Proposition One
PROPOSITION ONE
What is it?
A Successful
VOTER INITIATIVE
for Economic Conversion
through Nuclear Disarmament
- Proposition One is an initiative that calls for economic conversion through nuclear disarmament. It would achieve this goal by amending the Constitutions of the superpowers to outlaw nuclear weapons and mandate that the governments of these countries promote policies intended to achieve global nuclear disarmament and an end to war.
- One immediate result of these policies will be the redirection of enormous resources toward meeting human needs -- restore the environment, house the homeless, make adequate health care, food, education, and job opportunities available to all.
- Proposition One won an election in Washington DC on September 14, 1993 as Initiative 37. As a result, DC's Congresswoman, Eleanor Holmes Norton, proposed legislation with similar goals in 1994 (HR-3750) and 1995 (HR-1647). The bill did not ask for a Constitutional Amendment. However, if H.R. 1647 is enacted, it would send a message to the world, for the first time, that the U.S. is willing to get rid of all its nuclear weapons if all other nuclear powers do so. It also would send a message to U.S. citizens that the billions of dollars saved each year will be redirected into converting the nuclear weapons industries into socially beneficial "peacetime" industries, and into "environmental restoration" and other human needs, and NOT more weapons systems.
- Eight Representatives have signed on as co-sponsors to the proposed law: Hilliard of Alabama, Tucker of California, Lewis and McKinney of Georgia, Wynn of Maryland, Oberstar and Minge of Minnesota, and Rangel of New York. All but Rep. Tucker were re-elected in 1996.
- Individuals and groups are beginning to seriously promote the idea of Proposition One around the country and around the world. A Proposition One representative was hosted as a speaker at the Japan Peace Conference in November 1994, and took a letter from Congresswoman Norton to the World Court hearings on the legality of nuclear weapons in The Hague in 1995. Proposition One Committee is a member of the Abolition 2000 Network.