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#Petrobromance

Building Connections Across the Antinuclear, Climate, and Police Abolition Movements

WILPF’s latest report ‘Petrobromance,’ Nuclear Priesthood, and Police Repression: Feminist Confrontations of Violent Industries, and Movements to Abolish Them investigates connections between the nuclear and fossil fuel industries and state repression of activism against these industries. It offers feminist perspectives on how the nuclear and fossil fuel industries operate and entrench their power; their impacts on communities; and how resistance against these industries is suppressed by police, militaries and private companies. On 2 October 2024, WILPF will officially launch the report online in conversation with some of the authors, activists and academics involved in its creation. Download the report. 

Image credit: WILPF
  • 4 min
Ray Acheson
25 September 2024

Industries’ Impact and State Repression 

Powerful industries continue to shape many of the realities of the world we live in today, influencing ecological health, human rights and the ability of communities to live in peace and security. Both the fossil fuel industry and nuclear industry constitute an existential threat to humanity and all species on our shared planet. Despite this, the burning of fossil fuels and the existence of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy continue to be justified and legitimised by entrenched interests in government and industry. 

The nuclear and fossil fuel industries are connected through colonial pasts and imperial presents, through corporate connections and patriarchal structures, through their capturing of state politics and their use of the state’s repressive forces like the police and military to suppress dissent and protest. 

Report Themes and Chapters Overview 

This report highlights and unpack these connections. Through extensive research and conversations with activists, academics and affected community members, ‘Petrobromance,’ Nuclear Priesthood, and Police Repression dives keep into the fossil fuel and nuclear industries, struggles of building movements against these industries, experiences of police violence, as well as hope for the future and imaginative recommendations for building a better world.  

The report contains five main chapters, focusing on: 

  1. the nuclear industry;  
  1. the fossil fuel industry and extractivism;  
  1. the ways in which police, militaries, and private military and security companies (PMSCs) are used to suppress resistance to these industries;  
  1. and the connections among these industries and among the various structures of state violence.  
  1. And finally, recommendations for activists, organisers, governments, and others working on these issues. 
Download the full report here

Building Connections Across Movements 

Across all chapters, several cross-cutting themes emerge as essential for understanding the ways in which the nuclear and fossil fuel industries operate and impact diverse communities. These include industries as causes and drivers of conflict and violence; impacts to health, violence, and wellbeing; impacts on the environment; dynamics of decision-making and governance; repression of resistance; and intersectionality.  

By examining these cross-cutting themes as well as the specificities of the nuclear and fossil fuel industries, the hope of the report authors is to provide a common knowledge base from which social movements can continue their essential work. The process of conducting this research through group interviews and consultations brought together activists across antinuclear, climate, environmental, land defence, and peace movements. These interviews helped create connections and spark discussions about the diverse ways in which these movements can deepen their joint strategising and collaboration towards common goals of peace, ecological regeneration, and justice.  

We hope this work will continue, and that further connections across these areas can be identified in future research. All the thematic areas explored in the report can be the focus of joint activism, organising, and collaboration, as well as further research. We believe it is critical to build networks across regions and geographies, to share knowledge with each other, and to learn from heterodox approaches including feminist, Indigenous, and decolonial views. It is also critical to centre critiques of state violence in our movements, given the intense repression that is levied against them.  

Join the Conversation – Webinar Details 

Join WILPF on Wednesday, 2 October 2024 at 09:30–11:00 EDT / 13:30–15:00 GMT for a webinar featuring the report authors and activists and academics whose experiences and work helped inform the report’s analysis and recommendations. 

We hope that this webinar will be the first of many global conversations that help build connections between our movements for climate justice, nuclear abolition, and police abolition. With powerful movements and coordinated and creative action, under the leadership of impacted communities, we believe that a better world is possible. 

Register for the webinar
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Ray Acheson

Ray Acheson is Director of Reaching Critical Will, WILPF’s disarmament programme. They are author of Abolishing State Violence: A World Beyond Bombs, Borders, and Cages and Banning the Bomb, Smashing the Patriarchy. They organise for abolition, disarmament, and demilitarisation in their work with various coalitions and provide intersectional feminist analysis and advocacy at international disarmament forums. 

