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About
the Project
Introduction
to the Project Idea
 Since
the fall of
the Iron Curtain and the end of the Cold War, the imminent danger of a
nuclear attack has faded from public awareness in most countries of the
North. While the threat has just recently increased in Aisa, with North
Korea, India and Pakistan joining the Nuclear Club, many people in
North America, Europe or Russia see the idea of their home city being
hit by a nuclear attack as something very improbable, distant, even
impossible.
However, with thousands of nuclear weapons still on hair-trigger alert,
security systems slowly getting older and more prone to fatal errors or
hacker attacks, Russian nuclear weapons being a possible target for
grand-scale theft by terrorists, nuclear subs still plowing the oceans
and terrorist groups threatening to acquire and use nuclear weapons,
the head of the IAEA, the UN's nuclear watchdog organization, Muhammad
el Baradei, has recently stated, that the threat of a nuclear attack
has never been greater than today.
The need for and the possibilty of nuclear disarmament has equally
never been greater. Many organizations are currently struggling to
regain public awareness of the dangers of nuclear attacks. In its early
years IPPNW has very successfully organized so-called "bombing-runs",
explaining in great detail the medical effects of a nuclear attack to
the inhabitants of major cities.
This tool has proven to be very
effective in getting people to realize the necessity of nuclear
disarmament. Now, the IPPNW
student movement is attempting to revive this successful idea through a
project called Target X,
adding the name of the individual city for each street action (for
example "Target New York" or "Target St. Petersburg")
Local student
groups get permission from their city hall to have an information stand
in the city center. There, they place or draw a large red "X" on the
ground, surround it by police line and set up some informative
cardboards and a few tables with information brochures. These informative materials
can be downloaded from this website. As passerbys
become interested in the red "X", they approach the group of
medical students, dressed in their white coats, who would explain to
them that this could be the target site of nuclear weapons pointed at
this city.
 Cities
like
Budapest have already done such things in an institutionalized way,
painting a red "X" at the target site of NATO's Pershing-II rockets, in
the middle of the Buda castle. The impression for the passerby is
generally a strong one, as he is reminded that weapons are still
pointed at his city, waiting, in hair-trigger alert, to be launched. Click here to read the
harrowing account of what the Warsaw Pact and NATO are able to do with
Europe. Stories about Yeltsin, almost setting of a nuclear war in 1995
could be
worked into the information brochures, as would pictures of the city
map with concentric circles around the target site, explaining the
medical effects and death tolls for that individual city. At the
tables,
the students can hold discussions with disagreeing passerbys looking to
start a dialogue and could hand out informative brochures in form of
flyers. This street action would be photographically documented and
later placed on this website. Here, visitors can see the
different street actions in different cities.
In order to preempt
the most obvious concerns regarding this project, we would like to
state that we are aware of the danger of such as street action actually
leading people to believe that with the threat of nuclear attack still
around, the appropriate responde would be to arm instead of disarming.
Missile shields and the like come to mind. However, we feel able to
instruct local groups sufficiently to avoid such traps, clearly
pointing out at all times and throughout the information material that
there is no working method to defend such an attack, that no army can
prevent such an atack from occuring and that disarmament on all sides
is the only viable option. This is true for the US-Russia standoff as
well as the India-Pakistan one.
Training the local groups and
empowering them to become well informed and vocal advocates of nuclear
disarmament is the key to success in this project and will have to be
carefully prepared. However, we feel that we're up for it. The other
concern is the permission issue. Of course, street actions such as this
one will always have to be registered in advance to avoid unwanted
attention from police.
Goals
This project basically consists of the website and leaves the actual
work up to
local groups. It has three specific aims:
-Education of the
public in the target cities and trying to get the media to help by
reporting about this street action
-Increased
awareness of IPPNW students of the issue of Nuclear Abolition, whcih
many student groups are currently not involved with
-Providing local
student groups with a well-thought out and effective, media-attractive
project they can easily perform themselves, thereby strenghening
cohesion and attractiveness of that student group and even helping it
recruit new members
Organizational structure
The
central coordination team writes up the information materials,
translates them, does the research and helps local groups
organize the project in their cities. Responsible for the local
street actions are the individual student groups, which will have
to be well informed and trained in advanced in order to be able to
respond to visitors' questions and comments, which is something that
the central organizing comitee is currently trying to prepare.
Evaluation of the
project takes place continually
through the central organizing comitee, with a large evaluation of all
activities at the next World Congress in 2008.
How
to go about organizing your own installation of Target X
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