Endurance Activism: Transcontinental Walking, the Great Peace March and the Politics of Movement Culture

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Theses and Dissertations

Summer 2018

Endurance activism: transcontinental walking, the great peace march and the politics of movement culture

Dain TePoel University of Iowa

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Part of the American Studies Commons

This dissertation is available at Iowa Research Online: https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/6510

Recommended Citation TePoel, Dain. "Endurance activism: transcontinental walking, the great peace march and the politics of movement culture." PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) thesis, University of Iowa, 2018. https://doi.org/10.17077/etd.xvsbb29q

Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd Part of the American Studies Commons

ENDURANCE ACTIVISM: TRANSCONTINENTAL WALKING, THE GREAT PEACE MARCH AND THE POLITICS OF MOVEMENT CULTURE

Dain TePoel

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in American Studies in the Graduate College of The University of Iowa

August 2018

Thesis Supervisors: Associate Professor Thomas Oates Associate Professor Laura Rigal

DAIN TEPOEL

2018

Graduate College The University of Iowa Iowa City, Iowa

CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL

______

PH.D. THESIS

______

This is to certify that the Ph.D. thesis of

Dain TePoel has been approved by the Examining Committee for the thesis requirement for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in American Studies at the August 2018 graduation.

Thesis Committee: ______Thomas Oates, Thesis Supervisor

______Laura Rigal, Thesis Supervisor

______Susan Birrell

______Meenakshi Gigi Durham

______Catriona Parratt

To Meg, Lena, and June

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I could not have done this project without the support of my committee. Thank you to

Tom Oates, Laura Rigal, Susan Birrell, Gigi Durham, and Tina Parratt. As dissertation co-chairs

Tom and Laura allowed me time and space to grow as a researcher and writer. Their effort and help throughout has greatly improved my work, and I am grateful for their patience and flexibility. Thanks to Gigi for her incisive, emboldening comments and suggestions. Throughout my time at Iowa, Susan has been an excellent professor, mentor, and advisor. I will always appreciate the ease in which our conversations flowed between work, writing, life, family, and the day-to-day world. She and Tina offered a warm welcome to the program after my two years at Ohio State.

I would not have pursued a PhD without the introduction to the field, tremendous support, and excellent training that I received as a master’s student in Sport Humanities at Ohio

State. Sarah Fields is a consummate professor and advisor who has not ceased in her role providing me with guidance and thoughtful advice, when asked. Susan Bandy’s dedication to the development of her students and their preparation as future colleagues is unparalleled. Mel

Adelman pushed me as a new, nervous graduate student to dive right in and see myself as a scholar. You could never leave his office without a discussion of your five-year plan

(professional and otherwise). I also made lifelong friends at OSU. Endless thanks and love to

Andy Linden, Lindsay Parks Pieper, Melissa Wiser, Lauren Brown, and Kiernan Gordon. And even though they had graduated by the time I started, Ari de Wilde and Claire Williams welcomed me into the OSU fold as if we had been classmates and colleagues for years.

The “flash bulb” moment for this project took place late in January 2015 as I listened to

Miriam Kashia describe her experiences walking across the United States with the 2014 Great

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March for Climate Action. I am thankful to Miriam for educating me about her commitment, her work, and for introducing me to her network of activists. Though the Great March for Climate

Action did not ultimately become part of this dissertation, I look forward to continuing my research and writing about their efforts and climate change activism in the future.

I am indebted to each of my interview participants. They graciously shared their time, stories, and unique understandings of the complexities of taking part in a collective transcontinental walk for political action. I am grateful for the richness and texture they added to the study. I would like to extend a special thanks to Julia Gosztyla and the organizers of the

Great Peace March’s 30th reunion for allowing me to join them during their valued time together.

It was an amazing experience to be part of their community for a few days and get a little sense of what they call “march magic.”

Shortly before the reunion, I spent a week immersed in the Great Peace March records at the Swarthmore College Peace Collection and received invaluable assistance from Wendy

Chmielewski and Mary Beth Sigado. TC Mack – a best friend since our college days – and Laura

Gray Mack, also a dear friend, were gracious hosts during my time at Swarthmore despite the fact that they were brand-new parents. Thanks to the North American Society for Sport History

Dissertation Travel Grant for supporting this research, and to Kajsa Dalrymple and Lis Erickson for assistance with the IRB application process.

I wish to thank friends and classmates at Iowa for their solidarity at various stages of the process. The “Machines in the Garden” trivia crew provided much needed moments of laughter and levity, though I was too infrequent a participant. I am fortunate to have shared the joys, frustrations, workshops, and coffee shop crawls of the dissertation journey with Diane Williams,

Cathryn Lucas, Stacey Moultry, and Stephanie Grossnickle-Batterton. Thanks to Steph for being

iv an excellent office mate during our final semesters at Iowa, which coincidentally led us both to

Pennsylvania. Our conversations, in person or through text, were always reassuring.

I am so thankful for friends Deeann Grove and Paul Cork, and Heather and Josh

Helmich. The Helmich’s place was like a second home for our oldest daughter in the summer of

2017, and I am indebted to Heather for the many hours she watched Lena that allowed me to research and write. I am honored to call the Helmich’s friends. Deeann and Paul threw many an awesome party for the preschool and kindergarten set, and in between, somewhere along the way they became the kind of friends one needs to survive writing a dissertation. I owe Deeann special thanks for her encouragement on good days and difficult ones. She had an astonishing ability to provide whatever was needed when it was needed most – humor, empathy, motivation, or the bigger picture. I am also appreciative of my new colleagues in the Sport Studies Department at

Lock Haven University for their camaraderie, understanding, and support as I completed the dissertation.

My family has provided unwavering support throughout graduate school. The Williams family imparted steady support, goodwill, and confidence, for which I am grateful. My parents always encouraged me to pursue my dreams and never blinked when I embarked on a path that combined my passion for sports, and especially baseball, with my equally strong desire for learning, social change, and justice. They nurtured my interest in sport from a young age, and made tangible the connections between sport, family, community, culture, and society. They made tremendous sacrifices for my education, pushed me in moments of doubt, and had no small part in fostering my commitment to fairness and social justice. Thank you, mom and dad.

My brother Kyle has been a constant source of inspiration and is someone I truly admire.

Throughout my entire life he has, quite simply, been there for me in every sense of the phrase.

When we were little, I might protest when he’d had enough of backyard baseball and wanted to draw pictures of birds from his books. I don’t know when it happened, but I developed his affinity, appreciation, and concern for wildlife and the natural environment, though not a sliver of his knowledge, talent, or expertise. I do not have the words to thank him for all that he is and the ways he has supported, uplifted, and believed in me. I consider my sister-in-law Nicky a friend in many of the same ways. She went through medical school and residency while I toiled in graduate school, and I was revitalized by the times we were able to share our excitement, exhaustion, and a cold beer.

I owe everything to Meg, Lena, and June. Lena was just shy of her third birthday when I started at Ohio State. By then, she had already been our little partner-in-crime during the two years that Meg was working on her master’s degree. I always joked that as long as I earned my

PhD before Lena graduated from high school, we were good. She will never know how much she meant to me and inspired me throughout these years, as she’s grown from a little toddler filling my office walls with drawings to a wise-beyond-her-years 10-year-old helping me to see the finish line. June joined us midway through my second year at Ohio State. She too must have no idea the essential part she played in pushing me onward and filling me with resolve, her pictures joining Lena’s on the wall. Her hugs, squeezes, and smiles at daycare and Montessori drop-offs were frequently the boost that sent me on my way, too. To these two, my love and appreciation is boundless.

Finally, the fault is utterly my own if Meg is unaware of how much her love, patience, and companionship mean to me. Words are entirely insufficient to express my appreciation for her, and how she steered our ship through stormy seas and calm. I am eternally grateful that we get to build our dreams, pursue new adventures, and be together whatever life brings.

ABSTRACT

On March 1, 1986, 1,200 activists set out from Los Angeles on a walk across the United

States to call for an end to nuclear weapons. Within two weeks, a few hundred remained. They reorganized as the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament and successfully completed the nine-month, 3,325-mile walk to Washington, D.C. Two central questions guide this work: What is the relationship between long-distance walking and the politics of social movements? To what extent does “endurance” shape meanings of the March’s related but distinct goals: the building of a collective, or “prefigurative” community, and a mass movement capable of attaining mainstream media coverage and achieving concrete, or “strategic” political outcomes?

This study utilizes historical reconstruction, semi-structured interviews, and discourse analysis of print news media to apprehend different perspectives on long-distance walks and the

Great Peace March. This project provides a multilayered account of the historical and cultural roots of long-distance walks for sociopolitical change, the March’s origins and organization, marchers’ understandings of their participation, and media representations of the March. It also examines Jamie Schultz’s categorization of “physical activism” in combination with

“prefigurative politics,” of which Wini Breines claims the central task is to create and sustain within the live practice of the movement, relationships and political forms that ‘prefigur[e]’ and embody the desired society. The result is a more nuanced understanding of the ways physicality and endurance constitute a significant aspect of participation in social movements.

This dissertation conceptualizes “endurance activism” as the articulation of endurance physical feats with political activism. The Great Peace March illustrates how social movement participants undertook endurance actions to communicate arduous and strenuous work for the

vii cause. This project finds that endurance – physically, but also symbolically and metaphorically – signifies particular meanings of movement for social movements, such as persistence, focus, and determination to stretch limits and push boundaries. The marchers sought to accomplish a difficult physical challenge and maintain the solidarity of their community to analogize the coming into existence of their campaign’s equally extraordinary vision for denuclearization.

The marchers experienced and communicated endurance to stress their movement as an act that has no end, and to solidify perceptions of themselves as lifelong activists. Their emphasis on endurance highlights the importance of the means of lasting work for social and political change that are valued in and of themselves. This study finds that collective effort and striving are crucial qualities that build solidarity in social movements, while also signaling the necessity of ongoing work for the cause and the forging of another way forward.

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PUBLIC ABSTRACT

Walking and marches have a long history as popular tactics for activists and social movements. Even today, activists use walks and marches to protest or demonstrate a particular social or political position on an issue. Outside of a few often-cited famous examples, however, such as marches of the black freedom struggle to end segregation and ensure African Americans right to vote, what have these walks really accomplished? And why do activists continue to organize walks to demand change?

The prevailing assumption is that by walking, the people can represent the will of the public and call upon elected officials or other significant authorities to enact change. For this project, I researched the history of long-distance walking in the United States, interviewed 20 activists with the 1986 Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament, and analyzed hundreds of newspaper articles about the March. My study shows that media coverage focuses on the human interest and logistical aspects of long-distance marches, rather than the political message. Long-distance marches also rarely lead to direct social or political change.

Overall, however, this research indicates walking is important whether or not activists achieve their political goals. This is because walking on long-distance marches has significant impacts on those who march. Walking can help foster personal commitment and greater understandings of the issues for which the activists are marching. Walking, working, and living together over a long period of time also facilitates solidarity and creates enduring bonds among activists that frequently strengthen dedication to a cause.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES ...... xi INTRODUCTION FROM PHYSICAL ACTIVISM TO PARTICIPATORY ENDURANCE ACTIVISM: UNDERSTANDING THE GREAT PEACE MARCH ...... 1 CHAPTER 1 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES LONG-DISTANCE WALK AS ENDURANCE ACTIVISM ...... 30 CHAPTER 2 “THE GLITZ HAS GIVEN WAY TO THE GRASSROOTS”: THE ORIGINS OF THE GREAT PEACE MARCH FOR GLOBAL NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT ...... 70 CHAPTER 3 MEANING BY DOING: THE MAKING OF ENDURANCE ACTIVISM ON THE GREAT PEACE MARCH ...... 114 CHAPTER 4 COMMUNICATING ENDURANCE ACTIVISM: COMPETING PUBLIC NARRATIVES OF THE GREAT PEACE MARCH ...... 181 CONCLUSION ...... 252 APPENDIX A GREAT PEACE MARCH FOR GLOBAL NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT ORGANIZATIONAL TIMELINE ...... 261 APPENDIX B GREAT PEACE MARCH FOR GLOBAL NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT DEPARTMENTS ...... 263 APPENDIX C INTERVIEW GUIDE ...... 266 APPENDIX D INFORMATION LETTER ...... 269 APPENDIX E RECRUITMENT MESSAGE POSTED ON GREAT PEACE MARCH FACEBOOK SITE...... 271 APPENDIX F EMAIL SCRIPT TO RECRUIT PARTICIPANTS ...... 272 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 273

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 David Mixner announces the dissolution of PRO-Peace to gathered marchers at a campsite on Stoddard Wells Road, ten miles outside of Barstow, California...... 113

Figure 2 Marchers tear down tents as another marcher prepares to load gear onto a truck that will take equipment to the Great Peace March’s next site...... 119

Figure 3 The desert-like environment foregrounds marchers participating in one of many long planning meetings ...... 123

Figure 4 Rick Life helps Mike Walls treat a blister...... 126

Figure 5 Marchers adopted spontaneous, circular, and nonlinear practices to build connection and community in the wake of PRO-Peace’s disbandment ...... 130

Figure 6 Marchers gather for one of their many consensus meetings during the reorganization in Barstow ...... 134

Figure 7 A marcher finds a lamppost support as a dry spot to rest during a break from the walk ...... 138

Figure 8 Marchers contend with hot, humid, and shade-less walking ...... 139

Figure 10 Volunteers serve lunch to a long line of marchers near Davenport, Iowa ...... 143

Figure 11 The Great Peace March in City Mode ...... 158

Figure 12 The Great Peace March in Country Mode ...... 159

Figure 13 The Great Peace March near Loveland Pass at the Continental Divide in Keystone, Colorado ...... 161

Figure 14 Some of the marchers’ attire upset factions within the Great Peace March who wanted to present a mainstream image in City Mode ...... 164

Figure 15 Many Great Peace March sources posit that inner-cities and “ethnic” neighborhoods across the country were among the most supportive communities the march encountered ...... 170

Figure 16 A drawing by marcher Guy Colwell illustrates the hopeful outreach the Great Peace March conducted with farmers in the “Heartland.” ...... 173

Figure 17 A group of schoolchildren greets the march with signs and flags ...... 174

Figure 18 Many marchers expressed despair and a strengthened link between the Great Peace March and labor politics after witnessing economic deprivation in the Rust Belt ...... 176

Figure 19 The Great Peace March Daily Roundup, also referred to by the Media Department as a Press Release...... 208

Figure 20 Diane Clark served as the “Mayor” of Peace City ...... 215

Figure 21 Press releases promoted the Great Peace March’s occasional staging of dramatic street theater such as this “die-in” to promote a freeze on nuclear testing ...... 221

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INTRODUCTION FROM PHYSICAL ACTIVISM TO PARTICIPATORY ENDURANCE ACTIVISM: UNDERSTANDING THE GREAT PEACE MARCH

On March 1, 1986, 1,200 activists set out from Los Angeles on a nine-month, 3,325-mile walk across the United States to call for an end to nuclear weapons. Within two weeks their sponsoring organization had declared bankruptcy. A few hundred marchers remained and reorganized as the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament. During this period, marcher and philosophy professor Gary Stahl filed a report for the Washington Post from a campsite high in the California desert. Amid isolation and the uncertainties of the March’s transition from hierarchical, corporate leadership and centralized organization to spontaneous grassroots mobilization and decentralized authority, he and his fellow marchers had recently completed a 19-mile walk, enduring sandstorms and hours of pounding rain. Stahl claimed that this group of women, men and children aged between 10 months and 78 years were walking in order to “focus attention on the urgent need to eliminate nuclear weapons from the world.”1 With numb toes in soggy socks, blisters covering soft-soaked skin, and fingers too cold to maneuver coat buttons, Stahl reflected, “I am occasionally terrified to think that we have 37 weeks to go, walking 15 miles a day, six days a week” until reaching Washington D.C., the March’s ultimate destination.2

In his dispatch, Stahl agonizingly detailed the factors leading to his physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion. Days began with a 4:30 a.m. wake-up call and search for socks that slid under his sleeping pad. Marchers served one another breakfast in lines formed under the darkness-piercing light of a kitchen trailer. The whims of weather and idiosyncrasies of equipment complicated even the simplest of logistics. Keeping warm (or cool), fed, rested and

1 Gary Stahl, “Footsteps on the March Toward Peace,” Washington Post, March 23, 1986, K1. 2 Stahl, “Footsteps on the March,” K1. 1

even somewhat clean took up the entirety of a typical day. Odd times in between were filled with task force, outreach, and group facilitation meetings. But despite their dogged exertion, constant discomfort, and ceaseless negotiation, Stahl suggested the working professionals, indebted college kids, young families, poets, carpenters, teachers, children, and seniors who made up the

March walked with an overarching common purpose: the opportunity to speak with people face- to-face about the dire threat nuclear weapons posed to peace, justice, and survival.3 This was an opportunity they created through their collective acts of physical and symbolic endurance, which allowed them to amplify their position on nuclear weapons. Stahl’s description illustrates the centrality of walking and physical movement to the group’s ability to maintain solidarity and reinvent the March following its initial collapse.

Long-distance walks, which I define as those that cover hundreds or thousands of miles over a period of several weeks or months, provide scholars with extraordinary examples of human movement involving strength, stamina, persistence, commitment and resiliency that test the limits of mental and physical exertion. Further, they operate as mechanisms of physical expression intentionally designed to generate attention and circulate as newsworthy events. The

Peace Marchers’ dedication to a visionary politics and attempt to build a new world in the shell of the old exemplifies what Wini Breines’ popularized as “prefigurative politics.”4 The Great

Peace March also reflects Francesca Polletta’s contention that groups adopt participatory democratic practices and principles for strategic reasons in addition to their expressive or

3 Stahl, “Footsteps on the March,” K9. 4 For the coining of the term prefigurative politics, see Carl Boggs, “Marxism, Prefigurative Communism, and the Problem of Workers’ Control,” Radical America 11.6 (1977): 99-122. Sociologist Wini Breines popularized the term through analysis of movements in the 1960s, noting the decade’s “New Left” tried to create activist communities that endorsed participatory democracy while creating and sustaining “within the live practice of the movement, relationships and political forms that “prefigured” and embodied the desired society.” See Breines, “Community and Organization: The New Left and Michels’ ‘Iron Law,’” Social Problems 27.4 (1980): 419-429, and Community and Organization in the New Left: 1962-1968 (New York: Praeger, 1982), 46-66. 2

ideological values.5 Marchers walked, worked, and lived together on the March as they developed an internal structure that featured shared labor, decentralized authority, and decision- making through consensus-oriented processes. While marchers enacted values of equality, community, and democracy to live the type of society they envisioned on a larger scale, their efforts also produced benefits that served practical and strategic political goals. Not merely an expression of cultural or lifestyle preferences, the March’s participatory ethos increased solidarity that sustained the movement, facilitated diverse input that informed actions, outreach, and events, and helped train activists while creating mechanisms for further involvement.

Moreover, the long-distance walk is an under-examined social movement tactic. Its history presents alternative conceptualizations of the link between physical activity and political activism. Two central questions guide this work: What is the relationship between long-distance walking and the social movement politics of the Great Peace March? To what extent does

“endurance” shape meanings of what emerged as the March’s related but distinct goals: the building of a “prefigurative” community that tries to embody the better world within the operations of the movement, and a mass movement capable of attaining mainstream media coverage and achieving concrete, or “strategic” political outcomes? Jo Freeman and Victoria

Johnson claim the ways in which movements negotiate the tension between structure and spontaneity give a group or organization its “peculiar flavor.”6 Marchers’ literal movement accompanied shifting expectations and modified purposes as they balanced this core tension.

They reinvented the Great Peace March from an organization that emphasized structure and a single, strategic political objective to one that allowed greater latitude for spontaneity and

5 Francesca Polletta, Freedom is an Endless Meeting: Democracy in American Social Movements (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 2. 6 Jo Freeman and Victoria Johnson, Waves of Protest: Social Movements Since the Sixties (Lanham, MD: Roman and Littlefield, 1999), 1-2. 3

participation in deciding what the March stood for beyond the arms race. Physical and symbolic expressions of endurance activism sustained their vision of community, as well as the survival of their organization.

In this dissertation, I argue that the Great Peace March deployed a strategy of “endurance activism” in its pursuit of global nuclear disarmament and personal, communal, and political transformations. The Peace Marchers were not alone in combining opposition to nuclear weapons with a belief in the practices of nonviolence and decision making by consensus.

Barbara Epstein carefully illustrated how direct action movements of the 1970s and 1980s, ranging from the Clamshell Alliance and Abalone Alliance protests against nuclear power and nuclear weapons, to the peace, ecology, women’s, gay, lesbian, and anti-intervention movements, were often as much about efforts to realize radically egalitarian values as any particular issue.7 Further, the March was just one comparatively small and short-lived campaign among many during the 1980s that opposed the decade’s prevailing political tides. Bradford

Martin argues one of the key tactics of the 1980s opposition movement was playing defense to

“preserve the liberal and progressive gains” of the prior two decades, but the March was largely on the offensive, pushing for the elimination of nuclear weapons.8 The Peace March shared an affinity with other aspects movements in the 1980s though, such as an increasingly transnational sensibility, a reinvigoration of social conscience against the emphasis on personal responsibility, and the involvement of student activists, feminists, women, gays, and lesbians in key roles.9

The Great Peace March was also the beneficiary of an already active peace and antinuclear movement between 1981 and 1985 that Lawrence Wittner refers to as the “Revolt of

7 Barbara Epstein, Political Protest and Cultural Revolution: Nonviolent Direct Action in the 1970s and 1980s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 1. 8 Bradford Martin, The Other Eighties: A Secret History in the Age of Reagan (New York: Hill and Wang, 2011), x. 9 Martin, The Other Eighties, xi. 4

the Doves.” For example, membership in the leading national antinuclear organization, the

Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, had increased fourfold between 1983 and 1986, while the

Freeze Campaign endorsing a “freeze” on the development of nuclear weapons grew from 1,333 state and local affiliates in October 1984 to 1,824 in August 1986. As further illustration of the vitality of the movement at the time, test ban petitions signed by 1.2 million Americans were presented at the 1986 Geneva Summit by leading antinuclear activists. The period also featured an increase in nonviolent resistance at the Nevada Test Site, the grassroots efforts of scientists to reject funding tied to nuclear weapons research, and the denunciation of nuclear deterrence by national religious bodies. Additionally, over two dozen international unions supported a freeze on testing, and Women Strike for Peace and Mobilization for Survival led a large opposition to the Strategic Defense Initiative.10

These gains, in turn, had been influenced by organizations that were active during the

1970s, such as the American Friends Service Committee, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the

War Resisters League, and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Collectively, these and other groups attacked nuclear testing, criticized the “overkill” capacity of the United

States and Soviet Union, launched campaigns to foster arms control, and investigated contamination near nuclear weapons production facilities. They “reminded people of the existence of the Bomb” and raised the “salience of the nuclear issue among the general public,”

Wittner surmised.11

I focus, however, on marchers’ physical activities, particularly the intersection of walking with efforts for social or political change, which is largely missing from the social movement

10 Lawrence Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the Present (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 340-343. 11 Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition, 9-11, 21. 5

literature of the 1970s and 1980s, and under-theorized in accounts of the Great Peace March and prior instances of long-distance walks. In the introduction that follows, I examine the literature on “physical activism” and “endurance” in sport studies and the concept of prefigurative politics from social movement literature. Additionally, I discuss how the March and endurance activism draw upon and differentiate from other social movement strategies. Ultimately, I provide an interpretive theoretical framework for understanding various components of the Great Peace

March that together constitute the phenomenon of endurance activism.

Physical Activism

Lucy Barber’s history of marches on Washington begins with the first attempt by

“Coxey’s Army” of the unemployed in 1894, though her analysis does not foreground participants literal physical efforts. Rather, Barber centralizes the tactic as representing ordinary citizens’ involvement in national politics, the changing spatial politics of the capital, and the strategic uses of American citizenship.12 Further, Barber argues that Washington, D.C. is filled with spaces of “actual policy making and national symbolism,” making marching there a

“complex mixture of nationalistic, patriotic, and revolutionary performances and rhetoric.”13

Though by the late twentieth century the tactic had become conventional, covered formulaically if at all by the media, and constrained by negotiation and compromise between march organizers and authorities, public spaces in the District continue to symbolize a common meeting ground for people to assemble with hopes of shaping public policy and shifting public opinion.14 Barber

12 Lucy Barber, Marching on Washington: The Forging of An American Political Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 2. 13 Barber, Marching on Washington, 8-9. 14 Ibid., 222. 6

contends that though marches on the capital are less effective for seeking specific policy changes, they remain a useful way to confirm personal commitments and build movements.15

Barber links marching to citizenship, spatial politics, and efforts to influence national policy, but she elides analysis of the physical act of walking itself. Endurance activism is more closely related to and builds from Jaime Schultz’s designation of physical activism.16 Quite simply, physical activism is the articulation of physical activity and political activism. Schultz’s analysis of the suffragette hikes of 1912 and 1913 illustrates the synergy between long-distance walking and a specific political cause that justifies physical activism, not just marching on the capital, as a distinct form. The first march, a 170-mile walk of several women from New York

City to Albany, and the second, a 225-mile trek undertaken by 13 women to Washington, D.C., from Newark, New Jersey, were organized with an explicitly political intent: the women walked for the right to vote and the rights of full American citizenship. The “Hike to Albany” culminated in the presentation of a suffrage petition to governor-elect William L. Sulzer, while the latter hike joined a parade of over 5,000 women at the nation’s capital scheduled for the day before President Woodrow Wilson’s 1913 inauguration. While women were denied full citizenship, through the hikes the suffragettes exercised their right to assembly and free speech.

As part of the longer struggle for the right to the duties and obligations of full citizenship (albeit one still mired in gendered, racialized, class-based, and heteronormative dictates), “the women staked a symbolic claim on the polity” through their occupation of city streets and rural roads.

Physical activity was key to their claim on the public sphere; they were “in it to be of it.”17

15 Ibid., 227. 16 Jaime Schultz, “The Physical Is Political: Women’s Suffrage, Pilgrim Hikes and the Public Sphere,” The International Journal of the History of Sport 27.7 (2010): 1133-1153. 17 Schultz, “Physical Is Political,” 1134, 1142, 1133, 1135. 7

Three key characteristics illustrate the implications of physical activism – the articulation of the physical to political statements and campaigns – for this dissertation. Though perhaps taken for granted, the physical act is undertaken with the purpose of achieving the movement’s goal or objectives. Even if the act has no direct relationship to eventual political outcomes, the participants are walking for the attainment of the goals espoused by their cause. The embodied component of physical activity can provide an invigorating experience for activists in contrast to traditional tasks of lobbying, attending conventions, hosting social events, and pursuing other educational opportunities. Physical activity feels like working for a cause, not merely thinking or talking about it. For instance, hike leaders and organizers critiqued the National American

Woman Suffrage Association for a “conservative” campaign that had grown stale and lethargic.

The hikes were an inviting alternative from typical gatherings in meeting halls and parlors as suffragettes walked between 10 and 22 miles a day with periodic stops for lunch, dinner, tea, and speeches. They also had the opportunity to expand the movement’s reach, greeting passersby from the countryside and audiences in factories and schools. While providing a fresh tactic for the movement, the 200-mile-plus treks were also influenced by “their more active, sometimes militant, British sisters who pledged themselves to ‘deeds not words.’”18

The effort to attract and sustain media coverage for the cause as a result of the physical activity (i.e., long-distance walking) is a second significant component of physical activism.

Media coverage, with all of its attendant benefits and consequences, increases visibility for a movement and its cause. As Schultz illustrates, the suffragettes’ physical endurance feats were exploits designed to capture national attention through media coverage. Rosalie Jones and Ida

Craft, organizers of the 1912 hike, combined military and religious discourse to “emphasize the

18 Ibid., 1136, 1140. 8

fervor and dedication” marching suffragettes felt for their cause.19 Multiple military and religious signifiers illustrated the connection between the physical and political nature of the hike. Using ranks and titles such as General, Colonel, Corporal, Private, and Surgeon General, as well as having an “official scout,” “aide de camp,” and “war correspondent” drew further attention to their hike as a well-executed mission in pursuit of a strategic objective. Such fanfare also signaled their appeal for coverage in the press. To add to the novelty of upper class white women walking miles outdoors for two consecutive weeks, suffragettes adorned themselves with slogans, paraded through urban spaces, and gave open air speeches from horse-drawn wagons, automobiles, and trolley cars. In short, Schultz posits “they made spectacles of themselves and of suffrage.”20

The unconventional nature of the hikes substantially increased media coverage for the suffrage movement. The Woman Voter estimated the hikes raised $3 million in advertising, and moreover, that they had no rival in generating publicity. Narratives circulating within the press, however, highlighted the ideological battles at stake in fighting for the right to vote. They serve as a reminder to activists that press coverage, while providing important advertising for a campaign, also creates an arena for backlash and marginalization that reasserts a preference for the status quo. For example, press coverage amplified the position of Cardinal Gibbons in

Baltimore who considered the hikes “noisy, clamorous and spectacular,” in contrast with women who “know their place in sisterhood and service and uplift of the poor.” Some journalists admonished the women and their walking as variously mad, foolish and vain. A groundswell of opposition to the movement might flourish on the heels of negative coverage, and in the case of the suffragettes, a mob physically attacked and harassed demonstrators upon their arrival in

19 Ibid., 1140. 20 Ibid. 9

Washington.21 At the same time, the physical act creates meaning in the interaction between its performance and its articulation to media frames and a political cause.

Third, physical activism highlights the importance of combining work, and in this case physical work, with the desires of the cause. Physical activism stresses that it will take work to achieve results. While political issues serve as the occasion for the physical action, the physical action itself is no less important as Schultz argues the act would not have the same resonance if expressed in any other way.22 Physical activity, apart from the political message, inherently communicates messages about the individual bodies doing the action and the social identity categories which they represent. For example, Susan Cahn identifies the “unsteady tension between female athleticism and male-defined sport forms” as “a central thread in the history of women’s sport, illuminating not only women’s complicated standing in the athletic world but the vital interplay between sport and the surrounding culture.”23 Similarly, athletic forms of activism that complicate conventional spaces of politics have the potential to draw more attention to the relationship between physical activity and political action. Here, the suffragettes endured several criticisms: that they had abandoned the domestic sphere and threatened its safety; that they put themselves in harm’s way simply by being in the public sphere; and that they endangered themselves in a sustained and vigorous undertaking.24 Schultz persuasively delineates the ways these themes coalesced around gendered constructions of the women as mothers, sisters, and lovers who had abdicated their feminine roles and in turn needed protection from the public, political, environmental, and physical hazards they encountered.25

21 Ibid., 1133, 1145, 1134, 1146. 22 Ibid. 23 Susan Cahn, Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in Women’s Sport (Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 6. 24 Schultz, “Physical Is Political,” 1146-1147. 25 Ibid., 1147-1148. 10

In spite of hardships in weather, press ridicule, and the presence of occasionally hostile crowds, suffragettes completing long-distance walks debunked the myth of physical inferiority that had been used to justify disenfranchisement. Such adversities arguably made the hikes more newsworthy, but more importantly, the execution of long-distance hikes made sense as a political tactic to move the movement forward. Notably, Schultz maintains that physical activism gave participants a sense of agency, pride, and power during a time when few thought women were capable of such persistence and commitment. Concomitantly, the strenuous activity was central to increasing the visibility of the women’s suffrage campaign. Ultimately, Schultz’s analysis rests on the conclusion that “the body seems the most fundamental and perhaps the most underestimated possibility for enacting change,” and that “the concept of physical activism” may help shed light on “those situations through which to consider the power of corporeal action.”26

To summarize, I interpret physical activism as a lens to explore physicality as a deliberate mode of activism; physical feats performed with the intent of gaining media attention; and the importance of physical exertion to energize social movements and highlight the work of movement participants. Further, physical activism demonstrates the significance of human movement for communicating counter-narratives that challenge dominant ideologies, beliefs, and attitudes held by groups that oppose activists and a given cause. But as a social movement strategy, physical activism also contains limitations, exclusions, and hierarchies along lines of race, class, gender, and ability.

The freedom to walk safely for long distances in public spaces over extended periods of time, for example, resonates with white, male, able-bodied, heteronormative, and class-based privileges, enjoyed by those who can afford the time and expense without an accompanying fear

26 Ibid., 1135, 1149-1150. 11

of arrest, harassment, or violence. As Rebecca Solnit argues, “the streets are where people become the public and where their power resides,” though unequally.27 Women, for instance,

“have routinely been punished and intimidated for attempting the most simple of freedoms . . .

