Staten Island’s Nuclear History: From the Manhattan Project to the Nuclear Weapons Free Zone
About this event
Greenpeace activists at the Statue of Liberty, 1984. Photo © Greenpeace / Kurt Abrahamson.
Did you know Staten Island once held two-thirds of the Manhattan Project's uranium? Or that New York City has been a legally declared Nuclear Weapons Free Zone since 1982?
Join us on Sunday, August 9 at 1 PM as we welcome Pace professor Matthew Bolton for a talk tracing NYC's surprising nuclear story — from the Manhattan Project office near City Hall, to radioactive sites scattered throughout the city, to the activists who fought back. Staten Islander Dorothy Day was arrested for refusing civil defense drills. Mayor David Dinkins helped block plans for a nuclear-capable Navy port on Staten Island. And in 2021, International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) activists helped push the City Council to strengthen NYC's nuclear-free status, aligning it with a nuclear ban treaty negotiated in 2017 at the United Nations. It's a story of how a city at the center of the Atomic Age became a model for disarmament. The talk will be 30 minutes followed by 30 minutes of Q&A.
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