UFPJ welcomes a new member organization, the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament & Common Security (CPDCS). After more than four decades with the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), the last 36 years of which he served as Director of the Peace & Economic Security program, Joseph Gerson will become president of the CPDSC as the AFSC ends its peace program to devote energies to other issues.
The CPDCS advocates for peace and nuclear disarmament and serves as a bridge between peace and nuclear disarmament movements in the U.S., Asia and Europe. Its priorities are first and foremost to reduce great power tensions and promote demilitarization and common security diplomacy with China, other Asia-Pacific nations, and Russia. To this end, the Campaign is creating a Committee for a Sane U.S. China Policy formed of scholars and policy analysts and organizing a new nationwide Asia-Pacific working group of community based and national organizations. Second, the Campaign will work to advance nuclear disarmament and the abolition of all nuclear weapons. Third, it aims to protect democracy from authoritarianism here in the U.S.
To these goals, Joseph brings his years of experience organizing international conferences and protests, along with the working relationships he has made and maintained with women and men working for transformative change in their countries. These include the hibakusha, victims of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and of nuclear weapons testing; organizers of the nuclear weapons freeze movement of the 1980s; members of the International Peace Bureau; the Korea Peace Network and many others.
The immediate program goals of the CPDCS include a post-election conference titled “Where do we go from here? Preparing our Movements for the Next Four Years,” which will focus on a broad range of peace, economic and racial justice, climate, pandemic, and democracy issues. And when the pandemic abates, the Campaign will be leading NGO organizing to influence the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference.