Legal measures, social mores subscribed to by both men and women, the threat implicit in sexual harassment, and rape itself have all limited women’s ability to walk where and when they wished.”28 L.A. Kauffman observed further that many black organizers were not interested in putting their “bodies on the line” in the name of nonviolent action on the heels of persistent arrests, beatings, and violent white resistance following the black freedom struggle of the 1950s and 1960s.29

A cursory look at the suffragette hikes illustrates some of the racial and class privileges accorded “physical activists.” Two southern businessmen threatened the suffrage “pilgrim hike” to D.C. with violence if they advocated for “negro” women’s votes. Schultz notes that many southerners in the National American Women Suffrage Association similarly objected to black women’s suffrage and an integrated march, and that no evidence suggests the hiking suffragettes solicited support from or reached out to African Americans.30 Class relations were also at issue, as the participants were primarily wealthy white women who could only symbolically align their walk with working women in American industry and manufacturing.31 Despite these flaws, the

1912 and 1913 hikes evince how physical activism can draw attention to interlocking social, economic, and political causes even as an effort promotes a single issue. The suffragette hikes

27 Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking (New York: Viking, 2000), 176. 28 Solnit, Wanderlust, 233-234. 29 L.A. Kauffman, Direct Action: Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism (New York: Verso, 2017), 29. 30 Schultz, “Physical Is Political,” 1144. 31 Ibid. 12

also demonstrate the potential of physical activism to generate productive outcomes for individual participants and their cause.

The Endurance in Endurance Activism

Endurance activism builds and extends from the three core threads of physical activism detailed in the preceding section. Endurance activism – the articulation of endurance physical feats with political activism – features intentionally longer, more difficult exploits that require active participation in an ongoing commitment which communicates and combines with arduous and strenuous work for the cause. Endurance activism taps into what Sarah Fields suggests is

Western culture’s fascination with the notion that “life and everything in it” is about the long haul, and that there is value in the “consistency of perpetual movement.”32 In a 2012 special forum on endurance in the Journal of Sport History, various sport historians offer their takes on the lasting legacies of endurance in an instant gratification society. They note the ways in which endurance reflects mental perseverance, the overcoming of physical challenges, and the unity of mind and body in competition.33 Frames of endurance link athletes to heroic narratives of successfully pushing boundaries.34

Endurance, symbolically, offers a repository of meanings (e.g., persistence, consistency, stamina, dedication) from which individuals and the media extend a feat that “no one else had done,” or at least, had not officially recorded, to another entity’s intangible, symbolic greatness, or limitless potential.35 For example, Theresa Walton and Susan Birrell demonstrate the symbolic linkage of Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay’s ascent of Mt. Everest in 1953 and Roger

32 Sarah K. Fields, “Commentary: The Allure of the Tortoise,” Journal of Sport History 39.2 (2012): 259. 33 Fields, “Allure,” 259. 34 All in the Journal of Sport History 39.2 (2012), see Theresa Walton and Susan Birrell, “Enduring Heroes: Hillary, Bannister, and the Epic Challenges of Human Exploration,” 211-226; Shelley Lucas, “Women’s Cycle Racing: Enduring Meanings,” 227-242; and Laura Chase, “Running with the Masses: A History of the Clydesdale Movement,” 243-258. 35 Fields, “Allure,” 260. 13

Bannister’s sub-four-minute mile in 1954. Public representations and media narratives assigned these “firsts” particular cultural meanings on behalf of “nationalistic impulses.”36 More specifically, the authors reason the events “gave hope to [Britain] badly shaken by world events that were ushering in a new world order.”37 Heroic exploration symbolized determination and courage as major parts of British national identity.38 New Zealand’s Prime Minister S.G. Holland declared Hillary’s success a “terrific example of tenacity, spirit of endurance and fortitude,” and regarded it as a “symbol that there are no heights or difficulties which the British people cannot overcome.”39 The race for the fastest mile also has special resonance as a British creation primarily contested by subjects within the diaspora, with Bannister’s record a “reflection of

English dominance and influence.” In searching for the boundaries of his own endurance,

Bannister’s record-setting was heralded in the press as bringing a “patriotic glow” and “glory” to

Britain. Unfortunately, this splendor was steeped in colonial power and exclusions along lines of race, ethnicity, gender, and class.40

Walton and Birrell cogently argue that we know of these achievements through the intertextuality of their representations. Such narratives relied on interlocking meanings of endurance, physical prowess, earthly conquest, and mastery of the flesh, and made sense of these triumphs as regenerating national pride.41 Though not all athletes witness such an external extrapolation of meaning from their endurance exploits, many like Hillary, Tenzing, and

Bannister might experience an intense aggrandization of meaning in connecting their achievement to something on a deeper level. Coupled with risk, danger, difficulty, and a lack of

36 Walton and Birrell, “Enduring Heroes,” 211. 37 Ibid., 213. 38 Ibid. 39 “The Crowning Glory—Everest is Conquered!” Daily Mail (London), June 2, 1953, 1. 40 Walton and Birrell, “Enduring Heroes,” 213, 213-216, 217-222. 41 Ibid., 213-217. 14

clear precedence, endurance feats are often construed as having far-reaching implications – for the individual and the world. For example, Hillary understood his and Tenzing’s expedition as

“an effort by mankind as a whole.”42

Similarly, I contend that endurance activists seek to accomplish a challenging physical endeavor to analogize the coming into existence of a campaign’s equally extraordinary social or political vision of change or transformation. Themes of overcoming adversity, pushing boundaries, persistence, universality, and the need to do what no one has done before are important for understanding how meanings of endurance inform the Great Peace March’s walk across the United States. Specifically, the March drew upon the significance not of a “first ever” endurance event, but one unsurpassed in its size, duration, and distance. Marchers claimed they were the largest group of people ever to walk across the United States for a socio-political cause.

Moreover, achieving and communicating the arduous journey were crucial tasks that allowed the

March to link the walk to their broader objective. Their goal was something that, despite four decades of prior activism, had also never been achieved – the elimination of nuclear weapons.

By making concrete and tangible something previously unimaginable, or at least un-attempted, remarkable endurance feats push a limit to envisage the existence of other seemingly impossible desires.

As with physical activism, participants gain a sense of empowerment and agency from taking part regardless of political success. For some, however, endurance physical activities restrict opportunities for participation and replicate the aforementioned inequalities related to long-distance walking. Within the sport of cycling, for instance, distances for men’s and women’s road racing differ greatly and acquire vastly different meanings. Examining meanings

42 “Conqueror of Everest Visits Headquarters,” United Nations Bulletin, February 15, 1954, 153. 15

of distance races among organizers, promoters, athletes, and cycling’s governing bodies between the 1950s and 1990s, Shelley Lucas contends that “distance” in the context of women’s races corresponds with stereotypical understandings of women’s inferior stamina, strength, speed, and aggressiveness.43 Relatedly, while marathon running bifurcated in the 1970s into separate races for elite runners and fitness runners, organizers had initially restricted women from competition.44 During the US “running boom” between the 1970s and 1990s, men and women with varying body types, sizes, and shapes started running or jogging, and often they entered marathons not to compete, but to participate.45 Age, weight, and sex divisions, though met with some resistance by organizers, were created to “provide a fairer playing field for runners.”46

Laura Chase’s analysis of weight divisions, however, indicates a struggle for mainstream acceptance and an absence of women from organizational leadership and participation in historical records.47

William Bridel, Pirkko Markula and Jim Denison’s edited collection Endurance Running is another anchor of the sport literature on endurance.48 The authors state the general objective of the collection is “understanding the concept and meaning of endurance historically and in contemporary times.”49 Given that the number of people finishing marathons in the United States tripled between 1980 and 2007, and the explosion of popularity in adventure races and obstacle course events such as the “Tough Mudder,” most of the contributions center on how running has linked endurance with elite athletes, neophytes, and everyone else in between.50

43 Lucas, “Women’s Cycle Racing,” 227. 44 Chase, “Running with the Masses,” 245. 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid., 248. 47 Ibid., 255. 48 William Bridel, Pirkko Markula and Jim Denison, Endurance Running: A Socio-cultural Examination (London: Routledge, 2016). 49 Bridel et al., Endurance Running, 1. 50 Ibid., 2. 16

Of the collection’s fourteen main chapters, only one, by Mary Louise Adams, takes walking as its point of departure.51 Because of the links between the concept of athletic endurance and religious, cultural, scientific, and aesthetic discourses that have racial and imperial underpinnings, Adams notes that endurance has been an ambivalent means of differentiating bodies and their capacities. Remarkable feats of endurance could either be lauded or derided. She identifies a myriad of scholarly explanations for the rise of endurance sports among contemporary white middle classes, including that they function as a response to middle- class malaise, communicate neoliberal notions of success, discipline bodies, and showcase the ascendance of the health-conscious citizen.52

Critically, Adams identifies shifts in meanings of endurance. She observes that the kinds of ideological work performances of endurance accomplish circulate well beyond sport.53 The key questions then, are “which experiences, which understandings, which people are made visible, and which are obscured through the celebration of endurance as it is expressed through sport? How has the historical celebration of endurance in sport influenced or been influenced by understandings of endurance in other contexts?”54 This dissertation takes up those questions by addressing the ways understandings of endurance influenced and were applied to the non-sport context of antinuclear activism.

Here, another important distinction must be made relating to the connection of physical activity and health with the non-sport contexts of charitable and philanthropic causes. Samantha

51 Mary Louise Adams, “‘Astounding Exploits’ and ‘Laborious Undertakings’: Nineteenth-century Pedestrianism and the Cultural Meanings of Endurance,” in Endurance Running, ed. William Bridel, Pirkko Markula, and Jim Denison (London: Routledge, 2016), 19-34. 52 Adams, “Astounding Exploits,” 19. 53 Ibid., 20. 54 Ibid., 21. 17

King’s work is particularly influential in this regard.55 The 1980s, she argues, witnessed a plethora of running events organized for charitable fundraising as part and parcel of the running boom in its connection to the privatization of health care and health research. King argues that

“running for a cause” produced a new kind of North American citizen, one which combined the imperative for people to take responsibility for their own health through activities such as running with the idea that private donations and corporate giving offered the path towards a cure for cancer. This individual onus, she argued, obscured the role of, or need for, governmental support.56

In Pink Ribbons, Inc., King argues that the development of consumer-oriented philanthropic solutions to social problems, and the myriad techniques soliciting corporate and individual donations of time and money, has helped “fashion a far-reaching constriction of public life, of the meaning of citizenship and political action, and notions of responsibility and generosity.”57 The emergence, popularity, and ubiquity of breast cancer consumerism, she warns, tells “a story about American culture,” namely its individualist, consumerist orientation towards enacting social change.58 By contrast, what was at stake for the Great Peace Marchers was the assertion of a revitalized, radical citizenry’s involvement in US politics and democracy.

Endurance activism attracts media coverage and traffics in the positives and negatives of mainstream media coverage. What distinguishes endurance activism from physical activism are the qualities of endurance linked to the movement, namely, that endurance connotes an act that endures and has no end, and that participants possess the endurance to continue the work. This

55 Samantha King, “Doing Good by Running Well: Breast Cancer, the Race for the Cure, and New Technologies of Ethical Citizenship,” in Foucault, Cultural Studies, and Governmentality, ed. Jack Z Bratich, Cameron McCarthy, and Jeremy Packer (New York: SUNY Press, 2003), 295-316; and Pink Ribbons, Inc.: Breast Cancer and the Politics of Philanthropy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006). 56 Ibid. 57 King, Pink Ribbons, xi. 58 Ibid. 18

emphasis on endurance highlights the importance of the means and the processes of enduring work for social and political change that are valued in and of themselves. Because endurance activism is sustained over a long period of time, and desires wider social and political change or transformation, the collective effort is a crucial component distinguishing the concept.

To summarize, the literature on endurance demonstrates that themes of adversity, suffering, and perseverance conjoin mediated representations of walkers and runners to dominant ideological frameworks of gender, race, national identity, and consumerism. But these meanings have also been employed to produce intersectional identity analyses, the perceived subversion of gender norms, and challenges to sport as a white, male, hetero preserve. Pushing bodily limits, even those of “non-elite” bodies, traffics in discourses of high-performance and the means of bringing about an optimal functional state.59 Pain, and the ability to endure, tolerate, or overcome it, appears to be a central part of an endurance ethos of doing something that “hurts so it feels good.”60 These meanings are potentially insightful alongside a consideration of the Great Peace

March, as marchers sought to operationalize their willingness to experience suffering for their cause.

A discussion of endurance, finally, carries with it a discussion of privilege, especially insofar as the boom in long-distance hiking and marathon running beginning around 1970 contextualizes the emergence of the Great Peace March.61 Many endurance events are leisure

59 William Bridel and Genevieve Rail, “Sport, Sexuality, and the Production of (Resistant) Bodies: De-/re- /constructing the Meanings of Gay Male Marathon Corporeality,” Sociology of Sport Journal 24 (2007): 135. 60 Bridel et al., Endurance Running, 6. 61 Long-distance hiking becomes a significant fad, specifically in relation to hiking the Appalachian Trail. See Adam Berg, “‘To Conquer Myself’: The New Strenuosity and the Emergence of ‘Thru-Hiking’ on the Appalachian Trail,” Journal of Sport History 42.1 (2015): 1-19, and Kristi Fondren, Walking on the Wild Side: Long-Distance Hiking on the Appalachian Trail (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2016), 4. For a discussion of the running boom in the 1970s, see Darcy Plymire, “Positive Addiction: Running and Human Potential in the 1970s,” Journal of Sport History 31.3 (2004): 297-315; and Aaron Haberman, “Thousands of Solitary Runners Come Together: Individualism and Communitarianism in the 1970s Running Boom,” Journal of Sport History 44.1 (2017): 35-49. 19

activities requiring both a wealth of time and money to cover travel, training, equipment costs, specialized gear, and registration fees. Moreover, endurance sports and athletics frequently require access to expensive technologies, as well as the knowledge and skill to make effective use of them.62 In fact, considering traditional restrictions of race, nationality, gender, ability, and weight-based discrimination, the history of endurance sports does not entirely bode well as a site for mass participation and inclusivity – whether in the name of sport for sports sake, or for a political cause. Yet, the Great Peace March is precisely different from the long-distance hike and marathon phenomena because the march was not an individualist act to set a personal record or

“conquer” nature; rather, it was a collective, participatory form of endurance activism.

Endurance feats continue to inspire those who aspire to or identify with the role of the underdog. As Fields suggests, though most people do not have bulging biceps, toned bodies, breathtaking speed, or spectacular agility, they can seek to achieve greatness through focus and determination.63 Further, as Bridel, Denison, and Markula propose, endurance can be complex, nuanced, and multifaceted, linking bodies with their social and cultural contexts, their sensorial, discursive, and biological domains, and relationships to space, nature, and movement.64 It is through these more dense, intricate complexities that I argue activists with the March operationalized meanings of endurance in the context of the nuclear arms race, hoping their slow and steady tortoise-like approach could tame the hare’s pace of nuclear proliferation.

Endurance activism provides a new categorization because it is not the physical act alone that links to the political activism or strategy. The physical and symbolic resonance of endurance and collective striving signals the necessity of ongoing work for the cause, and also the building

62 Fields, “Allure,” 262. 63 Ibid., 263. 64 Bridel, Denison, and Markula, Endurance Running, 247. 20

and forging of another way forward. As such, prefigurative politics is a central factor of endurance activism for the stress it places on the participation of every member in the community, and on the commitment to building the new society within the live practices of the movement.

Prefigurative Politics and Endurance Activism

While offering a new lens to interpret and examine the interplay between physical activity and political activism, endurance activism shares similarities with other social movement strategies, most centrally prefigurative politics, which Wini Breines contends is characterized by participants’ deep desire for community and democratic participation.65 Further, prefiguration seeks the participation of everyone in the group, is a rejection of the separation of people from decisions that directly affect their lives, and entails an emphasis on the process of radical transformation.66 While prefigurative politics is an important part of endurance activism, endurance activism contributes to an alternative expression of prefigurative politics. Engagement in endurance physical actions can provide a means for direct participation in both democratic processes and the formation of community.

Participatory democracy serves as an ideal and organizational model for prefigurative political communities that value the independence of ordinary people to share in the responsibility for decision-making processes that determine the quality and direction of their lives.67 It is an assertion that society should be organized to encourage independence and provide for common participation. Those committed to prefigurative politics work for social and political change, but they are also attracted by the opportunity to make use of their lives in working for a

65 Breines, Community and Organization, 46-47. 66 Ibid., 57. 67 Ibid. 21

cause while making real changes in themselves and changes to the way people relate to each other in building community. Endurance activism illuminates the ways that prefigurative movements have “to continually regenerate and communicate” themselves to others.68

Participatory physical endurance actions are a key ingredient in the work of continually reviving and communicating the movement.

Endurance activism fits with prefigurative politics as both seek to redress a social or political grievance while simultaneously building within the movement a community marked by egalitarian principles and human relatedness. They are strategies for social change through the transformation of relations with social institutions and within the movement itself. Endurance activism is a tactic for embodying the politics of prefiguration with active participation in the political formation at its root. It marks an attempt to hold the tension between achieving specific, strategic political objectives and the ongoing project of prefiguring future social transformation.

A major challenge lies in translating prefigurative politics into organizational mechanisms and forms, as well as communicating a clear strategy and outcomes.

Endurance activism thus centralizes prefigurative politics but does not preclude efforts for strategic gains. It is less clear, however, for how prefiguration leads to structural change.

Given the enormity of the tasks prefigurative groups and endurance activists take on, their methods can make them appear fragile and too un-instrumental to be taken seriously as

“realistic” political actors. Indeed, scholars, including Breines, posit critiques of participatory democracy and prefigurative politics, such as the fact that their practices often do not function well in large groups. These scholars claim that some activists take on prefiguration to establish a political identity separate from strategic considerations, leading to an inward-looking quality of

68 Ibid., 48. 22

activism. Moreover, L.A. Kauffman suggests that in the 1980s it took a great deal of education to propagate the unconventional model. Participants often learned about consensus processes and egalitarianism in several hours-long trainings and read handbooks on structures, roles, and expectations. Further, arduous planning after days-long consensus meetings could be abandoned by a small group of individuals that disagreed or acted on their own.69

The rhetoric and espousal of egalitarian principles and human relations does not guarantee their actual practice. These formations, to be effective, often require being scaled to appropriate sizes and forms. These realizations demand a sober evaluation and assessment of prefigurative politics and participatory democracy, but critique does not mean a rejection altogether. Prefigurative politics and endurance activism promise community and meaning through collective struggle and participation. They also are an important attempt to close the gap between a movement’s means and ends, so as not to replicate the inequalities and oppressive structures they seek to transform.

The linkage of physical movement and endurance actions to central messages characterizing the group’s political statement distinguish endurance activism as a social movement strategy. Endurance activists make use of physically active bodies as a communication vehicle to try command media attention at given geographical locations over different periods of time. While endurance activism does not escape media frames that delegitimize social movements, endurance activists seek to use their physical feats and symbolic associations with endurance to generate counter-narratives that challenge dominant understandings of their movement and cause. Moreover, this strategy attracts participants

69 Breines, Community and Organization, 52-56; Polletta, Freedom is an Endless Meeting, 8; Kauffman, Direct Action, 58-64, 155-170, among others. 23

seeking an alternative means of engaging in political activity, while in turn, the physicality of endurance activism can energize participants in the movement.

The strategy of endurance activism is also distinguished through its hybridity of prefigurative, strategic, and mass mobilization politics. Breines defines strategic politics as the commitment to building organization in order to achieve major structural changes in the political, economic, and social orders, while Freeman and Johnson claim the desire to spread a movement’s message makes the common actions of participants possible. They contend “there is a reason [that] social movements are called ‘movements.’ Without the missionary impulse they do not move.”70 Moreover, Freeman and Johnson distinguish two uses of “movement”: one indicates mobilization and organization of large numbers of people to pursue a common cause, while the other connotes the community of believers created by that mobilization. The first relates to groups with a short-term goal, but the second meaning speaks to the movement continuing after the inevitable decline, which may provide resources and ideas for a new generation of movement activists.71

Endurance activism contributes differing modes of involvement to these discussions about the “movement” of social movements’ strategic goals, mass mobilization, and the building of community. Those who participate in endurance activism become part of a community in motion grappling with the tension between prefigurative impulses and the strategic aims related to the political issue that brought them together in the first place. Organizations associated with a wider social movement might sponsor endurance activism campaigns – for instance, in the early

1960s, the Committee for Nonviolent Action initiated the San Francisco to Moscow March for

Peace and the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace. But the individual mobile

70 Breines, Community and Organization, 7; Freeman and Johnson, Waves of Protest, 3. 71 Freeman and Johnson, Waves of Protest, 3. 24

groups in effect become a separate entity through the nature of their activity, negotiating community, strategy, and mobilization along their routes. On the Great Peace March, endurance activism integrated goals of mass mobilization and maintenance of the long-term community through physical movement within the social movement. Thus, endurance activism campaigns are a unique site from which to analyze the conflict between prefigurative and strategic politics, and the internal and external factors that complicate attempts to communicate messages, visions, and goals.

The Great Peace March is an instructive case study for the analysis of endurance activism because it was the largest group in United States history to attempt and complete a transcontinental walk for a social and political cause. As mentioned, the March began with 1,200 people and ultimately consisted of a core group estimated between 400 to 500 that completed the entire journey. Their numbers were in flux throughout, of course, and at times the March dipped below 100 marchers actually walking. At other moments, however, the March swelled to thousands of participants, briefly enlarged by those joining temporarily for a parade or rally.

While the exact number of participants remained fluid, the significant size of the March matters because it illustrates the attraction of endurance activism as an entrée for many into the work of political activism.

The March is also a useful case study because Great Peace March publications, newsletters, mission statements and the like highlight their walk as a continuation of the legacy of other notable walks by social movement actors, namely those of the 1960s civil rights movement, and as emulation of Gandhian principles of nonviolence. It is not so much that they adopted or mimicked these strategies that is important. Rather, that they sought carefully and intentionally to communicate them makes the March an instructive example for understanding

how endurance activism expresses symbolic meanings of the willingness to make sacrifices and experience hardship to keep a movement going. The Great Peace March emphasized the painstaking work required to maintain their campsites, mobile city, and strategic outreach, as well as the at times exhausting dedication and commitment demanded by prefigurative political practices and forms. In addition to legitimizing their efforts by reference to political walks in the past, the March positioned its walk as a spectacle worthy of media coverage that would allow them to raise awareness of the dangers of nuclear weapons and reinvigorate the movement for nuclear disarmament. As such, the March provides a rich site for analysis of the messages and meanings of endurance activism as portrayed by the mainstream press. Finally, the March left extensive records and many marchers are still alive to discuss the march and its strategies.

Endurance activism also provides a lens through which to analyze and interpret how the physical and mobile nature of the march constituted the complexities of the March’s complementary but competing prefigurative and strategic goals. Marchers made endurance a political statement for global nuclear disarmament, specifically, that physical hardship, suffering, and difficult experiences were necessary to attain such a world. But they also strove to build and sustain a prefigurative community characterized by participatory democracy and physically demanding endurance activities. Endurance activism offers the framework necessary to examine the Great Peace March as a microcosm for pursuing personal, social, communal, and political transformations through the enduring collective striving they enacted.

Chapters

My dissertation approaches the topics of long-distance walking and activism by drawing from American studies, sport studies, media studies, cultural studies, social movement studies, and nineteenth-century American history, as well as popular and scholarly works on the subject

of walking. In researching this dissertation, I have drawn upon three different methods – historical reconstruction, semi-structured interviews, and discourse analysis of print news media

– as a means of understanding long-distance walks, and specifically, the Great Peace March of

1986. Together, these techniques provide a multilayered account of the March’s origins and organization, of marchers’ experiences and understandings of their participation, and of media representations of the March. Having analyzed exclusively the Great Peace March, I cannot generalize widely about this march’s experiences and history for other long-distance marches, much less for all social movements that involve endurance activism. Though some of the theoretical insights from this analysis may be transferable to thinking about the contexts and dynamics of other marches, my central task here is to critically analyze the Great Peace March relative to my questions about the value and values of endurance-based forms of social activism.

In the first chapter, I argue that long-distance walks, as they emerged in the United States, have been historically imbued with cultural identifications and meanings that the Great Peace

March operationalized in its deployment of endurance activism. These identifications include the association of walking with innocence, virtuosity, interaction, and engagement, as well as the linking of the long-distance walks as a ritual connected with progress, endless possibility, the search for cultural and national identity, and the “unification” of America. The chapter illustrates precedence for the use of long-distance walks as an opportunity to communicate wider messages to and about an imaginary, unified “America.” This chapter is especially important for illustrating the historical roots of cultural signifiers of endurance activism that were later attached to the March’s political statements and campaign. The longer history of walks for social and political change illuminates the Great Peace March’s claim for legitimacy, and the ways the organization sought to extend that legacy.

In Chapter Two, I situate and contextualize the origins of the Great Peace March in the rise of celebrity activism in the early 1980s. The chapter provides an analysis of the March’s founding organization, People Reaching Out for Peace, or simply PRO-Peace, which hoped the

March would be a 5,000-strong, multimillion dollar mass media spectacle mobilizing a nationwide movement to “take down the bombs.” As this chapter will show, the dream of a celebrity-fueled movement had, in fact, been shattered before the march left Los Angeles.

Instead, as the marchers looked toward the Mojave Desert, they would have to rely on their physical endurance both to sustain their march and to gain the attention they needed to spread their message. This chapter is core for elaborating the idea of endurance activism as a key aspect the original organizer’s vision for the March. Further, this chapter demonstrates the desire to attract media coverage as a central tenet of endurance activism, and the assessment by endurance activist organizers that media visibility is necessary for success. The Great Peace March extended this ploy by combining long-distance walking with the attempt to use celebrity support to create a media spectacle.

While the first two chapters explore how walking is permeated and saturated with cultural and historical meanings, and how PRO-Peace and then the Great Peace March tapped into and modified those meanings, Chapter Three develops the dissertation’s core thesis – that activists on the march drew from and communicated their reserves of physical endurance and mental stamina, defining endurance activism in the process of remaking PRO-Peace into the

Great Peace March. More specifically, I focus on something largely missing from the relatively scarce scholarship on long-distance walks for social and political change: marchers’ physical, mental, and emotional experiences of walking, being, and doing. The analysis in this chapter is critical for the ways it demonstrates modes of walking (or not) on the March illustrated the

politics of walking as activism, and the way that styles of walking similarly constructed marcher identities and divisions. This chapter explores how walking, endurance, image, and marchers’ collective and individual expressions of physicality were all intimately tied up together in debates and divisions over marcher identities, organization, strategy, prefiguration, and the purpose of the Great Peace March.

Beginning with a discussion of the social movement and media contexts in which the

March took place, Chapter Four identifies strategies the Great Peace March Media Department and Board of Directors used to attract media attention. These strategies primarily relied on framing the March as a polite, middle-class movement, in a reiteration of the approaches taken by the antinuclear movement during that period. But the March also relied on its own sacrifice and commitment, or endurance activism, to make the case that they were worthy of coverage.

The chapter then elaborates the actual patterns of press coverage, and analyzes the strengths, weaknesses, successes, and failures of their approaches. Together, the four newspapers I analyze

– the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, New York Times and Washington Post – illustrate the ways the March occasionally existed “as news,” but mostly remained on the margins, where activists’ experiences inflected the values and meanings of their endurance activity. This chapter stresses how the March rather unsuccessfully combined strategies of professionalism and pragmatism with endurance activism in an attempt to show that ordinary Americans comprising the “polite” antinuclear movement were willing to do more and go further to eliminate nuclear weapons. The frames adopted by the press suggest that endurance activism does not draw as much attention to organizers’ political mission as it does assimilate endurance activists into prevailing world views and nonthreatening political positions.

CHAPTER 1 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES LONG-DISTANCE WALK AS ENDURANCE ACTIVISM

The introduction established my core argument that the Great Peace March deployed a strategy of endurance activism characterized by the articulation of endurance physical feats, ongoing physical activity and labor with political activism. These physical efforts combine with symbolic meanings to communicate the necessity of arduous and strenuous work for a cause.

Moreover, the Great Peace March selected a long-distance walk from the U.S. west to east coast to amplify the strategy of endurance activism as an act of sacrifice and hardship that drew attention to the March at given geographic locations over different periods of time. These marchers, however, did not invent this strategy.

This chapter traces instances of overtly politicized U.S. long-distance walks between

1894 and the mid-1970s as an object of historical and cultural study. The chapter is not intended as a comprehensive or exhaustive study of walking in general. There are several literary, historical, and sociocultural examinations of walking, such as Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust and

Joseph Amato’s On Foot. Rather, I seek to develop a specific, underexamined history of long- distance walks for sociopolitical change that informs the concept I term endurance activism. This history is selectively presented to illuminate the U.S. long-distance walk as a particular strategy deployed by specific social and political movement actors and groups to create a platform from which to promote their vision of change. This chapter explores historical precedents to the Great

Peace March that establish endurance activism as a specific social movement strategy.

In the United States, long-distance walks have been historically imbued with cultural identifications and meanings that specific social movement groups have operationalized through the organization of long-distance walks. These identifications include the association of walking

with innocence, persistence, virtuosity, interaction and engagement with locals, landscapes, and one’s own spirituality. Several of these meanings come to be construed as natural and self- evident. When linked with activism or a social movement, walking as marching attaches additional signifiers such as moving for expressive and political purposes. These signifiers also include the confrontation with power, an individual or collective representing the public, and the demand for change from significant political or corporate officials. As Rebecca Solnit elaborates,

“public marches mingle the language of the pilgrimage, in which one walks to demonstrate one’s commitment, with the strike’s picket line, in which one demonstrates the strength of one’s group and one’s persistence by pacing back and forth, and the festival, in which the boundaries between strangers recede.”1 Colloquially, this act is one way of putting your “body on the line” to demonstrate a political or cultural conviction, common ground among a group of people, and to use those two forces to represent and communicate a desired goal. In these ways, walking has become part of the cultural histories, languages, and practices of democratic citizenship.2

In this chapter I argue that the long-distance walk is a core physical practice that gives shape to endurance activism. This linkage with walking is important for several reasons. Five different long-distance walks (and in one case, a single walker) for change are analyzed in this chapter: Coxey’s Army of the Unemployed, Peace Pilgrim, the San Francisco to Moscow March for Peace, the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace, and the Continental Walk for

Disarmament and Social Justice. Collectively, they show that endurance and strength components in walking are not simply about the doing of the physical activity; crucially, the shape of the physical activity in long, slow, daily walks over an extended period of time links

1 Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking (New York: Penguin, 2000), 216. 2 See, for example, theorists Guy DeBord, “Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography,” in Situationist International Anthology, ed. and trans. Ken Knabb (Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets, 1981), 5; Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 93, 100. 31

marches with the desire for the endurance of the social or political movement and community itself.

Second, this chapter illustrates that long-distance walking is central to the concept of endurance activism because long-distance walks are a powerful visible manifestation of a campaign’s mission, vision, goals, or political agenda, and they generate images and narratives of common cause that are viewed by thousands more. In turn, these images make a strong case for media coverage and can aid the movement’s efforts for outreach and recruitment through the communication of unity and strength in numbers.

Third, this chapter shows that long-distance walking articulates with endurance activism because of the actual activities of the participants during the walk. Organizers envision the walk as engendering excitement, not only in relation to media coverage, but also as an effective tool for person-to-person engagement and interaction. Through contact with people along their routes in informal conversations, speaking engagements, events, rallies, and the distribution of movement literature, participants on long-distance walks illustrate endurance activism as a strategy that stresses enduring physical activity undertaken to achieve the purpose of the cause.

The slow pace of movement across the country offered further opportunities for activists’ involvement with local groups, the formation of alliances, the establishment of connections for potentially lasting coalitions, and community. In these ways, long-distance walks utilize endurance activism to “go directly to the people.”

