In a formal statement on January 10, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists noted: “It is five minutes to midnight. Two years ago, it appeared that world leaders might address the truly global threats that we face. In many cases, that trend has not continued or been reversed. For that reason, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is moving the clock hand one minute closer to midnight, back to its time in 2007.”

The Path Toward a Nuke Free World “Is Not at all Clear”Commenting on the Doomsday Clock announcement, Jayantha Dhanapala, member of the BAS Board of Sponsors, former United Nations under-secretary-general for Disarmament Affairs, and ambassador of Sri Lanka to the United States, said:“Despite the promise of a new spirit of international cooperation, and reductions in tensions between the United States and Russia, the Science and Security Board believes that the path toward a world free of nuclear weapons is not at all clear, and leadership is failing.”Dhanapala further pointed out that the ratification in December 2010 of the New START treaty between Russia and the United States had reversed the previous drift in US-Russia nuclear relations.19,000 Nuclear Weapons!“However, failure to act on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty by leaders in the United States, China, Iran, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Israel, and North Korea and on a treaty to cut off production of nuclear weapons material continues to leave the world at risk from continued development of nuclear weapons.”

The world still has over 19,000 nuclear weapons, enough power to destroy the world’s inhabitants several times over, said Dhanapala.An ICAN campaigner and the author of the study, Tim Wright, said: “The vast majority of nations believe it is time to ban nuclear weapons in the same way that biological and chemical weapons have been banned.”Abandon Snail’s Pace“Nuclear disarmament cannot continue at a snail’s pace if we are to prevent the further spread and use of nuclear weapons. It must be accelerated, and the best way to achieve that is through a comprehensive nuclear disarmament treaty with timelines and benchmarks for eliminating nuclear stockpiles,” Wright said, adding: “This must be the next big negotiating objective of the international community.”The pressing need for doing away with nukes was also stressed in a historic resolution in November 2011 by the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, which has close to 100 million members and volunteers worldwide.The resolution highlighted the humanitarian dangers of nuclear weapons and called on governments “to pursue in good faith and conclude with urgency and determination negotiations to prohibit the use of and completely eliminate nuclear weapons through a legally binding international agreement”.

[Read also: Red Cross Movement Wants Nukes Abolished]ICAN study finds that support for a treaty to abolish nuclear weapons has grown considerably since 2008, when the UN Secretary-General made such a treaty the centrepiece of his nuclear disarmament action plan.“At the May 2010 review conference of the ailing Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, two references to a nuclear weapons convention made their way into the agreed outcome document, despite strong protestations from some nuclear-armed nations,” notes ICAN.“Immoral, Inhumane and Illegal Weapons”Arielle Denis, a senior campaigner at ICAN’s office in Geneva, believes that governments have a clear popular mandate to ban nuclear weapons.

“Right across the world, even in nations with large nuclear arsenals, opinion polls show that a majority of citizens support the elimination of these immoral, inhumane and illegal weapons. The people believe the time has come for their leaders to cast off the nuclear shadow,” she said.But, as Robert Socolow, member of the BAS Science and Security Board, says, “Obstacles to a world free of nuclear weapons remain. Among these are disagreements between the United States and Russia about the utility and purposes of missile defense, as well as insufficient transparency, planning, and cooperation among the nine nuclear weapons states to support a continuing drawdown.”

Socolow adds: “The resulting distrust leads nearly all nuclear weapons states to hedge their bets by modernizing their nuclear arsenals. While governments claim they are only ensuring the safety of their warheads through replacement of bomb components and launch systems, as the deliberate process of arms reduction proceeds, such developments appear to other states to be signs of substantial military build-ups.”

The way out of this morass is to mobilise public opinion. “Whether meeting the challenges of nuclear power, or mitigating the suffering from human-caused global warming, or preventing catastrophic nuclear conflict in a volatile world, the power of people is essential,” says BAS executive director, Kennette Benedict.Answers and Action, Now“For this reason, we ask other scientists and experts to join us in engaging ordinary citizens. Together, we can present the most significant questions to policymakers and industry leaders. Most importantly, we can demand answers and action,” she adds.BAS points out that some of the key recommendations for a safer world have not been taken up and require urgent attention. These include ratification by the United States and China of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and progress on a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty.There is a pressing need for implementing multinational management of the civilian nuclear energy fuel cycle with strict standards for safety, security, and nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, including eliminating reprocessing for plutonium separation;BAS also pleads for strengthening the International Atomic Energy Agency’s capacity to oversee nuclear materials, technology development, and its transfer.BAS was founded in 1945 by University of Chicago scientists who had helped develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project.The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists subsequently created the Doomsday Clock in 1947 using the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear explosion (countdown to zero), to convey threats to humanity and the planet.

The decision to move the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock is made by the Bulletin’s Board of Directors in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes 18 Nobel Laureates.

    Domestic workers often don't get a break to eat, even working many more than the eight-hour workday considered normal for most workers.  Others cook for the families they work for, but can't use the same implements to cook for themselves.  If they have to sleep in the homes of clients, they often have to get up during the night several times to perform basic services for them, like taking them to the bathroom, or giving them medicine.  And the night is considered a rest period, for which they sometimes don't get paid.

