Cornell College student fights nuclear weapon proliferation

CEDAR RAPIDS - Elissa Karim dreams of ridding the planet of nuclear weapons.

'For me, nuclear weapons combines political, social and economic issues,” said Karim, 19, a sophomore studying politics at Cornell College. 'Because you have a threat of deaths, political biases and the economic decisions made to spend money on them.”

Karim's anti-nuclear weapon stance started in elementary school.

'I remember learning about the bombings in Japan when I was 8 or 9, and talking to my dad about it. I wasn't able to understand, ‘why did we kill so many people,'” said Karim, who is from Nevada City, Calif.

Now, Karim is the president and founder of Cornell's chapter of the International Global Zero movement, which is dedicated to the elimination of nuclear weapons.

Karim said Global Zero was instrumental in securing last year's Iran nuclear deal, which ended years of economic sanctions in exchange for restrictions on Iran's nuclear program.

'We were really pushing for that deal, and Global Zero actually had a role in it,” she said. 'We talked to all of the congressmen who were going to vote for it, and that were on the fence. That is probably our biggest accomplishment, because that is an international deal.”

Last month, Karim and three other Cornell students traveled to Washington, D.C., where they joined 50 other Global Zero activists in protesting the Nuclear Security Summit. Karim said they wanted to send a message to President Barack Obama, as well as world leaders, that the global cache of 15,000 nuclear weapons jeopardizes security.

'I thought it went great,” she said. 'Our protest had a lot of media attention and later we went to the Capitol and talked in the Senate offices - just giving them some information. They were really receptive. They really recognized our movement, and it's good to have people champion for you in Congress.”

Lawmakers at the summit did express concerns with keeping the nuclear weapons away from terrorists, and argued against Obama's proposed $1 trillion plan to 'modernize” nuclear weapons.

'We were trying to tell them you need to put it on your agenda, and you need to discuss the threat of nuclear terrorism,” she said.

This isn't the first time Karim has traveled on behalf of Global Zero.

Last year, she went to New York City to protest and talk with politicians. And last summer, Global Zero sent her to Japan to attend the 70th anniversary commemoration of the bombing of Hiroshima, where she talked with survivors. Karim said the experience changed the way she thinks about nuclear weapons.

'I have always been angry at the political side of it, and how it was a choice to take away human life,” she said . 'Suddenly, I was like ‘Oh my gosh, I know what people were experiencing ... I know what people were doing underneath that mushroom cloud. It changes the color of the fight. I was politically angry, but now I'm emotionally angry and sad.”

In the future, she hopes to continue her activism work, or study and create foreign policy.