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Melissa Torres

VICE-PRESIDENT

Prior to being elected Vice-President, Melissa Torres was the WILPF US International Board Member from 2015 to 2018. Melissa joined WILPF in 2011 when she was selected as a Delegate to the Commission on the Status of Women as part of the WILPF US’ Practicum in Advocacy Programme at the United Nations, which she later led. She holds a PhD in Social Work and is a professor and Global Health Scholar at Baylor College of Medicine and research lead at BCM Anti-Human Trafficking Program. Of Mexican descent and a native of the US/Mexico border, Melissa is mostly concerned with the protection of displaced Latinxs in the Americas. Her work includes training, research, and service provision with the American Red Cross, the National Human Trafficking Training and Technical Assistance Centre, and refugee resettlement programs in the U.S. Some of her goals as Vice-President are to highlight intersectionality and increase diversity by fostering inclusive spaces for mentorship and leadership. She also contributes to WILPF’s emerging work on the topic of displacement and migration.

Jamila Afghani

VICE-PRESIDENT

Jamila Afghani is the President of WILPF Afghanistan which she started in 2015. She is also an active member and founder of several organisations including the Noor Educational and Capacity Development Organisation (NECDO). Elected in 2018 as South Asia Regional Representative to WILPF’s International Board, WILPF benefits from Jamila’s work experience in education, migration, gender, including gender-based violence and democratic governance in post-conflict and transitional countries.

Sylvie Jacqueline Ndongmo

PRESIDENT

Sylvie Jacqueline NDONGMO is a human rights and peace leader with over 27 years experience including ten within WILPF. She has a multi-disciplinary background with a track record of multiple socio-economic development projects implemented to improve policies, practices and peace-oriented actions. Sylvie is the founder of WILPF Cameroon and was the Section’s president until 2022. She co-coordinated the African Working Group before her election as Africa Representative to WILPF’s International Board in 2018. A teacher by profession and an African Union Trainer in peace support operations, Sylvie has extensive experience advocating for the political and social rights of women in Africa and worldwide.

WILPF Afghanistan

In response to the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban and its targeted attacks on civil society members, WILPF Afghanistan issued several statements calling on the international community to stand in solidarity with Afghan people and ensure that their rights be upheld, including access to aid. The Section also published 100 Untold Stories of War and Peace, a compilation of true stories that highlight the effects of war and militarisation on the region. 

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WILPF Germany (+Young WILPF network), WILPF Spain and MENA Regional Representative

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Demilitarisation

WILPF uses feminist analysis to argue that militarisation is a counter-productive and ill-conceived response to establishing security in the world. The more society becomes militarised, the more violence and injustice are likely to grow locally and worldwide.

Sixteen states are believed to have supplied weapons to Afghanistan from 2001 to 2020 with the US supplying 74 % of weapons, followed by Russia. Much of this equipment was left behind by the US military and is being used to inflate Taliban’s arsenal. WILPF is calling for better oversight on arms movement, for compensating affected Afghan people and for an end to all militarised systems.

Militarised masculinity

Mobilising men and boys around feminist peace has been one way of deconstructing and redefining masculinities. WILPF shares a feminist analysis on the links between militarism, masculinities, peace and security. We explore opportunities for strengthening activists’ action to build equal partnerships among women and men for gender equality.

WILPF has been working on challenging the prevailing notion of masculinity based on men’s physical and social superiority to, and dominance of, women in Afghanistan. It recognizes that these notions are not representative of all Afghan men, contrary to the publicly prevailing notion.

Feminist peace​

In WILPF’s view, any process towards establishing peace that has not been partly designed by women remains deficient. Beyond bringing perspectives that encapsulate the views of half of the society and unlike the men only designed processes, women’s true and meaningful participation allows the situation to improve.

In Afghanistan, WILPF has been demanding that women occupy the front seats at the negotiating tables. The experience of the past 20 has shown that women’s presence produces more sustainable solutions when they are empowered and enabled to play a role.

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