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Partnership for Global Justice
Annual Meeting
April 30-May 2, 2010, New York City
Members of the Partnership for Global Justice gathered in uptown Manhattan during rush hour on the very hot afternoon of April 30th to begin three days of activities associated with the International Conference for a Nuclear Free, Peaceful, Just and Sustainable World. The events of the weekend were initiated and planned by a collaborative effort of several national and international peace organizations in advance of the 2010 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference beginning on May 3 at the UN.
Our first activity was the Annual Meeting of the Partnership for Global Justice. 
The meeting in the Church of St. Paul the Apostle basement was reminiscent of where many peace and justice activities have been initiated and sustained. There we gathered to honor the Berrigan brothers, Daniel and posthumously, Philip, who are icons of the nonviolent peace and resistance movement. Sisters Carol Gilbert and Ardeth Platte introduced Dan, who was surrounded by his small residential Jesuit community. Partnership Board member, Amata Miller, IHM read the Justice Award citation. Phil’s eldest daughter, Frieda, accepted her father’s award in the name of the family. The awards were followed by a luncheon of simple but delicious Mexican cuisine.
We then travelled to Riverside Church for the opening of the NPT Conference. More than 500 international and national participants were present including peace demonstrators who had walked for days from places in Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Upper New York State and Maine. Plenary sessions were interspersed with health, environment and abolition track workshops and panel discussions. The plenary sessions, including the Saturday evening speech by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, can be downloaded from the website: http://www.theriversidechurchny.org. There were many opportunities to meet old friends and to engage in discussions with people, young and old, from all around the world.
Sunday noon, May 2nd, we gathered at the Church Center of the United Nations for an Interfaith Convocation for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons. Rev. Michael Kinnamon, Secretary General of the National Council of Churches, called nuclear weapons "a crime against humanity" that must be removed from the face of the earth. Baha’i, Buddhist, Christian, Confucian, Hindu, Humanist, Indigenous, Jain, Jewish, Muslim, Shinto, Sikh, Taoist, Unitrarina Universalist, Wiccan and Zoroastrian communities were involved in gathering the participants and the readings and rituals of the convocation.
By 2:00 Sunday afternoon about 15,000 people from around the world were gathered in Times Square. This crowd assembled only hours after the area had been closed off following a failed attempt to explode a car bomb. The 1600 Japanese participants included a number of Hibakusha, survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Representatives of nation after nation spoke in favor of the abolition of nuclear weapons and for a nuclear free world. Then we marched to the Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza at the UN for a Peace and Music Festival.
Throughout these events T-shirts, banners and signs abounded with quotes such as:
“It must never be repeated”
“No more NUKES!”
“Abolition 2010”
“Tell Obama, In Our Lifetime!”
“The world still lives under a nuclear shadow”
“No more Hiroshimas. No more Nagasakis.”
SOME
Some stood up once, and sat down.
Some walked a mile, and walked away.
Some stood up twice, and sat down.
'I've had it', they cried.
Some walked two miles, and walked away.
'It's too much!' they cried.
Some stood and stood and stood.
They were taken for fools,
they were taken for being taken in.
Some walked and walked and walked.
They walked the earth, they walked the waters,
they walked the air.
Why do you stand, they were asked, and
why do you walk?
Because of the children, they said, and
because of the heart, and
because of the bread.
Because the cause
is the heart's beat,
and the children born
and the risen bread.
Written and read by Fr. Dan Berrigan at the PGJ Annual Justice Award Luncheon,
April 30, 2010
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