A Brief Tour of Long-Distance Walking and Transcontinentalism

The idea of signification from critical cultural communication studies and theory speaks to the array of signs applied to walking as these vary across cultures, demographics, time, and

places.3 Walking is not merely an apolitical, neutral form of mobility. It carries a diversity of signification depending on location in time and space, as well as other social and cultural divisions. While seemingly an equal opportunity for people with able bodies, the act has often been restricted and limited to certain participants. Some of the major cultural histories of walking and the general literature on the subject have been concerned near exclusively with European and

U.S. cultural meanings and interpretations of walking.4 Poetry and essays by William Hazlitt,

William Wordsworth, Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendall Holmes, John

Muir, Charles Dickens, Henry David Thoreau, John Burroughs, and Robert Louis Stevenson discussing the effects and meanings of walking receive a disproportionate amount of attention.

Collectively, this literature argues that the physical act of walking restores and reconnects human beings to their natural proportion and perceptions of the physical world and its moral order. This enables the walker – with an enhanced sense of self, clear mind, acute perception and stronger expression – to rediscover their personal and national past.5 This dissertation, rooted in one examination of a late twentieth century long-distance walk for peace undertaken mostly by white participants, mirrors these Western frameworks. But it also seeks to contextualize these assumptions about walking and scrutinize their application by specific social movement actors.

Long-distance walks lend themselves to racial, ethnic, gender, and class divisions, and limitations based on white, male, and middle-to-upper-class privileges. Rebecca Solnit

3 My understandings and application of signs is influenced by Stuart Hall. “Encoding/decoding,” in Stuart Hall et al., (eds.), Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972-79 (New York: Routledge, 1980), 128- 138. 4 Joseph Amato, On Foot: A History of Walking (New York: New York University Press, 2004), 1-18; Robin Jarvis, Romantic Poetry and Pedestrian Travel (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998); Anne D. Wallace, Walking, Literature, and English Culture: The Origins and Uses of Peripatetic in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). 5 Wallace, Walking, 12-13; Amato, On Foot, 104-106, 141-147, 206; Geoff Nicholson, The Lost Art of Walking: The History, Science, Philosophy and Literature of Pedestrianism (New York: Riverhead, 2008), 25-32; Solnit, Wanderlust, 84-132; Aaron Sussman and Ruth Goode, The Magic of Walking (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980), 223-388. 33

chronicles accounts of long-distance walks by nature evangelist John Muir in 1867, writer

Charles Lummis in 1884, and Englishman Colin Fletcher in 1958, and claims that “the lengthy tale of the very long walk” emerged as the dominant form of writing about walking in the twentieth century.6 Further, she argues that long-distance-walk memoirs usually express one or more of three motives: to comprehend a place’s natural or social makeup; to comprehend oneself; or to set a record, often through increasingly extreme or remote circumstances.7 The ways in which particular groups have planned and organized long distance walks to draw attention to a political position, however, may or may not speak to these well-worn cultural paths of meaning.

This history demonstrates that starting in the 1860s, long-distance walks emerged alongside forces of industrialization, urbanization, immigration, transportation, and national commerce as communication strategies and media spectacles.8 They were phenomena reflective of the modernizing industrial-era, existing as advertising, self-promotion, and political communication. Long-distance walks, however, are permeated with and redeploy established cultural meanings and mass mediated messages. Walking is not static or fixed in what it represents, and its meanings change given the socioeconomic contexts and cultural spaces in

6 Solnit, Wanderlust, 126. 7 Ibid., 128-129. 8 See works on the popularity of pedestrianism in the mid-late nineteenth century, and, in particular, the figure of Edward Payson Weston who became a celebrity for his endurance and long-distance walks. John Cumming, Runners & Walkers: A Nineteenth Century Sports Chronicle (Chicago: Regnery Gateway, 1981); Mary Louise Adams, “‘Astounding Exploits” and ‘Laborious Undertakings’: Nineteenth Century Pedestrianism and the Cultural Meanings of Endurance,” in Endurance Running, ed. William Bridel, et al. (London: Routledge, 2016), 19-34; Wayne Curtis, The Last Great Walk: The True Story of A 1909 Walk from New York to San Francisco, and Why It Matters Today (New York: Rodale, 2014); Nick Harris, Helen Harris, and Paul Marshall, A Man in a Hurry: The Extraordinary Life & Times of Edward Payson Weston, the World’s Greatest Walker (London: de Coubertin Books, 2012); and Jim Reisler, Walk of Ages: Edward Payson Weston’s Extraordinary Trek Across America (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015). Additionally, see Linda Hunt’s fascinating account of a mother-daughter transcontinental walk in 1896, Bold Spirit: Helga Etsby’s Forgotten Transcontinental Walk Across Victorian America (Moscow: University of Idaho Press, 2003). For an account of the proclaimed “first” Canadian transcontinental walk, see George Hart, Transcontinental Pedestrians: Canada’s First Cross-Country Walk (1906) (Brighton, MA: Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 2007). 34

which it takes place.9 The messages around long-distance walks in the U.S. nation-building context, however, were foremost associated with the idea of “transcontinentalism” as developed through frontierism, the railroad, tourism, and the expansionist fantasy of the West as an endless site of possibility, progress, and domination.10

This notion of a continent tamed marks the legacy of the white man’s version of the

West, made famous by Theodore Roosevelt, in The Winning of the West, which celebrated white frontiersmen as “the restless and reckless hunters, the hard, dogged frontier farmers [who] by dint of grim tenacity overcame and displaced Indians, French, and Spaniards alike, exactly as, fourteen hundred years before Saxon and Angle had overcome and displaced Cymric and Gaelic

Celts.”11 Regardless of conflict and contradiction, entrepreneurs, intellectuals, politicians and promoters projected a vision of a white racial utopia onto the trans-Mississippi West.

Transcontinentalism was at the root of John O’ Sullivan’s phrase Manifest Destiny that signaled it was God’s plan for Americans to “overspread and possess the whole of the continent.”12

This imagined utopia entailed a fetishistic fascination with non-Anglos who provided a

“veneer of exoticism” that was also a simultaneous denial of their political and economic

9 Here, my views are informed by cultural studies understandings of representation, the circuits of culture, and articulation. See Stuart Hall, “The Problem of Ideology: Marxism without Guarantees,” in Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, eds. David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen (Florence, KY: Routledge, 1996), 35-44; in the same collection, Jennifer Daryl Slack, “The Theory and Method of Articulation in Cultural Studies,” 112-127; and Paul du Gay et al., Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman (London: Sage, 1997), 3-13, 17-18; and Richard Johnson, “What Is Cultural Studies Anyway?” Social Text 16 (Winter 1986-1987): 43-48. 10 Perry Miller, “The Romantic Dilemma in American Nationalism and the Concept of Nature,” in Nature’s Nation by Perry Miller (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), 197-207; Roderick Frazier Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1967); Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1950); Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” in John Mack Faragher, Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner (New York: Henry Holt, 1994), 31-60. 11 Theodore Roosevelt, The Winning of the West: The Spread of the English-Speaking Peoples (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1889), 41. 12 Quoted in Richard White, “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own”: A New History of the American West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 73. 35

power.13 Without power or access to citizenship, such groups and their cultures could be romantically celebrated as part of what ostensibly set the West apart from the East, which, through the lenses of white supremacy, eugenicists, and race scientists struggled to “contain” its influx of Southern and Eastern European immigrants. For Western boosters, the West also contrasted from the South because of the sheer number of African Americans that lived there, with the resulting tension between the fight for black equality and white retreat from the promises of Reconstruction.14 Continentalism in its full expression, then, emerged as the

“wonderlands of whiteness.”15

Exploring similar themes, Marguerite Shaffer’s See America First: Tourism and National

Identity, 1880-1940 is an invaluable resource for scholars interested in the cultural history of the transcontinental.16 Shaffer argues the development of national tourism at the turn-of-the-century emerged alongside national transportation systems, communications networks, markets of mass production and distribution, and an expanding middle class with time and money to spend on leisure. In short, national tourism “extended from and depended on the infrastructure of the modern nation-state” and centered on “geographical consumption” of “the sights and scenes of the American nation.”17

Americans chronicling their tours of the West’s scenic landscapes, historical monuments, and natural attractions expressed themes of patriotic fervor, sublime transcendence, religious

13 Jason Pierce, Making the White Man’s West: Whiteness and the Creation of the American West (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2016), xvii. 14 H.W. Brands, The Reckless Decade: America in the 1890s (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 214- 253; Amy Louise Wood, Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890-1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 19-30. 15 David Wrobel, Promised Lands: Promotion, Memory, and the Creation of the American West (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2002), 176. 16 Marguerite S. Shaffer, See America First: Tourism and National Identity, 1880-1940 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books, 2001), see especially 1-39, 135-163, and 222-230. 17 Shaffer, See America First, 2-3. 36

epiphany, and personal joy as parts of a “larger search for cultural and national identity.”18 By the mid-twentieth century, the voyage west to “escape” mainstream consumer culture and discover the “real” America, while reimagining and reinventing oneself through intense whole body experiences, had been epitomized in Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road.19 Shaffer illuminates how, between 1880 and 1940, a wide array of advocates in the tourist industry promoted tourism “as a ritual of American citizenship.”20 Key to defining this citizenship was the industry’s marking of certain landscapes as quintessentially “American,” highlighting some meanings and myths and ignoring others, while deliberately framing the continent as a coherent national whole. This framing reaffirmed idealized white, native-born, middle- and upper-class histories and traditions: encouraging citizens to see the nation firsthand and follow “the footsteps of American history” were core mandates that helped establish this distinct national identity.

Historically, then, transcontinental travel was intimately linked with the search for and production of a form of American identity rooted in a mythic ideal of the West as a white racial utopia. These identities are wedded to the consumption of the nation in geographical terms and the experiencing of landscapes, but also the subjugation of tribal, Chinese, Japanese, African

American, and Mexican American cultures, histories, and narratives. As the next section examines, forms of “mobile citizenship” were also enacted on foot by social movement groups who “re-mapped” transcontinentalism. Endurance activists deployed notions of walking long distances, including between continental borders and coasts, not for its imperialist associations with domination and nation-building, but they traveled America in this way on projects for equality, justice, nonviolence, and freedom. While long-distance walks for social and political

18 Ibid., 2. 19 Jack Kerouac, On the Road (New York: Viking, 1957), 3. 20 Shaffer, See America First, 4. 37

change could not entirely avoid replicating the dominant social, economic, and political relations they sought to transform, the individuals and groups analyzed in this chapter turned to long- distance walks to question and voice opposition to forms of injustice, in hopes of earning public support, communicating a different way forward, and inspiring transformation.

Endurance Activism through Long-Distance Walks

The first instance of a U.S. long-distance walk designed to influence public consciousness and effect significant legislative and policy change was the 400-mile walk from

Massillon, Ohio, to Washington D.C., organized by the successful businessman Jacob Coxey in the spring of 1894. This march highlights the first core tenet of endurance activism: that physical activity and endurance are deployed for the purpose of achieving a concrete political goal, regardless of the odds for success. Roughly 125 unemployed men from across the United States traveled to Massillon and completed the entire march, which started on Easter Sunday, March

25, and strategically ended on May 1, International Labor Day. That core would be joined intermittently by thousands more along their route and in nine copycat marches organized across the nation from as far west as Portland and Los Angeles. These marchers who came to be known as “Coxey’s Army” set the precedent for myriad subsequent political and social movement actors that would raise awareness of their causes by walking to Washington.21

The men marched to inspire their elected leaders to provide much needed employment opportunities around the country on the heels of an economic depression following the collapse of the stock market on May 5, 1893. Jerry Prout, a political scientist, argues “the very idea of being unemployed was at odds with the dominant laissez-faire business ideology of the nineteenth century that revered individual enterprise and self-reliance. Everyone who wanted to

21 Barber, Marching on Washington, 11-44. Besides Coxey’s Army, Barber’s work focuses on movements that gathered thousands of participants to march in Washington, starting from within Washington. 38

work was supposed to be able to find a job. Those without jobs were generally frowned upon and viewed as indolent, or even worse, naturally flawed.”22 Images of Coxey’s Army plodding through difficult weather and terrain could be used to counter stereotypes of the unemployed as prone to drunkenness, idle roving, and self-loathing. Instead, their diligent walking demonstrated steadfast commitment to find honest work. Attaining press coverage would be critical for Coxey to humanize these supposed tramps and correct misperceptions of the unemployed for a national audience.

Coxey initially tried to promote the plan through letters to President Harrison, a petition to Congress, the formation of his own Good Roads Association, and other forms of advocacy, but these all failed to make serious headway.23 To generate support for his plan, Coxey conceived of the march to Washington from his hometown of Massillon. He explained that the

“aim and object of the march to Washington” was “to awaken the attention of the whole people to a sense of their duty in impressing upon Congress the necessity for giving immediate relief to the four million of unemployed people.”24 These comments support the argument developed in this chapter that Coxey’s Army established a precedent for interpreting endurance activism as a legitimate, distinct form of activism that involved the literal physical motion of participants to try influence the figurative movement of political policy aim.

His plan was met with sharp criticism. Though the government invested in the construction of the transcontinental railroad ahead of western settlement, Coxey found less support for the development of nationwide roads for automobiles and bicycles. Reverend

William Alvin Bartlett of Washington’s New York Avenue Presbyterian Church summarized the

22 Jerry Prout, Coxey’s Crusade for Jobs: Unemployment in the Gilded Age (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2016), 2. 23 Ibid., 33-39. 24 Quoted in Henry Vincent, The Story of the Commonweal (Chicago: W.B. Conkey, 1894), 50. 39

prevailing attitude towards the march, telling his congregation that “no honest laborer would ever think to march to Washington to ask for a job.”25 Press headlines further admonished Coxey by calling him “Ohio’s Don Quixote,” suggesting he was a “candidate for the lunatic asylum,” and referring to his Good Roads Plan as “idiocy.”26 These critics and others deemed using the Capitol for public protest as unacceptable and illegitimate. At best, the tactic was novel and outside of political norms. They were qualities that helped establish the march as a spectacle worthy of press coverage.

Pertinent to the interests of this dissertation, Prout analyzed the march for its significance as a strategic initiative that took political arguments outside the traditional meetinghouses and convention halls, transformed the capital into a stage for citizens to participate in national politics, and focused national and political attention on a social and political cause. Prout notes that though Coxey carefully financed and planned the march, “unprecedented press coverage” helped him and his partner Carl Browne achieve their goal in unforeseen ways.27 These arguments align with the development of endurance activism in this dissertation as providing individuals with an alternative mode for participation in political activism, and organizers with a strategy for amplifying their cause through media coverage of unconventional displays of physical activity and endurance.

Thousands of newspaper stories appeared on the front pages of papers across the country, familiarizing millions of readers with the unemployed men. Further, Prout stresses the significance of a dozen reporters who were embedded in the march and “created a journalistic prism that projected a myriad of colorful individual stories about the characters and everyday

25 “The Pulpit View,” Washington Post, April 23, 1894. 26 “Ohio’s Don Quixote,” Chicago Tribune, February 5, 1894; “Coxey and Lodge,” Harper’s Weekly 38.1952 (May 19, 1894): 458. 27 Prout, Coxey’s Crusade, 4. 40

episodes that comprised it.”28 Humorous incidents, accounts of the marchers’ quirks, frailties, homes, and struggles helped portray them as human beings. For Coxey’s plan to gain widespread support, it was as important for these representations to circulate through the national press as it was for the march to get to Washington. The spectacle of the endurance walk fostered national press coverage – no small feat considering the public and political disdain for the unemployed.

Walking helped the men reify their condition as they embodied the human toll of the depression and the importance of addressing unemployment, hunger, and homelessness. Walking also challenged narratives of the unemployed as weak and incapable vagrants, through the image of what one journalist called the “peaceful” and “earnest . . . eloquence in the patient dreariness of their plodding.”29 This quote unequivocally resonates with the suggestion that endurance activism offers a means for a movement to generate counter-narratives that challenge dominant understandings that belittle their cause and its adherents.

In early 1894, Coxey spent three full months raising money, resources, and recruiting personnel for the march. Aware of the public scorn for the unemployed, Coxey and Browne carefully sought to craft the public image of their marchers, claiming they sought “patriots, not bummers,” and “typical skilled workers.” Their “Army” would be distinguished from stereotypes of the idle tramp and consist of “proud men seeking honest work,” reflecting the values of self- reliance and a Protestant work ethic.30 The sick and those of ill repute were turned away, as were immigrants, unskilled laborers, and anarchists. Their announcement of the march touted hyperbolic expectations geared to grab readers’ attention: “There will be one hundred thousand of us. We shall leave Ohio about March 25th and our war cry will be ‘On to Washington.’ We

28 Ibid., 5. 29 Quoted in Vincent, Story of the Commonweal, 15. 30 Prout, Coxey’s Crusade, 24. 41

shall reach Washington on May 1st, when we will hold a grand meeting on the steps of the

Capitol, to demand in the name of the sovereign people the passage of the good roads bill.”31

Their efforts to negotiate image did not always translate into success, however, as newspapers referred to them as “Coxey’s tramp army.”32

The presentation of the march itself, in addition to the image of the marchers, was designed to attract favorable press coverage and appease the mainstream. The physicality of the experience was referenced to provide the marchers with credibility and to demonstrate their character and willingness to suffer. Coxey emphasized the journey would be “a test and that all who joined would face rough conditions,” but, “with true American grit, grin and bear it.”33 In the weeks leading up to the march’s departure, Coxey and Browne produced, directed, and staged what Prout calls “an unfolding daily drama that might attract a large national audience.”34

The physical presentation of the marchers themselves would also attract national attention. Prout claims the “imagery of Coxey’s humble body of men in drab frock coats and bowler hats quietly walking toward their nation’s capital . . . challenged the sleek and ostentatious advertisements parading themselves across America’s newspapers and magazines.”35 Specifically, Coxey and Browne positioned their men within the new culture of realism which provided a glimpse of lifelike, banal, and ordinary circumstances, in contrast to the earlier nineteenth century romantic embellishment of the rugged, individualist, American frontiersman.36 Coxey and Browne thus carefully presented a spectacle of endurance activism.

31 “A Magnificent Faith,” Massillon Evening Independent, January 27, 1894. 32 “Army Growing,” Boston Globe, April 6, 1894; “Coxey’s Army Order,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 5, 1894; “Organization of the Army of Peace,” Chicago Daily Tribune, February 10, 1894. 33 Prout, Coxey’s Crusade, 24. 34 Ibid., 43. 35 Ibid., 48. 36 Miles Orvell, The Real Thing: Imitation and Authenticity in American Culture, 1880-1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 104-109. 42

Though Coxey’s Army departed as a far cry from the organizers’ original vision, its sendoff and first few days out of Ohio illustrated the significance of promotion, publicity, and news coverage for long-distance walks as endurance activism. As they reached Canton, an estimated twenty thousand people had already greeted them from the roadsides. A steady stream of local and national daily news coverage helped spur the spontaneous gathering of audiences along their 400-mile route. Many joined in the march for a few miles at a time, while others enthusiastically welcomed the procession with food, clothing, or waved from balconies. As Prout notes, the press helped create Coxey’s Army as a spectacle, which in turn motivated passersby and locals to actively participate in what they had observed in the papers. “The physical size of the march came to matter less than the reality this spectacle represented,” Prout avers, while the march’s chronicler asserted “the world has never until that time witnessed such a spectacle.”

Among the many traits that made Coxey’s march a spectacle, none were more significant for gaining press coverage than how the march used long-distance walking to be the first to march to

Washington to petition for a cause.37

As an ongoing endurance walk, the march also provided good serial copy. Coxey’s march demonstrated how the combination of an indefatigable commitment to one’s cause and walking could be used to garner a steady media presence. For example, the Massillon Evening

Independent’s Robert Skinner remarked that the Coxey story “arrests the attention of the whole

United States. From Massillon . . . seventeen operators sent 39,000 words of press matter contributed by dozens of special writers from all of the best papers in the country. Rarely except at national political conventions have so many newspapermen from the really leading papers assembled to cover a single event.”38 Coxey’s march was routinely covered by the Baltimore

37 Prout, Coxey’s Crusade, 55-56; Vincent, Story of the Commonweal, 56. 38 Robert Peet Skinner, “Moving from Massillon,” Massillon Evening Independent, March 26, 1894. 43

American, Cincinnati Enquirer, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Herald, Pittsburgh Leader,

Pittsburgh Times, Pittsburgh Dispatch, New York Herald, and the United Press. The nature of the mobile story embedded reporters in the same physical conditions as the marchers, and the journalists faced similar hardships which they described in their stories. At the same time, this consistent reporting did not guarantee the march favorable coverage as a protest. Nor did it view the march through a prism of support for Coxey’s Good Roads plan. In fact, Prout argues the five-week editorial coverage of the march was “virtually unanimous in its condemnation,” frequently deploying derisive headlines that branded the march as “freakish, dangerous, and ridiculous.”39

Thus, from the first example of long-distance walking as endurance activism, there is an inherent struggle for organizers to negotiate and control meanings and interpretations with the press. Organizers aim for press coverage that illuminates aspects of their social critique and the credibility of their political proposals. On the positive side, readers can become acquainted with participants of a movement, which fosters sympathy and weakens the hold of misrepresentation and stereotypes. But narratives of endurance activism are also shaped in ways that serve to entertain readers, even if this means ridicule and disparagement of the march and marchers. With goals of expanding readership, advertising, and revenues in mind, the press frame long-distance activist walks variously as “sagas” and “circus parades,” but rarely as ongoing discussions of the march’s policy proposals.40 Activists arguably benefit when the press popularize a march, even if the content and style minimize or eliminate the march’s social and political purpose. Ultimately,

Coxey’s march established a pattern of reporting on the daily physical and logistical challenges of life on the road, the perils of weather and terrain, the impressions of onlookers, and the

39 Prout, Coxey’s Crusade, 78-79. 40 Ibid., 70. 44

reception from local officials.41 It also demonstrated how the press can distort and ignore a march’s substantive messages and replace stated peaceful goals and methods with unfounded claims of criminal behavior and plans for surreptitious violence.42

A final precedent established by Coxey’s Army significant for the conceptualization of endurance activism is that long-distance walks rarely, if ever, directly lead to the accomplishment of specific goals, such as legislative or executive action that addresses the concerns represented by endurance activists. If measured exclusively for its effectiveness in convincing Congress to adopt and pass Coxey’s Good Roads plan, or its ability to inspire other interventions for job-creating public works, the march would have to be deemed a failure.

Grandiose arrivals in Washington that dramatically sweep in political change do not simply materialize because the marchers complete their journey. Rather, marches often conclude with an anticlimactic mixture of fleeting excitement followed by chaos, crowd confusion, administrative indifference, police opposition, and the customary proliferation of competing views in the press.

By taking a longer and wider view, however, long-distance walks can be interpreted as successful campaigns when they involve and educate thousands of people in events and rallies, gain the attention of millions of citizens, and further sustain the overall movement.

Mid-20th Century U.S. Long-Distance Walks for Political Change

Following Coxey’s Army and the Suffragettes, most groups skipped the long walk in favor of shorter single-day marches that started within or just outside the capital. Though a less- heralded second Coxey’s Army again marched from Pennsylvania and New York in 1914, single-day marches in D.C. included those by the Ku Klux Klan in 1925, and a march by World

41 Ibid., 76. 42 Ibid., 80. 45

War I veterans known as the Bonus Army in 1932.43 By the early 1960s, of course, marches were just one of several tactics of nonviolent direct action, among sit-ins, freedom rides, and civil disobedience campaigns, that the black freedom struggle demonstrated could effectively mobilize the masses and political leaders toward enacting fundamental social change. As this chapter and dissertation centers on the long-distance walk, I do not take up the well-known civil rights marches, of which there are already several exemplary historical treatments.44

Nevertheless, those marches proved influential for many endurance activists, who looked reverently and romantically to the example of the black civil rights movement as inspiration and justification of long walks for their causes. As Marian Mollin argues, in the public eye nonviolent direct action had nearly become synonymous with civil rights protest.45 And by the time of the Great Peace March in 1986, the protest march had been infused with a reservoir of cultural meaning for social movements. While still considered an extraordinary physical act and demonstration of commitment, long-distance walks became an increasingly predictable form of endurance activism.

A series of long-distance walks for peace, disarmament, racial, economic, and social justice between the 1950s and 1970s further cemented the tradition of coast-to-coast marches.

These marches include the 1960-61 San Francisco to Moscow March for Peace, organized by the

Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA), a relatively small but daring pacifist group; the

1963-64 Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace, again organized by the CNVA; the

43 “White-Robed Klan Cheered on March in Nation’s Capital,” Washington Post, August 9, 1925; Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen, The Bonus Army: An American Epic (New York: Walker and Company, 2004). 44 Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988); Aldon Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change (New York: Free Press, 1994); Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981); Cynthia Griggs Fleming, Soon We Will Not Cry: The Liberation of Ruby Doris Smith Robinson (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998). 45 Marian Mollin, Radical Pacifism in Modern America: Egalitarianism and Protest (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 127. 46

1976 Continental Walk for Disarmament and Social Justice, established by the War Resisters

League (WRL), and lastly, the 1978 Longest Walk, led by Dennis Banks of the American Indian

Movement.46 These marches received nary a mention as inspiration from the Great Peace

March’s organizer David Mixner. Nor did many marchers who filled the Great Peace March ranks cite them as models. This ignorance may stem from the fact that some of the prior walks took place a full generation before the Great Peace March, did not clearly accomplish a set of specific goals, or rise to a high-level of involvement and overall public consciousness. It may also be due to the isolation of the Great Peace March from the wider peace movement, and the desire of some within the March to distance marchers from radical pacifism and issues outside of nuclear disarmament. But some of these marches did attain significant media coverage and achieve tangible results. They also illuminate the workings of prefigurative politics on long- distance walks, in which participants seek to model the world they hope to create through participatory forms of endurance activism.

46 In the interest of length and the synchronicity between the Great Peace March’s focus on disarmament with the San Francisco to Moscow March, the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk, and the Continental Walk for Disarmament and Social Justice, the forthcoming analysis will not include the Longest Walk from San Francisco to Washington, D.C. The Longest Walk was completed by a core of 26 walkers and supported by thousands more. The movement was successful in its bid to have Congress reject 11 proposed bills that would have limited rights to tribal government, hunting, and fishing, and also restricted access to social services. The Longest Walk was organized to draw attention to and protest the proposed legislation, as well as other forms of violence and negligence against Native Americans during the late 1960s and 1970s. Further, the Longest Walk was an homage to the Trail of Tears following the Indian Removal Act of 1830, and the Long Walk of 1864. AIM’s Longest Walk was thus also a memorialization of the history of forced migration and the brutal treatment of the Apache and Navajo people who were forced by the U.S. Army to either starve or relocate 400 miles to Fort Sumner. Many died, were killed, or kidnapped by slave traders. The Longest Walk attracted support from celebrities such as Marlon Brando and Muhammad Ali, and politicians such as Senator Edward Kennedy. The walk symbolized the enduring solidarity of many Indian nations, prevented the enactment of the legislation, and spread knowledge about Native American cultures and the laws that limited their sovereignty and well-being. See Ward Churchill, “The Bloody Wake of Alcatraz: Political Repression of the American Indian Movement During the 1970s,” in American Indian Activism: Alcatraz to the Longest Walk, eds. Troy Johnson, Joanna Nagel, and Duane Champagne (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 242-284. 47

The Peace Pilgrim Path

Before discussing these organized, collective long-distance walks, it is important to acknowledge the influence of a woman who viewed herself as a transcontinental walker for peace, and who identified as “Peace Pilgrim.” Several Great Peace Marchers referenced her as an example and precedent for their own work. Born Mildred Norman, at the age of 44 she set out from the Rose Bowl Parade in Pasadena, California on January 1, 1953, with a goal of walking across the United States for peace.47 By 1964, according to her own calculations, she had walked

25,000 miles and completed a second transcontinental pilgrimage, walking at least 100 miles in each state, and parts of Mexico and Canada. Though she stopped counting miles after 25,000, she continued her pilgrimage until her untimely death on her seventh cross-country walk in 1981.

On her way to a speaking engagement – among the few occasions for which she accepted rides – she was killed in a car accident near Knox, Indiana.48

In several ways, Peace Pilgrim is an exemplary model for endurance activism, even though she was a solo actor with no organizational sponsor or support. The notion of the transcontinental was an inherent part of her pilgrimage. She described her inspiration for the pilgrimage appearing “in [her] mind’s eye,” a vision of herself “walking along and wearing the garb of my mission . . . I saw a map of the United States with the large cities marked – and it was as though someone had taken a colored crayon and marked a zigzag line across, coast to coast and border to border, from Los Angeles to New York City. I knew what I was to do.”49 She also vowed that she would endure walking “until mankind has learned the way of peace.”50 These statements by Peace Pilgrim, though not explicitly linked to political activism, capture the

47 “Peace Pilgrim to Start Hike Across U.S. as Antiwar Bid,” Los Angeles Times, January 4, 1953. 48 Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Work in Her Own Words (Santa Fe, NM: Ocean Tree Books, 1991), 135. 49 Peace Pilgrim, 22. 50 Ibid., xiii. 48

participatory endurance ethos of endurance activism, the absolute stress on the importance of doing physical work for a social or political cause, and the play upon symbols and metaphors of endurance that the cause must or will go on in perpetuity until the realization of the objective.

Though this statement is vague, and Peace Pilgrim’s message was filtered through her views on spirituality, inner peace, healthy living, and the meanings of a purpose-filled life, she started out with clearly stated political goals: “to rouse people from apathy and make them think,” specifically in the contexts of the Korean War, the McCarthy era, and the proliferation of nuclear weapons.51 She carried petitions that directed messages to the US President, congressional leaders, and the United Nations to accomplish three specific objectives: 1) to end the war in Korea, 2) to establish a Peace Department to work toward peaceful resolution of conflicts at home and abroad, and 3) the disarmament of nuclear weapons and reconstruction of the war economy to address hunger and poverty.52 At the end of her first walk across the country, she presented signed petitions from individuals, peace groups, churches and other organizations to officials at the White House and the United Nations.53

Peace Pilgrim is also representative of endurance activism for the ways she used her walk as a platform to deliver her message to people face-to-face and through extensive media coverage. She almost instantly realized the power of the media upon setting out, as she wrote,

“All channels of communication were opened to me and my little peace message. I spent hours being interviewed by newspaper reporters and being photographed by newspaper photographers.

The story of my pilgrimage and even my picture went out over all the wire services. Besides doing two live television programs, I spent hours recording for radio and the television

51 Ibid., 24. 52 Ibid., 28. 53 “‘Peace Pilgrim’ in Toledo; She’s Hiking 5,000 Miles: Anonymous Woman Plans to Present Pleas to Ike, U.N.” Toledo Blade, September 17, 1953; Peace Pilgrim, 28-29. 49

newscasts.”54 Indeed, she was covered by all the national radio and TV networks, in addition to hundreds of local stations and countless local newspapers in small towns and larger cities.

Additionally, she sought out speaking engagements at high schools, universities, civic clubs, and a variety of churches.55

All the while, walking was the central mechanism of her communication strategy, with

“Peace Pilgrim” sewed on the front of her tunic, and “25,000 Miles On Foot for Peace” on the back. These simple words served as her advertisement for initiating contact.56 Walking was critical to Pilgrim’s message and her ability to communicate dedication. “You don’t cheat about counting miles on a pilgrimage,” she asserted.57 Walking as a pilgrim also connotes hardship and suffering, which is key for establishing credibility, legitimacy, and the appeal for public empathy and sympathy. Peace Pilgrim was no stranger to these traits of her walk. She explains, “I thought the pilgrimage might entail some hardships. But I was determined to live at need level. . .

Penance is the willingness to undergo hardships for the achievement of a good purpose.”58 She describes being tested severely by the elements, such as in one case of a dust storm so fierce that she could neither see ahead or stand against it. At other times she describes potentially threatening encounters with people that might do her harm.

While she interpreted her navigation of these “tests” through the Christian sacrament of penance, in which one confesses sins and receives absolution, I connect Peace Pilgrim’s descriptions of withstanding the challenges to another aspect of endurance activism – that each test turns out to be “an uplifting experience” from which to grow, learn, and persist.59 The

54 Peace Pilgrim, 28. 55 Ibid., xiii. 56 Ibid., 26. 57 Ibid., 40. 58 Ibid., 30. 59 Ibid., 30-38. 50

intense meaning of these personal insights and spiritual connections has a certain resonance and poignancy alongside the lack of specific political outcomes. As Peace Pilgrim claims, she used walking not only for contacting people and attracting the media, but “as a prayer.”60 As a prayer, transcontinental walks sustained her in the face of apathy, opposition, conflict, hardship, and a world that continues on with its many forms of violence and injustice. Others following in her footsteps would come to view the act of their sustained walks, despite challenges ranging from violent hostility to disillusionment and isolation, in much the same ways.

