Anti-Nuclear, Historical Memoir, Political Activist

Courage and “mission fortitude”

Posted on June 17, 2023by Betsy Bell

Dear Betsy,

You may add one more person to your list of readers. I saw your book lying on our dining table and was soon informed by my wife, Natalia, that you had generously given it to her during her stay in your West Seattle home. My interest was piqued by its title, which I could not imagine relating to today’s use of this term. And certainly it wasn’t, as its content quickly revealed.

You seem to be one of these individuals, almost all female, victimized by the patriarchal era in which you lived. Bright, talented, ambitious, and capable of far more spacious boundaries, you mostly played the role of the times. But your spirit was evident in what you did achieve, and your book is testament.

I, too, have a history of a brief residence in Russia, two years for me, in Moscow. Aside from my all-engaging work as an English teacher, I was primarily an ethnologist, exploring the question of what 73 years of the Soviet experience did to people, not to mention the centuries of servitude under the Czars. As your book makes clear, there is one overarching lesson from foreign immersion. People are people wherever you find them. The aphorism observes that there is a line in human nature below which we are all the same. Big or small, smart or dull, kind or mean, hopeful or fearful, such as we are, are about the same in proportion everywhere on the planet. Aspirations for oneself and for our progeny and friends seem universal, and are heavily driven toward peaceful, supportive, and loving connections between all of us. There is no such thing, under superficialities, as “the Russian character” or the “the Asian nature”. Around the kitchen table, we are all pretty much the same.

The subject of attitude, molded by life, is where we find differences across cultures, and these differences have substantial bearing on the success or failure of entire cultures, judged by those qualities that lead to human fulfillment.

Your writing classes and, as we all experience, your life-long practice in journals and so forth, has made you a pretty good writer. You cleared the bar in my book. I enjoyed your style and frankness. Your story of your work with Target Seattle and the Tashkent sojourns is really quite inspirational and, as I perceive it, took a good deal of courage and “mission fortitude”. You would have made a good US senator or a governor.

With utmost respect and sincere good wishes,

Paul Shelton

Uncategorized

We must; Our governments will not

Posted on February 24, 2023by Betsy Bell

Putin has withdrawn from the S.T.A.R.T. treaty renewal talks. Talks have broken down between governments whose nuclear weapons are at the ready. Tension is the highest since the Cuban Missile Crisis. We seem headed to Mutual Assured Destruction. It is time to imagine a popular citizen’s diplomacy blossoming this spring as it did in 1983. Read Open Borders: A personal story of love, loss, and anti-war activism and relive the uprising of a city sitting in the center of Ground Zero, a target in a nuclear war. A city from which ordinary citizens wrote and carried a letter of peace to Moscow, Leningrad, and Tashkent and Samarkand in Uzbekistan and handed it out on the streets in the U.S.S.R.

Reviews suggest this slim volume will inspire the reader to action.

Elizabeth Mosier

Compelling and inspiring!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 17, 2018

In her memoir, Open Borders: a Personal Story of Love, Loss, and Political Activism, Betsy Bell twines two narratives: her anti-nuclear war activism, and her feminist development within a long, loving marriage. Recounting her eye-opening 1983 trip behind the Iron Curtain, part of a delegation of Seattle citizens delivering a public message of peace (and a secret cache of letters addressed to two “refusenik” families) to their sister city, Tashkent in Uzbekistan, Bell captures the dramatic events—and everyday details—of a precarious time in history. Bell’s story has unfortunate resonance today, and speaks to the power in the personal: knowing “the other” and wishing for the happiness and wellbeing of our so-called adversaries. “Putting words on paper is my way of taking up arms again,” Bell writes in the book’s introduction. “Action gives me hope.” Bell’s story, enhanced by contributions from four other activists, is a call to action—and evidence of a life lived with the curiosity, compassion, and respect in which she places her faith. A compelling, inspiring book!

KOB

Snapshot of history of a city’s era

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 5, 2018

Betsy Bell’s book is not only a personal history of her participation in citizen-based diplomacy at the height of the Cold War, it is also a chronicle of anti-nuclear war activism in the city of Seattle. What is wonderful about the book is how much it remains very much on the human scale and therefore draws the reader in.

InspireSeattle

Inspiring

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 3, 2018

Too often in our lives we let ourselves become convinced that our own “small-selves” can’t really change the direction of things, because the issues are too big and too complex, and that any efforts we expend towards global-betterment are wasted energy, and won’t make a difference. But then, if we are lucky, we read a story of individuals that, through their own determination and effort, do make a difference on a critical global issue. Betsy Bell’s Open Borders is one of those inspiring stories. Describing the efforts of her family, friends and activist colleagues in Seattle during the Cold-War 1980s, Open Borders captures efforts to engage on a person-to-person level with citizens in Seattle’s sister city of Tashkent, Uzbekistan, located in the heart of the USSR. Bell’s story describes the efforts of her team to craft personal connections between Seattle and Tashkent, built around the joint belief that we really have more in common than we may initially believe, and that “regular-citizens” of the world must work together to prevent catastrophic nuclear war. Bell’s story is both highly descriptive of the times, as well as very personal. It provides important insights as to the common questions, challenges and doubts that come with efforts such as these. Mostly, Bell’s story provides needed inspiration for all of us to continue to show up and take action on the issues that are most important to us; to get involved, and to stay involved.

