Syracuse-area peace activists and opponents of nuclear weapons held their annual silent procession through downtown Syracuse Tuesday to commemorate the 71st anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
" I think that nuclear weapons could be the scourge of the earth. If there is a nuclear war we could actually destroy life on this planet."
Richard Weiskopf is a retired doctor and member of physicians for social responsibility.
" We need to devote a lot more effort to scaling down our nuclear arsenal, asking other countries to do that. We need to abolish nuclear weapons."
Weiskopf says if two bombs killed nearly 200,000 people, he doesn’t want to imagine a nuclear war. Critics say President Obama has set in motion plans to spend at least one trillion dollars over the next 30 years to modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Activist Jerry Lotierzo doesn’t hold out hope about the next president.
"Clinton and Trump will not be more sympathetic to our cause, then Obama was. Obama speaks sympathetically about abolishing nuclear weapons, but then he does the opposite by investing in enormous amounts of money in plants that are producing these weapons."
Lotierzo and others were also critical of nuclear power, and Tuesday's announcement that the FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant in Oswego County will continue operating under new ownership.
