‘Nobody else is paying attention’: New Spokane billboard warns of last U.S.-Russia nuclear arms treaty expiring Feb. 5

Around 20 people gathered on the corner of Market Street and Liberty Avenue on Wednesday afternoon, waving flags sporting rainbow colors, peace signs and doves holding olive branches.

With thick coats, hats and gloves, the mostly older crowd was braving the cold in attempts to bring awareness to the Feb. 5 expiration of the last nuclear arms treaty between the U.S. and Russia.

Four new billboards have cropped up around Washington, two in Seattle, one in Lakewood and one in Spokane, at the very corner people gathered. The boards urge passersby to tell their elected officials to take action.

“We had to do this because nobody else is paying attention,” said Rusty Nelson, a member of the Spokane Veterans for Peace group. “Our senators don’t talk about it. Our representative doesn’t talk about it. We don’t see anything about it in the mainstream media.”

The treaty in question is the New START Treaty, which limits the number of deployed nuclear warheads to 1,550 in each country, along with how many ballistic missiles and launchers they can maintain.

The regional coalition Northwest Against Nuclear Weapons sponsored the billboards through a crowdfunding campaign, program manager Sean Arent said.

“We don’t want to see another arms race,” Arent said. “Spokane has a large community of Marshall Islanders who were impacted (by bomb testing). Spokane has people impacted by Hanford (Nuclear Reservation) … Our whole nation bears the scars of the past arms race.”

Cheryl McDaniel was one speaker at the event Wednesday and a member of Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility. She used to sing opera before radiation-induced hypothyroidism degraded her voice, leading her to pursue nursing.

“Dr. Martin Luther King once said, and I quote, ‘There comes a time when silence is betrayal.’ To Rep. (Michael) Baumgartner, Sen. (Patty) Murray, and Sen. (Maria) Cantwell, I say, the New START treaty expires in 22 days,” she said. “The Russians have offered to keep the limits on deployed weapons. Your silence as our leaders is betrayal. We need your voices, all voices, our voices, to fight the threat of nuclear war.”

Russia stopped participating in New START in 2023 following the U.S. involvement in the Ukraine war, leading the U.S. to retaliate by withholding some previously required missile and launcher statuses and locations.

In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that the country is open to continuing observing the restrictions of the New START for an additional year, though U.S. President Donald Trump has since made comments to the New York Times that “if it expires, it expires,” adding that “we’ll just do a better agreement.”

Earlier this year, Trump proposed a 66% increase in military spending for 2027, which would bring the budget from $901 billion to $1.5 trillion.

U.S. Sen. Jim Risch , R-Idaho, spoke last month at a committee hearing called “Arms Race 2.0.” He said that Russia has historically used nuclear arms talks as a way of constraining U.S. policy towards Russia and pursuing concessions on other issues, while China is approaching having the same nuclear power as the U.S. The U.S. needs to “modernize the triad and re-establish a strong, credible deterrent,” Risch said.

“With New START expiring in February, we must seize this once-in-a-generation opportunity to lead on any new arms control negotiations with Russia,” Risch said at the time. “It’s time to move beyond blind faith in Putin and take the reins on our nuclear future.”

Spokane Veterans for Peace and the greater Northwest Against Nuclear Weapons do not share Risch’s sentiment.

Member of Spokane Veterans for Peace Hollis Higgins, who was holding two flags at the billboard event, said that he believes the only way to have safe nuclear weapons is to “ban them completely from the planet.”

Arent was less extreme, saying that he thinks the president should respond to Putin’s proposition to keep the New START restrictions for an additional year.

“To us, every nuclear weapon that isn’t made reduces the risk of accidents,” he said.

“We are just one computer glitch, human error or malevolent act away from a nuclear war,” Tom Charles with Spokane Veterans for Peace said. The billboards in Washington encourage viewers to visit NWANW.org, where they can contact members of congress.

“When we are out here, we’re out here in desperation. We’re out here because we got kids. I got grandkids,” Charles said. “What am I going to do? Turn my back on them? I don’t think so.”

McDaniel remained optimistic.

“As a nurse, I know that every single person matters, and I hope my words aren’t – My voice isn’t really strong, but my heart is really strong,” she said. “The power of love versus the love of power and money. And love will conquer. We conquered it for the last 70 years; we can do it again.”