DJVS

Inspiring

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 27, 2020

Verified Purchase

This is an uplifting, inspiring, and personal story of how people to people peace efforts of thousands in Seattle changed Cold War relations in the 1980s. A powerful testimony to how the personal is political, how engaging in activism is empowering, how feminist sensibilities can develop even as love flourishes. Bravo!!

Amazon still has copies. You can find the book in your local library.

Anti-Nuclear, Uncategorized

Why the Russians don’t trust us

Posted on April 3, 2022by Betsy Bell

Why Russians don’t trust us

March 17, 2022

In 1981 we were scared s**tless about a nuclear war between us and the Soviets. President Reagan and Mikael Gorbachev, president of the Soviet Union, met, respected each other, and agreed to avoid nuclear war. Ordinary people began to travel back and forth between our two countries. Our leaders promised to respect each other’s boundaries after the USSR broke up. What happened over the last 22 years to change our attitudes toward one another?

Watch this important 45-minute talk by journalist Vladimir Pozner as he explains the change to a classroom of students and others at Yale University in October of 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X7Ng75e5gQ In a response to an undergraduate’s question [57 minute mark], Pozner suggests that young people can change the current attitude of fear on both sides, can make overtures to young people in Russians, can befriend the Other. It may be our only hope of avoiding World War III, a nuclear war that will destroy everything we know and love. Please share this with your groups. Our future may depend on it.

Thanks for reading. Betsy

In 1983, thirty-three people went as tourists to the USSR to visit our sister city in Uzbekistan, Tashkent. We delivered to people on the street a letter of peace asking those who lived in the USSR to join us in working to prevent nuclear war. I wrote about our trip and the aftermath in my memoir, Open Borders: A Personal Story of Love, Loss, and Anti-war activism. The book is available on Amazon and through your independent book seller. Here’s the ISBN number: 978-1-941890-21-9.

Anti-Nuclear, Political Activist

Who are the Marshallese?

Posted on November 13, 2020by Betsy Bell

Some months ago I hung a world map as my shower curtain. I wanted to visualize the places I have traveled, the places in the news, and the regions where military tensions and potential nuclear weapon exchanges or accidents might take place. A two-fold objective: pleasurable memories and frightening possibilities.

My work on the Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility’s task force provided incite into a previous unknown [to me] world: the Marshall Islands, their people, and the use our government made of this tiny archipelago as the testing site for our hydrogen bombs in 1954.

I searched my plastic map for the Marshall Islands scanning the South Seas from my seat or waiting for the water to run hot before stepping in the shower. I never found them.

Yesterday I googled the Marshall Islands, took longitudinal and latitudinal eye-ball measurements removing any doubt about where to look. The island nation did not exist on my large and detailed map. Overlooked on my shower curtain map. Overlooked in the national consciousness of Americans, and perhaps the world. [I have taken my Sharpie and drawn them in, on the end seam where the roundness of the Earth splits to make a flat map.]

Two years ago the population of the island’s sovereign nation was 58,400. Tyson Foods in Arkansas employs many Marshallese from the 17,000 member community living there. In Spokane, Marshall Islanders makeup 1% of the population (and account for 33% of the Covid-19 infections). Many live in Hawai’i. Their difficult history may be new to you.

On March 1st, 1954, the United States’ most powerful hydrogen bomb, with a 15 megaton yield and code-named Castle Bravo, was detonated upon Bikini Atoll – Marshall Islands. To this day, generations of people are without home and food security, and many face generational health disparities. But not even weapons of mass destruction can destroy Marshallese culture. The Marshall Islanders in Washington State are well organized and have not given up hope of getting access to health care, Medicaid, and other health services.

They live in a strange limbo resulting from a deal their government made to the US: to give our US military access to their islands for weapons’ testing and the creation of military bases in exchange for their citizens to obtain visas to live and work in the US, earn money and pay taxes. But, this is a big BUT, a Marshall Islander living in the US is not qualified to receive any of our social safety net provisions such as social security. To understand their limbo status better, read this article from the Spokane Tribune.

Since 1986, the Compact of Free Association (COFA) between the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Republic of Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia (Chuuk, Kosrae, Yap, Pohnpei), and the United States allows COFA citizens to serve in the U.S. military and enter, lawfully reside, and work in the U.S. in exchange for providing the U.S. exclusive military control of the region.
When the Compacts were originally signed, COFA migrants were eligible for Medicaid and other federal programs. That eligibility changed with a new law in 1996, when these and other migrants were excluded from benefits.

The WPSR has been instrumental in making the Marshallese presence and plight visible to the rest of us living privileged lives in Washington State. They was us to celebrate their resilience in the face of their circumstances.

Put this date on your calendar, March 12-14, 2021, In Washington, the Marshallese and nuclear frontline communities welcome us to attend the 2021 Marshall Islands Nuclear Victims and Survivors Remembrance Day. We will remember the legacy of the nuclear era, the resilience of nuclear frontline communities coping with today’s pandemic, and the crossroad of nuclear and climate change justice.

Is this news to you? Any reactions you would care to share? Please comment. If you have read this, you will be changed and become more aware of the need to abolish all nuclear weapons, their manufacture, their storage, and you may even join the efforts of WPSR.

Your donation helps support their lobbying efforts to change the nuclear landscape and the cost of maintaining it.

Thanks for reading. Google.map Marshall Islands and form your own mental image of this one-time island paradise’s place in the vast Pacific ocean.

For a Nuclear Free World, Betsy

My next public appearance will be hosted by the Anacortes peace activists No More Bombs in February. Watch this space for date and time and how to participate. https://www.nomorebombs.org/