Unlikely Saga of Great Peace March Nears Its Climax

The vision: That on March 1, 1986, 5,000 people would set out from Los Angeles for Washington, walking across the country for global nuclear disarmament. They would reach some 65 million Americans along the way, creating in them--and in the country and the world that watched--the moral and political climate necessary to bring about their goal.

Corporate donors and sophisticated merchandising would help finance the $20-million high-tech venture. Thousands would line the streets to welcome the marchers along the route and thousands more would visit the movable, solar-powered, mural-festooned, environment-friendly model community, Peace City. And, out there in m.o.n.--the middle of nowhere--the townsfolk of America would be educated about the arms race by marchers and visiting experts, and be entertained by celebrities ranging from Hollywood’s Establishment to its Brat Pack.

One hundred thousand would cheer their send - off at a rock concert at the L.A. Coliseum. One million would join them on the outskirts of Washington on Nov. 14, and march into the capital with them at sunrise. Then, having compiled a computerized list of 10 million names gathered across the country, the sponsoring organization, PROPeace (People Reaching Out for Peace), would be ready to call for massive civil disobedience, and to take the march overseas, if those drastic steps seemed necessary--in the words of PROPeace founder David Mixner--”to bring those suckers down.”

The reality: It was something else.

Try a vision like that in the America of the mid-’80s and this is what you get:

Money and people not forthcoming, about 1,200 marchers left Los Angeles from the steps of City Hall March 1, cheered on by about 6,000 well-wishers--the largest crowd the marchers have drawn to date. Two weeks later, PROPeace went bust in Barstow. Done in by grand dreams and a pile of debts, it was forced to pull out, leaving the marchers stranded on the edge of the Mojave, their numbers and supplies dwindling daily.

About 500 marchers regrouped as the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament. From their base in an auto graveyard in Barstow, they scrounged for money and supplies. Two weeks later, they took off across the Mojave desert for Las Vegas. Against all odds they made it across the country and will march into Washington on Saturday, on schedule.

About 400 have stuck it out the whole way. In the past two months, as they have passed through the populous Northeast, their ranks have grown steadily to an estimated 1,000.

Undersupplied and broke every step of the way, in the nation’s peripheral vision at best, forgotten by all but a few of Hollywood’s stars, depending on strangers for showers, and sometimes for meals and beds, disorganized and undisciplined--this is the march that has made it across the country.

“It is the closest thing to anarchy that works,” one marcher, Mordecai Roth, 66, a dentist from the San Fernando Valley, said of the march early on. It seems to have succeeded almost in spite of itself.

Doubtless no wagon train heading west ever looked less fit for the trip than the conglomeration of whimsically painted vans, trucks and old heaps that form the march’s supply convoy. The march itself is no lock-step operation led by oompah bands. Most of the time it’s barely a line at all, just a cluster of rugged individuals with flags, followed by stragglers stretched out for miles. The randomly pitched tents of Peace City bear little resemblance to the impressive color-coordinated mock-up plotted to the last meticulous detail in the days of the vision.

The march lost its middle-class image early on. And while the majority are dedicated people who really did take leaves of absence from schools and jobs, or were middle-class people in transition, ready for a change or retired, there are significant numbers of unkempt, strung-out, at times immodestly dressed, people from the fringes of society and beyond.

Their common and lofty goal has not united them. The most disciplined and unified among them are acknowledged, with appropriate irony, to be those young cultural anarchists who pitch their tents together around a black flag and call the spot Anarchy Village.

Ask who’s in charge and watch them laugh. The marchers have bucked attempts at authority and insisted on consensus for decision making in tortuous meetings that go on for days in uncomfortable surroundings.

In the process they have turned the focus of this march with a global goal inward to a degree that many have found disconcerting. As late as Pennsylvania, in the march’s final weeks, it was still possible to find those who, sounding greatly encouraged, would say, “You know, we’re finally beginning to learn how to live together here.”

Making Peace City work seemed more important than the larger issue for some marchers, and challenged all of them. “Peace City is some place to live. It’s harder than the march,” Elizabeth Vanek, a marcher from Palo Alto, on leave from Hewlitt-Packard Co., muttered one day in Heidelberg, Pa. “We can’t agree on anything except to knock at the Porta-Potty.”

It is easy to pile up negatives about the march. They are, however, inadequate measures to account for what did happen.

With more than 3,500 miles behind them, when the marchers reach Perry Hall, Md., today, they will have less than 50 miles to go. It is nothing less than amazing that midway through the 1980s hundreds of Americans, unorganized civilians, undertook this extraordinary journey on behalf of an abstract and lofty goal and persevered to the end.

And if their computerized list numbers 50,000 names rather than millions, they have nevertheless touched thousands along the way.

John Records, a lawyer from Oregon on the march with his wife and two children, is president and chairman of the march’s board of directors.

“It’s clear to me we’re part of something that is happening in this country,” he said one recent morning in Pennsylvania. “Maybe it’s a response to the excesses of Ronald Reagan, but something is happening. The march is having an acceptance and success almost puzzling given what I know of our shortcomings. People desperately want it to succeed.”

A Series of Goals

The goal remains global nuclear disarmament. In addition, they have singled out four others: a comprehensive test-ban treaty, a verifiable freeze on all nuclear weapons development, reduction to zero of existing stockpiles, the use of outer space for peaceful purposes only.

Lately they have been trying to assess their impact. It is no easy task, however, especially since being on the march wreaks havoc with any sense of perspective. John Records referred knowingly to this as “march myopia.” At times it is rampant.

Suggestions Listed

Last July in West Branch, Iowa, marchers began to brainstorm about what to do when they get to Washington, listing suggestions on oversized tablets propped up against the trees: commit civil disobedience, fast, camp in Lafayette Park across from the White House until Congress reconvened, keep on marching--back to California, to Europe, to the Soviet Union--or call it a day and go home.

It was one thing to be debating such things in July, but quite another to find the same meeting going on in a grassy field outside of Reading, Pa., in September, Washington just four weeks away. They seemed oblivious to the point of arrogance to such matters as time, calendars, permits, planning, or the fact they have an office in Washington and an advance team hard at work supposedly planning the events for them.

Allan Affeldt, who directs the Washington office, said he was given a free hand by the board. On a visit to the march in Ohio, he said recently, he saw that the marchers “would debate Washington until arrival.” Basically, he has been making an end run around the march ever since, obtaining sites, planning events, engaging speakers, staging actions, coordinating with peace groups.

Some of that myopia was evident as news of the Iceland summit went through Peace City like an electric current. They reacted to it as a crisis in progress. They held an emergency meeting in the morning and agreed to carry the flag upside down on that day’s march. They did it when told that was a symbol of international distress, but it angered some who argued that if the marchers had to be told what it meant, it would pointlessly confuse people driving by.

Paper Bags With Tears

One woman wanted them to march with paper bags over their heads, with tears drawn on them, so that they would be doing something dramatic. Jolene DeLisa from Honolulu found that preposterous and infuriating. “I already am doing something dramatic. I’m on this march,” she sputtered hours later in retelling the incident.

A delegation left by car for Washington that day “so that the march would be represented in whatever protest took place,” one marcher said. They drafted a statement for a press release, and some among them seemed to think the world press would be anxiously awaiting their reaction to the summit. They considered scrapping New York from their itinerary and heading directly for Washington to lobby Congress, until people began reminding each other they would find nobody home in Congress.

Some of the more politically sophisticated marchers with long histories in movement politics listened with sadness and amusement.

Dramatic Evidence

“My God, we can be an arrogant bunch,” one said. “As if it would matter to Congress if we showed up. They wouldn’t even notice.”

Iceland revealed more than myopia, however. It was dramatic evidence of the concern about the issues of the march that most marchers have sustained so relentlessly.

And if some are naive, others are sophisticated and focused. Three days after the summit ended, Mark Nairne, 25, of Hartford, Conn., had his work cut out for him. The march already had TBAG, he said--Test Ban Affinity Group. He was putting together SWAG--Stars Wars Affinity Group.

“We’re forming a core group. We’ll educate ourselves on Star Wars so that when we go out we can speak with authority. We’ll be putting out a newsletter with information and facts, getting people to lobby, write letters. Once the march is over, I have to get a job and start paying off college loans, but I want to keep working on this issue. Star Wars is the stumbling block.”

The marchers have not only been teaching; they have been learning. Crossing the country seems to have had a profound effect on them, especially seeing the depressed farm areas of the Midwest and the closed steel mills of Ohio and Pennsylvania. It has made the abstract goal of global nuclear disarmament concrete and linked it to other social and economic issues.

That has been the effect on Leslie Namasy, 23, of Long Beach. On leave from UC Irvine, she will not be returning to school when the march is over, she said recently. She has not figured her future out, other than knowing she wants to continue in social action work, she said.

Hunger, Homelessness Link

“Not just about nuclear disarmament, but how it relates to other issues,” she said. “One of the things I learned on the march is how it’s so related to hunger and homelessness. Even if the bombs are never used, they’re still hurting people because of the money they cost.”

Sister Dorothy Hennessy is a Franciscan nun from Iowa. At 73, she is so small and frail-looking from afar that it seems only her determined gait has kept her from blowing away on the march. Up close, the calm determination of her face comes through. She has not quit.

