BAP's Call to Support TPNW Is Cornerstone of Its Candidate Accountability Campaign

Global humanity made a significant step toward addressing one of the most intractable and irrational issues it faces—the production, potential use and normalcy of nuclear weapons—with the ratification by Honduras of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) on October 24, bringing the number of ratifications to 50 nations and triggering the 90-day period in which the treaty will enter in force as international law on January 22, 2021.

Adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on July 7, 2017, the TPNW is the first legally binding international agreement to prohibit nuclear weapons. The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) embraced this call and made support for the treaty’s ratification an integral element of its public educational work related to its anti-war campaign work.

“With the passage of the TPNW just a few months after BAP was launched in 2017, we understood this treaty and opposition to nuclear war had to be centered in our efforts to re-awaken the movement against war of all types, which had fallen into a slumber under the pro-war, right-wing administration of Barack Obama. Demanding that U.S. public officials at every level of government support the TPNW is a cornerstone of BAP’s current Candidate Accountability Campaign,” according to BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka.

BAP’s Candidate Accountability Campaign is a mass-based effort to present a set of anti-war and pro-peace demands to candidates and public officials that they must embrace in order to win the support of the public.

Along with the demand that candidates and public officials “sponsor legislation and/or resolutions to support the U.N. resolution on the complete global abolition of nuclear weapons,” BAP also demands that elected officials:

  • Oppose the militarization of U.S. police through the Department of Defense’s 1033 program

  • Oppose Israeli training of U.S. police forces

  • Call for and work for the closure of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM)

  • Advocate for the closure of 800+ U.S. foreign military bases

  • Oppose Trump’s “Operation Relentless Pursuit”

  • Commit to opposing all military, economic (including sanctions and blockades) and political interventions;

  • Advocate for an end to U.S. participation in NATO

The bipartisan commitment to use illegal force to maintain U.S. global hegemony must be challenged by the U.S. public. The fact that the U.S. operates today as a rogue state, completely ignoring international law and basic morality as it subverts governments, imposes murderous sanctions, supports anti-democratic regimes from Israel to the United Arab Emirates, and desecrates the concept of human rights, means it is up to the U.S. public to reign in the U.S. state. BAP's demands are a first step toward that goal.

“It is an irrational and immoral use of public funds to spend over a trillion dollars to upgrade the U.S. nuclear arsenal that both the Obama and Trump regimes committed to," according to Baraka. “This criminal use of public funds and the outrageous theory that the U.S. can launch a first strike against Russia or China, and catch their missiles in their silos, demonstrates that the U.S., no matter who occupies the White House, is an existential threat to collective humanity.”

Contact: Ajamu Baraka
(202) 643-1136

Photo credit: United States Department of Energy, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons