He chose for the parade’s Grand Marshal, a local champion in teaching about nuclear abolition, Kathleen Sullivan. Pats For All” parade (in 2018) was to have as its theme and focus support for the world’s Nuclear Ban Treaty, and divestment from this lethal industry, from this, the very town of Wall Street, the conduit for this incalculably costly business. ( Brendan had decided that the next “ St. banner, taking on the current catastrophic nuclear policy, and sounding the prophetic call to awaken us from the slumber of the status quo. Seven people from the Catholic Worker were about to risk their lives in nonviolent action, entering in prayer our most deadly nuclear-weapon-laden submarine base in Kings Bay, Georgia, holding an MLK, Jr. For its combined efforts ICAN was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize that year.īrendan Fay picked up on this clear call to action, and while visiting Maryhouse, speaking with longtime friend Joanne Kennedy in particular, he began to find the way to share this triumph of positive accomplishment toward protecting all life and future generations.
In NYC at the United Nations on July 7th, 2017, after years of hard work, 122 nations stood up and adopted The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons: one wise, brave act taking on the nuclear weapon states bent on incomprehensibly endangering us all each hour of each day, in the false name of their own security. John McNeill borrowing the title from his breakthrough book, “ Taking A Chance On God: Liberating Theology for Gays, Lesbians, and Their Lovers, Families, and Friends”. He had also made a beautiful documentary on the life of Fr. Twenty years ago Brendan then formed and founded the courageous and most joyful alternative to the once closed NYC’s St.
6th, 1945), asking us to feel that these, our brothers and sisters of Japan, had just been vaporized, and there was no reason to celebrate this new level of human atrocity and killing.īrendan Fay made it to America from the Emerald Isle and found welcome, acceptance for himself as is, and solidarity with the causes lived out in Dorothy Day’s Maryhouse on E 3rd St in downtown Manhattan. She with others were arrested.īayard Rustin, 1964, Hiroshima day, credit: War Resisters League.ĭorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker in 1933, stood up against the nuclear bomb from the day of Hiroshima (Aug. Presidential candidate on the Socialist ticket, the first openly gay candidate for President whose platform prioritized nuclear disarmament, joined together in an actions down at NY’s City Hall with the famed activist Dorothy Day during her sit ins and arrests each year, protesting the insanity of compulsory air raid drills for nuclear attack.
Not many people knew that earlier, in 1957, Bayard and the late David McReynolds (both leaders in the War Resisters League), two time U.S. He would go on to organize NYC’s first anti-Vietnam war protest in 1964, purposely held on Hiroshima day. Later on Bayard often had to work behind the political scenes because of threats about his sexual preferences, his love, his great, beautiful and gay heart. Muste to the Soviet Union to build the bridges that would help save the world from our mutually assured nuclear weapon annihilation. Martin Luther King, Jr gave his Dream speech, traveled in the 1950’s with pacifist A.J. Bayard Rustin, the chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, DC at which Dr.