October 9

Jody Williams, Gopabandhu Das, and our ever-present nuclear threat

Author

David Barnhart
October 09, 2025

Morning Glory, 2025. Own photo.

On October 9, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved an atomic weapons program that would become the Manhattan Project. Sixty-five years later, also on October 9, North Korea tested its first nuclear weapon. 

It is also the birthday of Jody Williams, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her work in banning landmines. Though illegal mines continue to be used, official government policies all over the world have forbidden them for their impact on children and other non-combatants. 

Today is the birthday, in 1877, of Gopabandhu Das, an Indian education reformer, journalist, and poet.

Reflection:

Jody Williams wrote:  

I believe that worrying about the problems plaguing our planet without taking steps to confront them is absolutely irrelevant. The only thing that changes this world is taking action.

I think there's a mythology that if you want to change the world, you have to be sainted, like Mother Teresa or Nelson Mandela or Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Ordinary people with lives that go up and down and around in circles can still contribute to change.

Gopabandhu Das wrote: 

Let my body mingle with the dust of this Land,
And let my countrymen walk along my back;
Let all the holes in the road of freedom be filled with my blood & bone,
And let my life be sacrificed when my people awake into freedom.

Prayer: God of Life, we have the capacity to end nearly all life on the planet. Help us instead turn our energies into creating a just and thriving life for all beings. Amen.