Organizing For Peace and A Nuclear Free Future

New Jersey Peace Action Celebrates 59 years of “organizing for peace and a nuclear-free future” at its annual awards dinner – featuring kevin martin, national director of peace action and shigeko sasamori, hiroshima survivor

The Bloomfield-based New Jersey Peace Action (NJPA) is holding its 59th Annual Dinner on Sunday, April 24, 2016 at the Hasbrouck Heights Hilton, 650 Terrace Avenue, Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey.

Since 1957, NJPA has worked for a world in which all are free from violence and war. NJPA and its parent organization Peace Action, based in Silver Spring, Maryland, continue to raise awareness that the end of the Cold War did not terminate nuclear threats to our country and the world. It strives for the global abolition of nuclear weapons as a most important part of the solution. Most recently, NJPA was part of a successful effort to uphold the Iran deal, a victory for diplomacy and negotiations.

This year’s program is: “Organizing for Peace and a Nuclear – Free Future”. Kevin Martin, Executive Director of the Peace Action national office and long-time activist for peace and justice will speak about what Peace Action is doing and has done over its 59 year history to organize for a peaceful and nuclear-free world.

"This upcoming event will be an organizational celebration of our rich, nearly six decade history of successful advocacy, such as Peace Action's key role in upholding the Iran peace deal last year,” said Kevin Martin, Executive Director of Peace Action since September 2001. “I personally will be honored to be with Shigeko Sasamori again, to honor her steadfast commitment to ensure no one anywhere experiences what she did, as a Hiroshima A-bomb survivor, ever again."

Shigeko Sasamori, a Hibakusha, Hiroshima Maiden and the adopted daughter of one of SANE’s founders (now Peace Action) Norman Cousins will speak about her experiences and passionate desire for peace. She was thirteen at the time of the bombing of Hiroshima and was less than a mile away from where the nuclear bomb exploded. Sasamori has dedicated her life to campaigning for peace and “against all nuclear things.”

“As long as I live, I will speak all over the world to many people because I feel we went through such a horrible life, we should not have anybody go through experiences like we did,” said Shigeko Sasamori. “I get to keep going because this is my mission, and it is very important. It makes me very happy to see all of these young people who want to do something and stop the nonsense … war is nothing good. Everybody has a responsibility to keep this Earth beautiful.”

NJPA will also honor Peace and Planet, Peace and Planet is an international network of 70 member organizations and more than 300 endorsers. It seeks to address the inter-related crises of preparations for nuclear war, war, social and economic injustice and climate change in integrated ways, building collaborations between organizations and movements.

Joe Gerson, AFSC, and one of the coordinators of Peace and Planet, said, “At a time when military tensions are rising with Russia and China and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has set their Doomsday Clock at three minutes to midnight, U.S. plans to spend $1 trillion on the modernization of nuclear weapons are sheer madness. Peace & Planet continues to press for nuclear weapons abolition, understand the necessity to make common cause with related movements for peace, justice and a sustainable environment. It will also be a privilege to meet Shigeko Sasamori. My organization, the American Friends Service Committee, collaborated with Norman Cousins on that brilliant and compassionate initiative."

Litsa Binder, the NJPA Person of the Year, has been an advocate for peace and justice and a member of NJ Peace Action for over 45 years, working tirelessly with the peace, justice and faith communities on issues as important and diverse as nuclear abolition, opposing war on Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran, ending the use of torture, gun violence prevention and addressing issues of poverty in the U.S. and around the world.

Those interested in making reservations to this awards dinner can visit http://www.njpeaceaction.org or by calling 973-259-1126.