Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security
Massachusetts State House
Joseph Gerson – Sept. 10, 2025
Testimony in Support of S.1649
Thank you for the opportunity to speak for passage of S.1649. It is the best way to move humanity away from the nuclear path to species suicide.
I am president of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security. My PhD is in Politics and International Security Studies. I have written and edited six books about the history of the use and consequences of nuclear weapons. I helped to launch the nuclear weapons freeze movement and later led opposition to Boston Harbor being transformed into a dangerous nuclear weapons base. That victory led to my being invited to Hiroshima and to a forty-year collaboration with Hibakusha, the witness/survivors of the first atomic bombings. I was a member of their Nobel Peace Prize delegation.
With them, I have learned and advocated the profound truth that “human beings and nuclear weapons cannot coexist.” With its Peace Prize award, with reference to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Doomsday Clock warning that we are 89 seconds to midnight – annihilation – the Nobel Committee sent an urgent message to the world: Prevent the increasing danger of nuclear war and abolish nuclear weapons. And, referencing earlier testimony about the importance of emergency services, there will be no emergency services in the wake of a nuclear war.
I have also been a participant in a Track II process with leading U.S., Russian, and European diplomats, former officials, and generals. As they work to prevent the unthinkable, there is recognition that this moment’s dangers compare with the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, negotiated by a majority of UN members, was designed to overcome the crisis of nuclear weapons states refusing to honor their Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty commitment to engage in good faith negotiations for the complete elimination of their nuclear arsenals. That refusal results an unsustainable nuclear apartheid that drives nuclear weapons proliferation.
With Back from the Brink as policy, Washington would finally pursue a verifiable agreement to eliminate the world’s nuclear arsenals. It would renounce using nuclear weapons first, which it has repeatedly prepared and threatened during wars and international crisis and which serves as Putin’s Ukraine nuclear playbook. Back from the Brink would end the unchecked authority of any U.S. President to launch a nuclear attack, especially important with Trump. It would take U.S. nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert. A false alert could trigger a thermonuclear exchange. Finally, Back from the Brink would cancel the estimated $2 trillion being allocated to upgrade the U.S. nuclear arsenal when funding for scientific research, health, housing and other essential social services is being slashed.
There is a precedent. Legislative bodies in five states have already endorsed back from the Brink and the nuclear weapons freeze was endorsed by more one or both houses of 23 state legislatures. Passing S 1649 will add pressure on Washington to take urgently needed action to save our species from itself.
Finally, while I profoundly oppose the Trump/MAGA assaults on constitutional democracy and innocent immigrants, Trump has expressed a desire to renew nuclear arms control negotiations. This is one element of his agenda that we should encourage.
Thank you for your attention.