Who Has Time to Think About Nuclear Weapons?

By Frida Berrigan

Nuclear weapons might be low on the list of most people’s concerns right now, but resisting them has never been more important.

“Pretty far from the pulse.” That was the comment someone on social media wrote below a photo of me getting arrested at an anti-nuclear protest near the United Nations in early March. Despite being strangely immune to my winning smile and pooh-poohing someone else’s work and passion to perhaps feel a bit superior, that person wasn’t wrong. After all, who has time to think about nuclear weapons when there’s so much else to worry about: Trump-Musk’s kleptocracy and government-busting, the daily fresh hell of Trump-Vance’s war on woke or the rise of white nationalists. Nuclear weapons — the most powerful and destructive weapon in the world — are not even on most people’s list of top 10 fears or top 10 causes they care about.

Unfortunately, this lack of interest doesn’t mean that nuclear weapons have somehow auto-disarmed. Thankfully, there is a serious, militant, and ever burgeoning international movement — mostly from the Global South — that is working toward nuclear abolition and that has led to the creation of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The treaty came out of grassroots organizing initiated by the nations most affected by nuclear weapons every day. It is no small feat that the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons has now been signed and ratified by half the world’s governments. Sadly (but not surprisingly), the United States — the world’s largest nuclear power and only country to use nuclear weapons in war — has yet to sign on.

And that’s the reason I was in New York City on March 5, standing on First Avenue and 45th Street, with my hands behind my back in metal handcuffs. While parties to the TPNW were meeting inside the United Nations, protesters convened by the Atlantic Life Community, Nukewatch, and War Resisters League were standing outside, calling on a recalcitrant United States to send someone from the U.S. Mission to attend.

The goal was to block traffic in front of the United Nations, ostensibly making it easier for the U.S. delegation to get to the meeting. As we prepared to block traffic, I grabbed onto the banner imploring the U.S. to join the treaty. It was 40 feet long, made of taped strips of paper, and extremely fragile and slippery. Holding onto it in the late winter wind took so much concentration that I forgot to be fearful as I stepped into traffic. A block away, another team carried a banner saying “Ban nuclear weapons which are illegal and immoral.”

It was a moment of genuine happiness. In the end, 17 of us were arrested. Although we didn’t convince the U.S. to send anyone to the treaty meeting, we did make a pretty big stink — and a team from our group wheatpasted the text of the related Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty onto the ground in front of the U.S. Mission.

So, going back to that person who commented “pretty far from the pulse” on the photo of my arrest, I’ll say this: The pulse is the resistance — and it is inside the resister. It gets bigger when we resist together, it helps us overcome fear and stay connected. In actions large or small, individual acts or mass movements, photographed or unnoticed, the pulse is there in the resistance. We couldn’t be closer to the pulse, because it is inside of us!

— Frida Berrigan is an author and columnist with Waging Nonviolence. This article, originally published at wagingnonviolence.org, was shortened for space.