yet to do if we are to achieve actual abolition, to which our own government is adamantly opposed. The United States Congress has allocated a trillion dollars, already being used, to modernize our own nuclear arsenal over the next thirty years.  Very few of our citizens are even aware of this new United Nations treaty since the major media have not reported on its development or discussed publicly its impact.

We request that all Friends and Quaker Meetings, which are so led, join to make this Treaty more widely known.  Let us show our fellow citizens that the door to abolition of nuclear weapons is open.  Let us proceed together as the Spirit leads and as the Way opens.

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