Aguiar-Curry honored for work on nuclear weapons reduction

Assemblywoman Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, D-Winters, has been honored with a national Pacesetter Award from the Women’s Legislators’ Lobby  for authoring and successfully enacting AJR 30 in 2018, a joint resolution calling on the Congress to pass legislation requiring a vote of Congress before the U.S. president can be the first to use nuclear weapons in a military conflict.

California was the first state in the nation to pass such a resolution, which spurred state legislators in Oregon, Illinois and New Jersey to propose similar bills — jump-starting a nationwide movement to begin to rein in the growing nuclear arms race that threatens the world and diverts resources ($70 billion per year in the US) from pressing domestic needs like housing, education, health care and climate crisis response.

“AJR 30 added California’s Legislature to the many voices demanding respect for the balance of powers proposed in HR 669 (the congressional measure authored by Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Los Angeles, and coauthored by Reps. John Garamendi, D-Walnut Grove, and Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena). No human being should have unilateral authority to wreak nuclear devastation,” Aguiar-Curry said on receiving the award at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., in September.

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