This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Salt Lake City • The drums in Sugar House Park on Friday evening weren't war drums — just the opposite.
The drumming was part of the first annual International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. The drummers were among a crowd of at least 40 people gathered in the southeast Salt Lake City park to demand the abolishment of nuclear warheads around the world. The event organizers brought in Congolese, West African and Taiko drummers .
"[The international day] was decreed by the [United Nations] and we wanted to have something in Salt Lake to honor that day, so we thought if we pulled together a bunch of drummers to help bring in this beautiful joy and drumbeat of peace, that it might resonate around the world," said Susan Soleil, executive director of Utah Interfaith Power and Light, who helped put on the event with The Utah Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, United Nations Association of Utah and the Ghandi Alliance for Peace.
The U.N. estimates that about 17,000 nuclear weapons still exist. As of this year, none has been physically destroyed "pursuant to a treaty, bilateral or multilateral, and no nuclear disarmament negotiations are underway," while nuclear deterrence persists as part of the security policies of all possessor states, according to the U.N. "This is so — despite growing concerns worldwide over the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of the use of even a single nuclear weapon, let alone a regional or global nuclear war."
Nine tables were set up in the Fabian Pavilion of the park, each representing a country that possesses nuclear warheads. And on each table was a jar filled with birdseeds — representing the warheads in that country's possession.
At the end of the event, attendees planned to spread the bird seed around the park as a symbolic act of removing the warheads.
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