What’s up with that cartoon billboard on 6th Ave. in Tacoma warning of nuclear weapons?
You might have seen the disconcerting, colorful billboard while driving down 6th Avenue in Tacoma.
The cartoon illustration shows what looks like a scared kid with an ice-cream cone standing next to weapons of mass destruction. On the bottom right, a map displays Tacoma’s proximity to “Subase Bangor,” also known as Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor.
“Did you know,” the billboard reads, “we’re only 34 miles from the largest concentration of deployed nukes in the world!” Below that: “Let’s abolish nuclear weapons.”
The billboard, near the Walgreen’s off 6th and Stevens, is part of an awareness effort by a Washington-based organization advocating for global peace. Finer print along the bottom of the sign reads: “Paid for by Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action.”
What is the group behind Tacoma’s anti-nuclear billboard?
Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action was founded in 1977, around the same time as construction of the Bangor Naval Base, according to its website. The organization wants the Earth to be “free from nuclear destruction and unjust division of humanity.”
Visiting the site, gzcenter.org, reveals that this isn’t the first time the group has tried to raise awareness via signage about nearby nuclear arms.
Another billboard nearly identical to the one in Tacoma cropped up in Kitsap County last year. That one pointed out Gorst’s 15-mile distance from the base.
Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action noted that the naval base houses eight of 14 “Trident nuclear-powered submarines” owned by the Navy, the group wrote in an August 2023 news release announcing the Kitsap display. The other six, they said, are deployed at Kings Bay, Georgia.
A single Trident submarine holds the catastrophic power of more than 1,200 Hiroshima bombs, according to the press release.
Pat Moriarty, the comic-book artist behind the billboard’s cartoon, sounded the alarm about the area’s proximity to nuclear weapons.
“I’d like to think if my neighbors knew, they would be concerned about getting rid of them,” he said in last August’s news release. “As a species we need to evolve past this mutual assured destruction mentality.
“It’s like the scariest staring contest you can imagine.”
Ground Zero previously helped raise a different billboard in Tacoma, per the release. The group teamed with the Catholic-peace organization Pax Christi USA on the sign, which featured a photo of a submarine and a quote from Pope Francis: “The use … and possession of nuclear weapons is immoral.”
