On April 1, 2010 Alan Khazei spoke to a gathering of Council for a Livable World and Center for Arms Control & Non-Proliferation supporters at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, MA.
Khazei is a citizen activist with a long history of public advocacy for progressive causes. Khazei is the founder of City Year, a organization dedicated to fostering public service among young people, and Be The Change, Inc, a group the creates national public awareness campaigns to build momentum for citizen service.
He is a founding member of Global Zero, an international membership organization dedicated to building momentum and providing a pragmatic blueprint for the eventual and total elimination of nuclear weapons.
In 2009, Khazei was a candidate for the U.S. Senate seat left open by the passing of progressive icon Sen. Edward Kennedy and received the enthusiastic endorsement of Council for a Livable World. Although Khazei was defeated in the Democratic primary, the grassroots enthusiasm and support generated by his dark-horse candidacy earned him widespread recognition as an emerging figure in progressive politics.
Addressing Council and Center activists at MIT, Khazei noted that the current political and policy environments present us with unprecedented opportunities in our effort to rid the world of the scourge of nuclear weapons. In President Barack Obama we have a genuine advocate of a nuclear weapons free world in the oval office. At the same time, in the past several years a clear bipartisan consensus in support of this vision has also arisen, crystallized most clearly in the statements of the “Four Horsemen” – former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger, George Schultz, Secretary of Defense William Perry and Senator Sam Nunn – and their unambiguous call for nuclear disarmament.
