Around New England

Western Massachusetts Town To Vote On State Seal, Nuclear War

June 5, 2018

Articles calling on voters to demand that the United States renounce first-strike nuclear attacks and that Massachusetts change its state seal are on the warrant of Town Meeting of a tiny town in western Massachusetts.

Wendell, with a population of about 850, is about 32 miles north-by-northeast of Springfield.

Article 22 gets right to the point:

“… We call on the United States to lead a global effort to prevent nuclear war by:
* Renouncing the option of using nuclear weapons first
* Ending the president’s sole, unchecked authority to launch a nuclear attack
* Taking US nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert
* Cancelling the plan to replace its entire arsenal with enhanced weapons
* Actively pursuing a verifiable agreement among nuclear armed states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals”

Article 23 isn’t as far-reaching, but considerably longer, at 699 words. It offers a pro-Indian, anti-English-colonist history of Massachusetts, and then recommends passage of House Bill 1707, which would establish a commission to replace the state seal, which depicts an Indian holding a downturned arrow and an arm holding a sword that is claimed to be Myles Standish’s.

The warrant article also laments “the 400th anniversary of the landing of the Euro-Colonists at Plymouth Plantation, which gave rise to the long 
chain of genocidal wars and deliberate policies of cultural destruction against Native Nations of this continent,” which is approaching in 2020.

Wendell is in former Massachusetts Senate President Stan Rosenberg’s district.

Town Meeting in Wendell, which was named after Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.’s great-grandfather, is scheduled to begin Tuesday, June 5.


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