Daniel Ellsberg Week 2024
ActionNetwork
(June 11, 2024) — Daniel Ellsberg’s final book, The Doomsday Machine, explained key realities of nuclear-weapons policies. “No policies in human history have more deserved to be recognized as immoral. Or insane,” he wrote. “The story of how this calamitous predicament came about and how and why it has persisted for over half a century is a chronicle of human madness.’”
Now, during Daniel Ellsberg Week, activists are commemorating his work and spirit by calling for an end to war and the policies that keep the world on the brink of nuclear annihilation.
This week, and year round, we carry on by fighting for crucial changes, like eliminating land-based nuclear weapons (ICBMs).
In a letter to Congress five years ago, Ellsberg singled out the urgency of one “immediate step” in particular: “to eliminate entirely our redundant, vulnerable, and destabilizing land-based ICBM force.” Unlike air-launched and sea-based nuclear weapons, which are not vulnerable to attack, the ICBMs are vulnerable to a preemptive strike and so are “poised to launch” on the basis of “ten-minute warning signals that may be — and have been, on both sides — false alarms, which press leadership to ‘use them or lose them.’”
While best known as the Pentagon Papers whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg “was preoccupied with opposing policies that could lead to nuclear war,” RootsAction national director Norman Solomon wrote in a new article, “The Absence – and Presence – of Daniel Ellsberg.” To read that article, and to send quick emails to members of Congress urging closure of ICBMs, click here.
This week has brought the premiere of a powerful short documentary – A Common Insanity: A Conversation with Daniel Ellsberg About Nuclear Weapons – and you can watch it now for free by clicking here. That new movie was directed by Judith Ehrlich, Oscar-nominated filmmaker of The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers.
To learn more about how you can help avert nuclear war, visit the Defuse Nuclear War website.
This work is only possible with your financial support.
In solidarity,
The RootsAction Team
