December 12, 2022

Bulletin 316: Fundraising appeal; THANK YOU

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Previously: Bulletin 315: (11/27/22) Urgent fundraising request, matching grant available! Also: near-daily selected Ukraine updates; updated pit policy recommendations; legislative testimony

Dear friends and colleagues --

End-of-year fundraising: THANK YOU -- SO FAR SO GOOD; PLEASE BE OUR AMBASSADORS

To all of you who have contributed to the Study Group this year, financially and other ways -- thank you. Your contributions and kind notes mean a great deal, and they make our work "together" possible.

I am putting "together" in quotes because we are seeing a disturbing absence of opposition to militarism, nuclear weapons, and war in New Mexico, in the United States, and in Europe for that matter. "Peace on Earth" means nothing to people who have convinced themselves that the present war against Russia is somehow justified. Most "antinuclear" NGOs, 100% of the Democrats in Congress, and all "arms control" organizations apparently fall into this category. If they don't, you sure can't tell from their public statements, or absence thereof.

At this moment, we are relatively poor but not broke. Despite the present fundraising blitz we have been heavily involved in nuclear weapons issues, setting the stage for next year's fights and dealing with some nuclear issues behind the scenes. We have also been carefully sifting through a variety of sources daily to find what we believe to the best and most easily assimilated updates and analyses of the Ukraine war to help inspire and inform your own peacemaking activities.

We have about $7,000 in 1:1 matching funds still available, so contributions up to that cumulative amount will be doubled.

Bulletin 315 provided some background about this organization and some of what we hope to do in the coming year without spilling too many strategy beans or making promises we might not be able to keep in the absence of sufficient funds. We did not detail our outreach plans. We can now say that these definitely include large mailings to selected geographic audiences (e.g. this postcard) and demographics, and full-page ads, and of course much more. Time is as limiting as money, so if you want to seriously help with outreach and organizing, call us. You don't need a dime to make a huge contribution.

At this point we anticipate letting go all but one billboard as their contracts expire. We will keep a relatively-inexpensive big, illuminated billboard on I-40 near San Jon NM, which will have an anti-war message (perhaps similar to the one on this page).

So please do contribute if you can, as many of you have already done. There are many ways to do that, from PayPal (one-time with no fee, or automatically recurring with a small fee), to check(s) in the mail, to (an) IRA distribution(s), to donations of stock. All donations are tax-deductible.

We are extremely fortunate to have so many donors of modest means supporting our programs. There are however fewer major donors and institutional donors than we need. If you have ideas as to whom we might reach out, or if you wish to reach out to potential supporters on our behalf, please don't be shy. One conversation can make a huge difference. More than a decade ago, a small handful of donors played a major role in halting plans for plutonium pit production in the U.S.

How could that happen? Because it was the right thing to do, from almost all perspectives. Delay is also the right thing now, and it's beginning to happen.

Please do not be discouraged. It is now essential for organizations of all kinds and stripes -- progressive, socialist, libertarian, environmental, Christian, Buddhist, whatever -- to courageously stand up, in the public sphere, to stop this war. We expect you to help them do that. We have given you all the information you need. The rest must come from you and your friends. Any public action is better than doing nothing -- it has come to that. Build community in and through your actions. The social damage caused by the covid lockdowns isn't healed; there is a terrific hunger for community. So make it count. Make it sustainable and make it a community of resistance, because without resistance the Empire will simply swallow up all that could make communities sustainable -- resources, political integrity and attention, talent and skills, and not least, the will to resist.

My notebook is filled with material to send to you, but we have to stop here. This is not the time or place for detailed analyses or for important nuclear weapons news, of which there is plenty. Many of you will find this rather odd press release interesting: "Do New Mexico news outlets care about LANL's plan to re-open nuclear waste disposal on-site? Or to produce still more warhead components?" (Dec 2, 2022). We've been working with the New Mexico press for 30 years, and have just never seen editors and journalists (what few remain) run away from real headline stories about nuclear weapons as much as they are doing today.

Thank you for your attention. Very best wishes, for this holiday season and beyond, for real peace, which is only going to happen if we get up and make it happen. Vern Partlow is frighteningly apt: "Peace in the world, or the world in pieces."

Greg Mello, for the Los Alamos Study Group