The San Francisco to Moscow March for Peace, 1960-1961

Long-distance walks emerged as one component of the surge in protest against the nuclear arms race in the late 1950s and early 1960s.61 For the Committee for Nonviolent Action

(CNVA), a transcontinental peace march was just one of its projects with a flair for the dramatic.

In the late 1950s, the group had launched a campaign of civil disobedience that included entering the US government’s Nevada Test Site, sailing a small ship into US Pacific nuclear testing grounds, and trespassing on a nuclear missile base near Omaha, Nebraska. These actions led to arrests and imprisonment for some of the activists, but also garnered a lot of publicity.62 In the summer of 1960, the organization also intended to hold vigils on the decks of nuclear-armed submarines in Groton, Connecticut – a demonstration that carried penalties of heavy fines and up to thirty years in prison.63 The San Francisco to Moscow March’s decision to step aside from civil disobedience and direct action tactics illustrates the distinction of endurance activism as social movement strategy. Less risky than trespassing at sites of nuclear weapons testing grounds

60 Ibid., 33. 61 April Carter, Peace Movements: International Protest and World Politics since 1945 (London, UK: Longman, 1992). 62 Gunter Wernicke and Lawrence S. Wittner, “Lifting the Iron Curtain: The Peace March to Moscow of 1960-1961” The International History Review 21.2 (1999): 900-901. 63 Lawrence Wittner, Rebels against War: The American Peace Movement, 1933-1983 (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1984), 262-263. 51

and missile bases, the organizers nevertheless turned to long-distance walking as a ploy for media coverage to keep their issue in the news. Simultaneously, their March to Moscow indicates a desire for their political goals and objectives to endure after their other methods led to arrests and fines that could diminish prospects for further activism.

Acknowledging the risks, CNVA leaders Brad Lyttle, Scott Herrick, and Julius Jacobs developed the San Francisco to Moscow March for Peace as an alternative project in support of nuclear disarmament, one that they estimated would allow their message to be heard by “millions of people.”64 Specifically, their aims were for governments of the world to disarm, settle international disputes through negotiation and compromise, and to train citizens in nonviolent resistance. Critics, however, told CNVA to take their message to the Russians, tapping into the common sentiment that if the United States disarmed unilaterally, the Soviet Union would easily win a war with its nuclear stockpile. The CNVA obliged by selecting ten marchers and mapping their march route not only 3,000-plus miles across the United States, but from there, another

3,000 miles from London, across western Europe, through the Eastern bloc and eventually to

Moscow.65

The marchers set out from San Francisco following a rally on December 1, 1960. Their activities illustrate the basic principle of endurance activism articulating long-distance walking to political activity. The group occasionally enlarged to as many as 40 marchers, and over the next six months, held vigils outside military bases and attracted mostly local press coverage.

Reception was mixed as bystanders occasionally threatened violence, as was the case near

Arizona State University, where a mob of male students warned the marchers to stay away from

64 Brad Lyttle, You Come with Naked Hands: The Story of the San Francisco to Moscow March for Peace (Raymond, NH: Greenleaf, 1966), 2-5. 65 Wernicke and Wittner, “Lifting the Iron Curtain,” 901-902. 52

campus. Some marchers were arrested by police for passing out leaflets. At other times, however, the marchers were met with offers of food, lodging, and gatherings in churches and public halls. In particular, the March received a warm reception in Chicago where they were joined by a rally of over 2,000 peace activists with the American Friends Service Committee

(AFSC), the Student Peace Union, and the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy. Upon arrival in

Washington, D.C., the marchers held a vigil at the Pentagon and a delegation met with presidential aide Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., for a brief meeting. In Manhattan, the march held a demonstration at the United Nations Plaza, where they were joined by hundreds of supporters.66

When the march left for Europe, it was clear that endurance walking was an essential part of the group’s political strategy. Herrick’s comment that it was vital “to take [their] message for peace to the Communist countries,” regardless of the political, legal, financial, and logistical obstacles, illustrated a belief in the centrality of walking.67 Similarly, A.J. Muste, the well-known radical pacifist, claimed it was the “persistent drive to get on toward Moscow . . . that finally holds the Team together and appeals to people generally.”68 Prolonged walking as a collective bolstered the Moscow March for Peace’s internal fortitude, illuminating the budding of prefiguration on the walk that assured the movement endured despite the resistance to their strategic goals that Herrick’s comment implies.

Though a long-distance walk across two continents seemed to have slim chances for success merely in terms of its ability to survive, walking, particularly as the group approached

Communist territory, was a unique method that allowed CNVA to engage in even minimal political agitation in East Germany, Poland, and the Soviet Union. Given the Communists’

66 Ibid., 903. 67 Ibid., 902. 68 Ibid., 905. 53

official position as being devoted to peace, CNVA’s plea that they were walking according to nonviolent principles helped them gain admittance into the countries. The image of Communist leaders turning away peaceful marchers might have reinforced Western views of Russian society as closed and totalitarian. Refusal could also have been interpreted as a signal that Russia was committed to additional militarization.

Upon entry to East Germany, the marchers were placed under constant surveillance. The media ignored any part of their campaign that contrasted with official policy, and officials prevented the march from entering East Berlin or demonstrating at military installations.

Walking could also be used as a political tool by its cessation. To protest censorship, the San

Francisco to Moscow March for Peace participants occasionally halted their movement, stopping to explain their position to the crowds. Though they were unceremoniously bussed out of East

Germany after insisting they would walk to East Berlin, the San Francisco to Moscow March had succeeded in using walking – and a strategy of endurance activism – to carry banners and distribute 15,000 leaflets challenging Communist militarism.69

In Poland, the group encountered no governmental resistance, though again media coverage excluded mention of the March’s challenges to government policy. However, with less of a state police presence tracking the marchers, the March was able to direct their march route through large cities and by military installations, distribute 50,000 leaflets, and generally converse with people freely. Upon gaining entrance in Russia, they marched 654 miles over 18 days on their way to Moscow. Soviet officials reinforced the restrictions the March encountered in East Germany, but facilitated a 90-minute meeting with Nina Krushchev, the Premiere’s wife, which made headlines across the Western newspapers. Despite the ban on demonstrations,

69 Ibid., 911. 54

marchers were still able to distribute over 100,000 anti-military leaflets, speak at numerous public events, and through media coverage, attempt to educate millions on both sides of the Cold

War divide about the dangers of nuclear testing. As illustration of their impact, the local director of the Associated Press commented that he had never seen anything like this in his years in

Moscow. Further, one marcher described how walking informed their work and engagement with

Soviet citizens during a vigil at Red Square: “The forest of hands never diminished, being renewed by new arrivals as fast as the old left. . . Soldiers and children, old women and smart- looking young people, professionals and workmen, all sorts of people . . . The most thrilling and satisfying experiences in the USSR have always been such scenes, down shoulder to shoulder with the man in the street, hand outstretched; his to receive, mine to give a little message.”70

The marchers did not persuade any government to move towards disarmament, at home or abroad. But they had managed to attract the attention of major governmental officials in the countries they visited and in the United States, such as Schlesinger. Even though the presidential aide told them their position was “irresponsible and immoral,” his meeting with the March increased public awareness of opposition to nuclear weapons.71 Overseas, the March was welcomed enthusiastically by 6,000 supporters, journalists, and camera crews at Trafalgar

Square in London. After their warm greeting in Britain, the marchers used long-distance walking as a “crucial ingredient” that allowed them to play off Cold War tensions, attract media coverage, and spread their message of nonviolence and de-militarization in Europe and Russia.72

70 Ibid., 904-915; Gerard Daeschel’s “Walk Log,” from October 1 – October 9, 1961, as quoted in Wernicke and Wittner, “Lifting the Iron Curtain,” 914. 71 Lyttle, You Come with Naked Hands, 28-30. 72 Wernicke and Wittner, “Lifting the Iron Curtain,” 910-917. 55

Muste argued all along that “to keep moving straight ahead as long as possible” was their best strategy in the face of political detractors to their march.73

The San Francisco to Moscow March for Peace highlights long-distance walks and endurance activism as a strategy designed in part to attract media coverage for a social movement. Further, even when faced with limited media coverage and misrepresentation, this

March demonstrated the value of endurance activism as a direct form of political activity, as the marchers were pleased with their ability to distribute movement literature, communicate their message of nonviolence through face-to-face encounters and interaction, and meet with government officials and authorities on both sides of the Cold War.

The Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace, 1963-1964

One year after the conclusion of the San Francisco to Moscow March for Peace, the

Cuban Missile Crisis during October 1962 made the threat of nuclear war immediate. At the same time, radical peace activists could not ignore the struggle for racial justice that was at the forefront of U.S. national consciousness. The escalating protests and widespread, mass-based civil rights movement for black freedom inspired many white peace activists. This reverence, however, did not immediately lead to interracial cooperation and resistance action in support of civil rights. Believing that linking the radical pacifist movement with civil rights was a moral and political imperative, leaders and members of CNVA again looked to long-distance walking as a strategy that could communicate their dual commitment to disarmament and the southern struggle.74

The CNVA’s Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace in 1963 and 1964 highlighted the significance of endurance walking as a strategic political tactic. On this occasion,

73 Ibid., 906. 74 Mollin, Radical Pacifism, 125-126. 56

organizers would use walking to demonstrate interracial solidarity in action by sending an integrated march through the segregated South. Pacifist and civil rights activists shared an affinity for the tactic of nonviolent direct action, and moreover, CNVA member Barbara Deming felt that walking could link the movements, their goals, and tie them together as parts of one shared struggle.75 In light of the Cuban Missile Crisis, however, the proposed international march belied the centrality of CNVA’s commitment to the civil rights movement. As Marian Mollin argues, “the route had undeniable symbolic power. By marching to Cuba, the [Walk] visibly placed its opposition to the Cold War and to nuclear weapons at the top of its political agenda.”76

Further, she suggests the pacifists’ “endless meetings” and “tiny vigils” in the face of “imminent atomic catastrophe” had hardly felt like “meaningful dissent.”77 A long-distance walk better suited their desires to be proactive, gain a personal sense of power, and public acclaim.

Despite these disarmament overtones, by walking through the heart of Jim Crow the march undeniably also displayed an explicit civil rights mission. Walking as an integrated group, the march would demonstrate a belief in racial equality and meet the violent defense of segregation head on. They would also illustrate the prefigurative politics of long-distance walks as they embodied their goal of modeling egalitarian efforts for social change. And as a further demonstration of long-distance walks as a method of endurance activism designed for media coverage, CNVA organizers spent several months in the winter and spring of 1963 recruiting participants, fundraising, finalizing the route, arranging hospitality, and mailing out thousands of publications for advertising and publicity.78

75 Ibid., 127. 76 Ibid., 128. 77 Ibid. 78 Ibid., 129. 57

A small interracial team of over a dozen women and men set out from Quebec in May

1963. Some of their early experiences resonated with the harassment, jeers, and threats of violence the San Francisco to Moscow marchers brooked, and like them, enduring and continuing on became important measures of success, illuminating prefigurative aspects of endurance activism. According to accounts of the northern leg of the walk from marcher Brad

Lyttle, the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk participants derived a synergy from the daily grind of working, marching, eating and sleeping as one unit. Yet walking in these northern states seemed to silence their avowed calls for racial justice and black civil rights, as CNVA’s slogans about disarmament and reconciliation with Cuba dominated their banners and signage and more explicitly outward strategic goals.79

As part of walking past the Mason-Dixon line, however, the Walk organizers would have to adjust their message and their presentation to accord with the realities of racism they encountered through the laws and customs of Jim Crow. Walking into the spaces and places of the issues they wished to transform, the marchers constructed new signs with civil rights messages, rewrote leaflets to highlight twin goals of peace and civil rights, and recruited the walk’s first permanent black member, Ray Robinson. Their logistical support also shifted, and now came from local black churches and civil rights groups.80 Walking was the catalyst, in this case, that forced a link between the movements for racial justice and nuclear disarmament, and upon entering the South, made racial integration the march’s most pressing issue. They no longer needed to promote the spectacle of long-distance walking to get public attention, as Mollin observes, “their very presence as an interracial group incited immediate response” in town after

79 Ibid., 129-130. 80 Ibid., 130. 58

town through Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia.81 White and black marchers alike with the

Walk were targeted for violence by individuals, groups, and police.

While walking united the pacifists and civil rights activists in some ways, marching in and of itself could not overcome the clashes between their political cultures. Encountering the violent realities that black civil rights workers regularly and unavoidably faced in the pursuit of their goals did not sit well with some of the white activists on the march, who subordinated the issue of racial discrimination to disarmament. For them, civil rights were only part of the struggle for a nonviolent world, whereas the threat of nuclear war was “the most pressing business for the movement.”82 Cuba – the march’s termination point – overshadowed the racial agenda. Walking there for many of the pacifists was largely a symbolic act to raise consciousness over a moral issue, an end in itself. They did not wish to slow or stop the walk to participate in civil rights demonstrations or risk their lives fighting Jim Crow. By contrast, for the civil rights workers, concrete objectives such as ending segregation, gaining political power, and increasing economic opportunities for black Americans were at stake. For them, walking was useful as an instrument for effective political action and a means to success in the struggle against racism.83

Upon nearing Albany, Georgia, however, the integrated nature of the Walk alone would be enough to raise the ire of segregationists and police officials, who had just recently withstood the Albany Movement campaign for full integration led by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating

Committee (SNCC) and Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1961 and 1962. Police Chief Laurie Pritchett had no intention of allowing the marchers to conduct an integrated march and rally through

Oglethorpe Avenue, Albany’s main street that doubled as the dividing line between the black and

81 Ibid., 131. 82 Ibid., 132. 83 Ibid., 132-133. 59

white sections of the city. When the Walk proceeded anyway, the Albany police arrested thirteen members of the march, which sparked the beginning of a two-month campaign for integrated groups to be able to march and leaflet throughout the city.84

Here, the activists turned to other forms of endurance beyond walking to sustain the existence of their march. For the next two months, marchers refused passive submission to police, prison, and court authorities. They fasted, faced brutal treatment in jail, and in general adopted the method of nonviolent noncooperation. Marian Mollin provides a tremendous analysis of how, for the women in particular, the fast “transformed physical weakness, perceived as a feminine characteristic, into an emblem of moral strength.”85 Using the words of marchers

Edith Snyder, Barbara Deming, and others, she details how the women withstood and interpreted weakness, hunger, and harsh conditions in prison in ways that elevated their resistance above the efforts of their male counterparts, who felt their masculinity challenged by powerlessness, helplessness, and the weakening of their bodies.86 Mollin explains, however, that the imprisoned marchers’ “ability to make these most basic decisions about how to use, or not use, their bodies imparted a sense of agency and hope . . . By embracing their physical suffering, the walkers collectively recast a situation primarily designed to humiliate and degrade into a source of honor and strength . . . that ultimately allowed the QWG Walk to march through downtown Albany as an integrated group.”87

During the imprisonment, supporters on the outside held vigils, fasted, and negotiated with city officials on their comrades’ behalf. The national press covered the unfolding events and eventually the federal government sent a representative from the Department of Justice to

84 Ibid., 136. 85 Ibid., 143. 86 Ibid., 139-146. 87 Ibid., 142. 60

investigate the situation.88 Eventually, three mediators from the AFSC, with assistance from influential white ministers and CNVA leaders, helped negotiate a compromise with city officials that allowed an integrated contingent of marchers to walk a loop of the downtown business district and hand out pamphlets – a first and a significant breakthrough for the civil rights efforts in the city.

After Albany, however, where white marchers had unintentionally gained a visceral knowledge of the violence of racism, the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk route led the group further toward Cuba. Symbolically and literally, this motion again subordinated the issue of racial equality to CNVA’s disarmament focus and foreign policy critiques, as it had in Canada and the northeastern US states. Edie Snyder reflected that in Albany, and other parts of Georgia,

“words like ‘freedom,’ ‘peace,’ ‘love’ ceased to be abstractions. . . When we walked through

Florida and returned once again to ‘symbolic’ protests . . . something very vital which had electrified the project . . . disappeared.”89 Ray Robinson soon left the walk to work with the voter registration campaign in Mississippi, and others, including the white women who gained central roles during their time in Albany, left as well, and pursued civil rights work elsewhere. The destination point of the Walk had exerted its own influence on the impacts of the attempted march to integrate the peace and racial justice movements, which illustrates how the physical and geographical spaces long-distance walks inhabit have a direct impact and link to the politics of endurance activism.90 The Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk ended as a small, predominantly white male group with a seemingly singular focus on peace and disarmament.

88 Barbara Deming, Prison Notes (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1970). 89 Mollin, Radical Pacificism, 146. 90 Ibid., 147. 61

The Continental Walk for Disarmament and Social Justice, 1976

One decade after the conclusion of the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk, the

United States was mired in a host of domestic and foreign problems such as stagflation, an increase in military spending, and the mistrust of government. In 1974, following a task force of the War Resisters League (WRL), organizers laid out preparations for the Continental Walk for

Disarmament and Social Justice (CWDSJ) as a “major project” for further actions against militarism and the arms race following the Vietnam War. Organizers also staged the walk in

1976 as a reminder that “the American revolution is unfinished business.”91 Ed Hedemann with

WRL claimed the march would mirror the timetable and route of the San Francisco to Moscow

March for Peace. Further, he viewed the CWDSJ as carrying on the tradition of using walking as a vehicle to reach the larger public with a political and/or moral statement, following in the footsteps of the civil rights marchers who had pushed for “social change in the spirit of nonviolence.”92 Hedemann’s statement articulates his belief in long-distance walking as a legitimate and recognizable social movement strategy.

Unlike the previous two marches, however, the CWDSJ had a more explicitly coalition- based structure to further its political objectives, and was sponsored by a range of religious, peace, and civil rights groups and organizations. The group had four clear goals: 1) to educate about the links between militarism, sexism, racism, nationalism, and economic injustice, 2) to stimulate local organizing in isolated areas based on the momentum of the walk, 3) to develop unity among disparate forces working for similar social and political change, and, 4) to use the walk as a process for two-way dialogue and learn the grievances of people in areas “not normally

91 Ed Hedemann, Introduction to The Continental Walk for Disarmament and Social Justice, ed. Vickie Leonard and Tom MacLean (New York: The Continental Walk for Disarmament and Social Justice, 1977), 3, 8. 92 Ibid., 8. 62

exposed to the issues the Walk was addressing.”93 These goals are markedly different from the previous instances of transcontinental walks that had specific political outcomes in mind.

Regardless, CWDSJ presented walking across the continent as necessary to “provide continuity in the unorganized or barren areas of the country.”94 Another characteristic that distinguished their walk was the existence of 20 separate, smaller branch marches that would further extend their outreach through parts of 34 states, covering 8,000 miles.

In place of strategic political outcomes, the CWDSJ more fully resembled the efforts of a prefigurative political community that was committed to a recognition of difference, intersectional identities, and utopic visions of social harmony across lines of race, class, gender, education, occupation, religion, and political beliefs. Eschewing goals of political change,

CWDSJ leaders communicated alternative purposes for their walk, such as Barbara Corr, who championed the “critical importance of the Walk” in building linkages, networks, and relationships that cultivated ground and planted seeds for a future movement that could produce

“the social cohesion that will make massive resistance and the building of a new nonviolent society a feasible reality.”95 Again, however, the notion of the long-distance walk was central to this vision.

The following passage by Corr describing the outreach of CWDSJ is quoted at length as illustration of the relationships fostered by the endurance activism of long-distance walkers: “A young white woman from New Mexico moved to tears by the caring comment of a poor black woman in St. Louis. A California farmworker and walker actively concerned over the struggle to save an inner city black hospital. A middle-aged woman from Minnesota hearing from an Illinois

93 Ibid., 8-9. 94 Ibid., 8. 95 Ibid., 6. 63

farmer how a large conglomerate was buying up feed companies and land around his town. A

Japanese Buddhist monk reverently picking up broken glass in the forsaken ghettos of Chicago.

Within a city, black social workers, radical feminists, Catholic priests, community organizers, and others cooperating and slowly tuning in to each other’s concerns. Expected to help get walkers from one city to another, peace activists in neighboring cities finally developing bonds of friendship and political commitment.”96

The rhetoric of the CWDSJ marks a shift away from the idea of a long-distance walk as a political tool that could achieve a specific outcome and towards the notion of building a prefigurative community activists can turn to when they believe survival is at stake, and that the nation and world are at a crisis point. By walking, they hope to symbolize the linkages among the silenced and oppressed people across the country, and in doing so, give voice to injustice. It is a way to build a movement rather than achieve a movement’s goal. As Corr elaborated, “These sparks, results of the thousands of links developed through the course of the year, are the tiny fires with which we must build our struggle to survive” against racism, sexism, classism, and nuclear weapons.97

First and foremost, however, long-distance walks give prefigurative communities the opportunity to confront the discrimination present within their own ranks. In particular, the

CWDSJ replicated the racial and class homogeneity present in the long-distance walks for social or political change examined in this dissertation. The walk also struggled with patriarchal traditions and sexist patterns that cast women as subordinates and supporters within social movements.98 Working through these social and cultural dynamics, the CWDSJ illuminates the

96 Ibid. 97 Ibid. 98 Ibid., 6-7. 64

ways transcontinental walks for political and social change can become mired in their internal struggles. Agonizing over their own interpersonal conflicts, and celebrating individual transformations, they risk losing touch with the external communities they hope to engage.

Given the legacy of prior walks for change they tapped into, the dramatic gesture of their walk, and their overarching ambitions, CWDSJ tended to situate themselves as having an outsized place in the history of work for profound social change. Based on their discipline, patience, compassion, and commitment to struggle, David McReynolds, a marcher with the

CWDSJ, articulated a description of his group’s activities which exemplifies the concept of endurance activism: “History is made by people as ordinary as ourselves, but extraordinary in that they have been seized by a dream for which they are willing to struggle and to risk a great deal – and to go on struggling and risking without ceasing.”99 Like the Peace Pilgrim, these activists approached their walk as a lesson and a test in learning the patience they needed to continue making personal sacrifices, demonstrate a willingness to suffer, and ultimately, confront a growing sense of public apathy to militarism and injustice. Long-distance walking was their chosen method for the enactment of renewed citizenship and participatory democracy.

Emblematic of endurance activism, the CWDSJ routed their travels through the sites of the issues they sought to confront. The CWDSJ met with local communities in Arizona that educated them about mining, environmental destruction, and deteriorating water supplies. In

Colorado, they visited Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Facility where they recognized those poisoned by the manufacture of radioactive plutonium and held a rally for a conversion to a peace economy. Amid several possible more examples worth reference, the CWDSJ demonstrated at multiples sites of weapons production, worked with impoverished minority

99 Ibid., 7. 65

communities in Dallas and St. Louis, and promoted the concerns of locals in Oklahoma regarding the effects of industrial agriculture.100

In the South, the walk encountered similar problems with racism as their predecessors.

Their time in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and North Carolina was distinguished by harassment, arrests, fear, intimidation, and the specter of violence.101 CWDSJ walkers described experiences with fiercely defended and enforced Jim Crow customs in Birmingham and eastern

North Carolina. But whereas the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo marchers felt a stinging divide along lines of race within their own march, CWDSJ collaborated with the Southern

Christian Leadership Conference, the Southern Organizing Committee, the WRL, and a broad coalition of white peace groups and southern black civil rights groups. The CWDSJ persisted in drawing attention to the plight of the southern poor, white and black, and demanded decent housing, full employment, adequate health care, food assistance, and an end to police brutality.

White walkers evinced a greater sensitivity and understanding of the different political resonances that walking as a form of nonviolent direct action had for people of color in racist, oppressive surroundings. On this walk, upon arrests in the South, black marchers developed a special bond with Buddhist monks who were detained with them in segregated cells.102 As with the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk, experiences in the South made salient the synthesis between peace and racial justice movements.

Given the despair the walkers encountered across the country, it was again through walking that the activists found a silver lining and sense of empowerment. As one member of the national office remarked, “It was in walking that one finally realized that one’s energies were

100 Ibid., 20-33. 101 Ibid., 51-60. 102 Ibid., 58. 66

really coming to something; the outreach the Walk was effecting in rural communities, especially, was amazing and important. For all of us on the national office staff, walking was the best part and no one ever wanted to come home from the road.”103 Larry Gara, who had walked long distances with the Food for Europe pilgrimages in 1940, and briefly joined the CWDSJ in

Ohio, claimed that walking on these occasions provided him “a sense of continuity which [he] hoped to share with the other walkers.” Further, he found that walking “united us together and with the landscape. I also felt the symbolism of getting somewhere step by step by sheer persistence. I felt as though I were again privileged to participate in an action of profound historical importance . . . and that provided hope that working together might also enable us to create a disarmed society.”104 Gara’s comments stress how meanings of endurance are often heightened, exaggerated, and linked to larger visions of what has yet to be, or seems impossible.

As with other long-distance walks, CWDSJ views were rejected by those in Washington they hoped to persuade. After the CWDSJ reached the capital, President Gerald Ford denounced those who called for slashing the military budget in order to meet domestic needs.105

Nevertheless, walkers continued to make an analogy between the inherent difficulty in addressing the complex issues they hoped to tackle – the arms race, world hunger, systemic racism – and the enduring commitment exemplified by their transcontinental walk. One marcher proclaimed, “I can’t imagine walking 105 miles…so I think about walking three miles at a time…I walk on. And we all walk on.”106 This marcher’s quote can be taken as case in point for endurance activism as an expression of desires that a movement’s goals will last and live on.

103 Ibid., 41. 104 Ibid., 71. 105 Ibid., 105. 106 Ibid., 79. 67

Conclusion

The examples presented in this chapter illustrate the core tenets of endurance activism.

Walking, in particular, is a way for people who are deeply concerned about an issue and either previously inactive, unsure of what to do, or tired with other methods to become engaged. By walking, activists carry their messages face-to-face and group-to-group, though they also seek

(and must negotiate) as much media coverage and publicity as possible to spread their message nationwide. Variously adopting strategic political goals and structures of prefigurative political communities, long-distance walks attempt to accomplish concrete outcomes while also creating the kind of society in which they want to live. Whether or not they are successful, however, by walking collectively over several months and thousands of miles, they connote the unrelenting energy, will, and work necessary of ordinary people to continue the struggle in perpetuity.

In this chapter, I analyzed walks that contextualized an understanding of the ways long- distance walks came to be (re)enacted as a unique form of activism that stressed the essential quality of endurance for both the pedestrian, the activist community, and the cause. These marches constituted instances of endurance activism and illustrate a deeper U.S. history of endurance walking for political, policy, or social purposes, of which the Great Peace March – examined in the following chapters – is an outgrowth and variation. The history developed here illustrated key political, organizational, and structural aspects of walks that alternatively sought to gain media coverage, raise the public’s consciousness, promote a vision for change, or achieve specific policy goals.

As mentioned earlier, walking’s cultural meanings connote innocence, simplicity, and virtuosity, among other signs. This chapter showed how Coxey’s Army, Peace Pilgrim, the San

Francisco to Moscow March for Peace, the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace,

and the Continental Walk for Disarmament and Social Justice operationalized these meanings, in different ways, to generate attention and circulate their walks as newsworthy events. But these campaigns also employed endurance activism to communicate that their cause was right and just, and that the individuals participating in the walk had to express the core issues they stood for through long-distance walking. This chapter expanded on my overarching argument through illustration of endurance activism not just as an expression of the willingness to withstand hardships, but as a plea for a movement to last, continue, persist, and go on. Endurance activists wanted their goals and purpose to endure in the dual sense of the word. Marshaling the cultural meanings associated with walking to be in and of the spaces and places they desire to change, endurance activists sought to challenge prevailing views against their movement. As part of a wider struggle, protracted walking in community gave participants a sense of solidarity, empowerment, and the endurance to continue working after the walk reached its physical destination.

CHAPTER 2 “THE GLITZ HAS GIVEN WAY TO THE GRASSROOTS”: THE ORIGINS OF THE GREAT PEACE MARCH FOR GLOBAL NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT

The Planning Stages On April 7, 1985, in front of a “sparsely attended press conference at the Los Angeles

Press Club,” the highly successful veteran organizer and political fundraiser David Mixner spelled out his plans for what he hoped would be the largest, most ambitious demonstration in

American history.1 Haunted by his seven-year-old niece’s belief that she was going to die in a nuclear war before having the chance to grow up, Mixner envisioned a transcontinental march across the United States starting on March 1, 1986, that could “dramatically reduce, and maybe eliminate, nuclear weapons.”2 Unlike previous walks and political marches across the country, this journey would not be that of a single, dedicated person.3 Nor would the trek enlist just a handful of people, or even a couple dozen participants.4 Under the sponsorship of a new organization called PRO-Peace (short for People Reaching Out for Peace), and Mixner’s leadership as Executive Director, this “Great Peace March for Nuclear Disarmament” would

1 Laurie Becklund, “5,000 Volunteers Sought for Nine-Month Peace March,” Los Angeles Times, April 8, 1985, OC_A. 2 Kathleen Hendrix, “Marchers’ Credibility on the Line: Celebrities Join Group to Publicize PRO-Peace Trek,” Los Angeles Times, October 3, 1985, F1; Becklund, “Peace March,” OC_A. 3 I will use terms such as walk, hike, march, and trek interchangeably when discussing long-distance walks for a social or political cause. Individuals and organizers rarely state an explicit reason for their particular choice of a word to describe their means of mobility. In cases where walking terms are elaborated, I will use their preferred verbiage. For an example of a solo walker, see Mary Stanton, Freedom Walk: Mississippi or Bust (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2003). Stanton provides a historical account of Bill Moore’s attempted walk in 1963 from Chattanooga, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi. Moore hoped to hand deliver a plea for racial tolerance to Mississippi’s segregationist governor, Ross Barnett, but was shot and killed by a member of the Ku Klux Klan in Gadsden, Alabama. “Peace Pilgrim” discussed in the previous chapter is another example of a solo transcontinental walker promoting visions of social and political change. 4 Long-distance “walks” or “marches” in the peace and social justice movement that had roughly one to two dozen participants were discussed in the previous chapter, such as the San Francisco to Moscow March for Peace, the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace, and the Continental Walk for Disarmament and Social Justice. See Vickie Leonard and Tom Maclean, eds., The Continental Walk for Disarmament and Social Justice (New York: The Continental Walk for Disarmament and Social Justice, 1977); Marian Mollin, Radical Pacifism in Modern America: Egalitarianism and Protest (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 128-150; Gunter Wernicke and Lawrence S. Wittner, “Lifting the Iron Curtain: The Peace March to Moscow of 1960-1961, The International History Review 21, no. 4 (December 1999): 900-917. 70

involve 5,000 people volunteering to leave their “jobs and families. As Chapter 1 demonstrated, no transcontinental walk for a political cause had ever, in actuality, included more than approximately 125 full-time “marchers.” On average, organizers of prior transcontinental walks had been able to recruit and sustain about a dozen or two dedicated activists on their treks. PRO-

Peace, however, proposed that these 5,000 marchers would help raise $15 million to support the organization by contributing one-dollar for each of the 3,325 miles they covered on the walk.

Mixner claimed they would also greet “more Americans than all the 1984 Olympic torch carriers combined” on their route from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., through the desert, Rocky

Mountains, Midwestern plains, Rust Belt, and metropolises of the east coast.5 Mixner’s vision was strong and clear. He aspired to thwart the hopelessness of his niece’s bleak outlook, the government’s inertia, and wider public apathy.6 As this chapter will show, however, the dream of a glitzy, celebrity-fueled movement had been shattered before the march left Los Angeles.

According to plan, the Great Peace March would create “nothing less than a new moral force” in the United States with the “simple” goal of forcing government leaders to drastically reduce, eliminate, or in Mixner’s words, “take down” nuclear weapons.7 A skeptical press and public may have dismissed such fanciful aspirations outright. But Mixner brought credibility to

PRO-Peace. He had worked on 50 political campaigns during his career and had recently co-

5 Becklund, “Peace March,” OC_A. 6 David Mixner, Stranger Among Friends (New York: Bantam Books, 1996), 170-71. Mixner composed a manifesto or “call to action” in 1984 titled “Because We Have No Choice” that detailed his plan of a “massive international citizens movement” in the wake of “governmental inertia” to halt the nuclear arms race. The movement would be led by Mixner’s organization and rooted in the spirit of non-violence exemplified by two of his heroes, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mahatma Gandhi. 7 Ibid. 71

chaired Senator Gary Hart’s 1984 presidential campaign. His activism began in the 1960s as a teenager involved with the civil rights movement. Later, he and three friends founded the

Vietnam Moratorium Committee that staged highly successful nationwide antiwar protests in

1969 and 1970. In the 1970s and 1980s, he extended his activism to the gay rights movement.

