BOSTON — The Massachusetts Senate has passed a resolution urging Congress to support a treaty banning nuclear weapons, timed to arrive as the country marks 81 years since it dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, killing an estimated 145,000 people by the end of that year and causing elevated cancer rates among survivors for generations.
Presented by Sen. Jo Comerford, D-Northampton, and Sen. Patrick O’Connor, R-Weymouth, the bipartisan state resolution vouches support of similar federal resolutions sponsored by U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern (H.Res.317) and U.S. Sen. Ed Markey (S.Res.323), which call for the federal government to embrace the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
“States can and should issue calls to action to federal lawmakers when the well-being of their residents is threatened. I am mindful that, in the 1980s, the commonwealth played a leading role in ending the nuclear arms race with the then-Soviet Union by adopting a nuclear freeze resolution and encouraging other states to follow its example,” Comerford said in a statement. “Massachusetts has come forward to help propel a high-stakes national movement.”
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was introduced as international law on Jan. 22, 2021, and has since been ratified by 70 countries.
Ira Helfand, a Northampton resident and co-founder of the Back from the Brink campaign calling for international nuclear disarmament, explained in an interview Thursday that he has advocated against nuclear arms since 1978. That was when he and three other doctors founded Physicians for Social Responsibility, a national organization of medical professionals concerned about the danger of nuclear war and dedicated to educating the public about its consequences.
“It was our belief that although people knew that nuclear war would be very bad, they didn’t really begin to appreciate how horrible it would be,” he said. “Nobody really wanted to think about nuclear weapons after the Cold War ended, but the danger hadn’t gone away. And now, with developments over the last five or 10 years, the danger is probably greater than it’s ever been — even worse than during the Cold War.”
Explaining some of the most common myths he hears about nuclear weapons, Helfand denounced the concept of mutually assured destruction — the theory that nuclear-armed nations are safe from being attacked with a nuclear weapon, since both involved nations would be aware that an attack would result in the complete destruction of both the attacker and the defender.
With five out of the nine nuclear-armed countries — the U.S., Israel, Iran, Pakistan and India — having been engaged in active warfare in the last 15 months, Helfand explained that the risk of nuclear warfare is more severe than most think.
“In the Ukraine war, Russia has made repeated threats to use nuclear weapons. In the latest version of the U.S. attack on Iran, Trump has made slightly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons, but the veil was pretty thin,” Helfand said. “We all should be very concerned that as Trump finds himself increasingly cornered by the situation he has created with this attack on Iran, that he may well resort to the use of nuclear weapons as the only thing he’s got left.”
Twenty-one municipalities across Massachusetts, including Northampton, Easthampton, Belchertown and Montague, have taken action to support the Back from the Brink campaign, alongside state legislatures in California, Oregon, Rhode Island and New Jersey.
The Massachusetts Senate resolution calls on federal leaders to not only embrace the treaty, but also to pursue a “verifiable agreement among nuclear-armed states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals,” renounce “the option of using nuclear weapons first,” and to end the president’s “sole, unchecked authority to launch a nuclear attack.”
“This is a bipartisan resolution, which I think is really important. This is not an issue that should be seen as a Democratic issue or a Republican issue,” Helfand said. “We are all going to suffer terribly if there’s a nuclear war, and if we don’t get rid of nuclear weapons, there’s going to be one.”
