BAP Call to Support TPNW is Cornerstone of Its Candidate Accountability Campaign

October 28, 2020 — Global humanity made a significant step toward addressing one of its most intractable and irrational issues it faces — the production, potential use and normalcy of nuclear weapons — with the ratification by Honduras of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) on October 24th, bringing the number of ratifications to 50 nations and triggering the 90-day period in which the treaty will enter in force as international law on January 22, 2021. 

Adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on July 7th, 2017, the TPNW is the first legally binding international agreement to prohibit nuclear weapons. BAP embraced this call and made support for the treaty’s ratification an integral element of its public educational work related to its Anti-war campaign work. 

“With the passage of TPNW just a few month after BAP was launched in 2017, we saw this treaty and the issue of nuclear war as an issue that had to be centered in our efforts to reawaken the movement against war of all types that had fell into a slumber under the pro-war, right-wing administration of Barack Obama. Demanding that US public officials at every level of government support the TPNW is a cornerstone of BAP’s current candidate accountability campaign,” according to BAP National Organizer, Ajamu Baraka. 

BAP’s Candidate Accountability Campaign is a mass-based effort to present a set of Anti-war and pro-peace demands to public officials that they must embrace in order to win the support of the public. 

Along with the demand that public officials “Sponsor legislation and/or resolutions to support the U.N. resolution on the complete global abolition of nuclear weapons,” BAP also demands that elected officials: 

• Oppose the militarization of US police through the Department of Defense’s 1033 program

• Oppose Israeli training of US police forces

• Call for and work for the closure of the US Africa Command (AFRICOM)

• Advocate for the closure of 800+ US foreign military bases

• Oppose Trump’s “Operation Relentless Pursuit”

• Commit to opposing all military, economic (including sanctions and blockades) and political interventions; 

• Advocate for an end to US participation in NATO

The bipartisan commitment to use illegal force to maintain US global hegemony must be challenged by the US public. The fact that the US operates today as a rogue state, completely ignoring international law and basic morality as it subverts governments, imposes murderous sanctions, supports anti-democratic regimes from Israel to the United Arab Emirates and desecrates the concept of human rights, means that it is up to the US public to reign in the US state. The BAP demands are a first step toward that goal. 

“It is an irrational and immoral use of public funds to spend over a trillion dollars to upgrade the US nuclear arsenal that both the Obama and Trump regimes committed to, According to Baraka. “This criminal use of the public funds and the outrageous theory that the US can launch a first strike against either Russia or the Chinese and catch their missiles in their silos, demonstrates that the US, no matter who occupies the White House, is an existential threat to collective humanity.” 

Posted in accordance with Title 17, Section 107, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes.