A group of NWIP students attended the Student PSR (Physicians for Social Responsibility) conference in February. The theme of the conference was Medical Consequences of War and the students were Martina Grosch, Thomas Silfverberg and Wenjing Tao from Sweden. We had two workshops (1 hour each), a 10 minute long presentation and arranged for Target Palo Alto. The purpose of this visit was to attract more American students to join NWIP, as U.S. is such an essential nation to work on when it comes to nuclear weapon disarmament. 

Before going

The preparations we did before the consisted of e-mailing with the organisers about two months ahead the conference. In the e-mails we discussed everything from how many workshops we could have at the conference to where to stay for the nights. It is good to have one person responsible for these contacts.

Presentation

The purpose with the presentation was to introduce the NWIP to all participants at the conference and attract them to our workshops. We talked a little about what NWIP was, showed them some pictures from former delegations and explained to them why we think it is important for medical students to get involved in anti-nuclear campaigns. It seems that we did manage to attract the interest of some of our fellow American students, and many of them came up afterwards to ask us more about the project. This is a very effective way to spread the news about NWIP and is highly recommended before the workshops at conferences. 

 
Workshop 1: Nuclear Weapons in 60 minutes

The purpose with this workshop was to stimulate the participants to discuss nuclear weapon issues, and thereby hopefully also increasing their interest in such matters. Our impression was that Nuclear Weapons have not been given much attention within the student chapters in US. The US students have mainly been focusing on environmental issues, small arms etc. One of the goals of our visit is therefor also to increase the interest in nuclear disarmament activities amongst the American students.

We started off the workshop with a general brainstorm of questions about nuclear weapons. The participants could ask their questions freely and we would discuss them. Our idea was that this part of the workshop would provide them with some basics about nuclear weapons adjusted to their level of knowledge and we also recommended sources where they could find more information. However, it did not work out very well. We had to begin by asking them questions to get the conversation started. Instead we should have warmed up the participants in the beginning with a game, e.g. wall-to-wall game, to create a sense of group connection.

The second part of the workshop went much better. The participants were divided up in groups of 2 or 3. We had prepared questions for discussion and each group got two questions which they discussed for approximately 15 min. It’s important to set aside enough time for discussion as it is now that everybody have the time to view their opinions. Each group then presented their questions and conclusions to the big group that could join in on the discussion. Examples of the questions we used are lined up below. If you wish to get all the questions, please email Wenjing at wenjing-nwip@hotmail.com.

1. What are the possible reasons for the decline in nuclear disarmament despite the end of the cold war and despite the decline of conflicts between the major military powers?

2. What role do nuclear weapons play in the political world? Can other weapons play the same role?

3. Which instruments could be used to come to a more equal balance of the world?

4. What is the reason for the very little interest in nuclear weapons among students?

During the last part of the workshop, we went through the principles of Old and New Security, a concept originally established by the Swedish IPPNW doctor Hans Levander. The aim was to show that nuclear weapons embodies the old security and that we/the politicians need to work for a new way of thinking in order to create a safer and more equalised world. (See question nr 3) The “Old and New Security”-thinking is what we hoped they would bring with them from the workshop. You can find some of the principles below.     

At the end of the workshop we asked them to give us some feedback by putting down one positive and one negative thing about the workshop on a piece of paper. We also had a short debriefing amongst ourselves directly after the workshop, which is helpful.

Workshop 2: Nuclear Activism

The second workshop was initially planed for an optional one-hour session, which is a bit short for discussing and coming up with new ideas for projects. Because the Sunday was re-scheduled we ended up with having everyone attending the workshop, but we just had 40 minutes to do it. All and all there were 25 students and doctors attending the session.

We started by mentioning what we had done in the first workshop and we once again explained the concept of old and new security. We felt that this was an important thing to take with them from our workshops. After that we did a very brief explanation on what activism could aim at, in essence raising awareness and confronting decision-makers. Than we divided the participants into smaller groups of 4 to 5 people and they had 20 minutes
to brainstorm on ideas for future activities in the US for nuclear disarmament. Each group then presented their best ideas for each other.

People came up with ideas like letter campaigns aimed for local and national politicians, arranging festivities to celebrate the nuclear disarmament that hasn’t taken place yet (like a mind teaser of how things could be) or taking students and other people to see NW pits and bunkers as well as naval bases (e.g. the Trident bases in the US). Many students really tried to take advantage of local issues like nuclear power plants or local military facilities. This is very good because it makes the issues more relevant for the people who you are trying to affect. Another good thing was that during the presentation some really educative discussions came up, that pointed out the opportunities as well as the current situation in many nuclear weapon related problems.

Unfortunately we didn’t have time to get into more substantial planning on how these activities could be planned, but we asked the participants to seize the opportunity and do it on their way back to their universities. Finally we expressed the idea and hope that the students could use the dialogue technique to make e.g. lunch-dialogues on their campuses. This is very educative as well as inspiring for everyone taking part in it and what’s more, that is a perfect way of introducing oneself in the NWIP.

All in all this workshop needs more time to be really effective, but we did the best we could with the time we had. It’s very important that there is time for students to sit down and have time to think about ideas for future actions when you have conferences like this. The opportunity needs to be seized. Anything else is light criminality.

Target X

During lunch on Sunday we arranged Target Palo Alto. For that we had brought flyers that was prepared by Thomas, a red cross to put in the street and a globe. It was a pity that not so many students stayed for the Target, as it was the last thing on the conference. It turned out to be quite hard to do the Target in Palo Alto. Not so many of the people passing by wanted to stop and talk. This felt like a disappointment. We suggest that you choose your spot (and city) with care if you want to achieve something with Target X.

Conference highlights

There were many educative presentations during the conference, many of them focusing on the Iraq war. E.g. a presentation about the post traumatic stress syndrome, veterans panel from the Iraq war etc. One of the most interesting speeches was held by Les Roberts, one of the authors behind the research article published in Lancet this autumn about death casualties in the Iraq war. According to Roberts around 650 000 people have died as a consequence of the invasion of the US since 2003. These numbers are ten times higher then those presented by the American government at the moment.

Conclusions

It was a real pity that not so many students attended the conference as it was well organised and there were several good speakers. This affected also us and our workshops. Despite that we are happy that some American students have shown interest in NWIP work and we have made new contacts in the US. We think it is important that they do dialogues about nuclear weapons at their home universities, but also that they join NWIP delegations to other nuclear weapon states. Of course, the funding is always a problem. We have talked to US doctors attending the conference and they seem to be overall positive. We need to send in a project description to the PSR so that decision can be made. However, it puzzles us that the topic of nuclear weapon disarmament doesn’t really appeal to most of the American students in PSR, especially as USA being perhaps the key country to nuclear weapon abolition.