“It’s certainly different from what I envisioned,” Hennessy said of the march. “Coming out of the 54 years in a convent and hearing all those four-letter words was a big shock. I think I’ve grown to understand people better who have positions I would have condemned utterly before.”

Man’s $5 Donation

She told of a man she had met along the way who did not have much but pressed a $5 bill in her hand, and said, “That’s when I get the most touched--when the ‘widow’s mite’ people come along. So many people put so much hope in this march--I don’t know.”

The march may not have created a moral and political climate sufficient to end the arms race, but it has had that effect on many individuals. Of the hundreds of times marchers have gone into classrooms, churches, synagogues, club meetings, bars and homes or struck up any number of individual conversations, “sowing seeds for peace” they sometimes call it, there is already evidence that some of their seeds have taken root.

When they arrive in Washington among those joining them will be at least 200 supporters from California. Calls have been coming in to the march headquarters on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica, marcher Denee Jordan said, from peace contingents and church groups requesting housing and motel information. Also word has reached Santa Monica of chartered buses going to Washington from Utah, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa and Ohio.

Bob and Beth Walton of Warren, Ohio, will be there with their children, Stephanie, 8, and Ian, 4, just as they were in New York last month.

Background of Activism

Bob Walton is a dentist; Beth runs the bookstore they own. They are an affluent couple in their 30s who feel strongly about a number of issues and have been active in the past on behalf of civil rights and the ecology. They first encountered the peace march directly when it came through Warren and Paul Ziegler, a marcher from Los Angeles, came to speak to their congregation, Temple Beth Israel.

“Ziegler made a big impression on me,” Bob Walton said.

They both plan on becoming actively involved in the peace movement in Warren. In the meantime, they walked with the marchers one day in Warren, drove the next weekend to Pittsburgh and joined them again, then flew into New York for two days, walked, demonstrated and attended a march fund-raiser in Spanish Harlem, and found themselves in a subway tunnel late one Saturday night, tired kids in their arms, talking about the march while they waited for a train to take them back to their hotel.

“It’s not like I’m 33 and looking for a cause. Far from it. I hate the word cause . I’m not a hippie. I’m not part of that. I’m a completely straight, middle-of-the-road person,” Beth Walton said. But when she heard about the march, something clicked.

“When (the cause) comes to your back door in Warren, Ohio, it’s like, ‘Wow, this is the time.’ I mean to be actually doing something, not just constantly reading about it. It’s my children that got me to do something. I want to see them grow up. I want to have grandchildren. I’m worried.”

Meg Gage directs the Peace Development Fund in Amherst, Mass., a foundation that rescued the march early on by agreeing to pay the bill for the portable toilets for the duration of the march. In the business of making grants to grass-roots peace groups, she has been watching the effect of the march closely. She sees it as one step, she said, saying, “There’s probably not that much that any one of us can do. It’s what we can do together.”

The march did not become the national media event that had been envisioned, with nationwide network and mass media coverage. Only recently has it begun to enjoy that kind of press, but it has been a different kind of national story, winding up on the evening news and front pages of papers in small towns and cities across the country.

Papers in small cities in the Midwest ran photos across the front page of marchers carrying a banner proclaiming “The Soviets Have Stopped Testing Why Don’t We?” Inside there would be biographical sketches and picture spreads of marcher families, closeups of sore feet and tent life, the campsite. More than one peace movement activist has sensed the importance of this unprecedented happening.

Suspicions, Fears

“It’s had a terrific effect along the route,” Gage said. “It has moved people and mobilized them I think. It’s been a personalizing of the peace movement. It’s not anonymous now.”

She regreted, as have many activists, that the organized peace movement had not given more support to the march, although that has been changing. There were suspicions and fears that the march would tap into already limited financial resources, wounded feelings on both sides--some marchers giving the impression no one had gone before them in the peace movement; the peace movement giving marchers the impression the march was about as relevant as searching for El Dorado.

The movement has not come out in force. Slowly, groups seem to have been deciding that whatever its merits, it behooves peace groups now to get on board, make a showing and take advantage of it.

“I think it’ll be different in Washington,” Gage said. “They haven’t taken advantage of it. They’ve been the beneficiaries. It could really have an effect. People will be moved. It’s extraordinary what they’ve done.”

Over a late supper of Chinese food in Washington one night, Washington office director and marcher Allan Affeldt talked about his own love/hate relationship with the march. Then he made a stab at assessing its impact, seeing a combination of missed opportunities and real accomplishments that seem to characterize it. Had it been worth the effort?

Out of some conditioned reflex he reached for the fortune cookie by his plate, broke it open and fished out the little strip of paper. He gave a short yelp of laughter and said, “I rest my case.”

The fortune cookie: “You will never know until you try.”