Mixner was a legitimate political organizer and strategist with a multimillion-dollar consulting and public affairs firm. When he returned to antiwar activism after a decade-plus hiatus by launching PRO-Peace, he had developed a public profile and reputation that helped garner media attention for the project. Most organizations in the peace movement, however, were miffed at

Mixner’s snub: his tone suggested he was the first on the scene, and that he did not need their help.8

The press responded to Mixner’s earnest plea with respect, but a decidedly measured tone. PRO-Peace was not a 1960s or 1970s redux. It had office space near the Beverly Center shopping mall in Hollywood, an initial paid staff of 30, mostly young professionals from government, law, and entertainment, and had already garnered $100,000 in donations.9 The organization anticipated generating a mailing list of five to ten million supporters over the next several months. As Mixner saw it, the march was strictly business, just “Phase One” of four in a much wider strategy of escalating action and pressure on political leaders in the United States,

Europe, and Soviet Union.

The first step was to march across the country. A PRO-Peace press packet detailed

“Phase Two” as a massive “Civil Disobedience Effort” to begin in the spring of 1987. It would

8 John Records, “President’s Report and Discussion on D.C. Trip,” 2-3, in Board of Directors Minutes, September 10, 1986, Series I, Box 1, in the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament Records (DG 147), Swarthmore College Peace Collection. 9 Laurie Becklund, “March for Peace: 5,000 Sought for Anti-Nuclear Trek in 1986,” Los Angeles Times, April 8, 1985, SD22. 72

carefully avoid the “errors of the peace movements of the 1960s,” such as being “hostile” or sounding “unpatriotic.”10 Instead, some 250,000 people would be willing to go to jail “in an atmosphere of unity and hope.”11 Phase Three outlined a march to Berlin by 25,000 West and

East Germans, which one staff member had already started organizing. The final phase, admittedly the most undefined, would involve “mass communications to encourage Soviet citizens to do whatever they can” to pressure their own leaders to eliminate nuclear arms.12 “This is not a great event or an act of conscience,” Mixner surmised at the press conference, belying the moral symbolism and extraordinary nature of the intended spectacle.13

Nevertheless, the march seemed fashioned in the image of figures who had led movements and achieved notable levels of success. Photographs of John F. Kennedy and Martin

Luther King, Jr., adorned the wall behind Mixner’s desk, aligning PRO-Peace and the March with icons of progressive social movements and politics in the not-so-distant past. “We believe there are moments in history when citizens can create a moral force to correct deep wrongs by deep sacrifice,” Mixner stressed.14 The dramatic presentation announcing PRO-Peace led one staff writer for the Los Angeles Times to view the proposed march as “quixotic,” though she conceded “several advantages” that other social movements lacked: “political savvy, instantaneous access to fund-raising networks and a staggering sense of pure showmanship.”15

Indeed, Mixner presented PRO-Peace with himself front and center.

The March was a very complex undertaking. For the media, however, Mixner framed the march as a simple, straightforward, but dramatic task. As designed, the cross-country trek was a

10 Laurie Becklund, “Marching for Peace: 5,000 Volunteers Sought for Cross-Country Anti-Nuclear Trek in 1986,” Los Angeles Times, April 8, 1985, C1. 11 Becklund, “Anti-Nuclear Trek,” C1. 12 Ibid. 13 Becklund, “Peace March,” OC_A. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 73

big money operation and business-class enterprise to be executed through the “front porch politics” and efforts of everyday working Americans.16 Mixner wanted 5,000 marchers to engage other Americans face-to-face over the course of eight-and-a-half months while walking along the

3,325-mile route. Further, despite the celebrity luster Mixner desired, to succeed the plan relied on the physical exertion and endurance of the marchers to merit consistent media attention. For instance, PRO-Peace spectacularized the March by quantifying the physical task ahead of the marchers, and by highlighting quotidian necessities as a staggering set of numbers. Official

PRO-Peace tee-shirts promoted the scope of march statistics: “15 miles per day, 225 days, 2,500 tents, 3,325 miles, 20,000 pairs of shoes, 1,275,000 showers, 3,825,000 meals, 65 million

Americans’ lives touched, and 50 billion steps” (italics added).17 Asked to explain his confidence in executing the ambitious project, Mixner replied, “I have never, in all of my years of organizing, seen a project as easy to organize as this one. The people are ready, and they can do it. We cannot keep waiting for a knight in shining armor to save us.”18 Indeed, as the corporate march later gave way, marchers had to leverage their resolve and participatory endurance activism as a grassroots operation in order to maintain their community, spread their message, and sustain the forward motion of their movement.

As the peace movement’s self-appointed new leader, Mixner strove to appeal to the masses by supplanting 1960s-style activism with a 1980s entrepreneurial and nonpartisan sensibility. His staff of mostly Democrats was organized like a “professional political campaign” with teams addressing finance, advance work, and communications. Fund-raising efforts were outwardly high-profile and glossy, tapping into “Southern California’s business and

16 Michael Foley, Front Porch Politics: The Forgotten Heyday of American Activism in the 1970s and 1980s (New York: Hill and Wang, 2013). 17 Hendrix, “Marchers’ Credibility,” F1. 18 Becklund, “Peace March,” OC_A. 74

entertainment community,” as well as the fashion industry on both coasts. For example, a

$25,000 donation from actor Paul Newman headlined the early backing, in addition to a contribution from David Stein, a major Orange County developer known to have supported

Democratic and Republican candidates. In New York City, designer Diane von Furstenberg held a “major” fundraiser. Singer Kenny Loggins offered proceeds from a future concert. Mixner, as principle founder, offered up his body as part of the fundraising, with a goal of dropping 100 pounds. “Unwilling to miss a single chance to raise money for the walk,” a reporter for the Los

Angeles Times observed, “the outgoing, admittedly overweight Mixner . . . is already lining up donors who will contribute money for every pound he loses.”19 Additional endorsements were expected to come in droves from churches, synagogues, peace groups, college campuses, and other public leaders. Finance director Natalie Swercheck scheduled a large direct-mail campaign for donations to start in May 1985.20

Logistical details, however, were sparse in early announcements of the Great Peace

March. The march would truck along at an average of 15 miles per day over roughly 255 days of walking. A single full-time staff member had been assigned “exclusively to seeking the thousands of permits” needed for campsites, parades and rallies. Organizers noted that a “convoy of 50 trucks” would carry most of the marchers’ supplies and equipment. Mixner posited grand expectations for the march. His claims portrayed a peculiar mix of on-the-ground people power boosted by the music, entertainment, and fashion industries. Swercheck also planned to persuade

“prominent artists” to “create original art works for auction and reproduction” for further merchandising opportunities.21

19 Becklund, “Anti-Nuclear Trek,” SD22. 20 Becklund, “Anti-Nuclear Trek,” C1. 21 Ibid. 75

The bold vision featured people “lining the streets” in cities such as Denver, but also in more rural areas like Nebraska, where the march organization would demonstrate as they passed missile silos. They would build momentum through the “heartland” and into the eastern metropolises. Mixner anticipated that “thousands of farmers” would lead the march on tractors through Des Moines, with “thousands more” marching “across the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan.” Mixner allowed room to dream of up to “a million people” filling the streets of

Washington, “asking their leaders to take down nuclear weapons.” The PRO-Peace staff grasped the ambitiousness of the March’s objectives, according to Laurie Becklund of the Los Angeles

Times, with the “understated confidence of people who are accustomed to taking on projects that others say cannot be done.”22 They were not entirely off-base. In addition to the successful

Moratorium on the Vietnam War, Mixner had once helped to sway public opinion against a popular initiative in California that would have curbed gay and lesbian rights.

Led by singer-celebrity Anita Bryant and a coalition of Christian fundamentalists, the

“Save Our Children” campaign in 1977 successfully repealed a Dade County, Florida ordinance that banned discrimination based on sexual orientation. On its heels, voters in Minnesota,

Kansas, and Oregon overturned similar ordinances. In 1978, California Proposition 6 was the first attempt to restrict gay and lesbian rights through a statewide ballot measure. Also known as the Briggs Initiative, it would have prevented gays, lesbians, and those “advocating, soliciting, imposing, encouraging or promoting of private or public homosexual activity directed at, or likely to come to the attention of, schoolchildren and/or other employees,” from working in the state’s public schools.23 Initially, the measure had wide public support. Mixner was part of an

22 Ibid. 23 For the full text of the initiative, see pages 29 and 41 of “California Voters Pamphlet: General Election November 7, 1978,” California State Archives, Secretary of State, accessed September 8, 2017, https://web.archive.org/web/20060818145437/http://library.uchastings.edu/ballot_pdf/1978g.pdf. 76

alliance of activists that helped persuade then-former California Governor Ronald Reagan to oppose the discriminatory policy. The proposed amendment eventually lost by more than one million votes.

Inspired by Mixner’s success with the “NO on 6” campaign and Vietnam War

Moratorium, some members of the PRO-Peace staff believed the March had the potential to realize comparable results. The head of PRO-Peace’s Chicago office remarked, “People stood up and shouted to the politicians to stop a war, and they stopped it. This is going to take off like wildfire.”24 Though the regional director oversimplifies the complexities of what “stopped” the

Vietnam War, it is undeniable that millions throughout the United States participated in antiwar actions and demonstrations. Details about the thousands of people who would walk and line the streets for disarmament were not as forthcoming, though PRO-Peace offered its strategy for recruiting them.

The organization had begun sending out applications for volunteer marchers. They hoped these individuals would “solicit sponsors to underwrite their walks.”25 Physical condition and abilities were also selection criteria. Walkers would need to “pass physicals and undergo a month of training before the hike,” and have the “option of carrying backpacks” that doubled as fold-out chairs. They would live in a “small city” (later to be known as “Peace City”) that March director

Stephen Perkins, a landscape architect, was arranging to move across the country “one day at a time.” As if walking, moving the city, and working to inspire a massive, groundswell movement that could pressure the Reagan administration to eliminate nuclear weapons were not enough of a logistical challenge, Perkins also aimed to “leave as ecologically clean a trail as possible.”26

24 Becklund, “Anti-Nuclear Trek,” SD22. 25 Becklund, “Anti-Nuclear Trek,” C1. 26 Ibid. 77

Marchers would be rewarded for their difficulties in ways that stretched beyond the satisfaction stemming from their physical toil and community outreach. City “amenities” were to include “tents with skylights, a mobile hospital, mail service,” and entertainment by celebrities, from “time to time.” Illustrating the corporate quality that distinguished PRO-Peace from earlier anti-establishment activism, Perkins was negotiating possible shoe, parka, and tent sponsorships.27 Despite decades of prior disarmament talks and rallies by the peace movement, this unmistakably and unapologetically middle-to-upper-class organization longed to attract individuals who sincerely believed, in Mixner’s words, that they “had the power to help deter nuclear war” and spark an “unrelenting movement” worldwide.28 Additional context on David

Mixner’s background in activism provides insight into PRO-Peace’s brazen goals. Specifically, an understanding of Mixner’s social movement influences, philosophies, and strategies – and how they changed over time – contextualizes the message, mission, and method he crafted for the Great Peace March.

David Mixner

From a modest upbringing, Mixner would become a well-known civil rights activist, antiwar and gay rights advocate. As detailed in his 1996 memoir, Stranger Among Friends, Mixner was heavily influenced by the social and political currents of his youth: “We thought anything was possible. There were heroes – Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr. – who made us believe one person with courage could truly make a difference. John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address inspired us to service. No aspiration – to soar to the moon and beyond, to change the world, to be president when you grew up – seemed too great.”29

27 Ibid. 28 Becklund, “Anti-Nuclear Trek,” SD22. 29 Mixner, Stranger Among Friends, xii. 78

King had a clear influence on Mixner’s burgeoning political subjectivity. As a gay man, he felt he and the civil rights leader shared “the pain of being different,” and was inspired to action.30 “When [my siblings and I] heard Martin Luther King call upon all people of goodwill to respond in the fight against injustice, we thought that was what we were also supposed to do.”31

As a high schooler, Mixner became increasingly involved in the civil rights movement, picketing and sending money to King’s home in Atlanta, Georgia. By his junior year in 1963, he planned to join the demonstrations over the summer in Birmingham, Alabama, but his parents forbade it.

Mixner elaborates, “To this day, Dr. King remains as important a role model for me as he was back in the 1960s . . . By working for the liberation of blacks, I intuitively knew I was fighting for my own liberation.”32 After graduating from high school, Mixner further developed his political activism as a college student at Arizona State University, in Tempe. During these years and afterward, Mixner’s actions would illustrate the formative influence of Parks, King, and

Kennedy’s message: that a single, courageous individual has the ability to make a difference in the world through service, vision, and tremendous ambition.

Mixner’s first attempt at organizing took place to support Tempe’s mostly Hispanic garbage workers, who were seeking the right to unionize. He attended a protest by the striking workers and was one of the few white people present, and perhaps the only college student. A garbage worker named Hector approached Mixner and explained their plight. Several, like him, were unable to feed and take care of their children and families, clothe them, buy medicine, or books and school supplies. Mixner felt he had to do something to gain support for the workers

30 Ibid., 18. 31 Ibid., 17. 32 Ibid., 18. 79

from the university community. The story, as Mixner narrates it, is significant for helping to describe some of the reasons behind his enduring commitment to activism.33

Starting from scratch, Mixner set about through rudimentary tasks, calling fellow faculty and students with likeminded progressive views. They discussed the issue, formed a committee to organize a rally at City Hall, and delegated tasks to spread the word and recruit participants.

The time for the rally came and less than one hundred people turned out. Rather spontaneously, it appeared to Mixner, the local police force ascended on campus in full riot gear, “with menacing blue helmets and Plexiglas shields across their faces. They marched in formation, their wood batons beating in unison against the palms of their gloved hands.”34 Students on campus swelled the ranks by the hundreds to protest against the invasion. Mixner abandoned his prepared remarks and spoke freely about his friend Hector’s story. “Bolstered by the crowd,” he describes feeling valued and needed. “It was an exultant day. I had not only made a difference; I also learned never to be too fast in proclaiming a failure.”35 Originating and organizing his first rally proved to have a profound impact on his identity as an activist and influenced the countless actions he would arrange over the next few decades, including the Great Peace March with PRO-

Peace.

Mixner’s experiences with the 1967 March on the Pentagon against the Vietnam War also left an intense impression of the rush of collective protest action. He notes that “The collective excitement was palpable . . . The crowd was vast, enormous beyond expectation or belief. The sense of common cause was contagious.”36 He joined the College Young Democrats, the National Student Association, and became highly invested in the campaign to elect Eugene

33 Ibid., 23-25. 34 Ibid, 24. 35 Ibid., 25. 36 Ibid., 33. 80

McCarthy. This effort turned into a full-time crusade taking him to Minnesota, Georgia, and eventually the infamous 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois.37

The rising political activist’s most significant contribution to the anti-Vietnam War movement took place the following year, in 1969. Writing about his role as one of the four head organizers of The Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam, he further expounded on themes that inform the creation years later of PRO-Peace and the Great Peace March. These themes include progressive activism that strives for mainstream support, the ability of ordinary people to effect change, and grand schemes that envision massive participation in enduring, ongoing spectacular protest.

Mixner did not construct the vision for the Moratorium. A Massachusetts businessman and peace activist first floated the idea – a day when “business as usual” would come to a halt to protest the war – to Mixner’s close friend and activist Sam Brown. Brown then shared the proposal with Mixner, David Hawk, and Marge Sklencar, who were familiar with one another from their work in the McCarthy campaign. Mixner remembers thinking, “The absurdity was obvious: four young people in their early twenties, with almost no money, believing they could bring the nation to a halt.”38 Though seemingly irrational, the Moratorium aligns with Mixner’s espoused belief that “anything was possible,” and no aspiration was too great.39 Additionally, the

Moratorium represented an attempt to work for political change through the exertion of economic pressure in the softened semblance of a nationwide strike against the war.

Their plan was to have an ongoing operation to end the war, not a one-time event. It would start with the Moratorium on October 15, and lead to protests escalating each month

37 Ibid., 40. 38 Ibid., 79. 39 Ibid., xii. 81

thereafter. They secured statements from hundreds of student body presidents calling on their colleges and universities to cease business as usual to engage in serious discussions about the war. One of the organizers sought support from other antiwar organizations and received endorsements from major religious leaders and groups. Mixner’s job was to work the political establishment for the endorsements of national, state, and local officials. The four had to meet and gain the trust of the “peace establishment,” and explain their commitment to total withdrawal of American troops, not just halting the bombing of North Vietnam.40 Feeling they had enough endorsements to establish credibility, the group announced their plans for the Moratorium, highlighting themes of massive participation, broad appeal, and the ability of participatory democracy to effect changes in policy at the highest levels of U.S. government.

Brown, Mixner, Hawk, and Sklencar stated their strategy to the press with confidence.

“On October 15, 1969, this nation will cease ‘business as usual’ to protest the war in Vietnam and to force the Nixon administration to bring the troops home.”41 They also made clear their determination to stir a hesitant middle America, closing with an assurance that “Since the goal of the action is to get massive and diverse sectors of American society to cease to do ‘business as usual,’ it is important to employ actions and rhetoric that will maintain the broadest possible opposition to the war.”42 While the Moratorium existed alongside other large-scale antiwar organizations and protests, notably the National Mobilization Committee to End the War, the latter differed dramatically in style and process. Informally known as “the Mobe,” the organization was less interested in working for change through electoral politics, and more

40 Ibid. 41 Ibid., 80. 42 Ibid. 82

attuned to charting a course for the antiwar movement through dramatic demonstrations.43 The goal of the Moratorium Committee, in contrast, was to unify less militant American voices against the war – a desire to appeal to the mainstream that Mixner would bring to his later work with the Great Peace March.44

In contrast to the “generally unorganized” activities “tarnished by the violence that frequently accompanied sit-ins, teach-ins, marches, and draft-card burnings,” the Moratorium

Committee “hoped to galvanize a moderate majority position by uniting student, labor, business,

Congressional, and civic antiwar sentiment.”45 Brown thought the key was to muster support for substantive arguments that Middle America could not “ignore . . . because of an offensive style.”46 Mixner was pleased with how the Moratorium “clearly reached those millions of

Americans hungry for a way to express their opposition to the war without being perceived as disloyal to the country they loved. Blue-collar workers, war veterans, centrist religious leaders, ordinary citizens – all responded.”47 A report in Newsweek confirmed Mixner’s assessment, averring that organizing had “quickly spread beyond the campus. And, if everything goes according to the evolving plans, the combination of scheduled events could well turn into the broadest and most spectacular antiwar protest in American history.”48

Descriptions of the Moratorium’s success in Mixner’s words are important because they illustrate the experience’s lasting influence on him as a political strategist. He gained concrete

43 Charles DeBenedetti and Charles Chatfield, An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990); Jo Freedman and Victoria Johnson, eds., Waves of Protest: Social Movements Since the Sixties (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999). 44 Peter N. Carroll, It Seemed Like Nothing Happened: America in the 1970s (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2000), 3-11. 45 William E. Jurma, “Moderate Movement Leadership and the Vietnam Moratorium Committee,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 68.3 (1982): 262-263. 46 Sam Brown, “What Strategy for Peace Leadership?” Current 122 (1970): 21. 47 Mixner, Stranger Among Friends, 91. 48 Quoted by Mixner in Stranger Among Friends, 91. 83

knowledge and skills for constructing an event capable of inspiring mass participation. The following passage is quoted at length from his memoir: “[the Moratorium] was happening.

Literally millions of Americans had stopped what they were doing this day to protest the war. In place after place, people were reading the names of every soldier who had died in Vietnam. In some cities church bells were rung more than forty thousand times, once for each of the dead.

High school students wore black armbands to school, and there were black armbands all over

Wall Street. Churches and synagogues held services and all-day prayer vigils to pray for the end of the war. Colleges and universities across the land canceled their classes and devoted the entire day to studying Vietnam. . . During the day the major cities started reporting in with numbers – over 100,000 in Boston, 2,700 in Lexington, Kentucky, 50,000 at Bryant Park in New York City,

15,000 in Baltimore, 5,000 in Tucson, 75,000 in Cleveland, 15,000 in Chicago, 100,000 in San

Francisco—and the totals kept growing as the day went on. . . We sat stunned, scarcely able to believe the enormous reservoir of concern and emotion we had tapped. . . the real story was in the many hundreds of thousands who carried the candles, tolled the bells, and read the names of the dead.”49 The day ended with a march from the Washington Monument to the White House, and words from Coretta Scott King denouncing the war.

The outpouring of support and action served as a model for what he hoped to replicate with the Great Peace March. In the fifteen years between the nationwide protest and his establishment of PRO-Peace, Mixner had devoted most of his energy to the gay rights movement and starting a political consulting firm with his partner, and lover, Peter Scott. Devastated by the

AIDS crisis in the early 1980s, Mixner claims he turned to the familiar territory of the peace movement because he was “literally unable” to “face” the personal and political realities of

49 Ibid., 94. 84

fighting the “AIDS battle.”50 Yet, his experience with the Vietnam Moratorium “made [him] believe that even [in 1985], one individual, starting from scratch, could move millions into action.”51 The Moratorium produced a formula, or blueprint, for Mixner’s vision of mass mobilization: tap into an extant movement with widespread concern over military excesses and guide massive numbers of participants into a highly visible spectacular action capable of

“forcing leaders” into serious negotiations for policy change.52 In addition, Mixner’s consulting business had flourished following the defeat of Proposition 6. This success likely only increased his confidence in working through corporate and celebrity channels for the March. The next section considers how PRO-Peace endeavored to bring Mixner’s vision to life in the middle of

President Ronald Reagan’s 1980s America.53

PRO-Peace: Corporate Activists, Celebrity Causes, and a Media Extravaganza

A smattering of events in southern California following the announcement of PRO-Peace indicates Mixner’s intention to spread the word about his march on college campuses, among

Hollywood celebrities, and within elite circles of the Los Angeles business and entertainment community. During a speaking engagement at the University of California, Irvine to discuss the

Great Peace March, Mixner noted cities across the west, midwest, and east that the trek would traverse. He expected “hundreds of participants” from the Irvine and Orange County communities to be part of an event that would attract a “larger number of spectators than 1984’s

50 Ibid., 168. 51 Ibid., 170. 52 Ibid. 53 William C. Berman, America’s Right Turn: From Nixon to Clinton (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998); Paul Boyer, “From Activism to Apathy: The American People and Nuclear Weapons, 1963-1980,” Journal of American History 70.4 (1984): 821-844; Jean V. Hardisty, Mobilizing Resentment: Conservative Resurgence from the John Birch Society to the Promise Keepers (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999); Bradford Martin, The Other Eighties: A Secret History of America in the Age of Reagan (New York: Hill and Wang, 2011); Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001). 85

Olympic Torch Run.” In communicating his vision and plans, organizers issued grand predictions stretching into the millions – of dollars, participants, and names stored in a database to tap for petitions, civil disobedience, and further action. They compared the forthcoming march to other great social movements in American history. In helping to rid the world of nuclear arms, the luxuriously accommodated moving-city of demonstrators would also rival the highest-profile of lavish modern spectacles.54

Though PRO-Peace established several regional offices throughout the country, sent two advance teams to chart routes and campsites, and undertook a nationwide recruitment drive for marchers, the organization was rooted in Los Angeles’s mix of corporate, entertainment, and political culture. Most of the press accounts for their early recruiting and fundraising efforts are tethered to the Golden State, and its “dream factory” of actors, singers, producers, and directors.

Several articles note PRO-Peace’s headquarters with office space for 75 to 100 paid staff in a building on the upscale Westside.55 One feature story highlighted a PRO-Peace employee as a

“new breed of community leader.”56 The leader was Jane Nathanson, a 40-year-old woman chairing the Great Peace March departure ceremonies. She is identified as the “stereotypical superwoman of the ‘80s,” a “wife-mother-professional-woman-volunteer,” comfortable working for change and enjoying her affluent life of “great clothes,” a “well-adjusted family,” travel, luxuries, and modern Beverly Hills home.57 Nathanson posited that her involvement with PRO-

Peace gave the organization “creditability when people see that your community ladies are involved too, that it’s more than a college hippie thing.”58 Mixner concurred, claiming

54 G.M. Bush, “Irvine; Great Peace March to Be Subject of Talk,” Los Angeles Times, April 23, 1985, OC_A2. 55 Becklund, “Peace March,” OC_A; Kathleen Hendrix, “Marchers’ Credibility on the Line: Celebrities Join Group to Publicize PRO-Peace Trek,” Los Angeles Times, October 3, 1985, F1. 56 Tia Gindick, “Pioneer in A New Breed of Community Leader,” Los Angeles Times, March 10, 1986, D_1A. 57 Gindick, “Community Leader,” D_1A. 58 Ibid. 86

Nathanson was a consummate activist professional who “works her head off,” and was also

“extraordinarily well-connected.”59 Indeed, Nathanson’s father started a chemical import company during the Second World War, and sold it for $90 million. Her husband was president of Falcon Communications, then California’s largest independent Cable TV operator.60

In a wider context, PRO-Peace emerged among two rock and pop music charity mega- events that took place in the summer of 1985: Live Aid and Farm Aid. In addition to referencing the successes of the 1984 Summer Olympic Games, which took place in L.A., PRO-Peace organizers were building off the budding culture of celebrity activism and televised fundraising spectacles.61

Live Aid, in July, was a dual-venue benefit for the devastating Ethiopian famine that staged concerts at Wembley Stadium in London, England, and the John F. Kennedy Stadium in

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, before 72,000 and 100,000 spectators, respectively. Queen, U2,

Madonna, The Who, Elton John, Paul McCartney, and dozens of other artists and pop icons performed. Billed as “the global jukebox,” related concerts took place throughout the world in countries such as the Soviet Union, Japan, Australia, Canada, and West Germany. Live Aid organizers’ decision to link up the venues through satellite technology spurred a global phenomenon, as an estimated 1.9 billion people watched the concerts on television in 150 countries. Graham Jones, who attended the day-long concert in London with his wife, and then watched the finale in Philadelphia on television until four o’clock in the morning the next day, recalled that “it was the first truly global concert, and people felt empowered and exhilarated.

59 Ibid. 60 Ibid. 61 Mark Dyreson and Matthew Llewellyn, “Los Angeles is the Olympic City: Legacies of the 1932 and 1984 Olympic Games,” The International Journal of the History of Sport 25.14 (2008): 1991-2018; H. Louise Davis, “Feeding the World a Line? Celebrity Activism and Ethical Consumer Practices from Live Aid to Product Red,” Nordic Journal of English Studies 9.3 (2010): 89-118; Frances Westley, “Bob Geldof and Live Aid: The Affective Side of Global Social Innovation,” Human Relations 44.10 (1991): 1011-1036. 87

They felt they really could help change the world.”62 The event raised over $100 million, though investigative reporting one year later revealed how the Ethiopian dictator, “deadlocked” in the nation’s civil war, used the funds to buy weapons from the Soviet Union and “viciously crush” his opposition with the “largest, best equipped army on the African continent.”63

On the heels of Live Aid, however, music legends Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, and

Neil Young organized Farm Aid in late September 1985. Over 50 artists performed to support the nation’s struggling family farmers facing foreclosure and bankruptcy through the mortgage debt crisis.64 Upwards of 75,000 attended the concert at the University of Illinois football stadium in Champaign, Illinois, a “14-hour show and telethon [that] raised more than $9 million for relief aid, a farming hot line service, counseling, and assistance for destitute farmers in need of legal help and job placements.”65 Though donations fell significantly shy of the hoped-for $50 million, Farm Aid’s founders used the platform to raise awareness of the crisis and pressure

Washington to improve farming laws. Young placed a full-page ad in the USA Today two weeks after the concert, imploring President Ronald Reagan, “Will the family farm in America die as a result of your administration?”66 Congress eventually passed the Agricultural Credit Act of 1987, which authorized a $4 billion “bailout” and overhaul of the Farm Credit System and contained

“numerous significant borrower protections.”67

62 Graham Jones, “Live Aid 1985: A Day of Magic,” CNN, July 6, 2005, http://edition.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/Music/07/01/liveaid.memories/index.html; 63 Bob Guccione Jr., “Live Aid: The Terrible Truth: On the 30th Anniversary of Live Aid, We’re Republishing SPIN’s 1986 Expose on the So-Called ‘Global Jukebox,’” SPIN, July 13, 2015, https://www.spin.com/featured/liveaid-the-terrible-truth-ethiopia-bob-geldof-feature/. 64 Thomas A. Lyon, “Who Cares About the Farmer? Apathy and the Current Farm Crisis,” Rural Sociology 5.14 (1986): 490-502; 65 Christina Crapanzano, “A Brief History of Farm Aid,” TIME, October 1, 2010, http://content.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2023006,00.html. 66 Ibid. 67 James T. Massey and Susan A. Schneider, “Title I of the Agricultural Credit Act of 1987: A Law in Search of Enforcement,” UC Davis L. Rev. 23 (1989): 589. 88

PRO-Peace similarly hoped to enlist celebrity support for the Great Peace March in an effort to capture the media spotlight, raise social awareness, and subsequently, provide a platform from which to pressure Congress and the Reagan administration for legislative action and changes to foreign policy, defense spending, and nuclear arms buildup. One reporter summarized this strategy: “The intent is not to dismantle the weapons on the walk across the

United States, but to create the moral and political climate in the country, and in the world that will be watching, to make it all happen.”68 The march itself was imagined as nonpartisan, not an entity that would protest, engage in civil disobedience, break laws, or pose an outright challenge to authority. Before doing any of those things, Mixner desired to instill hope among an ostensibly apathetic public through the march’s incongruent mélange of celebrity visibility and thousands of ordinary people walking. They would be led by radiation victims in St. George,

Utah, “welcomed by Hopi tribal leaders,” and joined by farmers across the Great Plains – the marchers taking on what Mixner understood as the “impossible, at tremendous inconvenience to themselves.”69

The attempt by a leading antiwar activist of the Vietnam era to finance a peace march in the mid-1980s with support from corporate America merits pausing the narrative briefly for further discussion. In my research, I did not find evidence to suggest that Mixner faced special criticism or heightened scrutiny specifically for taking this approach. Mixner had a history of adopting moderate approaches to liberal-progressive activism, such as with the Moratorium to

End the War in Vietnam. He had never espoused militant anti-establishment positions or advocated anti-capitalist views. Instead, he worked for liberal reform through official channels and sought to change the establishment from within. Moreover, Mixner had experienced

68 Hendrix, “Marchers’ Credibility,” F1. 69 Ibid. 89

tremendous success as a political strategist through his consulting business, and he promoted the

March as an action with bipartisan support that appealed to middle-class sensibilities. PRO-

Peace employed the slogan “peace is profitable” to emphasize their campaign’s suitability for businesses and commerce, mirroring the corporate ethos of other media-savvy campaigns for social awareness in the decade.70

Thus, the Great Peace March emerged alongside other early examples of neoliberal social movements, such as Live Aid, which implied that consumption could stand in as political participation. The original vision for the march reflects the cultural turn from politics to charity that Samantha King calls the “corporatization of activism.” This turn, symptomatic of a broader set of social, political, and economic conditions, mobilized volunteerism and philanthropy as the most prominent modes of civic involvement.71 Others in the peace movement, such as the

Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign, Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament, and the

National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, had also crafted a centrist, mainstream appeal in the early 1980s.72

Reporters occasionally expressed incredulity at Mixner’s plan for its audacity to press the

Reagan administration to eliminate nuclear weapons. Once in a while, a journalist would chide the Great Peace March as a “yuppie” march. But Mixner’s desire for corporate sponsorship and celebrity backing was rarely, if ever, rebuked. The presentation of the peace movement as

70 Bob Sipchen, “Taking Their Message Across America,” Los Angeles Times, February 20, 1986, OC_D1. See also PRO-Peace newsletters which emphasize its corporate activist profile: “The PRO Peace Profile,” Volume I, no. 1, July 1985, Series IV, Box 17, in the Great Peace March Records, Swarthmore College Peace Collection. 71 Samantha King, Pink Ribbons, Inc: Breast Cancer and the Politics of Philanthropy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 123. To summarize, King views the formation of the neoliberal state as one “in which boundaries between state and the corporate world are increasingly blurred as each elaborates the interests of others, at dispersed sites throughout the social body and through practices that misleadingly appear to be outside the realms of government or consumer capitalism,” xi. For a fuller discussion, see x-xxix. 72 Kyle Harvey, American Anti-Nuclear Activism, 1975-1990: The Challenge of Peace (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 42-67. The public relations and media strategies of these organizations are discussed in Chapter 4. 90

nonpolitical, noncontroversial, clean, neat, and organized had precedent. The March, and other corporatized social movements in the 1980s, illustrate Samantha King’s contention that the neoliberal state blurs distinctions between the state, corporate world, and social movements, as each “elaborates the interests of others, at dispersed sites throughout the social body and through practices that misleadingly appear to be outside the realms of government or consumer capitalism.”73

The Los Angeles Times picked up on PRO-Peace’s desire to replicate even a fraction of

Live Aid’s financial windfall and celebrity involvement. A “Weekend Guide” on July 19 noted the “continuation of rock’s involvement with social causes” through a “series of shows at the

Lhasa Club in support of next year’s ‘Great Peace March.’”74 Acts were to include artists such as the Nolte Brothers, Pop Art, Chris D., and Sylvia Juncosa. In September, the Los Angeles Times summarized a host of events, parties, and fundraisers for various L.A. and Hollywood benefits, including the AIDS Project/L.A. Commitment to Life Dinner co-chaired by Elizabeth Taylor and

Burt Reynolds, Women For, the Children’s Diabetes Foundation, money for scholarships at UC

Berkeley, the L.A. Coalition of 100 Black Women, and more. She also noted that actor Paul

Newman would “brief the entertainment industry on Pro Peace and the Great Peace March” at an event on September 30, co-hosted by Frank Wells, then-President and CEO of Walt Disney

Productions. The exclusive meeting would follow a reception “for business and corporate types at Stanley and Betty Sheinbuam’s,” two stalwart activists of the L.A. community. Betty’s father was the first president of Warner Bros. She and husband Stanley participated in antiwar efforts, supported the civil rights movement and various other social causes.75

73 King, Pink Ribbons, xi. 74 “Weekend Guide: Pop/Jazz: Peace of the Rock,” Los Angeles Times, July 19, 1985, G1. 75 Marylouise Oates, “On the Circuit: Angelenos Get Back to What They Do Best . . . Partying,” Los Angeles Times, September 13, 1985, F1; Christine D’Zurilla, “Betty Warner Steinbaum, an Independent Woman with a Hollywood 91

The informational meeting to boost support for PRO-Peace garnered some A-list RSVPs.

