“If you build it, they will come,” it was said in the great baseball movie, Field of Dreams. Here at bang-usa and Project for Nuclear Awareness, we believe that if we provide the forum and the space for youth and activists, then the magic of linking people will empower and connect participants motivated by the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons.

We built it. And here they come. Some 200 students, activists, and experts from around the world will be connecting by video-conference technology for two days of speakers, break-out groups, and information sharing. We’re linking people from Moscow, Santa Barbara, Mexico City and our home city of Philadelphia. We’re linking environmentalists, social justice activists, human rights activists, scientists, students, legislative experts, public health workers, and foreign policy experts. We’re connecting people on the most important issue of our age: the threat and continued existence of nuclear weapons.

We’re connecting—if you can’t join us at one of our sites, I have great news. We’re live web-casting the Dialogue. You’ll be able to see the link right here at www.bang-usa.org. You can watch and listen to participants from the four different sites. We’ll also be live tweeting from our Twitterfeed @BanAllNukes (www.twitter.com/BanAllNukes) on both days—you can join in the conversation on Twitter!

We are standing at the tipping point. The power of thousands of citizens’ voices can challenge the idea that nuclear weapons make us safer and to demand from our government leaders a safer world, a world without weapons of mass destruction. You can be a part of that.

“Be the change you want to see in the world” said Ghandi-- it is you who make the magic happen. You are the people who can make change happen. This is your generation and this is your world. Our world continues to be under threat from all different angles: but most of those don’t matter if you think about the implications of even a small scale nuclear war. Nuclear weapons make our world unsafe, threaten our stability, our way of life, billions of lives, the environment, public health, waste billions of US taxpayer dollars, and they cannot protect us as we were told.

The moment is now. We’re gaining momentum at all levels of society, from the average citizen right up to political leaders and international institutions. People are starting to realize that nuclear weapons are not the answer—to any question!

Join us and let’s work to make the dream of a world without nuclear weapons a reality!