The Peace Action Committee of the Green Party held a webinar on Wednesday, August 9 on the legacy of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Panelists:

Haig Hovaness: Haig is a peace activist with a professional background in information technology. He is the Co-Chair of the Peace Action Committee of the Green Party of the United States. He has written and presented on a variety of defense-related technology issues. He holds an MBA from New York University.

Chrissy Stonebraker-Martinez: Co-Director of the Interreligious Task Force on Central America. IRTF has co-founded many other projects such as the Immigration Working Group of Cleveland and the North East Ohio Worker Center. IRTF was founded after US trained and funded military forces killed two Clevelanders working in solidarity with refugees in El Salvador in 1980. IRTF is proud to center their work on those impacted by state violence from Colombia to Canada--especially Afro-indigenous communities, workers, queer and disabled folk.

Penny Hess: is chairwoman of the African People's Solidarity Movement and is an expert on why colonized people deserve reparations. She is named as one of the indicted "Uhuru 3". The “Uhuru 3” are charged with being unregistered “foreign agents” allegedly under the “malign influence” of the Russian government. Her apartment was the target of a militarized local and federal raid just over one year ago. The purpose of the raid was to intimidate the African Peoples' Socialist Party from continuing to speak out for justice and reparations. Hess has written a book entitled "Overturning the Culture of Violence".

Greg Coleridge: Greg is Co-Director of "Move to Amend" and author of "The Depth of Change: Selected Writings and Remarks on Social Change" (2022). He maintains and distributes via email a weekly "Real Democracy History Calendar" and "Monetary History Calendar". He previously worked for the American Friends Service Committee.

Lynn Sableman: Lynn is a member of the Disarm/End War group of the St. Louis Women's International League for Peace and Freedom chapter. Lynn created and displayed a "Nuclear Weapons Abolition Folk Art Fiber Pop-up Exhibit" which appeared in the St. Louis area 5 times last year. She has her master's degree in education and was one of several founding teachers of Shining Rivers Waldorf School, St. Louis. As if this is not enough for one person to do, she is also a recently retired RN.

Daniel Kovalik: Dan is a labor and human rights lawyer who teaches International Human Rights at the University of Pittsburgh Law School. An accomplished author and journalist, Mr. Kovalik has done extensive traveling worldwide which makes him a model diplomat for peace and justice. He is active in Pittsburgh Peace coalitions and attended the most recent "National March for Peace in Ukraine" in Washington, DC.

Moderator:

Madelyn Hoffman: Madelyn is Co-Chair of the Green Party Peace Action Committee. (GPAX) Madelyn is also a long-time member of the Green Party of New Jersey and was Ralph Nader's vice-presidential running mate for New Jersey in 1996 and the Green Party candidate for Governor in 1997. Madelyn was the director of New Jersey Peace Action. Currently she is an adjunct professor of public speaking and political science.

For More Information email [email protected] or call 314-495-8006.

Insert Photograph: Horatio J. Kookaburra

Circa 1945-1950: The Atomic Dome of Hiroshima, symbolic centrepiece of the devastated city. Author acquisition.
5067. Now [controversially ] UNESCO World Heritage listed and standing in a small riverside park crowded by bland high-rise buildings, the'Peace Dome' - the former 1915-built Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, is seen here in the early postwar period, as the city begins to recover from the devastation of August 6, 1945.

The atomic bomb, aimed at a nearby T-shaped bridge detonated 1,968 ft [600m] above this building, and not quite directly overhead.

We're not sure if restrictions on entry may have applied, but it must have been a familiar sight to many of the thousands of Australians who formed the British Commonwealth Occupation Forces in nearby Kure from 1946 to 1952, including the crews of RAN ships placed on station there.

One of the main functions of the BCOF - always Australian-led, and manned entirely from 1947 - was to oversee the collection and disposal of Japanese war materiel.

Photo: Author acquisition, copyright expired.