by Sarah Saunders '03
MAY 7 , 2002--As people who came of age and to political consciousness in the 1990s, young people of my generation did not grow up with the constant fear and consciousness of the nuclear threat that was so present in the U.S. during the Cold War and in the 1980s. Most young people in the U.S. today do not have a consciousness about nuclear weapons and therefore coming to consciousness presents the additional difficulty of proving not only that we must oppose nuclear weapons, but also that this is a threat. The moral issues of nuclear weapons production and use are a boring conversation to many young people--they have lived their entire lives under the nuclear umbrella and have no fear about the nuclear threat that they believe is nonexistent. This is why I am so passionate about anti-nuclearism--because our generation must speak up, must be ready to take great risks in order to work against nuclearism. As educated individuals and activists, we have a responsibility to use our voices and speak out in order to create a more just, beautiful, and sustainable world.