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Putin has withdrawn from the S.T.A.R.T. treaty renewal talks.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/

Anti-Nuclear, Political Activist

Raytheon Missile and Defense contract a bad idea

Posted on April 21, 2020by Betsy Bell

A recent article in Defense news came to my attention thanks to Carly Brook of WPSR, staff support to Washington Against Nuclear Weapons Coalition. Our work to abolish nuclear weapons is a David vs. Goliath story. Raytheon corporation has been a primary private sector supplier to the Pentagon for decades. I have a personal connection to Raytheon through my uncle Thomas Hope Johnson who served as vice-chairman of research for the company during my college years.

Raytheon has just been named the sole provider of a Long Range Standoff Weapons Program. This story probably won’t make the national news although some Members of Congress are asking questions about this decision.

Airmen from Minot Air Force Base, N.D., prepare an AGM-86B Air-Launched Cruise Missile for a Nuclear Weapons System Evaluation program test flight on April 10, 2013. (Tech. Sgt. Mark Bell/Air Force)

I decided to send a letter to the current head of the Missile and Defense arm of Raytheon. Here is what I had to say:

Dear President Wesley D. Kremer,

In your role as head of Raytheon Missiles & Defense, you have the power to stop the escalation of nuclear weaponry across the globe. The United States already has enough nuclear firepower to destroy the planet. Other countries with nuclear weapon arsenals know this. We have nothing further to prove.

Your words, “LRSO will be a critical contributor to the air-launched portion of America’s nuclear triad,” speak of Raytheon’s ability to manage the risk of arming aircraft with a weapon that could be either nuclear or conventional. This addition to a conventional aircraft could unnecessarily raise the risk of miscalculation, triggering a nuclear war. [I quote the recent article in Defense News by Valerie Insinna. 4-20-2020]

I write to you as the niece of Dr. Thomas Hope Johnson who retired from his position as Vice President of Research at Raytheon in 1965. Uncle Tom began his career at Brookhaven working with the Manhattan Project’s nuclear physicists to split the atom. During the Second World War, he turned to military projects. As chief physicist at the Ballistic Research Laboratories from 1942 to 1947, he measured the blast force of bombs and used microwaves to record movements of bullets and other projectiles.

Two years after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he became vice president of research with the Atomic Energy Commission to discover peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

Do you and your scientists have that youthful excitement in the power of microwaves and nuclear energy I witnessed in my uncle when I was a freshman at Bryn Mawr College? I visited him and my aunt in Georgetown, DC in 1955. He was working at Raytheon at the time. At breakfast, he emerged from the kitchen with the grin and gleam of a ten-year-old with a new discovery. He opened a mason jar full of freeze-dried strawberries. “Betsy, someday you will open a box of cereal, pour milk on it and these little red flakes will bloom into strawberries.”

He, Leo Szilard and other physicists from the Manhattan Project were horrified that nuclear fission had been used to kill millions of people. They formed the Council for a Livable World in 1962, determined to educate our citizens and our government about the destructive course of nuclear armament buildup. Surely the current mission of Raytheon could be life-giving instead of life-destroying.

Raytheon’s overall mission states that the company can be trusted to do the right thing and act with integrity. How is your division operating in harmony with this larger mission? How is a revenue stream of 60 Billion and a mission to provide the industry’s most advanced end-to-end solutions to detect, track and engage threats a trusted way forward? That 60 billion could be spent in diplomacy and arms reduction rather than producing weapons we never plan to use.

You have the power to change the “Peace Through Strength” model. The world needs Raytheon’s leadership for peace, not war.

Elisabeth Johnson Bell

The Washington Against Nuclear Weapons Coalition needs you, dear Reader, and your organization to join us. We must increase the voices in Washington State that urge, request, demand that our Members of Congress stop spending money on nuclear weapons. Please join www.WANWCoalition.org

If you are curious about how my Uncle Tom influenced my work in the anti-nuclear movement, check out my memoir, Open Borders: a Personal Story of Love, Loss and Anti-war Activism.

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Anti-Nuclear

Book talk June 16th

Posted on May 28, 2019by Betsy Bell

Come: discuss way to end the threat of nuclear war. Sunday, June 16th, 6:30 p.m., Woodland Park Presbytrian Church, 225 N 70th St, Seattle, WA 98103 Near #5 bus. Seattle Fellowship of Reconciliation program with Betsy Bell in a Book Reading and Discussion. Betsy’s book, “Open Borders: A personal story of love, loss and anti-war activism” describes how she and her husband Don Bell, advocated with many others, for a peaceful end to the Cold War through People to People friendship. All are welcome! Free, an offering will be taken. Info 206-789-5565 or wwfor@wwfor.org

WE DON’T WANT WAR! And here is some INFO and quick ACTIONS you can take.

INFO

Senator Udall’s S.1039, the “Prevention of Unconstitutional War with Iran Act of 2019” – has 14 co-sponsors but Washington Senators Murray and Cantwell have NOT co-sponsored yet. See https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/1039/cosponsors

Its House companion H.R.2354 has 18 co-sponsors. Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer can put this bill on the House floor for a vote any time they want. More co-sponsors will help pressure Pelosi and Hoyer to put the bill on the floor for a vote. None of the WA state Reps has co-sponsored yet! See https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/2354/cosponsors

Senator Merkley’s S.J.Res.11, the “Prohibiting Unauthorized Military Action in Venezuela Resolution of 2019,” has five co-sponsors, see https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-joint-resolution/11/cosponsors . Washington Senators Murray and Cantwell have NOT co-sponsored yet

Its House companion H.R.1004 has 72 co-sponsors. See https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1004/cosponsors . Rep. Jayapal is the only WA state co-sponsor. Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer can put this bill on the floor for a vote any time they want.

ACTIONS: Let your Congressional reps know you want them to support these bills! (and thank Rep. Jayapal) You can leave a message for any Senator or Representative at the Congressional Switchboard 202-224-3121.

Contact Sen. Murry https://www.murray.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/contactme (please cosponsor S.1039 and S.J.Res.11)

Contact Sen. Cantwell https://www.cantwell.senate.gov/contact (please cosponsor S.1039 and S.J.Res.11)

Contact Rep Jayapal https://jayapal.house.gov/contact/ (thanks for co-sponsoring H.R.1004, please sign on to H.R.2354)

Other Congressional contacts can be found at the League of Women Voters wonderful “They Represent You” directory, https://www.seattlelwv.org/uploads/1/1/7/8/117877553/try_web.pdf (scroll down to pages 33 and 34).

Together we can change from agression to peace-making. It takes every voice. Betsy Bell, author and peace-activist

dalai lama