Hampton Roads’ group educates, makes appeals to civic leaders
Members of Hampton Roads Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (HRCAN) might be going against the grain, especially since they live in an area with shipyards that build and maintain nuclear-armed submarines, but, believing in the peace message of the Scriptures, their hearts tell them they need to advocate for nuclear disarmament.
They also cite global community safety, the environment, the need to divest the trillions of dollars spent on nuclear weapons to pay for social justice efforts and that no one can win a nuclear war as reasons.
“I think that the reason I’m involved in it is because faith calls me to. If I take seriously Jesus’ call to follow him, everything he did was non-violent,” said Kathy Early, a parishioner of Holy Spirit, Virginia Beach, who has also been protesting war since the Iraq War began.
She added that she also “just cares about the world,” especially since she has eight grandchildren.
“The possibility that their whole world could just be annihilated just breaks my heart to say nothing of the devastation to the Earth that would cause crops not to grow and people will starve to death. I mean, the list just goes on and on,” she said.
‘God’s project in the crosshairs’
Steve Baggarly, a parishioner at Basilica of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception, Norfolk, who has been advocating against nuclear weapons since the 1980s and has been jailed several times for protests in different states and Washington, D.C., expressed a similar sentiment.
“It’s important work because nuclear weapons put God’s entire project in the crosshairs. Everything that God loves and created; everything that we love, everyone that we love is in the nuclear crosshairs, and if that’s not blasphemy, I don’t know what is,” he said.
“So doing good and opposing evil is what Jesus calls us to,” Baggarly continued. “I think one glaring evil in the world is humanity’s accumulation of nuclear weapons and our insistence that we’re going to use them if we have to… and someday somebody is going to make good on that claim for being credible, and we’ll be in a world of ashes,” Baggarly said.
As Holy Spirit parishioner Lucy Yatsko, who has been interested in peace since she was a child, said, “I was taught in Catholic schools to be a conscious citizen of the world, to do positive things, to listen to the Sermon on the Mount and not to be hopeless or complacent. Should we be held by the idea that we are a nuclear giant and infant when it comes to ethics? When we read the Gospel, we must read the newspaper to see the work we are called to.”
Several HRCAN members said they have nothing against the military. In fact, Baggarly said he is concerned about the people who have to “push the button” to launch a nuclear war should the order come, and Yatkso said that her distress is with the “issue,” not military members.
Pope Francis leads the way
HRCAN is a partner organization to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 for its part in bringing the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) to fruition, explained Baggarly.
Pope Francis has called the mere possession of nuclear weapons immoral, and the Vatican was among the first United Nations members to sign the treaty, which entered into force on Jan. 22, 2021. Sixty-six nations have ratified it according to ICAN’s website.
A collection of people, including members of the Norfolk Catholic Worker and Pax Christi Hampton Roads, started the interdenominational HRCAN in 2017 with the mission to promote the TPNW by “educating political and religious understand it as the road to complete, verifiable, global nuclear disarmament,” Baggarly said.
Baggarly said encouraging the TPNW gives him something to work for rather than just fight against.
HRCAN members have spoken before Newport News, Portsmouth and Norfolk city councils urging them to pass ICAN’s Cities Appeal. According to ICAN, five states, three counties and more than 60 cities in the U.S. have signed to urge their governments to join TPNW.
Although none of those Hampton Roads councils have voted on the appeal yet, nor have Virginia or any of its cities signed it, Early hopes that the resolution will be effective.
“The Cities Appeal gives me hope because you get the people with the right heart on city councils that can make a difference,” Early said. “If all the cities and states signed on, the legislators in that state would have to really look at it, right? So that’s cool. That’s the kind of forward movement I see, but you really need people that keep drumming the drum and keep you thinking about it.”
Vigils, advocacy
The group has spoken with staffers of Virginia’s U.S. Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner in an effort of convincing them to become the first U.S. senators to sign ICAN’s Legislator’s Pledge, which Baggarly explained “commits the signer to champion the TPNW however they can in their legislative milieu.”
“The role of government, the role of our senators and representatives, is to keep us safe, and the best way to keep us safe is to get rid of these nuclear weapons,” said HRCAN member Jim DellaValle, member of Immaculate Conception Parish, Hampton.
HRCAN also takes its efforts to the streets by holding vigils and marches at Newport News Shipbuilding and Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth. Their next rally is planned for Monday, Sept. 26, in Norfolk outside Wells Fargo and Bank of America at Colonial Ave. and 21st St.
Other advocacy efforts have included passing out leaflets to people, writing letters to the CEOs of Newport News Shipyard and mailing information to local pastors in hopes they will address nuclear disarmament in their homilies.
HRCAN members realize that nuclear disarmament isn’t going to happen overnight.
“We know this is a long-haul thing because it is education,” Baggarly said.
For information on HRCAN’s meetings and upcoming events, email [email protected].