User:Schnickelfritz66/Women Strike for Peace

Bibliography

• • This is a peer reviewed article in Feminist Studies from JSTOR, so it should be a reliable source. It covers our topic of the WSP in depth and how the leaders of the organization went about using their voices during the Cold War.
• • This is a reliable source from JSTOR. A snippet of the impact of the WSP during the Cold War and protesting nuclear strikes.
• • This is an article from the university's online library, so it should be a reliable source. It covers our topic, specifically when the WSP interacted with Vietnamese unions.
• • This is an article from the university's online library, so it should be a reliable source. It covers the history and lasting impacts of the Women's Peace Movement.
• • This article is from the University of London's School of Advanced Studies online library, so it should be a reliable source. The article analyzes the WSP and the changes it brought domestically in the 1960s.
• • This is a book from our university's library, so it should be a reliable source. It covers women's involvement in environmentalism during the Cold War.

Article Draft

Lead

“About 50,000 women…” instead of “around 50,000 women…”

“Nearing the height of the cold war in 1961,...” instead of “In 1961, "Nearing the height of the Cold War….”

Article body

Actions

Create a paragraph title: split up “Actions” paragraph starting at “The group consisted of mainly….” and separate that section into a paragraph titled “The Women Involved” or something describing the specific demographic of women who were the majority involved.

“In 1962, the members of the advance party of Women Strike for Peace met with Gertrude Baer, who at the time was the secretary for the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) in Geneva at the Seventeen-Nation Disarmament Conference.” slightly changed to “Members of the advance party of Women’s Strike for Peace met with Gertrude Baer in 1962, who was secretary for the Women’s International League For Peace and Freedom(WILPF) at the time during the Seventeen-Nation Disarmament Conference in Geneva.”

Building Up to the March on the Capitol

The Women’s Strike for Peace organization wasn’t a unified one, and they had no known leaders and were completely unknown in the American political scene before the capitol strike on November 1st [1]. The women of WSP were responding to several women in Washington D.C. who were unnerved by how much the nuclear arms race was speeding up[1]. The women sent messages from Washington through word of mouth, and telephone calls to friends and contacts from church, already established peace organizations such as the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) across America to cease their normal daily activities and join them from their own homes in a one day strike to end the arms race[1]. Each strike in each city depended solely on what the women were willing and able to do with different laws and regulations across states[7].

Nevada testing sites and effects of the experiments

The Nevada Proving Ground came to be where the United States perfected their nuclear weaponry[7]. The spot located a mere 65 miles north of Las Vegas replaced the Pacific Islands as a testing ground for these weapons[7]. Coined as an “outdoor laboratory” and an “experimental landscape”, several government sponsored activities took place there[7]. “Doom Towns” were constructed with mannequin families to test these weapons on[7].

The WSP protested in part because of the effects of the particles and debris that remained in the air after years of nuclear testing[8]. The radioactive affects after World War II were said to be the first global environmental issue in both scale and potency of the “post-war era”, said by historian John McCormack[8]. With more than 120 official weapon tests in the Pacific and Nevada, depositing immense amounts of radioactive debris which caused levels of ionizing radiation to slowly increase over time[8]. The nuclear arms race made the world more radioactive[8]. The debris spread onto things like food and drinks and in the very air we breathed, causing cancer and birth defects[?]. People were ignorant of the possible health risks and would have picnics at high points near the testing site to watch government experiments[8]. Exposure to radiation and the effects it had on civilians and the unborn were a driving force for the Women’s Peace Movement to strike to end the nuclear race and stop this rising environmental issue as it was harming the innocent[?]

Post - 1960s

“In Los Angeles, in 1965 and 1970, the Women Strike for Peace Movement, headed by Mary Clarke, published a cookbook that Clarke inspired.” edited to “The Women’s Strike for Peace published a cookbook in 1965 and 1970, which were inspired by Mary Clarke.”