Felton Davis of the New York Catholic Worker has put together a special collection of articles from the Catholic Worker newspaper, appearing between 1955 and 1961, dealing with nuclear weapons and the threat of all-out war.
Davis writes that he believes the deceased writers “would all be rolling over in their graves,” to see William J. Broad’s article in the December 16 New York Times: “U.S. Rethinks Strategy for the Unthinkable.” The article describes the Obama administration regurgitating the conclusion of a Reagan-era official who claimed that “with enough shovels” to cover each other in dirt for a few days, nuclear war wouldn’t be so bad.
“‘It’s more survivable than most people think,’ said an [Obama] official deeply involved in the planning…”
Davis, who has repeatedly been jailed for nuclear protests tells us “You can’t just erase from historical memory a half-century of anti-nuclear work, and re-educate the public as if several generations of activists had not lived and struggled over this issue! Before many of us were born, and while some others of us were little children, our Catholic Worker predecessors agonized over the thought that atomic weapons meant the end of human life. They agonized, they protested, they went to jail, and they wrote down their thoughts and reflections.
“Let us recover this special history and ponder it closely, as we continue to insist that what was unthinkable yesterday, is still unthinkable today, and will continue to be unthinkable tomorrow and forever.”
You can download the entire collection here.