Attendees included actors such as Sally Field and Richard Dreyfuss. Producer and manager Ken

Kragen also listened to Newman’s primer. That same year, Kragen had helped secure talent for

USA for Africa, a supergroup featuring Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, Bruce Springsteen,

Cyndi Lauper and other pop music stars that produced the fund-raising single and album We Are the World. Kragen organized Hands Across America later in 1986, a transcontinental chain of over six million people linking hands to raise millions of dollars to aid the hungry and homeless around the world.76 The Los Angeles Times, covering the proliferation of “cause celebrities,” playfully hinted at the increasing quality of social causes as “star attractions.” “Are there enough important movie industry people to go around?” and demurred, “activists will have to decide what cause is dearest to their hearts – and if they can make three events in one evening.”77 In addition to the PRO-Peace event, the article noted a Norman Lear-hosted gathering for People for the American Way (a group opposed to the Christian conservative political organization,

Moral Majority); a dinner honoring Ethel Kennedy and Pat Lawford to benefit the Human Rights

Award of the Robert Kennedy Memorial; and Mary Tyler Moore joining Stacey and Henry

Winkler in leading the Santa Monica Rape Treatment Center’s annual charity brunch.78 Two

Pedigree, Dies at 97,” Los Angeles Times, August 9, 2017, http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/gossip/la-me- betty-warner-sheinbaum-20170809-story.html. 76 James E. Post and Sandra A. Waddock, “Social Cause Partnerships and the ‘Mega-event:’ Hunger, Homelessness and Hands Across America,” Research in Corporate Social Performance and Policy 11 (1989): 181-205, Jochen Schulte-Sasse, “Electronic Media and Cultural Politics in the Reagan Era: The Attack on Lybia and ‘Hands Across America’ as Postmodern Events, Cultural Critique 8 (1987): 123-152. On USA for Africa, Daniel Dotter, “Growing Up is Hard to Do: Rock and Roll Performers as Cultural Heroes,” Sociological Spectrum 7.1 (1987): 25-44; Reebee Garofalo, “Understanding Mega-events,” Peace Review 5.2 (1993); 189-198; Greil Marcus, “We Are the World?” in Zoot Suits and Second-Hand Dresses: An Anthology of Fashion and Music, ed. Angela McRobbie (London, UK: Palgrave MacMillan, 1989), 276-282. 77 Marylouise Oates, “On the Circuit: Anti-Defamation League Postpones Bradley Honor,” Los Angeles Times, September 27, 1985, OC_D19. 78 Ibid. 92

young star actors, Eric Stolz and Alexandra Paul, even applied to be marchers, much to the chagrin of Stoltz’s publicist.79

During the summer, autumn, and winter months following Mixner’s announcement of the

Great Peace March, PRO-Peace sought to strengthen its image as a professional operation bolstered by the entertainment industry, but with activist roots. A PRO-Peace employee’s birthday party at Wallis Annenberg’s in Beverly Hills fostered a meeting of “old Hollywood” with “the newer anti-nuclear movement.”80 Controversially, First Daughter Patti Davis opposed her father’s nuclear arms buildup and volunteered to entertain marchers during their trek across the country.81 Celebrities including Rae Dawn Chong, Malcom McDowell, Susan Anspach, and

Mary Steenburgen lined up to marshal “artistic talent” and emcee a silent auction and supper party profiting the March at the Flow Ace Gallery.82 The Bangles, then a rapidly ascending pop- rock group, headlined an anti-nuclear rally “staged to raise financial and moral support for the

Great Peace March,” at UC Irvine.83 Barbara Streisand offered to donate proceeds from an upcoming single, “Somewhere” from West Side Story, to PRO-Peace and the American

Foundations for AIDS Research.84 Streisand suggested the song – a “passionate plea” for a “new way of living, a way of forgiving” – reflected “the life-affirming attitude we must have in order to prevent a nuclear war, as well as the destruction of human life from AIDS.”85 PRO-Peace was not eager to link its movement with the AIDS crisis, however. Streisand’s comments and

79 Marylouise Oates, “On the Circuit: Neil Simon, Danny Kaye Earn Kudos as Fund Raisers,” Los Angeles Times, January 17, 1986, OC_D4. 80 Marylouise Oates, “On the Circuit: For Liz and Joan, a Close Encounter or Star Wars?” Los Angeles Times, October 9, 1985, G1. 81 Oates, “Star Wars,” G1. 82 Marylouise Oates, “On the Circuit: From Barba to Live Aid, It’s People Helping People,” Los Angeles Times, November 13, 1985, F1. 83 Randy Lewis, “New Record Invention has Endless Variations,” Los Angeles Times, November 1, 1985, OC_E1. 84 Marylouise Oates, “Agent Tosses Haig’s Hat Into the Presidential Ring,” Los Angeles Times, November 20, 1985, G1. 85 Oates, “Presidential Ring,” G1. 93

donation provided a rare instance acknowledging the intersection between the anti-nuclear movement and AIDS awareness in the mainstream media.

It was much more common for groups supporting PRO-Peace to exclusively link their support to peace initiatives. Some combined their events with a sales and marketing opportunity.

In December, celebrities and designers took part in a fashion show held at a private residence to aid the march. Clothes from Leon Max, James Reva, and Christine Albers were modeled by Teri

Garr, Anjelica Huston, Ali MacGraw and others, and sold at 25 percent below retail with 25 percent of the profits going to Mixner’s organization.86 Less frequent was support from existing peace groups. The local chapter of Alliance for Survival, however, chipped in and threw a New

Year’s Eve party in Santa Monica named “Eighty-Six the Nukes” to encourage support.87 A group called Valley Women to Prevent Nuclear War, a task force of the L.A. section of the

National Council of Jewish Women, also planned a meeting to discuss the Great Peace March.88

Maggie Kuhn, founder of the Gray Panthers, joined with Alliance for Survival and Women’s

Action for Nuclear Disarmament in organizing a lecture, candlelight vigil, and short peace march to side with the Peace Marchers.89

In addition to having the famous and well-connected attend or host exclusive gatherings, private parties, and glitzy galas, in October PRO-Peace recruited “dozens of Hollywood’s young stars” for the shooting of a 30-second public service television commercial.90 They also urged the public to participate in the ad. Rather than have the stars deliver PRO-Peace’s message from a studio, director Nicholas Meyer (who directed the 1983 television film The Day After about

86 “Brentwood Show Will Benefit Pro-Peace Group,” Los Angeles Times, December 6, 1985, G25. 87 “New Year’s Eve Peace Party Benefit,” Los Angeles Times, December 12, 1985, E37. 88 “Valley News,” Los Angeles Times, February 3, 1986, V_A8. s 89 “Peace Marchers to Hear Gray Panther,” Los Angeles Times, February 14, 1986, F4. 90 Kathleen Hendrix, “Marchers’ Credibility on the Line: Celebrities Join Group to Publicize PRO-Peace Trek,” Los Angeles Times, October 3, 1985, F1. 94

nuclear war and fallout in Kansas) designed the spot as a “mock-up” of the march itself.91 Some of music, film, and TV’s brightest stars, such as Judd Nelson, Mare Winningham, Rosanna

Arquette, Martin Sheen, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, and Madonna, would be dispersed among the 1,000 or more ordinary people they hoped would show up for the filming at Woodley Park.

According to Los Angeles Times reporter Kathleen Hendrix, who covered PRO-Peace and the

Great Peace March extensively in 1985 and 1986, the desired image was a “swarm of people appearing on the horizon, stars and ‘just folks’ mixed in together, just marching along for peace like anyone else.”92 They had raised only $3 million of their projected $20 million budget and aired the commercial to solicit contributions and attract needed applicants to walk the 3,300-mile transcontinental journey.93

The day of the commercial shoot yielded mixed results. There was doubt over the size of the crowd of ordinary “folks” present. Estimates ranged to near 1,800, though others questioned if the throng crossed 1,000. At any rate, the mass did not appear fervid about nuclear disarmament, but a mulling collection of “babies in strollers, dogs, a semi-retired older couple,” and “Valley teen-agers . . . who had gotten the word that Madonna might show up.”94 The article notes that the fan posse materializing to see the global pop icon “obediently” kept “their distance,” though a few were able to participate in one last take with the singer who arrived

“about the same time the crowd was released for the day.”95 In the shot, Madonna follows three teens on a path, then looks into the camera, pleading support for the march. “The time has come for all of us to take the future into our own hands. If we don’t, who will?”96 The story featured a

91 Hendrix, “Marchers’ Credibility,” F1. 92 Kathleen Hendrix, “Madonna, Other Entertainers Join PRO-Peace Group in Public-Service TV Spot,” Los Angeles Times, October 6, 1985, OC_A16. 93 Hendrix, “TV Spot,” OC_A16. 94 Ibid. 95 Ibid. 96 Ibid. 95

picture of Mixner smiling and laughing with Madonna and Rosanna Arquette, emblematic of the organization’s attempt to channel a mass, wide, consumer-oriented audience base into participatory democracy.97

Despite the impressive list of entertainers, Hollywood producers, directors, and technicians volunteering their time, skills, and equipment for the public service spot, Hendrix maintained that PRO-Peace’s “credibility” was on the line. The gap between Mixner’s vision for the March and the challenges for achieving the size, scope, and enormity of the “real thing” appeared increasingly insurmountable. Beyond the intimidating logistical requirements and dire financial picture, there were signs that Mixner overestimated the appeal of a long-distance walk for nuclear disarmament. His perception that nuclear arms stockpiles demanded a response that mirrored other “historic times of moral courage and challenge” such as the abolition of slavery, defeat of Nazism, and protest of the Vietnam War, did not resonate as widely as the movements he cited.98 In entreating celebrities, business elites, and the public that it was “our turn” to join those from “great moments of the past, and what people can do,” he underestimated the issue’s polarization, unlike “safer” causes such as hunger and homelessness.99

In October 1985, a majority of union officers with the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) voted to “support a nine-month, cross-country, anti-war march by 5,000 demonstrators next spring.”100

Patty Duke, a candidate for the SAG presidency, was an outspoken opponent of President

Reagan’s policies, as was the incumbent SAG president, Ed Asner. A key issue in the SAG election was Asner’s role as a political activist, and his efforts to get the Guild to make political

97 A video containing footage of the PRO-Peace commercial can be viewed at the beginning of the documentary, Just One Step, produced by marcher Cathy Zheutlin. “Just One Step: The Great Peace March, part 1, The Journey Begins,” YouTube video, 8:23, posted by Cathy Zheutlin, July 5, 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bMkRvf1oyk. 98 Hendrix, “Marchers’ Credibility,” F1. 99 Ibid. 100 Harry Bernstein, “SAG Vote Looks Like Referendum on Reagan,” Los Angeles Times, October 16, 1985, E1. 96

endorsements. These officers were met with backlash from some members in the union.

Opponents such as Duke’s conservative opponent for the presidency Ed Nelson and Charlton

Heston baulked at the endorsement, claiming it politicized the union and that PRO-Peace voiced

“anti-American policy slogans.”101 Nelson and others were displeased with their colleagues who had appeared in the nonprofit PRO-Peace commercial and waived their daily minimum wage requirement of around $330. SAG had not approved the waiver, and though they endorsed the

Great Peace March, they regarded the march as “political activity.” Normally, waivers were granted only for charitable nonprofits. Those who objected communicated some of the earliest vocal opposition to the March, demonstrating PRO-Peace did not have unified mass support as a non- or bipartisan organization. They also indirectly questioned the “moral force” of PRO-

Peace’s vision by raising legal issues that interpreted the march as unpatriotic liberal propaganda.102

Ominous Clouds Gather for the Great Peace March

PRO-Peace’s fundraising and sponsorship efforts were challenged by expressions of doubt from an increasingly skeptical press amid reports that neither funding or participants were arriving in the anticipated droves. Regardless, PRO-Peace moved forward projecting itself as a business-celebrity fusion providing leadership for a large-scale action for the peace movement.

Bob Sipchen of the Los Angeles Times described the organization’s corporate structure and

“bureaucratese,” mocking its employees’ job titles, such as “deputy director,” “document coordinator,” and “assistant director of transportation.”103 Several employees quoted in Sipchen’s overview of the internal workings of PRO-Peace affirm the organization’s comfort with a

101 Bernstein, “SAG Vote,” E1. 102 Ibid. 103 Sipchen, “Across America,” OC_D1. 97

businesslike approach to activism. Allan Affeldt, 27, explained the march route “had been laid out ‘according to demographics,’” though he did not elaborate which social categories were targeted. Tim Carpenter, 26, traveled widely seeking endorsements and teaching representatives at regional offices how to deliver the PRO-Peace pitch. “We were always attentive to [wearing] suits and ties,” he elucidated, “and to going to the audiences where you wouldn’t expect to hear a

‘peace and justice’ event,” such as the Lions Club and city council meetings. “We organized around the belief that it’s time we stopped talking to ourselves,” Carpenter added, suggesting their desire to be taken seriously by the “mainstream,” or the more conservative-minded constituents of the professional, middle, and upper classes.104 “Peace is profitable,” another staffer chimed in, noting attempts were made to contact the Chamber of Commerce in every city and town on the march route to communicate that the March was a major customer for food, shoes, and other supplies.105

Mixner had anticipated criticism from Reagan loyalists, though, who he believed would interpret the March as a “nostalgia trip,” or “return of the ‘60s,” and its participants as “gypsies” and “traitors.”106 He dismissed such notions by stressing the sacrifice of marchers who would

“give up a year of their lives to dramatize their commitment.”107 Moreover, echoing Jacob

Coxey’s efforts in 1894 to soften mainstream fears about the men marching in his “army of the unemployed,” PRO-Peace claimed it would carefully screen applicants, reject “riffraff looking for three squares and a little company,” and prohibit drugs and alcohol.108 Mixner and actor Paul

Newman, an early supporter of the march, contrasted PRO-Peace with the widely popular

104 Ibid. 105 Ibid. 106 Mary McGrory, “A ‘Moratorium’ for the ‘80s,” Washington Post, April 2, 1985, A2. 107 McGrory, “‘Moratorium,’” A2. 108 Ibid. 98

Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign, or “Freeze.” Mixner stated the latter “asked nothing of its adherents,” while Newman disparaged Freeze organizers’ lack of a long-term plan.109 “There was no follow up,” he bemoaned, “we lacked staying power . . . This time we’re going to get computerized,” a reference to PRO-Peace’s database that would allegedly store the personal information of millions of sympathizers it collected along its route for further action.110 Even the organization’s t-shirts promoted the enormous size and scope of what it demanded from its devotees: “15 miles per day, 225 days, 2,500 tents, 3,325 miles, 20,000 pairs of shoes, 1,275,000 showers, 3,825,000 meals, 65 million Americans’ lives touched, and 50 billion steps.”111

With reality not appearing to match the complexity, logistical, and funding challenges of the proposed moving-city, journalist Kathleen Hendrix wondered, “will they ever make it out of

Los Angeles?”112 Her skepticism was far from unfounded. PRO-Peace was still seeking help from Physicians for Social Responsibility and the American Civil Liberties Union to enlist local doctors and lawyers. Over 10,000 permits for camping, marching, transportation, and speaking engagements needed to be obtained. Artists were still at work creating seven “10-by-30-foot portable murals” that would encircle the encampment.113 Headlining acts to help fill 100,000 seats for the Great Peace March concert and rally at the L.A. Coliseum remained a mystery. With less than five months remaining until the start of the march, she observed that Mixner’s

“exhilaration” took on a “brief look of disbelief” amid claims that the March’s sendoff would be the “longest, biggest, march” in the city’s history.114 Staffer Eve Hallinan admitted needing a

109 Ibid. For critiques and analysis of the Freeze Campaign, see, Michael J. Hogan, The Nuclear Freeze Campaign: Rhetoric and Foreign Policy in the Telepolitical Age (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1995), and David S. Meyer, A Winter of Discontent: The Nuclear Freeze and American Politics (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1990). 110 Hendrix, “Marchers’ Credibility,” F1. 111 Ibid. 112 Ibid. 113 Zan Dubin, “Artists Get in Step with Peace March,” Los Angeles Times, February 7, 1986, H2. 114 Hendrix, “Marchers’ Credibility,” F1. 99

$250,000 deposit for 3,000 tents or else, “we aren’t going anywhere.”115 An estimated 15 to 20 percent of the now-$20 million venture had been raised in cash and kind, a glaring $16 million deficit.116

The organization’s efforts for corporate sponsorship and private contributions appeared desperate. For example, a donation of $350 purchased a tent that would be returned to the donor after the march. Vietnam veteran Jon Randolph Floyd coordinated a $1,000 Adopt-a-Marcher program. Mixner continued seeking Hollywood entertainers and crews to provide free special- events for marchers and townspeople in sparsely populated areas along the route.117 He was unsuccessful. Further, a picture of the 5,000-strong contingent of marchers had yet to emerge.

The national media had not paid as much attention to PRO-Peace as the local coverage in southern California. CBS radio, however, covered the preparations, noting PRO-Peace’s efforts and its individualist ethos. CBS news correspondent Bruce Morton remarked, “Mixner is an idealist, but he is also a skilled political professional, and the PRO Peace press releases say over and over that the march and everything else will be professional – smart advance people and schedulers and so on. Can it matter? The idea that one man can make a difference—or thousands—seems almost dated now in a decade of massed government and missiles. But David

Mixner thinks he has to try and there seems nothing wrong with that.”118 As 1986 neared – ready or not – PRO-Peace shifted from hyping its organizational culture and foretold ability to stem the nuclear arms race, to going about the grunt work of welcoming marchers, and staging the equipment, gear, tents, pavilions, trucks, trailers and grounds of the future “Peace City.”

115 Ibid. 116 Ibid. 117 Ibid. 118 Quoted in Mixner, Stranger Among Friends, 171-172. 100

Pre-March Preparations: Chaos, Mixed Messages and Shifting Expectations

Before the Great Peace March set off from downtown Los Angeles on March 1, 1986,

PRO-Peace set aside the month of February to prepare and train the gathering activists.

Marchers, some arriving as early as late January, met at White Oaks Recreation Center at

Sepulveda Basin in the San Fernando Valley on February 15, where they camped, learned march logistics, and became initiated into the marcher system of governance. On February 24, the assembled marchers would walk to Griffith Park and camp there until March 1, when they would head to the Coliseum for the anticipated star-filled sendoff, cheered on by 100,000 spectators.119

The idealism suffusing the March’s objectives faced increasing scrutiny under the intensifying pressure of pulling off all that Mixner had promised. Pragmatic challenges in reaching the goal of 5,000 self-funded marchers accompanied mixed messages about the well- being of the organization, and informed shifting meanings about the March’s purpose and expectations. Spokesman Howard Cushnir admitted PRO-Peace had a “Herculean task” in

January 1986 to be able to launch the march. He was “in a panic.”120 The most urgent crisis appeared to be recruiting a sufficient number of marchers – the committed, self-sacrificing mass upon which Mixner’s entire vision rested.

With only two months left before the start of the march, reports surfaced that PRO-Peace was 3,300 marchers short of its goal. They had received 728 applications, reserved 700 spots as

“rotating slots” for part-time marchers, and planned for 300 March staff.121 Mixner outwardly recoiled at the notion of any trouble. He stubbornly held to his view that, “The bulk will come in

119 Kathleen Hendrix, “‘The Great Peace March’ Forming up in L.A.: Activists Are Gathering for 3,325-Mile Trek Across United States Starting From Coliseum,” Los Angeles Times, December 27, 1985, G1. 120 Hendrix, “Forming Up,” G1. 121 Ibid. 101

January . . . There are 20,000 (applications) out. I’ve never been more confident of anything.”122

Applicants capable or willing to front PRO-Peace the economic criterion for being a marcher were not forthcoming. The cost was likely prohibitive for most: a dollar-per-mile contribution of

$3,325, or an estimated $7,500 in 2018, adjusting for inflation.123 Only 30 percent of those who had asked for an application intended to follow through, according to a phone survey conducted by the organization. Confronting the irony of a peace march that excluded people based on ability to pay, Mixner and PRO-Peace reluctantly reneged on the financial commitment, desiring a group that would be “reflective of society.”124

Publicly, Mixner maintained he was “comfortable” operating behind schedule and that the “newcomers” to political organizing on his staff were more worried about the March’s prospects. Money was not an issue for the applicants; they had simply delayed “ironing out details of their personal lives,” he figured, such as paying taxes and making arrangements for pets.125 In addition to the disappointing dearth of marchers, however, PRO-Peace failed to attract corporate sponsors, book a cadre of celebrity performers, and obtain needed insurance and permits. These unrealized expectations led to a chronic financial crisis, equipment delays, cancelation of the rock concert opening ceremony, staff dissension and burnout, and culture shock for arriving participants expecting a luxury march.126

PRO-Peace’s dream of a swanky march was collapsing. A red flag was their failure to launch the mega-benefit concert. On February 16, two weeks before the “Concert and Departure

Ceremonies,” the organization was still advertising unnamed “very special guest artists and

122 Ibid. 123 According to https://www.dollartimes.com/inflation/inflation.php?amount=100&year=1986 124 Hendrix, “Marchers’ Credibility,” F1. 125 Hendrix, “Forming Up,” G1. 126 Kathleen Hendrix, “Marchers Prepare to Start Long Walk for Peace: Despite Delays, Problems and Changes, Symbolic Journey Begins,” Los Angeles Times, February 28, 1986, H1. 102

speakers” who would join “honorary co-chairs” Paul Newman, Barbra Streisand, and Elizabeth

Taylor for the all-day event. Advance tickets remained available for $17.50, or $22 day of show.127 The next day PRO-Peace announced the show at the Coliseum had been scrapped. In its place, they would host a free concert and ceremony at City Hall featuring acts such as Mr.

Mister, Melissa Manchester, and feminist singer-activist Holly Near.128 Mixner claimed the scaled-down plans were necessary because not enough “name” entertainers agreed to appear for free. They were probably “benefitted-out” in the wake of “Live Aid, Farm Aid and other nationwide celebrity fundraisers,” he conjectured. A capacity crowd at the 100,000-seat stadium would have been required to offset projected production costs of $850,000 and produce a profit.129

The Los Angeles Times proffered a theory of public awareness and messaging problems that exposed PRO-Peace’s vulnerabilities. In one article, the Times noted confusion between the

Great Peace March and Hands Across America, another cross-continent event taking place in

1986.130 The march was having difficulty convincing the public that it represented a serious, urgent political movement confronting the dangers of nuclear weapons, and that the fate of the world hung in the balance. The article pressed, “Don’t they worry that the whole thing will backfire, then fizzle out? That it will be seen as just one more publicity stunt in an escalating series of media events that are pushing to the point of absurdity?”131 PRO-Peace yearned for the media spotlight, but they struggled to distinguish their march as “more” than an event. They did so through self-righteous comparisons to other bearers of major social injustices, maintaining as

127 PRO-Peace advertisement, Los Angeles Times, February 9, 1986, AL15; the ad ran again on February 16. 128 “The News in Brief,” Los Angeles Times, February 17, 1986, 2; Duncan Strauss, “Pop Beat: Thin White Rope Spins Kinky Yarns,” Los Angeles Times, February 15, 1986, E9. 129 Kathleen Hendrix, “Peace March Organizers Cancel Send-off Concert,” Los Angeles Times, February 17, 1986, C7. 130 Sipchen, “Across America,” OC_D1. 131 Ibid. 103

Tim Carpenter did, that they were “dedicated to nuclear disarmament, just as the people who went out to free the slaves were dedicated.”132

Early reports of the pre-march staging grounds at White Oaks presented an alternative view. Portrayals highlighted volunteers in transition between jobs or taking time away from school, inspired by the adventure of walking across the country for nuclear disarmament. One journalist noted the “self-sacrifice” of the march was not “without its self-indulgent touches,” such as the “pretty upscale” campground featuring traveling showers and kitchens.133 Marchers would “have to carry only their lunch,” he observed, a statement that contests Mixner’s image of people marching at tremendous inconvenience and personal detriment.134

Conditions at White Oaks further shifted the focus from PRO-Peace’s political goals to day-to-day concerns. Marchers reached the grounds with the shocking realization that promised vehicles, mess tents, town halls, medical supplies, storage vans, lockers, showers, and laundry facilities were missing. A reporter noted the assembling activists “looked dazed” and “wrestled” with what they had gotten themselves into.135 The march appeared dull and mundane. Those arriving early experienced unexpected rain, cold, and high winds, with one account teasing that marchers “found themselves worrying more about storm clouds than war clouds.”136 The story depicted battles with leaky tents and muddy boots. Only 150 marchers had gathered at this point.

Mixner had even slipped while stepping out of a portable toilet, severely spraining his ankle. He would be on crutches and unable to walk with the march during its first week. “We’re waiting next for the locusts,” he deadpanned.137 Though likely meant as a joke, it was a frank assessment

132 Ibid. 133 Doug Smith, “2,000 Plan to Walk to Washington: Peace March’s Tent City Rises in Reseda,” Los Angeles Times, February 4, 1986, V6. 134 Ibid. 135 Hendrix, “Marchers Prepare,” H1. 136 Bob Pool, “Peace Marchers Bear Up in Mud,” Los Angeles Times, February 15, 1986, V_A6. 137 Pool, “Bear Up,” V_A6. 104

from the previously unwavering, now exasperated, director. Further illustrating the expedient nature of PRO-Peace’s decline, the organization posted an ad that volunteers were needed “on an occasional and permanent basis” at its headquarters.138 Mercifully, the encampment broke from

White Oaks and struck out on its first 15-mile walk to Griffith Park on February 24, singing and carrying instruments as they marched.139

Despite Mixner’s earlier, incredulous optimism that they were “right on schedule,” PRO-

Peace’s staff articulated shifting and at times competing meanings of the Great Peace March.140

Some employees’ focus turned from their political objective of reaching 65 million Americans and influencing policy change in Washington, to the symbolic sacrifice and expressive personal politics of those who were showing up to complete the march. Cushnir, disavowing the statistical wonders that once defined the march (e.g., 3,325 miles, 40,000 shoes, 3.8 million meals, 50 billion steps), argued “it’s not a numbers game,” and that the “strength” of the March “is really these individuals who are dropping everything to make this statement.”141 An anonymous source detailed staff who had grown “steadily disaffected” with the organization. This contingent predicted one of three outcomes for the trek: rapid dissolution, meager survival but obsolescence, or a grass-roots takeover by marchers that would gather momentum as they traveled.142

Others, like Carpenter, held fast to the original vision, arguing PRO-Peace would be

“turning people away” by the time the march reached Denver.143 He felt confident that the March would produce “organized individuals” that would continue to mobilize and agitate “in a sustained, disciplined effort until we succeed” in “taking down” nuclear weapons.144 Within

138 “Involvement Opportunities,” Los Angeles Times, February 16, 1986, 237. 139 “Peace March on Trial Run,” Los Angeles Times, February 25, 1986, V_A6. 140 Hendrix, “Marchers’ Credibility,” F1. 141 Hendrix, “Forming Up,” G1. 142 Hendrix, “Marchers Prepare,” H1. 143 Sipchen, “Across America,” OC_D1. 144 Ibid. 105

hours of the March’s official start, however, Mixner more or less ceded defeat of his original dream amid rumors, confrontational staff meetings, resignations, and marcher departures. “The

Great Peace March has become the marchers. It’s theirs now,” he quipped.145

At Griffith Park, the march was still without permits and insurance, which generated arguments among the legal team. They could not afford security, either, but marchers set about organizing their own system. Mixner and recruitment director Ida Unger explained the Great

Peace March would not be the march volunteers had signed up for and encouraged anyone with doubts to leave without guilt.146 The grassroots takeover was already afoot, and Mixner clung to some hope that a “modified” March under the sponsorship of PRO-Peace was still possible.147

Following a turnout of approximately 5,000 at City Hall for the kickoff, Mixner knew he and

PRO-Peace “failed to stir the imagination of the people. . . They were not moved. It was over.”148

He continued to seek funding that would allow the March to cross the Mojave Desert, but two weeks into the march, the remaining staff convinced him PRO-Peace was defunct.

“Death” of PRO-Peace

Marchers arriving at White Oaks and Griffith Park were well aware of the warning signs portending PRO-Peace’s demise. John Hassett, a 73-year-old World War II veteran, retired teacher, and daily ten-mile walker from Phoenix, wearily observed the confusion that engulfed the March’s staging grounds at White Oaks. His medical records and forms were missing when he checked in at registration. PRO-Peace representatives struggled to locate or obtain needed equipment. Fellow marchers tried their best to assure newcomers like Hassett by greeting them with hugs, and situating them with the two, green plastic milk crates each marcher received to

145 Hendrix, “Marchers Prepare,” H1. 146 Ibid. 147 Mixner, Stranger Among Friends, 174-175. 148 Ibid. 106

store their personal belongings. In his treatise on how social movements work through the creative processes of culture, biography, resources, and strategies, James Jasper argues that seemingly small gestures such as these welcome rituals are significant because they “remind participants of their basic moral commitments, stir up strong emotions, and reinforce a sense of solidarity with the group, a ‘we-ness.’”149

Acculturation into the group, therefore, included activities such as cheering the arrival of equipment, escorting visitors around, and eating on the ground because there were no tables.

Marchers took classes – some organized by PRO-Peace, others set up by the marchers themselves – on myriad logistical, strategic, spiritual, political, and philosophical subjects, such as tent waterproofing, foot massaging, nuclear disarmament, nonviolence, conflict resolution, and yoga. They wrote songs, played music, sang, and performed skits in their down time.

