New Haven Independent

The ride was preceded by the annual vigil around the flagpole on the lower Green at 8:15 a.m. - the exact moment the B-52 bomber, the Enola Gay, dropped its payload on an unsuspecting city, incinerating tens of thousands of civilians.

One man read the statement from Hiroshima Mayor Akiba on this year’s anniversary. Akiba said more than 2,000 mayors around the world have signed on as Mayors for Peace, calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons, and that the movement is growing.

Anna Aschenbach (pictured) and others said it’s important to call for positive action in addition to criticizing the government, which, under George W. Bush, has refused to abide by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has thumbed his nose at several other nuclear agreements. Peace activists are calling on their members to Congress to support Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey’s H. Res. 68 “calling for the U.S. to abide by the treaty, renounce the first use of nuclear weapons, stop upgrading nuclear weapons, renounce ‘preventive’ war, abide by the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, ban weapons in outer space, and related security-enhancing actions,” according to a flyer put out by the Greater New Haven Peace Council. Click here to read the flyer, which includes many references to U.S. government actions regarding nuclear arms and proliferation right up to the present, including toward both Iran and Japan, as well as a list of actions for the next three days. The bill has 14 co-sponsors — none from Connecticut so far — according to Henry Lowendorf, who chairs the peace council.

As the riders left the Green, small peace flags flapping atop their bikes, they rode between a phalanx of large white peace doves, held here by veteran peace activists Joan Whitney, Joan Cavanagh and Patty Nuelsen (pictured at the top of the story).

Riders (pictured) took off down Chapel Street, turned onto Olive and headed around the city, in a one-mile radius from City Hall, which Lowendorf explained would replicate in size the area of Hiroshima that was most directly impacted by the explosion of that first atomic bomb dropped in warfare - a small bomb, by today’s standards. Click here for his description of what New Haven would lose (think government, hospitals, schools, businesses) in a similar bombing.

As we rode down Howard Avenue in the Hill and crossed through some neglected side streets with decrepit housing and made our way to Sherman Avenue, this reporter hazarded a guess that people in these neighborhoods might have a different definition of the kind of peace they’d like to see - not that they’re opposed to nuclear non-proliferation, just that they might think in more immediate terms.

“Peace to me would mean all the killing stopping and all the kids not going through what they’re going through now - the shooting and all that stuff,” said Marquis Jones (pictured), who lives on Sherman Avenue and was crossing the street as the cyclists rode by.

He said he’d like the war in Iraq to end right now and thinks New Haven could use a little of the hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars that have been poured into the war to help those who need it at home for things like housing and drug rehab programs. Click here for his comments.

New Haven taxpayers have so far sent $218,818,000 to pay for the war, according to the National Priorities Project. (That’s as of Monday at 1:28 p.m. - the amount adds up fast.)

Lowendorf made his own connections between violence and poverty in New Haven and wars fought in Americans’ name. He also brings in the Minneapolis bridge collapse. Click here for his comments.

The bombing of Hiroshima (followed three days later by the bombing of Nagasaki, another Japanese city) is long ago and far away, but riding the periphery of a “New Haven blast area” helps bring home the enormity of the attack, and who the American counterparts would be who would perish in such an attack. Click here for a map of the city and the route the cyclists followed. As Lowendorf said, “Anyone can ride it.”

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