Senate Ratifies New START pact 71-26!
Peace Action Statement on Senate Passage of New START pact
December 22, 2010
For Immediate Release, Contact Kevin Martin kmartin@peace-action.org or 301-537-8244
Silver Spring, Maryland — Peace Action, the country’s largest grassroots peace and disarmament organization with 100,000 members around the country, welcomes today’s U.S. Senate vote to ratify the New START nuclear arms reduction pact, which will reduce U.S. and Russian deployed, strategic nuclear weapons by up to 30%, to 1,550 warheads each.
“While a modest step on the path toward a nuclear-weapons free world, today’s Senate vote to ratify the New START pact is cause for celebration in this season of ‘Peace on Earth,’” noted Peace Action’s Executive Director, Kevin Martin. “While the process of Senate ratification was difficult, and the political price paid for the treaty was high, everyone concerned with reducing the danger posed by nuclear weapons should see this as significant progress.” Martin referred not only to the bruising, partisan politics employed by some senators, but also the Obama Administration’s promise of $184 billion in funding for “modernizing” the nuclear weapons production complex and delivery systems over the next decade.
Peace Action’s members, and especially grassroots activists with our affiliates and chapters across the country, worked very hard to educate the public and pressure senators to support the treaty. Lobby visits with senators and their staff members, email alerts to hundreds of thousands of supporters, letters to the editor and other media work and generating tens of thousands of calls to senate offices were hallmarks of the START ratification campaign over the last few months.
Martin added, “As we celebrate this important victory in the Senate, we also rededicate ourselves to the struggle for further steps toward nuclear disarmament, which we will engage Congress, the Obama Administration, the American public, and the international community on early next year. New START must truly be a new start toward wiping the scourge of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth. We who believe in peace and disarmament cannot rest until it comes!”
