Most of the items that will be considered at Annual Town Meeting focus on matters within the town’s borders. Article 46, “Citizen’s’ Petition-Nuclear Disarmament,” casts a wider net. It comes with national and international implications.
The article was drafted by Joe McCabe, a retired psychiatrist and Town Meeting member from Precinct F who collected the 10 registered voter signatures required to get an item on the town warrant. This resolution seeks to send a message to our federal and state legislators to make nuclear disarmament a central goal of national policy.
It urges them to support a pending resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives put forward by Rep. Jim McGovern of Worcester. According to McCabe, the non-binding resolution calls to restart negotiations and to renounce the first launch of nuclear missiles. The resolution also recommends ending the president’s sole authority to order a launch and to call off enhancements of the current nuclear fleet.
In 2019, Needham Town Meeting passed a similar resolution by a two-thirds voice vote. McCabe said growing global tensions and the threat of nuclear proliferation makes the issue even more urgent than it was six years ago.
McCabe has been active in the disarmament movement for almost half a century. He cited the victories of the locally inspired nuclear-freeze movement of the 1980s that led to a massive reduction in the number of nuclear warheads and a number of important international treaties, the last of which, START II, will expire in 2026.
“We have an arsenal that’s sufficient to destroy vast portions of humanity,” he said. “We have to move against this. We have to get on the stick and start negotiating.”
McCabe said Needham’s congressional representative, Jake Auchincloss, has said he would not co-sponsor the resolution. Select Board member Kevin Keane received the same response from Auchincloss’s office.
“This is a new approach to move forward Rep. McGovern’s proposal,” McCabe said.
The effort in 2019 was led by North Hill resident Peter Metz, who appeared alongside McCabe at the April 15 Select Board meeting. They requested the Select Board’s endorsement of their proposal.
On April 22, the Select Board voted 3-2 to take no position on this warrant item.
“I don’t think the Select Board should pretend to have expertise in foreign policy or nuclear disarmament,” said board member Marianne Cooley. “This has such a broad ask it’s easy for people to walk away.”
Select Board member Cathy Dowd concurred. “We are concerned with what goes on in the town and this is a national security, foreign policy issue that is beyond our purview,” she said. “Town Meeting members can vote their conscience.”
The two members of the Select Board who voted to take a position on this warrant item did so for different reasons. In a written statement to the Observer, Josh Levy said the board should take a position on all warrant items “so that Town Meeting Members and all residents have the benefit of knowing how passage or failure of the proposal will impact the operations of the Town.”
“The worst thing that happens with this article is that it’s a waste of time,” he said. Levy pointed out that the 2019 vote to endorse nuclear disarmament had no impact.
Keane said it would be a symbolic vote but one with local implications. “If there’s an intercontinental ballistic missile coming into Needham, it’s a very local issue,” Keane said.
“The reason why I support it is because it’s OK for Town Meeting to talk to its representatives in Congress. That’s entirely appropriate,” Keane said. “This is a light lift and an optimistic symbol of sanity.”
Town Meeting has taken positions on national and international issues in the past. McCabe cited Needham’s opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act. Needham Town Meeting also passed a resolution in support of the Nuclear Freeze movement of the 1980s.
In 2019, Town Meeting took 38 minutes to consider and pass a similar resolution. That included 25 minutes of introductory remarks by Metz and McCabe, a procedural statement from then Select Board member John Bulian, and 13 minutes of discussion.
Town Meeting members’ comments mirrored the division reflected by Levy and Keane.
All commenters agreed that Needham’s actions on this global issue would have virtually no impact, but many felt it was vital to take a stand anyway.
At the Select Board meeting McCabe pointed to rising tensions on the Indian subcontinent. “A nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan with 250 medium-size nukes would lead to the starvation of 2 billion in a nuclear winter,” he said.
McCabe said nuclear war is one of the topics that people avoid thinking about “because the results are so unthinkable.”
“But unless we do something, we’re all going to be toast,” he said. “To sit and do nothing is unacceptable.”
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