Question: Is it possible to push Mayors for Peace membership over the 5000 threshold by August 6th? The answer from the 2020 Vision Campaign Board of Directors June 9th meeting: YES! A major motivation is the desire to provide media coverage of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki commemoration with an additional news hook. The message to the world will be “Cities are not targets! Abolish nuclear weapons!”
Reaching this goal will take concerted action city by city, country by country, and region by region. The Chairman of the Board, Ypres Mayor Luc Dehaene, has written to the 4736 current members urging them to recruit neighboring cities and to check if their sister cities are also members. Mayor Gaëtan Ruest, Ville d'Amqui immediately responded: “I will address in the coming days a personal e-mail invitation to Quebec Province Mayors Colleagues to do [join]. Count on me! I am personally convinced that together we will attain easily this target and better, we will surely overpass it! Good luck to every one! We will succeed!”
The leading cities of the 2020 Vision Campaign will be reinforcing the Chairman’s message within their countries and leading by example. And, in this effort as in so much of our work, Mayors for Peace is getting the help of NGOs. Most notably, the International Campaign to Abolition Nuclear Weapons has made the recruitment of mayors one of their top activities for International Day for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons, 25 June. 2020 Vision Campaigners in many countries are using their civil society networks to support national recruitment efforts.
Another recruitment approach is to obtain the cooperation of national associations of local governments. The cooperative agreements signed this year and last in Latin American are beginning to be bear fruit in this regard. The http://www.famargentina.com/Federation of Argentine Municipalities and the Association of Brazilian Municipalities have written to their extensive membership urging them to join prior to August 6th, and it is expected that other national associations in the region will follow suit. We also have the help of an Argentine consulting firm to cities, IC-Argentina, which is urging its 4500-strong regional city network to sign up with Mayors for Peace.
In Europe, the Mayor of St. Polten, Matthias Stadler, made sure that everyone participating in Städtetag – City Day – received in their conference packet an invitation to join Mayors for Peace. The Mayor of Klosterneuburg, Stefan Schmuckenslager, is following up with a letter to all cities specifically urging them to act before August 6th. The cities of Hannover and Manchester are organizing national Mayor for Peace meetings at which plans for the membership drive are high on the agenda. The UK meeting will be hosted by the Mayor of Oxford, Elise Benjamin. Campaign Association Vice President, Mayor Thore Vestby of Frogn, Norway, is writing to all Norwegian cities.
In Japan, the aim is to be the first country with more than 1000 members. In the United States, the goal is 200 cities. Please visit the 2020 Vision Campaign’s special website portal for more information.
This will be the 2020 Vision Campaign’s last international membership drive for some time to come. At 5000 cities, we will be able to accurately claim to represent more than one billion people. With these impressive quantitative results, emphasis will switch to the quality of members’ participation in the Campaign’s activities which are now entering a new phase. Membership recruitment will proceed on a country by country basis focusing on major cities that can add significant political clout to the Campaign. The network already has many major cities as a quick look at this list of 206 cities from 142 countries makes immediately evident. These 206 cities alone represent over 400 million people. They are part of a global list of 546 capitals and major cities, thus indicating how well Mayors for Peace is already represented in these circles.
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