NAPF’s Annual Gala Gets a New Sheen

President Bartlet is coming to the Santa Barbara beachfront! 

The actor and activist Martin Sheen, who won an Emmy Award for his portrayal of the fictional head of state on Aaron Sorkin’s much beloved (and some would say better than reality) TV series The West Wing, will receive the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Daniel Ellsberg Lifetime Achievement Award at the Santa Barbara-based organization’s 38th Evening for Peace on Friday, September 26, at the Hilton Santa Barbara Beachfront Resort.

Sheen, whose film credits include major roles in Apocalypse Now, Badlands, and The Way, among many others, has also had a long history of activism, exhibiting a commitment to peace, justice, and human dignity. Over his six-decade career, he has used his platform to bring attention to critical global issues including nuclear disarmament among many other causes. He participated in protests locally at Vandenberg Air Force Base as well as the Nevada Test Site, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and other nuclear weapons facilities, often engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience. He has been arrested more than 60 times in connection with peace demonstrations. 

In addition to his disarmament advocacy, Sheen has supported labor rights, immigration reform, abolishing the death penalty, and action on climate change – including narrating or appearing in numerous documentaries on peace and social justice.

“It’s hard to think of anybody who deserves this recognition more than Martin Sheen,” said Dr. Ivana Nikolić Hughes, president of Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (NAPF). “While still maintaining his acting career, he has been a lifelong activist for a better world, for peace, and specifically for nuclear disarmament. He really is an inspiration. More than 60 arrests! It’s incredible that a person of his stature, fame and celebrity has put himself, body and soul, on the line over and over again, not just as a stunt a couple of times.”

Hughes said that celebrities speaking out on nuclear disarmament decades ago was a large part of eventually turning the corner on the nuclear arms race, though the current political climate has curtailed such efforts. 

“But Martin Sheen is unafraid in this time of cancel culture when many people are watching what they say and don’t want to take up important causes, which makes him extraordinary. He literally has more arrests than movies!” 

NAPF’s annual gala event will also posthumously recognize Pope Francis with the Distinguished Peace Leader Award for his moral leadership on nuclear abolition just five months after his passing. A vocal advocate for environmental stewardship, migration justice, and interfaith dialogue, Pope Francis was also a consistent and outspoken proponent of peace and nuclear disarmament who strongly supported the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) – one of NAPF’s ongoing efforts at the United Nations – calling its vision “courageous” and “ever more timely.” Under his leadership, the Holy See became one of the earliest and most active state parties to the Treaty, reflecting the pontiff’s broader moral vision for a world free of nuclear weapons.

“He sent such a message of love and kindness and peace into the world, and absolutely believed in the importance of nuclear abolition,” Hughes said. “The pope changed the conversation in 2017 when he said that the mere possession of these weapons that could destroy life on the planet is immoral. That was a big change in the church’s position that accepted nuclear deterrence as helping to secure world peace… Whatever your religion, there’s something really beautiful in honoring this kind of legacy that the Pope himself personally left.”

NAPF’s annual Evening for Peace is an essential fundraising gala that supports the international organization’s efforts to rid the world of the threat of nuclear weapons. The funds go to support advocacy work that includes TPNW and other UN general assembly resolutions – proposals that advance the cause of disarmament, as well as nuclear justice, which aims to compensate communities that have been impacted by nuclear weapons (primarily by the nuclear weapons testing programs). The evening also supports NAPF’s internship program, its Women Waging Peace series, and its travel to international conferences, which Hughes said is an integral aspect of the nonprofit’s work. Its work also endeavors to bring the climate change and anti-nuclear weapons communities together, bridging the gap to other issues while keeping nuclear discernment as the center of its focus. 

“We also go a couple of times a year to Washington to go door-to-door on Capitol Hill to speak with the members of Congress and their staff, to both educate them but also advocate for specific resolutions,” she said. “What we do is a combination of advocacy and education, including a lot of work with young people.”

Importantly, Hughes said, achieving nuclear disarmament isn’t just a pipe dream given the current level of proliferation and possibility of a burgeoning arms race. The plan involves all nine of those states with nuclear arsenals, “using both carrots and sticks, and how to actually address some of the underlying issues for why some of these countries have nuclear weapons. There’s a timeline, but when exactly that timeline begins, that’s what’s up in the air – and depends on both top leadership and the general public, so that the issue bubbles up to elected leaders who want their grandchildren to live, and who realize the insanity of nuclear weapons that can destroy the planet in 72 minutes.”

Thinking that the issue isn’t important just because it hasn’t happened yet is foolish, Hughes said. 

“We’ve just been really, really lucky. And that luck is going to run out eventually. It’s nuclear roulette. If you keep playing a game when there’s one out of however many bad outcomes, that outcome is going to happen. It’s just a matter of time. And roulette isn’t an accurate metaphor – because it’s not just you, your family, or even your nation, but the entire planet, for all of humanity. It’s preposterous.” 

Hughes said that NAPF doesn’t receive government grants, so events like the annual Evening for Peace are of great importance. 

“We essentially depend almost entirely on the generosity of donors. And I’m grateful that we do. It’s very hard to imagine an organization like this existing just about anywhere else but Santa Barbara because there is a culture of support for nonprofit work here. There’s a kind of communal spirit that has been so special to experience.”  

Reserve tickets or sponsorship for NAPF’s Evening for Peace by September 17.
Visit www.wagingpeace.org