Take Action
The multiple converging emergencies that threaten to overwhelm our world are not your fault or mine. But if we don’t take responsibility, who will?
Thankfully, more and more people around the world are waking from the trance of “business as usual” and finding ways to speak out and work for change. It turns out that regardless of success or failure, working together in a worthy cause is inspiring, invigorating, and deeply fulfilling. And there are literally millions of ways to plug in, from small groups to large organizations.
In this space I will offer a sampling of options for contributing your time and energy where it is needed most – or at least dipping your toe into the current of change. I concentrate my own efforts on three particular areas (listed below), but I contribute to many others by signing a petition, showing up at a rally, making a donation . . .
Every issue is vitally important, and for each, one or more citizen groups has formed to work for fairness and sanity. Pick the one that calls to you and give what you can. Time, money, energy, creativity – it all counts.
To learn more, read my essay “The Community of Hope” here.
To plunge right in without further ado, check out the suggestions on the right-hand side of this page. Below you’ll find links to my own particular issues of priority concern.
Photo: Lorraine Fontana
HOW YOU CAN HELP
1. Comment on Plans to Renew Production of Nuclear Bomb “Triggers”
We have a historic opportunity to halt a new nuclear arms race, or at least slow it down. Spurred by “defense” industry lobbying, the Pentagon, Congress, and presidents of both parties have pushed through a 30-year plan to spend $1.5 trillion upgrading our nuclear arsenal, which has pressured Russia, China, and North Korea to follow suit. We are currently spending $100,000 per minute on this, and no new missiles, submarines or warheads have yet been built.
But the new weapons will not work without new “plutonium pit” triggers. The National Nuclear Security Administration’s plan to build the pits at Savannah River Site in South Carolina was stopped by the courts because they had skipped the Environmental Impact Statement required by law. Now the EIS is ready for public comment, and every public comment counts — yours, for example! Please read on and find a way to make your voice heard. Similar proposals have been shot down several times in the past by citizen opposition. (Note that the EIS doesn’t address the environmental impact of a nuclear war.)
Email your comments by July 16, 2026 to PitPEIS@nnsa.doe.gov. See links below for more information from the experts. Read my own comment here.
Background: Plutonium, the most toxic substance on Earth, is an unnatural element created by fissioning uranium in nuclear reactors. It has a half-life of 24,000 years and a hazardous life of 240,000 years. The United States has thousands of plutonium pits deployed and in storage, many from decommissioned nuclear warheads, but has not mass-produced them since an FBI raid in 1989 shut down the Rocky Flats plant in Colorado for contaminating its own workers and the surrounding countryside for decades. The NNSA’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) concludes that this could not possibly happen at Savannah River Site, a former nuclear weapons plant which is already highly contaminated. Plutonium pits are currently being produced on a small scale at Los Alamos in New Mexico.
The NNSA proposal claims new plutonium pits are needed to ensure our existing stocks of nuclear weapons will function properly — a euphemism for global annihilation in a thermonuclear holocaust. However, the new pits are designed for use not in existing systems such as the Minuteman II land-based ICBM missiles, but in proposed next-generation systems such as the Sentinel missiles intended to replace them.
For help drafting your comment:
Union of Concerned Scientists, U.S. Nuclear Agency Releases Environmental Impact Statement, a “Legal Fig Leaf” for Plutonium Pit Program Decisions
Nuclear Watch South trifold brochure: Plutonium Made Simple
Website of a coalition of anti-nuke NGOs: PitPEIS.com
Click here to read the NNSA’s “Plutonium Pit Production Facility Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement”
2. Read and sign these timely petitions:
And remember, signing petitions is not enough!
3. To add your voice to the resistance against a totalitarian U.S.A., read these empowering articles:
From New Republic: “Fighting Back: A Citizen’s Guide to Resistance“
From Yes! Magazine: “Activists Take Back the Climate“
“7 Ways to Rise Up Against Trumpism 2.0“
From Waging Peace: “Resistance Is Alive and Well in the United States“
Take Action and Learn More
Our political, social, and environmental concerns are all connected at the root. I have concentrated my own efforts on the three areas listed below, Every issue is vitally important, and for each, one or more citizen groups has formed to work for fairness and sanity. Pick the one that calls to you and give what you can. Time, money, energy, creativity – it all counts.
Stephen Wing
Poet, activist and author Stephen Wing lives in Atlanta with his wife Dawn Aura and assorted pets. Read more about him here.