     One Filipina caregiver from the East Bay explained that she sleeps in the same bed as her client.  "What I'd like would be a bed where I could sleep by myself," she said.
      Even at five or six, the kids marching with their moms are old enough to understand a little of those bitter truths.  When one young girl, who looked about kindergarten age, held up a sign saying "trabajo digno," or "decent work," she knew enough to explain, "she doesn't get enough money, and she works too hard."
      Last year the state Assembly passed AB 889, authored by Assembly members Tom Ammiano and V. Manuel Perez, that would give domestic workers some state-recognized rights in their efforts to curb abusive conditions.  It would provide meal and rest breaks, overtime and reporting pay as enjoyed by other workers, and expand domestic workers' access to workers compensation.  In addition, it would guarantee eight hours of sleep for those who work around the clock, and allow them to use kitchen facilities.
  The bill would affect the 200,000 people who work in California domestic service, who are almost entirely women, and immigrants or people of color.  While domestic workers face the same excuses for substandard conditions faced by other women, namely that they're only working to supplement the income of men, most of them are either the sole source of income for their families, or are bringing home pay that their families can't live without.  One woman explained that she was still working many more than 40 hours a week, and was in her 70s.
The Domestic Workers Bill of Rights is modeled on one that was enacted in New York State in 2010.  It is supported by dozens of statewide worker and community advocates, including the California Labor Federation and many other unions, Filipino Advocates for Justice, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, Mujeres Unidas y Activas, the Women's Collective of the San Francisco Day Labor Program, a number of churches and synagogues, and Hand in Hand, the Domestic Workers Employers Association.  Its main opponent is the business association for agencies that provide domestic workers to clients.

        At the end of the last session of the legislature, the bill was in the appropriations committee of the state Senate.  The marchers hoped to pry the bill loose, get it passed through the Senate, and convince Governor Jerry Brown to sign it.  One of several legislators who spoke to the crowd, Watsonville Assembly member Bill Monning explained in Spanish, "This bill is just, and we're going to make sure it becomes law and that domestic workers finally get the same basic rights as other workers."

1. The Organization is dedicated to public education and awareness about human rights using courses, film events and post-screening discussions.
2. The Organization employs local, global and long-distance communications to promote education and cultural diversity of future leaders.
3. The Organization fosters public understanding of world cultures.
4. The Organization develops creative content in global news, and media arts and culture to highlight human and civil rights of migrants crossing borders.

Then, under pressure from employers in the late 1970s, Congress began to debate the bills that eventually resulted in the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. That debate set in place the basic dividing line in the modern immigrant rights movement. IRCA contained three elements. It reinstituted a bracero-like guest worker program, by setting up the H2-A visa category. It penalized employers who hired undocumented workers ("employer sanctions"), and required them to check the immigration status of every worker. And it set up an amnesty process for undocumented workers in the country before 1982.

The main trade union federation to which most U.S. unions belong, the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), supported sanctions, saying they'd stop undocumented immigration (and therefore, presumably, job competition with citizen or legal resident workers). The Catholic Church and other Washington DC liberal advocates supported amnesty and were willing to agree to guest workers and enforcement as a tradeoff. Employers wanted guest worker programs. The bill was opposed by immigrant communities and leftwing immigrant rights advocates, from the Centro de Acción Social Autónomo (CASA), founded in Los Angeles by labor and immigrant rights leader Bert Corona, to the Bay Area Committee Against Simpson Mazzoli in Northern California, and similar groups around the country. Local labor activists and leaders also opposed the bill, but were not strong enough to change labor's position nationally. The Washington DC-based coalition produced the votes in Congress, and Ronald Reagan, one of the country's most conservative presidents, signed the bill into law.

Once the bill had passed, many of the local organizations that had opposed it set up community-based coalitions to deal with the bill's impact. In Los Angeles, with the country's largest concentration of undocumented Mexican and Central American workers, pro-immigrant labor activists set up centers to help people apply for amnesty. That effort, together with earlier, mostly left-led campaigns to organize undocumented workers, built the base for the later upsurge of immigrants that changed the politics and labor movement of the city. Elsewhere, local immigrant advocates set up coalitions to look for ways to defend undocumented workers against the impact of employer sanctions. Grass roots coalitions then began helping workers set up centers for day laborers, garment workers, domestic workers, and other groups of immigrants generally ignored by established unions.

The Movement since IRCA

Over the 27 years since IRCA, a general division has marked the U.S. immigrant rights movement. On one side are well-financed advocacy organizations in Washington DC, with links to the Democratic Party and large corporations. They formulate and negotiate over immigration reform proposals that combine labor supply programs and increased enforcement against the undocumented. On the other side are organizations based in immigrant communities, and among labor and political activists, who defend undocumented migrants, and who resist proposals for greater enforcement and labor programs with diminished rights.

In the late 1990s, when the Clinton administration acquiesced in efforts to pass repressive immigration legislation (what eventually became the Immigration Reform And Immigrant Responsibility Act), Washington lobbying groups advocated a strategy to allow measures directed at increasing deportations of the undocumented to pass (calling them "unstoppable") while mounting a defense only of legal resident immigrants. Many community-based coalitions withdrew from the Washington lobbying efforts, refusing to cast the undocumented to the wolves. The strategy failed, in any case, and the eventual law includes severe provisions directed at legal, as well as undocumented immigrants.