Embedded reporter Kathleen Hendrix observed, “by the end of the first week, there were enough in-jokes to make for a long, funny evening.”150 In a short time period, many marchers experienced a “palpable” bonding that solidified their commitment, despite the sponsoring organization’s disarray. Though some were furious with Mixner and PRO-Peace for failing to deliver the march-as-advertised, others were “euphoric” that they were finally about to set out on their walk across the United States. Hassett said he was “sticking with it,” and had made “every inch” of the walk to Griffith Park. Connie Fledderjohann, a woman in her early fifties, had seen firsthand the “shakiness” and financial woes hampering the march. She had resolved to do it,

“come hell or high water.”151 These early struggles with PRO-Peace’s flimsy beginning generated shared emotions and reciprocal, close, affective ties of friendship among several

149 James M. Japser, The Art of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography, and Creativity in Social Movements (Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 1997), 184. 150 Hendrix, “Marchers Prepare,” H1. 151 Ibid. 107

marchers. These collective experiences illustrate Jasper’s contention that such attachments can be cultivated to build solidarity between members, and to help movements persist even after seeming failure or the end of their instrumental purpose.152

At the sendoff rally on March 1, now free and open to the public, speakers and artists framed the Great Peace March as high spirited, though beset with internal strife and hounded by external skeptics. Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley wished the marchers well, but decried “those who tried to stop this march by denying insurance.”153 The scarcity of corporate sponsors reflected the controversial nature of the issue and brought concerns over the effectiveness of the march to the fore. Initial celebrity support waned as supporters Paul Newman and Barbara

Streisand sent messages but did not attend in person. The most visible celebrity on the march was actor Robert Blake. At the rally, he tried to recuperate the apparent failure of the march with an unfortunate comparison to the Birmingham Campaign, and an inflated sense of the march’s place in history: “If we only last another ten miles and they turn the fire hoses on us, we still have made our point and all of the world knows that America wants to take the bombs down now.”154

Realistically, PRO-Peace’s “point” was challenged by opponents from the start. But, the march would struggle to maintain control over its message and image throughout its existence.

Echoing taunts hurled at the Committee for Nonviolent Action, which partially inspired the San

Francisco to Moscow March for Peace in 1960-1961, hecklers identifying as “Citizens Against the Deceptive ‘Peace’ March” held signs reading “March to Moscow, Not Washington.”

152 Jasper, Art of Moral Protest, 187-200. 153 George Stein, “Anti-Nuclear Plea: Rally Spirit Starts Trek for Peace,” Los Angeles Times, March 2, 1986, B1. 154 Stein, “Anti-Nuclear Plea,” B1. 108

Counter-demonstrators chanted “defense is cheaper than war.”155 A man with a bullhorn claiming to be Jesus Christ followed and harassed marchers. The kickoff ceremonies also attracted some of the area’s homeless. A reporter noted that a former truck driver “sporting a week’s growth of beard and a recent gash over his left eyebrow, watched the festivities with a bemused air,” drinking wine and viewing the march as “entertainment.”156 Journalists narrated the departure as a circus-like atmosphere of jeering from wanderers and the lost. Jay Mathews of the Washington Post described “marchers cover[ing] the first few miles singing, waving balloons and posters, pushing strollers and contemplating the difficulties of engaging the world in the struggle to destroy all nuclear weapons.”157 Readers were presented a vision of well-intentioned but naïve marchers walking for a misguided organization that had suffered a total loss of focus from its political goals.

News of the march’s floundering dominated early headlines of the journey in newspapers throughout the country. Reports surfaced that several marchers had quit as a lack of funds, campsite permits, and liability insurance threatened the March’s ability to make it out of

California.158 Reporters challenged Mixner’s strategy, reminding him that “a majority of voters in 1984 seemed to endorse the Reagan administration’s approach to arms control – balancing nuclear threats rather than destroying weapons.”159 Needing an estimated $10 million to complete the march as PRO-Peace had envisaged – with 2,500 tents and over 70 trailers transporting the mobile city – Mixner conceded the march was ill-prepared, and headed toward

155 Jay Mathews, “‘Great Peace March’ Is Heading Here: Los Angeles Departure Undeterred by Dearth of Funds, Support,” Washington Post, March 2, 1986, A16. 156 Stein, “Anti-Nuclear Plea,” B1. 157 Mathews, “Dearth of Funds,” A16. 158 “1,000 Leave City on Anti-Nuclear Trek,” Los Angeles Times, March 3, 1986, A2; Mathews, “Dearth of Funds,” Washington Post, March 2, 1986, A16; “Stepping Out for Peace,” Agence France Presse photo, Chicago Tribune, 3/2/86, 8; “Peace Marchers Set Off on a Cross-Country Trek,” New York Times, March 2, 1986, 27. 159 Mathews, “Dearth of Funds,” A16. 109

oblivion. “I think what we’re doing is risky,” he confessed, “whether we can raise the money, if the people can make it across the country, and whether anyone will know we’re out there.”160 On the march’s third day, marchers were denied access to camp at a school campsite in Claremont,

California, due to lacking the required insurance coverage. Local churches and peace groups collaborated to house and feed the marchers in their facilities and private residences.161

Regardless, the steady trickle of individuals, couples, and families abandoning the march turned into a flush of exits. Up to 200 dissatisfied marchers had dropped out after a few days, unhappy with the lack of showers and procedures for food rationing.162 A 62-year-old marcher from Wilmette, Illinois was among those heading home. She had become frustrated by the marchers’ isolation and disillusioned with the march’s outlook. “I thought I would make this sacrifice if I thought I could make a future for my children,” she claimed, “but I don’t feel I’m making that kind of impact. I have no chance to talk to people about my views about nuclear disarmament. We’re not touching lives out here.”163

Despite the disaffected who canceled their plans to spend 1986 marching for nuclear disarmament, the majority of marchers saw their message of peace as outweighing the inconveniences of PRO-Peace’s instability. They were greatly inspired by the generosity of the

Claremont community, and took solace knowing that their misfortune had the unintended consequence of uniting and reinvigorating Claremont’s various churches and peace groups “like nothing else in recent memory.”164 But, the warm grassroots reception in Claremont was only a

160 “Cross-Country Trek,” 27. 161 “Peace Marchers Barred from Campsite,” Los Angeles Times, March 4, 1986, A2. 162 United Press International, “Some on Peace March Quit After Two Days,” New York Times, March 4, 1986, A24. 163 “Peace Trek Marchers Drop Out,” Chicago Tribune, March 14, 1986, 18. 164 Kathleen Hendrix, “Peace March: The Long Thin Line Gets Thinner, Crippled by Funding, a Committed Core Vows to Carry on Trek to Capital,” Los Angeles Times, March 14, 1986, H1. 110

brief respite. The next several days included several hardships ranging from treacherous weather to botched plans and insufficient provisions.

By March 13, the marchers were nearing Barstow – a small town at the edge of the desert

– with an ultimatum from PRO-Peace headquarters that the organization needed to raise

$100,000 by the 14th or fold.165 Aside from the looming financial collapse, marchers had been dealing with heavy rains, high winds and cold temperatures, resulting in bouts with the flu, sleeplessness, discomfort, and damaged equipment. One storm led to 12 cases of hypothermia, though none required hospitalization. They had also been adjusting to their “harsh reality,” summarized aptly by Hendrix of the Los Angeles Times: “The glitz has given way to the grassroots.”166 Envisioned as a group embraced by an “admiring entertainment community,”

“financed like the Olympics by an impressed corporate America,” and hopeful that the Great

Peace March would erect “their movable monument to creative and alternative technology” across the country, the march was now “dependent upon the kindness of strangers” with reports suggesting only 600 of the 1,000 participants “actually walking.”167

Without adequate food, water, and medical supplies, Mixner enlisted health and nutrition advisers to warn marchers of the dangers of setting out on their next leg: a 10-day, 200-mile stretch through the desert. Marcher John Curley, a former paratrooper, lectured marchers on survival tactics and especially urged the elderly, the ill, and those with children to “rethink their commitment.”168 Sensing the imminent end of PRO-Peace, several groups of marchers had started to form the shell of a structure to take its place. They had elected leaders, sent

165 Kathleen Hendrix, “Beset by Bad Weather, Financial Woes: Peace Marchers Vow to Slog on Despite Odds,” Los Angeles Times, March 13, 1986, OC_A10. 166 Hendrix, “Long Thin Line,” H1. 167 Ibid. 168 Hendrix, “Despite Odds,” OC_A10. 111

representatives to Barstow in advance to fundraise, and dispatched members to Las Vegas to address needs for the marchers with children. For others, confrontations with fellow marchers and PRO-Peace, conflicts with indifferent local officials, deflating media accounts, and above all, their exhausting physical situation, had steadily and effectively crushed morale.169

On March 14, PRO-Peace officially shut down in dramatic fashion. Mixner’s last-ditch fundraising efforts had been unsuccessful.170 By helicopter, he descended on the marchers’ camp site eight miles outside of Barstow. There, he tearfully acknowledged PRO-Peace was folding because of insurmountable debt. A spokesman added that they could not ensure the health and safety of the marchers or be held legally and financially responsible from that point forward.

Mixner accepted full responsibility for the breakdown, though it was far too late for some rather hostile marchers.171 Later, Mixner admitted that his ego, overly ambitious plan, failure to heed staff warnings, wishful thinking, and decision to drop the minimum marcher financial contribution doomed the march. Most critically, perhaps, he acknowledged a serious misreading of his ability to replicate the Moratorium experience with a peace movement that offered no indication it “desired such an effort,” and a staff that devolved into “bitter and destructive factions.”172 Several in the peace movement acknowledged withholding pecuniary backing, citing Mixner’s poor planning and the impression that his “sophisticated, Yuppie-style creature of the ‘80s could do without their small-time help.”173

169 Hendrix, “Long Thin Line,” H1. 170 “Offices Close but Peace Trek May Continue,” Los Angeles Times, March 14, 1986, A1; Jay Mathews, “Peace March Collapsing as Funding Ebbs,” Washington Post, March 15, 1986, A18; “Peace March Organization Disbands Hastily,” New York Times, March 15, 1986, 8. 171 Kathleen Hendrix, “Great Peace March Stalls Amid Debt; Some Will Continue Trek,” Los Angeles Times, March 15, 1986, SD_A5. 172 Mixner, Stranger Among Friends, 171-175. 173 Hendrix, “Long Thin Line,” H1. 112

Figure 1 David Mixner announces the dissolution of PRO-Peace to gathered marchers at a campsite on Stoddard Wells Road, ten miles outside of Barstow, California. Photograph in the Great Peace March Records (DG 147), Swarthmore College Peace Collection. The March was labeled a “disaster” and “failure” that had “died” and “stranded” several hundred people in the desert.174 Some in the press claimed it could no longer have any hope of crossing the desert with creditors repossessing trucks carrying water and essential supplies.175

PRO-Peace offered to provide free transportation home for the marchers. Those refusing the offer could stay at their current campground for two more days, through the weekend. More sympathetic journalists noted the march had “stalled,” and that hundreds would continue as a new group called “The Great Peace March for Nuclear Disarmament, Inc.”176

174 “Die-hard Peaceniks Plan New March,” Chicago Tribune, March 16, 1986, 12; Mathews, “Funding Ebbs,” A18; “Disbands Hastily,” 8. 175 Mathews, “Funding Ebbs,” A18. 176 Hendrix, “Peace March Stalls,” SD_A5. 113

CHAPTER 3 MEANING BY DOING: THE MAKING OF ENDURANCE ACTIVISM ON THE GREAT PEACE MARCH

A contradictory picture of the Great Peace March emerged following the disintegration of its parent organization, which had only managed to sustain the March through its first 120 miles.

On one hand, an overwhelming majority of the original 1,200 marchers had dropped out. The

Wall Street Journal pronounced on page one that PRO-Peace had met its “sad end.”1 But on the other, one-third of the marchers remained in the desert, engaged in continual meetings discussing how to ensure the march’s survival.2 This core was preparing to continue without the promised fanfare, and would progressively draw from and communicate their reserves of physical endurance in remaking PRO-Peace into the Great Peace March. As discussed in the previous chapter, PRO-Peace’s model of centralized organization and corporate structure initially produced meanings of the March and expressions of marchers’ endurance as a strategic tool to influence national policy on nuclear weapons. When that structure collapsed, the marchers determined meanings of the Great Peace March, their purpose, and how to enact and embody those meanings.

This chapter explores the “power of corporeal action” (see Introduction) through an examination of the Great Peace March.3 Using the lens of endurance activism, this chapter asks what did long-distance walking over the course of nine months in a prefigurative political community do for Great Peace March activists and the movement against nuclear weapons?

What shapes and forms did the articulation of endurance, physicality, and political action take for the participants? Which social identity categories and ideological battlegrounds were at stake,

1 Kathleen A. Hughes and Trish Hall, “Great Peace March Ends Up 3,115 Miles Short of Destination: But Hands Across America, Yet Another Mega-Event, Is Hoping for Better Fate,” Wall Street Journal, March 20, 1986, 1. 2 Hendrix, “Long Thin Line,” H1. 3 Schultz, “Physical Is Political,” 1149-1150. 114

and how did their walk become a unique site from which to interrogate the collective, prefigurative politics of movement culture?

The marchers’ reinvented the Great Peace March through endurance activism. Literal physical movement and symbolic meanings of endurance informed how marchers balanced the tension between the original strategic intentions of PRO-Peace and their emergent prefigurative and experiential practices. Forging ahead in the weeks and months to come would not only require sustained exertion from long-distance walking.4 It would mean meeting the demands of physical labor in the many tedious jobs to keep the march fed, sanitary, and organized, or the mental discipline to stem off isolation, depression, and monotony. Bodily endurance could also take shape in withstanding the hours that turned into days of meetings by consensus about complex issues. Marchers also needed emotional durability to persevere during intense internal debate and disagreement about the march’s purpose that at times turned personal and confrontational. The challenges varied, but the expression of endurance in the face of strenuous circumstances remained constant.

I argue that walking, doing, and debating – in the midst of enduring dichotomies – allowed marchers to develop a multiplicity of activist identities that gave meaning to their social movement politics as a collective and physical endeavor. These identities and meanings, as well as the March’s mission, major functions, and tasks, were intensely contested and negotiated by the marchers who created the Great Peace March through participatory endurance, even while they consistently grappled with – ultimately without ever fully resolving – two questions: “what

4 For a discussion of physiological and psychological aspects of walking and long-distance walking, see Lee Crust, Richard Keegan, David Piggott and Christian Swann, “Walking the Walk: A Phenomenological Study of Long Distance Walking,” Journal of Applied Sport Psychology 23.3 (2011): 243-262; Eva Mattsson, “Energy Cost of Level Walking,” Scandinavian Journal of Rehabilitation Medicine, Supplement 23 (1989): 1-48. 115

is the Great Peace March?” and “who is a marcher?” The March’s continual movement across the country evaded rigid organizational visions, activities, and categories.

It is not my intention to suggest that endurance activism on the Peace March had a monolithic impact that applied to marchers universally. Some marchers, in fact, may reject the notion of endurance altogether as an important factor contextualizing the significance of their personal experience. Nor do I argue for an uncritical embrace of physicality as a panacea for the development of social justice-oriented citizens, or as the only political option available for responding to interlocking social, political, economic, and environmental crises. Instead, I want to encourage American studies, sport studies, and social movement scholars to engage with endurance acts, such as long-distance walks, as significant physical and communication practices for varying modes of collective social action. On the Great Peace March, enduring occurred unevenly and in contrasting ways. For some, endurance took place through the rejection of working or walking, yet still claiming a place and a role within the Great Peace March. The question then becomes, given these contexts, what is the enduring value of engaging in endurance-based forms of social activism?

The first major section of the chapter illustrates how the March constituted its political activity through the expenditure of participants’ energy in walking and physical labor, but also through the mental and emotional strain of forging community and an organizational structure.

These dual tasks were marked by prolonged consensus decision-making processes and internal divisiveness that came to the fore in Barstow and persisted throughout the duration of the march.

While these endurance acts were an important part of what established the March as a collective, in the second section, I argue that marchers used physical activity (or inactivity) and walking (or not-walking) to construct the social and symbolic boundaries between competing identities and

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purposes. Participatory endurance informed the development of conflicting activist identities and debates over the March’s purpose as marchers moved through Utah, Colorado, and Nebraska.

The final section considers those physical instances of activism throughout the march that, in the words of grassroots organizer L.A. Kauffman, are “profoundly embodied, often personally transformative” and “electrifying.”5 These intensely personal experiences often solidified marchers’ perceptions of themselves as having moved from someone taking action to someone committed to activism as a lifestyle. In this section, I argue that these profoundly embodied instances occurred in contexts that demanded a capacity for physical, mental and emotional endurance. Several marchers provided vignettes of transformative experiences that occurred while walking or demonstrating at sites they found deeply moving and impactful. Many marchers experienced as profound certain significant areas ravaged by the farm crisis, or regions suffering from the decline of industrial manufacturing. As part of the marchers’ tasks of living, walking, and working as a collective over the course of nine months, these highly personal transformations nevertheless animated the role of social intimacy and bonding in the community.

While this chapter traces the development of binary divisions between groups preferring central organization, order, and rules, and those favoring individual freedom, collective creativity, and egalitarian consensus processes (Appendix A), it does not attempt to provide a thorough chronological account of the March’s entire trek across the country. Several books written by former marchers already provide such chronological narrative histories. Foremost among them are those by Sue Guist, Franklin Folsom and Connie Fledderjohann, Donna Rankin

Love, Anne Macfarlane, and Martin V. Hippie.6 I have consulted them judiciously, and

5 Kauffman, Direct Action, xiii. 6 Franklin Folsom and Connie Fledderjohann, The Great Peace March: An American Odyssey (Santa Fe, NM: Ocean Tree Books, 1988); Martin V. Hippie, Spirit Walk: The Great Peace March of 1986 (Seattle, WA: Create Space Independent Publishing, 2013); Sue Guist, Peace Like a River: A Personal Journey Across America (Santa 117

annotated events, incidents, debates and points of tension that were repeatedly mentioned across each. Collectively, these primary resources suggest certain events, incidents, issues and debates were significant to understanding the March’s organization, activities, and culture.

The most significant scholarly account of the Great Peace March is Kyle Harvey’s chapter on the March in his book American Anti-Nuclear Activism, 1975-1990.7 I am indebted to

Harvey’s analysis, and many of the themes he discusses are prevalent in this dissertation. Indeed, any serious study of the March would have to reckon with them. Harvey deftly examines marcher identities and interactions, marchers’ advocacy of different approaches to anti-nuclear activism, and the tension between organizational strategy and radical idealism. He also explores the March’s relationship with the cultural idea and spaces of Middle America, their direct engagement with local communities, and the challenge for the broad March community in navigating competing visions and views through the politics of consensus. Harvey argues that these debates and issues pose questions about the function of performative dissent in antinuclear activism; of approach and image; and regarding the struggle to devise a united and palatable message. Equally pressing in his analysis are the March’s attempts to practice egalitarianism, manage the practical realities of their mobile community, and negotiate contesting forms of democracy.

I focus on something different and largely missing from Harvey’s account: marchers’ physical activities on the march, including the intersection of long-distance walking with efforts for social or political change. Similar to Harvey’s chapter, the scholarship on long-distance

Fe, NM: Ocean Tree Books, 1991); Anne Macfarlane, Feet Across America (Auckland, New Zealand: New Women’s Press, 1987); and Donna Rankin Love, Walking for Our Lives (Pacific Grove, CA: Park Place Publications, 2011). 7 Kyle Harvey, American Anti-Nuclear Activism, 1975-1990: The Challenge of Peace (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 143-167. 118

walks discussed in Chapter One explores marches’ social, cultural, and political organization and ideological projects. But scholars have not focused as much on how marchers physically experienced the relationship between long-distance walking and their cause, and the ways their physical and endurance acts are both constituted by and constitutive of marches’ social differences, cultural dynamics, and internal and external politics.

Figure 2 Marchers tear down tents as another marcher prepares to load gear onto a truck that will take equipment to the Great Peace March’s next site. This was just one of the many daily core tasks that required physical labor to sustain the march. Photograph in the Great Peace March Records (DG 147), Swarthmore College Peace Collection. Interviews

This chapter utilizes interviews I conducted with 20 former Great Peace Marchers between June 28, 2016 and November 17, 2016. Interviews allow me to further understand and explore marchers’ perceptions of endurance and physical activity in relation to their own experiences, and within the concepts and frames pertinent here. The interview participants worked and/or marched with the Great Peace March in 1986. My work with them was guided by the standards set forth by the University of Iowa’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) for research utilizing human subjects. All except one of the participants requested to be identified in the study; a pseudonym is used for the individual who requested anonymity. Early in 2015, I became acquainted with a local activist, Miriam Kashia, who had walked every step of the way across the

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country with the 2014 Great March for Climate Action and was familiar with some of the Great

Peace Marchers. After I obtained IRB approval, Miriam distributed an email through her network of activists to recruit participants for the interviews (Appendix F). I also posted an IRB- approved recruitment message on the Great Peace March’s group Facebook page (Appendix E).

These methods yielded a handful of participants. Serendipitously, the Great Peace March held its

30th reunion during the first week of July 2016 at a site just a few miles from my academic home at the University of Iowa. I contacted the reunion coordinator – herself a former marcher – and explained my project. She invited me to attend the reunion and displayed the IRB-approved information letter (Appendix D) with my contact information at the registration table. She also pointed me out during “announcements” at dinner one evening, so that interested marchers could speak with me in person. The bulk of participants – 15 of the 20 – approached me at the reunion volunteering to be interviewed.

A semi-structured interview guide was used in all interviews to ensure our conversations addressed areas of interest in the research, but also to allow flexibility to probe more deeply into the answers offered by participants (Appendix C). On average, I spoke with each individual one time, in an interview lasting roughly three hours. In some cases, the interviews required two sessions. Interviews ranged from 45 minutes to over four hours. I had permission from each participant to make an audio recording of each interview. Immediately before each interview, I reminded participants that they could decline to answer any question asked and they could stop the interview at any time. Nine of the interviews occurred entirely over the phone, seven exclusively in person, one over Skype, and three that were a mix of in person, phone, and computer video chat format. Of the 20 participants, 19 are white and born in the United States.

One was born in Peru but grew up in California. Most of the participants are middle class,

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working in occupations such as education, office administration, nonprofit organizations, construction, health and nutrition, waste management, social work, counseling, and outdoor recreation. A smaller percentage of interviewees, however, struggled to secure consistent full- time work. Of the interviewees, 13 identify as women, six as men, and one went by the name

Yvonne and used gender pronouns she/her/hers on the march, and now goes by Evan. While I did not ask interviewees for their sexual orientation or expression, 16 of 20 mentioned being in a heterosexual relationship (as either married, divorced, boyfriend, or girlfriend) during the course of the conversation. One marcher identified as gay, one as lesbian, one as bisexual, and one participant did not mention a relationship status or sexual orientation. The participants ranged in age, approximately, between 19 and 40 at the time of the Great Peace March.

The questions in the interviews concentrated on each participant’s background and involvement in activism, their decision to join the Great Peace March, and general questions about their experiences during the march. Additionally, questions were asked that allowed participants to elaborate on their “march story” and particularly memorable experiences to provide a thicker description of their impressions and involvement. Many participants’ lives are still impacted by the March, as they made links from the march to their current activism and/or maintained relationships with former marchers. Participants discussed the ways in which they came to actively embody their politics within their everyday activities, communities and creative collaborations on the Great Peace March, and for several, in the years before and afterwards. Our interviews covered a multitude of topics, and illuminated the complexities of antinuclear activism, work for peace, feminist politics, and other initiatives within the social, cultural, and historical contexts of mid-1980s America.

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After each interview, I took notes on my thoughts and observations and reflected on the concepts and themes that needed follow-up with participants. Each interview was then transcribed, coded, and analyzed. I provided each participant with a transcript of their interview and invited them to follow-up with questions, comments, and an opportunity to reconfirm or adjust their initial statements. Throughout the course of this process, I listened to each interview multiple times, re-reading interview transcripts several times to identify emerging themes relevant to the research questions. I created categories and subcategories to organize themes, identify their connections, and confirm their interrelationships as they surfaced throughout my analysis. This data was then organized based on a number of themes and sifted into distinct

Word documents. Overall, conducting semi-structured interviews served as an appropriate method for acquiring insight into how transcontinental walker-activists view the physical aspects of their participation.

Thomas Lindlof and Brian Taylor contend that qualitative analysis and interpretation is about asking “what does it all mean?” Or, to reflect what the researcher actually does: “What can

I make it mean? The researcher interacts with data on the page or the computer screen and tries to make conceptual sense of these layers upon layers of discourse and social action.”8 As a researcher, I adhere to the notion that all truths are partial, multi-perspectival, and mired in power relations. Realities are in a constant state of flux; memories shift and morph over time.

Many of the marchers I spoke with operate from similar understandings and viewpoints and took pains to express this during our conversations. They wanted me and any potential readers, including their fellow marchers, to know that their truth was not the one and only truth of the way things were on the march, but rather just one slice of a lived experience being recalled

8 Thomas R. Lindlof and Brian C. Taylor, eds., Qualitative Communication Research Methods, 2nd edition (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. 2002), 209. 122

thirty years after the fact. Similarly, our interviews and any information they produced are the result of a collaborative process of shared communication and meaning-making in a human relationship. My understandings of marchers’ narratives can be given multiple, plausible interpretations. They are most certainly affected by my positionality as a white, cisgender, heterosexual, middle-class male academic, and in terms of my personality, value systems, culture, and the theoretical orientations and conceptualizations I bring to the study. Any, and all, of these aspects shift the account.9

It is always my goal, however, to be honest and loyal to the localized meaning constructions of a given marcher’s experience. I aim to represent their voices as distinct understandings and representations of themselves, not as a collective group forming concepts or ideas that speak for the whole. Our interviews totaled 65 hours in length and 1,064 pages of transcription. They contain a lot of knowledge, insight, and perspective. But they barely scratch the surface when one considers that 1,200 people initially signed up to march, several hundred completed the entire trek, and likely thousands more joined for a day, week, or sporadic times and durations as they were able.

Figure 3 The desert-like environment foregrounds marchers participating in one of many long planning meetings. The weather and terrain were constitutive factors informing marchers’

9 Lindlof and Taylor, Qualitative Communication, 209-211. 123

Figure 3—continued understandings of the Great Peace March’s "rebirth" as variously symbolic or expressive of the group’s commitment to democratic process, to endure difficult physical circumstances, and to their mission to “save the planet.” Photograph in the Great Peace March Records (DG 147), Swarthmore College Peace Collection. The Great Peace March Constituted through Acts of Endurance When PRO-Peace collapsed, former staff members, emerging leaders, and marchers committed to the March’s survival realized they would have to rely on their own physical labor, exertion, and toil to keep the march going. This was a necessity because PRO-Peace had not raised the $20 million Mixner budgeted to pay for the Great Peace March’s infrastructure, apparatus, and liability insurance. In the initial framework, PRO-Peace marchers would not have needed to expend time and energy in continual fundraising and the labor of maintaining camp.10

They would walk during the day, collect signatures for the March’s petition for bilateral disarmament, and recruit citizens to join them for a massive march on Washington in November.

In the evenings, however, PRO-Peace had promised luxury treatment.11 The transition from

Mixner’s vision for the march to the actual march required grueling effort.12 As one marcher stated of his experience with the reorganization, “I never worked so hard in my life, and I never wanted to work so hard.”13

Marchers Ben Atherton-Zeman and Donna Williams discussed the physically, mentally, and emotionally trying aspects of their early days on the March. Ben, a college student who had taken a leave from Cornell University, felt disoriented upon reaching the march. “I got my tent

10 “The PRO-Peace Profile,” 1, no. 1, July 1985, Series IV, Box 17 in the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament Records (DG 147), Swarthmore College Peace Collection. 11 “PRO-Peace Profile,” July 1985, in the Great Peace March Records. 12 Ibid. The PRO-Peace newsletter made numerous claims that marchers would be “making history” by mobilizing a massive nationwide movement of citizens that could pressure government leaders to make multilateral nuclear disarmament a reality. Press accounts of PRO-Peace’s announcement, outlined in the previous chapter, delineated the organization’s goal of having celebrities entertain marchers and citizens at various points throughout the nine- month journey. 13 Cathy Zheutlin, “Just One Step: The Great Peace March Part 2 Grassroots Underpinnings,” published July 5, 2010, YouTube, film, 8:31, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hg6kVkV7_s. 124

and went to the ‘how to set up the tent’ class and set it up and felt incredibly out of place and lonely, and just had no idea what I was getting myself into [laughs]. And just was really upset, and sad and lonely.”14 To stave off confusion and loneliness, he sought a defined role doing something “useful.” In a short time, he was working for the Great Peace March away from the march at a donated office space in Los Angeles. During this stretch, the struggle to find his bearings continued. “I really worked myself all the time there, didn’t really have money for food or place to sleep so I would sleep on the office carpet . . . sometimes would take naps on the, across the street [at] Santa Monica Beach.”15 Once, a homeless man started offering him advice for where to get food and other support. Though Ben emphasized that he never struggled to obtain food or shelter, these early experiences demonstrate some of the physical challenges he encountered after joining the March.

Donna, on the other hand, sought dual physical experiences of walking with the march and working in camp. Since PRO-Peace had never officially approved her application, she pursued these activities to solidify her role as a member of the Great Peace March. Upon reaching camp, she felt like she stuck out for looking “clean,” “or new! And shiny!” After two days of walking, Donna’s feet formed blisters that she had not yet learned how to treat or prevent. Temporarily inhibited from walking, she volunteered for a job most of her peers avoided

– cleaning the portable toilets. She explained, “When I signed up for an official job…I wanted to be indispensable, I was really concerned about securing my place on the march.”16 Donna also chose jobs that did not interfere with walking during the day. Two days a week, she cleaned porta-potties after completing the day’s march. Only her job washing dishes in the kitchen on

14 Ben Atherton-Zeman, interview with author, August 30, 2016. 15 Atherton-Zeman, interview. 16 Donna Williams, interview with author, July 15, 2016. 125

Friday mornings conflicted with walking. Her actions highlight the significance of physical activity and the credibility of a “worn” look for the construction of marcher identities. They also illuminate the physical labor required to maintain a core sanitation function of the mobile community.

Figure 4 Rick Life (right) helps Mike Walls treat a blister. Getting blisters, and knowing how to prevent and tend to them, was a shared physical experience across marchers’ social, political, and philosophical differences. Photograph in the Great Peace March Records (DG 147), Swarthmore College Peace Collection. For the wider March, the day-to-day strains of conducting a transcontinental march for hundreds of people was an exceedingly demanding and never-ending task that mandated intentional organization (Appendix B). Many marchers like Ben and Donna volunteered to work certain positions. But the March needed a way to coordinate the many functions and tasks that ensured the mobile city’s survival, as well as plan outreach and efforts to gain publicity. Evan

King became one of three “City Managers” that oversaw the three dozen departments and task forces that comprised “Peace City.” She described a glimpse of the logistical complexities in reorganizing after PRO-Peace collapsed: “as marchers, you have no communication with anything but, you know, the 250 of us hoping that someone puts food together for you. Where's that food coming from? We have no money…you're exhausted and there's no showers…And where's the water truck? And what got repossessed recently? So, we don't even know what we

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have left… It was a very surreal experience, that we were all just figuring it out on our own as we go along.”17 Some marchers like Evan were dedicated to tackling these logistical matters, while others were more concerned with how to pursue the March’s instrumental goal of eliminating nuclear weapons.

