Nuclear-free world: You can make it more than a dream

The dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, 1945, might have ended World War II, but it put an end to an era of moral limitations. Ever since, nuclear weapons have become sort of a potential “final solution” to political and social problems that ought to be resolved through dialogue, diplomacy and cooperation.

Recently, former Defense Secretary William Perry (1994-1997) stated, “Today, the danger of some sort of nuclear catastrophe is greater than it was during the Cold War and most people are blissfully unaware of this danger.”

There are 15,800 nuclear weapons in the world’s arsenals; 94 percent of them are held by the United States and Russia. These two countries are perilously edging toward a military confrontation that could unleash an accidental or intentional nuclear war that would devastate both nations, an extremely dangerous situation not well perceived and understood by most people in our country. In a recent message from Matsui Kazumi, mayor of Hiroshima and current president of Mayors for Peace, he said, “Nuclear weapons are an absolute evil and ultimate inhumanity.”

A group of local civic, religious and artistic leaders, concerned by the effect of a potential nuclear explosion over our city, led the way for the city of Orlando to become a member of Mayors for Peace in February 2011, during the celebration of the Orlando Latin American Film & Heritage Festival. Mayors for Peace was founded in 1982 to promote the elimination of nuclear weapons as a vital step toward lasting world peace, with a goal of abolishing nuclear weapons by the year 2020. Today, nearly 7,100 cities and municipalities in more than 161 countries are engaged in its Vision 2020 Campaign.

Could it be that abolishing nuclear weapons is part of our next evolutionary step as humans?

We hear this faint whisper in President Obama’s words upon visiting Hiroshima in May: “Among those nations like my own that hold nuclear stockpiles, we must have the courage to escape the logic of fear, and pursue a world without them…We’re not bound by genetic code to repeat the mistakes of the past.”

As part of the upcoming Abolition 2020-Hiroshima/Nagasaki Commemoration to be held on Aug. 6 at the Guang Ming Buddhist Temple in Orlando — an event open to the public — we are calling on Orange County and Orlando government officials, the news media, educational and cultural organizations of Central Florida to raise public awareness of the humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons, the growing dangers of wars among nuclear-armed states and the urgent need for good faith U.S. participation in negotiating the global elimination of nuclear weapons.

And during this political season, we ask God to, in the words from “Prayer for Leadership, a poem by Catholic Sr. Joan Chittister, “Give us the hearts to choose the leader/ who will work with other leaders/to bring safety/to the world.” Nelson Betancourt is executive director of awakening/ art and culture for Orlando Latin American Film & Heritage Festival.