Banning the Bomb, Smashing the Patriarchy

Ray Acheson is currently director of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom’s disarmament program in New York City. Ray leads the organization’s work on stigmatizing war and violence, advocating and organizing for disarmament, and raising feminist perspectives on militarism and weapons. Ray represents WILPF within the International Steering Group of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize. Ray has been awarded the 2020 Nuclear Free Future Award and the 2018 UN Women Metro New York Champion of Change prize.

Acheson has dedicated the past decade to the nuclear disarmament movement as an activist, researcher, and expert. She sums up her experiences in this passionate, thought-provoking, and highly detailed look into the history of the call to ban the bomb, the creation of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), and the adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in 2017. Acheson covers key issues pertaining to nuclear weapons, strategically breaking down the arguments behind the weapons' manufacture and highlighting the racial, patriarchal, and capitalist motivations for their creation, deployment, and stockpiling. She also analyzes the socioeconomic, environmental, and cultural impacts nuclear weapons have on the world. Acheson smoothly and convincingly argues that nuclear proliferation is a global issue and must be discussed globally, setting the stage for her uniquely incisive discussion of the multigenerational “humanitarian initiative” in support of banning the bomb. This is a powerful and encouraging approach to an often overlooked concern, an informative work that will inspire readers to pay close attention to and even consider participating in the nuclear weapons disarmament movement.

• Foreword, Setsuko ThurlowPrefaceAcknowledgementsIntroductionChapter 1. “Terminally Unserious”: Ideologies and Oppressions of Nuclear Weapons Chapter 2. Rage Against the Bomb: A Brief History of Antinuclear Efforts Chapter 3. Reclaiming Our Time: Changing Discourse, Changing Minds Chapter 4. Karaoke and Campaigning: Building a Case and a Community Chapter 5. Revitalizing a Movement Chapter 6. From Deterrence to Disarmament: How the Humanitarian Initiative Disrupted the Nuclear Weapon Orthodoxy Chapter 7. Courage, My Love: How Nuclear-Free States Fought for the Ban Chapter 8. Getting Our Ban On, Part One: The What Chapter 9. Getting Our Ban On, Part Two: The HowConclusionBibliography