After nearly two weeks of strenuous meetings, planning, fundraising, and re-stocking, the marchers’ “vaguely defined form of self-government” began to take shape in an overhaul of the original PRO-Peace Policy Board.18 Marchers were initially arranged by PRO-Peace into four pre-determined “towns” and several “villages” comprising “Tent City.” Though these distinctions quickly gave way, marchers – who were still getting to know each other – used them as a base from which to elect representatives to a “central governing body” with undetermined tasks and an unclear mandate. “It took a total paralysis of any kind of political action and 12 cases of hypothermia to make us realize that without some form of workable, representative government, people could perish as we proceed into the desert,” read the opening line of the

Policy Board’s first official meeting minutes.19 The minutes further detailed the voting and non- voting responsibilities of the members, their terms of office, and the statement that “all board decisions will be binding on the marcher community.” Meetings would be completely transparent, and the board unilaterally interpreted their directive to “set policy” and steer clear of the “immediate urgency.”20

These early efforts to re-constitute the March illuminate the relationship of endurance activism to the threads of prefigurative politics and strategic organization at play in the marchers’

17 Evan King, interview with author, September 3, 2016. Evan’s name on the march was Yvonne, and she used the gender pronoun she/her/hers. 18 Folsom and Fledderjohann, Great Peace March, 22. 19 “Marcher-Elected Members of Policy Board,” March 13, 1986, in the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament Records (DG 147), Series I, Box 1, Swarthmore College Peace Collection. 20 “Marcher-Elected Members,” March 13, 1986, in the Great Peace March Records. 127

activities. Marchers such as Evan directed their energy toward developing systems that ensured the March would continue – in and of itself, this was a strategic objective. In the process, however, marchers such as Ben and Donna acted out of a participatory ethos to fill needed volunteer roles in the nascent decentralized amalgam of task forces, departments, and committees. Many of these departments and positions were not pre-planned or guided by a central authority figure. Instead marchers took on these initiatives themselves, or as Evan stated, they were figuring it out on their own as they went, following the prefigurative impulse toward nonhierarchical forms of leadership and participation. Moreover, the preceding discussion illustrates how physical activity, physical labor, and the extremes of marcher endurance were a part of the March’s reinvention at this stage. The 12 individuals afflicted with hypothermia after walking through miles of cold, wind, and rain demonstrate some of the physical challenges, dangers, and risks marchers took on in order to move the March from one site to the next.

Simultaneously, in response to the formation of the Policy Board, some marchers argued that the creation of hierarchical structures and a representative government replicated the bureaucratese of PRO-Peace. Marcher Christina Tomacic felt some of this vociferous resistance was from those who wanted to “rebel” against anything that resembled PRO-Peace structures, though she personally felt that some organization and structure was necessary.21 On the other hand, many like Donna quietly acknowledged that marchers were not beholden to any Great

Peace March authority. “Some of us…had no clue what town council was doing and couldn't care less…Very good of you, but, you're kind of irrelevant, I think,” Donna recalled.22 Marcher

Luis Pardo relayed a narrative that demonstrated how the resourcefulness of marchers could trump the guidance of new March leadership. “[A fellow marcher] went to the Board to make a

21 Christina Tomacic, interview with author, July 2, 2016. 22 Williams, interview. 128

request, and I came with him that day for support, a bunch of us came. And he told the Board that he needed a refrigeration truck. And they were all like, ‘What? For what? What do you want a refrigerator for?’ And he said, ‘No, we need a refrigeration truck to carry our food, and this is how we store food. And this is how we preserve the food, and this is how we're going do it.’ And they were like, ‘No. Absolutely not.’ And sure enough, next day, somebody was able to find a refrigeration truck for like almost nothing and purchased it for the march…And then the Board was like, ‘Oh, okay. Well if you found that, okay fine.’”23 Luis’s narrative reinforces the argument that participatory actions by marchers in nonhierarchical, decentralized groups helped to constitute the new March.

For another segment, the March’s new forms of governance were at odds with their budding prefigurative community – a participatory, decentralized collective wary of hierarchy that viewed process as important as outcome. Marcher Tom Atlee described processes on the march as “iterative dynamics where what comes up in one day, moves into what happens the next day and people are digesting it…these were on the ground living things and, when you have a sense of what's needed and other people disagree with that, it's just, it's hard to comprehend.”24

Following these dynamics, some marchers resisted installing already-formed ideas for centralized organization. These marchers sought organizational forms and mechanisms that served both expressive and instrumental needs, and that could be egalitarian and effective politically. Their impulse toward local, spontaneous politics pulled in a conflicting direction from those who wanted to push the March toward national political ambitions.

Atlee’s description of marchers’ ideas, initiatives, planning, and dialogue uses language that implies movement and energy. The flow between ideas as a symbolic form of movement,

23 Luis Pardo, interview with author, October 22, 2016. 24 Tom Atlee, interview with author, June 28, 2016. 129

and actual practices of discussion and negotiation that involved physical movement, highlight the connection between endurance activism in giving participants a sense of power, pride, and agency. They also reiterate how movement helped marchers to work through discordant views and philosophies for the March’s organizational strategy and community.

Figure 5 Marchers adopted spontaneous, circular, and nonlinear practices to build connection and community in the wake of PRO-Peace’s disbandment. Photograph in the Great Peace March Records (DG 147), Swarthmore College Peace Collection. Tomacic, Williams, Pardo, and Atlee represent a range of marcher viewpoints that endured as contending divisions throughout the march: some in favor of top-down organization, some promoting creative process without limits, and others indifferent to tense organizational debates, like Leslie Nanasy who said, “I was not really an active part of Peace City organization…I put blind faith in that other people would get it together…I was more of a

‘Where are we walking today? What are we having for dinner? [laughs]’”25 In reincorporating as the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament, Inc., marchers resembled a latticework of these interconnected yet divergent aims, activities, tactics, philosophies and messages. As they negotiated and fought over pragmatic, strategic, and prefigurative priorities, they drew from and communicated their reserves of physical, mental, and emotional endurance.

25 Leslie Nanasy, interview with author, July 7, 2016. 130

The restructuring process was slow, difficult, and at times painful. Marchers nevertheless made strides during the uncertainties, ambiguity, and tensions. PRO-Peace had originally created an extensive blueprint for organizing their anticipated 5,000-strong march. The blueprint was the product of a “tremendous amount of work,” according to PRO-Peace recruitment director Ida

Unger, who had been promoted to middle-management as the organization started to fall apart.26

“We had these books of the route and all the details, of highways, and who to contact in every town, and, in terms of, you know, highway patrol and all the things that were needed for a large march. . . It was the whole march laid out,” she explained. Unger was part of what she described as the “handing over that happened in Barstow, where the staff gave all of this research and all of this material to this group of people who thought they were gonna continue.” Even with these resources, the staff remained skeptical that the marchers could successfully get across the country. Unger emphasized that it felt like an “amazing resurrection, it was like a phoenix.”27

The revival started with marchers’ putting parts of PRO-Peace’s plans into action, which further stressed the centrality of endurance activism, physical activity, and physical labor to the restructuring of the March. Each marcher was supposed to volunteer for work to keep the march functioning. Individuals and groups signed up for meal preparation and cleanup in the kitchen.

Others tackled filling water tanks and cleaning the toilets. Out of these embryonic task forces, over 30 discrete march departments eventually solidified, including fundraising, sanitation, water, medical, permitting, safety, administration, advance community outreach, child care, transportation, and finance (Appendix B).28 Slowly, the centralized structure of PRO-Peace was

26 Ida Unger, interview with author, October 14, 2016. 27 Unger, interview. 28 “Policy Board Meeting,” March 15, 1986, page 3, Series I, Box 1, in the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament Records (DG 147), Swarthmore College Peace Collection. 131

supplanted by the work of these interrelated but autonomous units.29 Barstow was a microcosm of the march’s experimentation in alternative ways of living as an intentional and communal society, characterized by the group’s egalitarian ethos, spontaneous creativity, and participatory initiative that carried out the successful operation of these departments and critical functions.

Though the March had been stalled for several days as the Board coordinated needed permits and negotiated plans for movement out of Barstow with local police and the Bureau of

Land Management, marchers kept themselves busy with a range of activities during the gridlock.

Tom Atlee enlisted volunteers in a plucky telephone-campaign to seek contributions from friends and family members who had likely already donated to the PRO-Peace version of the march.

Others used their spare time not only visiting with people in Barstow’s parlors, cafes, churches, bars, and parks, but providing community service as a form of appreciation. They cleaned up trash from city streets, painted the community center, repaired a local museum, and simply did odd-jobs for local residents, coordinating an “errand-and-handyman service.”30 These activities elucidate various expressions of endurance activism. The ongoing efforts by the Board to design an organizational structure for the revitalized March were complemented by the spontaneous outburst of action and creativity of marchers in Barstow that demonstrated their commitment to forging community.

Consensus Decision Making as Mentally and Emotionally Draining

During this time in Barstow, some marchers implemented key ideas and organizational forms they inherited from pacifist movements, feminist politics, and the Quaker tradition, such as

29 Folsom and Fledderjohann, Great Peace March, 25-26. 30 Ibid., 28-32; Kathleen Hendrix, “Still Plagued by Problems: Peace Marchers Back on the Road Again,” Los Angeles Times, March 29, 1986, B1. 132

small group consciousness raising, equality of participation, and consensus decision making.31

Prefigurative politics impose substantial tasks such as these on movement participants to sustain relationships and organizational forms that embody the desired society.32 Many marchers experienced consensus decision making as mentally and emotionally draining. Christina recalled being exhausted by persistently oppositional marchers who prevented reaching group consensus.

She described “painfully long” meetings that went “on and on and on, because even if one person objects, you gotta talk it out, talk it out, talk it out.”33 Similarly, a marcher who identifies as RJ felt consensus was “too time consuming and too tiring.”34 Marchers such as Roger Solberg, who helped facilitate consensus meetings by queuing participants and synthesizing viewpoints, also found they led to burnout.35

Even proponents acknowledged that the stamina required for consensus meetings could prevent engagement in the process. Tom stated he was a type that “could sit through endless meetings,” but admitted that consensus had a reputation of “the people that make the final decision are the ones that are still awake.”36 Susan Hoffman recognized that participants had to find a common ground that “acknowledges everybody” but does not get “quagmired” in “16 hours of consensus.” “There's people who just, win by endurance burnout,” she reflected,

“[they’ll] just interfere, and interfere and interfere till people just leave out of complete exasperation.”37 Karen Jeffers Tracy felt part of the problem was that some marchers were not educated about the principles of consensus. Reflecting Christina’s concern with co-optation by

31 King, interview; Karen Jeffers Tracy, interview with author, September 19, 2016; Susan Hoffman, September 26, 2016. 32 Breines, Community and Organization, 6. 33 Tomacic, interview. 34 RJ, interview with author, October 18, 2016. 35 Roger Solberg, interview with author, June 30, 2016. 36 Atlee, interview. 37 Hoffman, interview. 133

those solely wishing to voice disagreement, Karen tried to inform marchers that consensus “is representational, it does mean that we trust someone to represent us in the meeting. And it does mean we'll abide by the decision of the group.”38

Tiring consensus meetings were not unique to the Great Peace March. The comments by

Christina, RJ, Roger, Tom, Susan, and Karen, however, suggest a distinctive element about consensus within the contexts of endurance activism. Consensus meetings on the March were held after marchers had already taken part in physically taxing activities. They often took place in the evenings after a 20-mile walk, and some marchers had additional work to do afterwards.

Karen recalled times she sat in on meetings already feeling “exhausted. You'd take your dinner and go sit in the big meeting tent…I would tape record, and then I would go type the reports so that the people could find out what happened in the meeting.”39 Consensus meetings on the

March might require literal physical endurance from marchers to participate, just as that very participation could be expressed as a symbolic representation of the commitment and dedication of marchers to the prefigurative practices of egalitarianism and shared decision-making.

Figure 6 Marchers gather for one of their many consensus meetings during the reorganization in Barstow. Marchers claimed these meetings could be difficult to endure due to their length, but

38 Jeffers Tracy, interview. 39 Ibid. 134

Figure 6—continued also because of obstructionists who prevented finding agreement. Photograph in the Great Peace March Records (DG 147), Swarthmore College Peace Collection. Mired in meetings and other tasks, the early signs were not promising as the March ranks continued to thin. Moreover, it appeared the March’s problems extended beyond the nagging consensus meetings. Contentious factions had solidified among restless marchers negotiating to

(re)define the march with competing philosophies and methods.40 One frustrated marcher named

Gary Stahl grew tired of the community’s nascent “populist fervor.” He claimed this contingent desired “all power to the marchers” and rejected management expertise in place of consensus decision-making. He felt creating a “tight-bonded and focused community” and “walking the country” materialized as ends in and of themselves for a sizable portion of marchers, which made him weary.41 All the “exertion and discomfort,” in his view, should be funneled wholly toward

“nuclear disarmament.”42 Stahl’s interpretation stresses that marchers’ exertion and discomfort, at least in part, constituted the purpose of the March. Whether those acts of endurance were funneled toward strategic ends (which he preferred) or walking and the creation of a close community (which he did not), his comments demonstrate that endurance activism was a key framework for understanding the rebuilding of the Great Peace March.

Countering Stahl, other marchers interpreted the emerging antiauthoritarianism and decentralized power structure of the March as key to its survival. Their expressions also resonate with meanings of literal physical effort and activity as well as symbolic references to movement energy and strength. Dorie King claimed newfound agency would leave the march “stronger than ever.”43 Evan was energized by the process of “raising ourselves up” because “you help create

40 Folsom and Fledderjohann, Great Peace March, 29-33; Gary Stahl, “Footsteps on the March Toward Peace,” Washington Post, March 23, 1986, K1, K9. 41 Stahl, “Footsteps,” K9. 42 Ibid. 43 Hendrix, “Long Thin Line,” H1. 135

the narrative…we're figuring this out together and let's just keep going…I wanna be a part of this group that is doing this.”44 Tom observed that without clear guidance, marchers followed their

“energy” and found where “it fit.” He noted “the doomed that involved action was better than the doom that involved sitting there in the desert!”45 Karen was assured as well, as she stated “We don't need PRO-Peace. We don't need David Mixner…We have what we need right here in all the skills and all these people.”46 Even two marchers who had quit described the community charitably as “cooperative, caring, committed,” and “tough, dedicated, tenacious people.”47

These comments align endurance activism with Breines’ view of prefigurative politics as

“an avenue of freedom, a way to express oneself and decide with others on political strategy,” not a rejection of it.48 Dorie, Evan, Tom, and Karen describe a sense of elation in participating actively in the social movement. They were rejecting a passive form of representative democracy on the March in which they were to be pawns for “management expertise,” per Stahl, and instead favored endurance activism as direct democracy, the creation of community through collective effort with others, and a degree of risk-taking in experimentation. They sought to create forms that did not duplicate the instrumentality and rigidity of wider social institutions. Most all of the marchers agreed, however, that their most immediate job was to get across the Mojave Desert.

Physical Conditions and Hard Labor as Endurance Challenges

Survivalists and officials with the Bureau of Land Management warned marchers about the dangers of crossing the desert, including the assurance that some were likely to die. Wildlife posed one problem, including rattlesnakes, wild dogs, big ants, and other animals that “will take

44 King, interview. 45 Atlee, interview. 46 Jeffers Tracy, interview. 47 Hendrix, “Stalled in Barstow,” OC_A3. 48 Breines, Community and Organization, 51. 136

a big chunk out of you.”49 The toll from the heat and physical exertion in walking 20 miles each day for 10 days presented another concern. Several marchers scoffed at the threat of casualties, but some compliantly heeded advice to go home. The former interpreted this tactic as either a ploy by Mixner or the CIA to scare marchers into quitting the nine-month-long expedition for disarmament.50 Marchers were advised by health, nutrition, and survival experts on the march to consume an estimated 3,500 to 4,000 calories and 20 grams of protein daily during their desert hike. Self-appointed leaders searched locally for another four-ton water truck, much more food, medicines, and supplies before the march could leave Barstow.51

Many marchers communicated their endurance through the difficult physical conditions that characterized their participation on the march. Rain and cold were a particular source of discomfort, which Christina described as “terrible.” She elaborated, “you don't sleep well cause you're cold. And then you wake up at six o'clock in the morning…it's dark, and you have to fold a wet tent…And then you have to try to keep everything else not wet…it's just like absolutely miserable…you can never get warm.”52 Similarly, Roger recalled days when “you get up in the rain, you eat breakfast in the rain, you walk in the rain, it's raining when you get to the campsite, and they've unloaded the gear truck and somebody's thrown your sleeping bag into a puddle, and…what are you gonna do?”53 Sandy Perpignani said she was “exhausted” by the walks when it was “really windy or really raining, or both.”54 Ben concurred, and stated that living out of a tent “was all about dryness or not dryness…There was never, never a chair [laughs]…it was a triumph even to find—say if it was a lunch stop… I really liked a curb, you know, even just to

49 Hughes and Hall, “Better Fate,” 1. 50 Macfarlane, Feet Across America, 12; Hippie, Spirit Walk, 73-74; Folsom and Fledderjohann, Great Peace March, 28-29. 51 Hendrix, “Long Thin Line,” H1; “7 Felled Briefly By Fumes,” Los Angeles Times, March 25, 1986, A2. 52 Tomacic, interview. 53 Solberg, interview. 54 Sandy Perpignani, interview with author, July 1, 2016. 137

put your, to put your butt on that curb and to have it be dry and have your feet a little below, that's something I have a strong memory of.”55

Figure 7 A marcher finds a lamppost support as a dry spot to rest during a break from the walk. Marchers identified having a lack of places to sit – as well as the struggle to feel dry, warm, or cool – as some of the physical challenges they endured. Photograph in the Great Peace March Records (DG 147), Swarthmore College Peace Collection. Luis recalled that a lot of marchers were unprepared for the desert weather extremities the

March encountered during its first month, and that many ended up with sunburns and frostbite.56

Indeed, by the end of the tenth day of the march, 12 marchers suffered from hypothermia after walking through miles of cold rain and winds blowing up to 50 miles per hour.57 Marcher and activist Jerry Rubin (not the Jerry Rubin who co-founded the “Yippies” with Abbie Hoffman and appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee) recalled being one of those marchers who stumbled into camp in a stupor, on the “verge of hypothermia… wandering around in the dark, no flashlight, and I couldn't find my tent. I was disoriented, and Sister

Dorothy, who’s a nun, said ‘Jerry.’ And she helped guide me back to my tent. And then, I got inside, and I got under the covers. And then all of a sudden, I hear this noise outside. And it's one

55 Atherton-Zeman, interview. 56 Pardo, interview. 57 Folsom and Fledderjohann, Great Peace March, 20-21. 138

of the other marchers in the same predicament that I had been in.”58 Physical struggles illuminate endurance activism as part of the March quite literally in this instance, as demonstration of the occasional bodily hardship and suffering required to move the March forward another day.

Heat, dust, and sun also posed tests for marchers’ bodies. Evan recalled strategies to keep her body cool that worked in the desert, but not later in the Midwest. “Putting the bandana around my neck with cold water kept me cool. But, when we got into the Midwest, it was so humid, like, that was not an effective strategy…then it’s just about the shade.”59 She recalled feeling exhaustion walking through the desert that tried her endurance. “It’s hot. This is dusty and we’re never gonna have real food, and we’re never gonna make it…Just not another mile on this dusty road.”60 Donna reinforced the difficulty of repeatedly walking through near one- hundred-degree temperatures on humid days in the Midwest, which also pushed marchers’ limits.

“The relentlessness…the heat and the humidity was just unbearable…That’s when it sunk in that,

‘Oh. This just keeps going.’”61

Figure 8 Marchers contend with hot, humid, and shade-less walking. The image on the right shows how precious and valuable shade could be, with marchers crowded closely together to try grab some relief from the sun. Photographs in the Great Peace March Records (DG 147), Swarthmore College Peace Collection.

58 Jerry Rubin, interview with author, July 6, 2016. 59 King, interview. 60 Ibid. 61 Williams, interview. 139

Others described the hard, physical labor that the march required of them. Sandy described the early wake-up call that was part of her work on the breakfast crew. “In the beginning when we were huge, making pancakes for like a thousand people, I had to get up at like 3:30.”62 Roger described his work in food preparation that took “all day” and felt as physically demanding as walking 15 or 20 miles. “We would make lunches to be delivered at the lunch site, so early in the morning you'd be making sandwiches or something like that, making

500 sandwiches or whatever…after we got done doing the lunch prep, then we would do the dinner prep. And sometimes what that would involve…bushel baskets of onions ‘this tall’

[gestures near his waist] and you've got to put the onions in the chopper and grind up all these onions…I just cut the vegetables, cut potatoes, peel carrots, whatever had to be done…you’re just as tired as if you’d walked the whole day.”63

Others contributed mostly or exclusively in logistical support positions such as Laura

Routh. Laura was briefly part of the March, but afterwards, she worked in support for several demonstrations and actions with the group Seeds of Peace. Laura elaborated on the physical demands of her work, but also the patience it required to deal with impatience, rude behavior, and difficult personalities. “It's grunt work. It's like being in the army. You're the person that has to get up before everybody else and make sure that the water's runnin', and that the pump is runnin', you got gas in the generator, and the kitchen trailer is unlocked, and propane tanks are on. And then invariably, you know, try as you might, you throw breakfast down and people are bitchin’ about it. ‘There's not enough this!’ or ‘I want this!’ and ‘Why is it this way?’”64 Overall, she described her efforts as “backbreaking work. I mean, to this day, I have a couple of blown

62 Perpignani, interview. 63 Solberg, interview. 64 Laura Routh, interview with author, September 2, 2016. 140

discs, my back will never be the same from all the incredibly heavy objects that I picked up and moved from point A to point B as part of that work.”65 Another non-marching task that required hard, physical labor was maintenance for the March’s many old trucks, tractors, cars, vans, buses, and trailers. This frustrating and at times painstaking work repairing engines, brakes, generators, and water pumps was staffed by a handful of full-time volunteer mechanics. One book about the march claims they had a “seven-day-a-week job, sometimes for 18 or 20 hours.

No rest days. No walking. They often got tired and emotionally drained.”66

Figure 9 A large convoy of vehicles housed the march’s equipment, transported marchers to various sites, served as “offices” for various Great Peace March departments, and served as sites for education and child care. Photograph in the Great Peace March Records (DG 147), Swarthmore College Peace Collection. Mundane and repetitive tasks also became part of what constituted the Great Peace

March’s social and political activity. For example, Evan’s work as one of three City Managers overseeing the function of the March’s three dozen departments became intertwined with physical labor that supported other groups. “Whatever our [City Managers] agenda was, people would come to us…Pretty early on it was clear the kitchen needed help with prep, and people

65 Routh, interview. 66 Folsom and Fledderjohann, Great Peace March, 74-75. 141

didn't wanna do it, so, we just like, our meetings would be kitchen prep…anyone who came to us and wanted to have money, they would have to cut vegetables with us.”67 Evan further described how the City Managers demanded a participatory attitude from marchers. “Some would come in like, ‘I can't do this kind of work, I'm doing this important work.’ And we're like, ‘Yeah, no.’”

One day, the kitchen crew had to fill large, several gallon tubs with chopped garlic. Evan recalled telling marchers coming to make a request from the City Managers, “If you do not chop garlic with us, we will not talk to you.”68

Roger, Sandy, Laura, Evan and many others worked non-marching jobs anywhere between two to four or five days a week in addition to walking. Their efforts and reflections about their March “jobs” indicate that physical labor was also a key part of what constituted endurance activism, contributed to the March’s resurrection, and sustained the community. Days of hard labor were required to feed hundreds of marchers. In accordance with the March’s espoused egalitarianism and participatory ethos, any and all were expected to play a role in this aspect of providing for the community, which reflects the prefigurative value that the March should represent a way of life that fostered genuine, equal, and caring relationships.69

67 King, interview. 68 Ibid. 69 Breines, Community and Organization, 48. 142

Figure 10 Volunteers serve lunch to a long line of marchers near Davenport, Iowa. Though the Great Peace March occasionally received potluck-style meals from churches, civic groups, or supporters in communities along their route, the March kitchen crew worked relentlessly and often around the clock to prepare, cook, and serve meals. Photograph in the Great Peace March Records (DG 147), Swarthmore College Peace Collection. Walking as an Endurance Action that Constitutes the March

Of course, as a peace march several marchers communicated that walking itself was one of the core physical practices that constituted the Great Peace March. Sandy, who worked early mornings to prepare breakfast, also viewed the march itself as her job. “Our job was to walk.

And it felt like a job…to talk to people and to further the cause of peace.”70 Sandy’s view illustrates how marchers linked physical activity and the endurance of long-distance walking to the March’s strategic goal of mobilizing the public in favor of nuclear disarmament. Others, such as Kathleen Taylor, viewed walking as the central spiritual connection to the March’s mission.

She shared her view that, “when you contact the earth with your feet, and you are with the heart of protecting the earth, and love, and caring, it brings holiness to your steps, and consecrates the earth itself, in a very special way.”71

70 Perpignani, interview. 71 Kathleen Taylor, interview with author, July 2, 2016. 143

In my research, many indicated they joined the March in the first place because they were captivated by the notion of walking across the United States, illustrating the appeal of endurance forms of activism as a method for participating in a social movement. Leslie claimed she was attracted to the March by “a real sense of adventure. You kind of had to be in that mode.”72

Roger affirmed that the “pure sense of adventure,” in addition to his belief in the cause, pushed him to join. He stated that when he heard about the Great Peace March, he thought “here's something that I can do…everybody has to do something. You know, you have to feel like you're, that you're not just sitting there…I'm going to be challenged physically as well as in other ways…it's an interesting sort of physical challenge on top of everything else.”73 Susan’s “march origin story” is similar. After seeing a flyer about the March, she instinctively knew that she would be on the march. Susan recalled a “vivid, kind of visceral memory of just standing there, staring at [the poster] kind of with my mouth gaping open, and hearing ‘I’m going on that’ voice, and going, ‘oh, shit. Oh, oh, okay!”74 Donna described a similar sense of being hailed as marcher. “That was very captivating, I mean, you couldn't put that vision down of, ‘Oh, my

God…not just a big march one day, but, a big march across the whole country. That was the concept that was really inspiring…walking across the country to solve the biggest problem you can think of.”75 Collectively, their stories demonstrate the contested meanings of long-distance walking for those with the ability and forms of privilege that allow for participation.

Underlying the attraction to the compelling adventure of a continental walk was that it felt like a task in substantial proportion to the cause of disarmament. It also moderated many of

72 Nanasy, interview. 73 Solberg, interview. 74 Hoffman, interview. Many marchers told similar stories during our interviews, including Lala Palazzolo, August 31, 2016; Atherton-Zeman, Williams, Perpignani, King, Tomacic, Kim Hunter, October 5, 2016, and Ric Driver, October 24, 2016. 75 Williams, interview. 144

the marchers’ feelings of despair with the social, environmental, and economic costs of nuclear proliferation, and their fears that nuclear annihilation was a concrete possibility. For example,

Tom stated that walking was partly about “trying to have an effect and partly…trying to not feel that sense of total powerlessness in the face of horror…for many of us, Reagan was terrifying.”76

Marcher Lala Palazzolo similarly framed her approach to walking as something that would

“inoculate me and empower me to keep going.”77

These quotes reveal the efficacy of endurance activism and the literal forms of physical activity, walking, being, and doing that supported the March as a prefigurative formation and what Breines refers to as a “parallel structure” that existed outside of existing institutions.78

Participating in the March took the edge off the sense of powerlessness and fear some marchers’ perceived while not actively working for peace and disarmament. Aside from the pursuit of strategic success in the realm of nuclear weapons policy, Tom and Lala’s comments suggest a value for marchers in being together in an experiential community regardless, as a strategy to empower continual efforts for social change.

Others approached walking as more direct and pragmatic, such as Ric Driver, who felt that “walking was the best way” to “convey” the message he wanted to get across at the time, through face-to-face, interpersonal communication.79 Jerry also viewed the method of walking as appropriate for meeting people, attracting local media coverage, and getting participation from people who wanted to support the movement. “You have to go to them!” Jerry implored, “That’s why the mobile march is one of the most important kinds of demonstrations.”80 Jerry and Ric’s

76 Atlee, interview. 77 Palazzolo, interview. 78 Breines, Community and Organization, 58. 79 Driver, interview. 80 Rubin, interview. 145

perspectives reveal that endurance activism could also be pursued with strategic objectives at the fore.

This range of assessments illustrates divergent views on the purpose of walking on the

March. As Ric reflected, “the underlying concept of walking across the country…was the only thing that unified us. And even then, sometimes it didn’t.”81 The chapter now turns to a more thorough discussion of marchers’ actual experiences with walking as they moved from Barstow through the desert and into Utah, where officials sought to prevent marchers from walking across most of the state. The ways the Great Peace March negotiated this resistance – allowing some marchers to walk through designated portions of Utah while the majority took buses to Salt Lake

City – influenced the construction of marcher identities. This disagreement and another controversy in the March over the modes in which marchers walked – together in a uniform column or spread out randomly – informed debates about the March’s overall purpose.

Walking, Not Walking, and the Construction of Marcher Identities and March Purposes

The official Great Peace March “Statement of Purpose” begins with the following preamble: “The Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament is an abolitionist movement. We believe that great social change comes about when the will of the people becomes focused on a moral imperative. By marching (emphasis mine) for nine months across the United States, we will create a non-violent focus for positive change; the imperative being that nuclear weapons are politically, socially, economically and morally unjustifiable, and that, in any number, they are unacceptable. It is the responsibility of a democratic government to implement the will of its people, and it is the will of the people of the United States and many

81 Driver, interview. 146

other nations to end the nuclear arms race.”82 The Statement makes additional remarks about

Marching as a political tool, as it stresses that in walking, marchers have sacrificed “jobs and homes, our incomes and comforts.” The Statement’s view of walking synchs with the claims I propose about endurance activism. Specifically, the March’s “conviction” that physical activity through long-distance walking can be construed as a social movement strategy used to convey, in the case of the Great Peace March, “that each individual can make a difference” towards a world

“free of nuclear weapons” and “war.”83

In this section, I illustrate how marchers, in effect, contested this Statement of Purpose by arguing over the meaning of a word at the center of their organization and their mission: marching. Marchers disagreed, frankly, over what it meant to “march” and be a “marcher” as they debated the political effects of what they labeled as different “modes” of walking. Separate and spaced out according to marchers’ varied pace and schedules, in “country mode,” or regimented together as one mass column in “city mode,” marchers disagreed about the appropriateness of each method for furthering their message and achieving their goals. Relatedly, some individuals known as “Spirit Walkers” insisted on the necessity of walking every single step across the United States. This absolutist philosophy meant they often created their own rules and challenged “official” Great Peace March policies. Some argued they neither worked to facilitate the many core logistical functions that kept the march going, nor contributed to other

March social and political activities. On the other end of the spectrum, some individuals were labeled “march potatoes” for ostensibly neither walking nor working to support the March in any capacity. Exploring these points of tension provides a site from which to analyze the construction

82 “The Peace March Update,” May 20, 1986, 6, Series IV, Box 17, in the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament Records (DG 147), Swarthmore College Peace Collection. 83 Ibid. 147

of “legitimate” marcher status and identities. Anxieties over which activities granted one

“marcher” status can be viewed through a prism of the dichotomous interplay between prefigurative community and those who favored traditional organization. Again, these debates were connected to one’s physical exertion and labor in service of the march.

Walking was at least part of what marchers were doing, but there was a demonstrated resistance among some of those holding leadership positions to make walking and prefigurative politics the focus of the March. Allan Affeldt, who crafted what eventually became the Statement of Purpose, stressed that being for “peace” and “nuclear disarmament” were much too

“nebulous” and advanced “few if any causes.”84 He adamantly opposed centralizing the march as a laboratory of participatory democracy and experiment in radically inclusive social justice. “We are not an experimental commune. Anyone can walk across the country if someone else pays for it. We must focus on the issue of nuclear weapons,” he opined. He further hypothesized that

“walking across the country will have little impact on the issue,” and pilloried the notion that the

March would “spend a few millions of dollars” to “give 500 [marchers] a magical experience, and to touch a few thousand lives.”85

Similarly, he believed their message had to stay on point to be effectively inspirational.

“We need to inspire to anti-nuclear action, and not to group adventuring,” he lectured. “Every time one of us is quoted as saying that they came for adventure, to walk across the country, or for anything other than nuclear disarmament, our credibility and our message are impaired.”86

Ironically, Affeldt himself was quoted in the Los Angeles Times remarking upon the spiritual aspects of walking and being with the march over the Easter holiday. “We got to spend [Easter]

84 Allan Affeldt, “The Vision,” 4, Series I, Box 1, Candidates Statements file, in the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament Records. 85 Ibid. 86 Ibid., 6. 148

in a more spiritual and solitary way,” he said. “Walking is sort of a prayer in itself.”87 In his vision for the March, however, he downplayed the importance of walking and “personal agendas,” while privileging a rigid doctrine that exacted discipline from the marchers to remain focused on a unified purpose and collective action. He asserted “collective commitment” to their

“goal” was their “only strength” if they hoped to “catalyze the national will” and pose a “threat” to the multi-billion-dollar military-industrial complex.88

This drawn-out consideration of Affeldt’s vision for the March is representative of those on the March who wanted to channel the group’s symbolic expressions of endurance toward strategic political outcomes. Several others expressed similarly “hard core” commitment to this type of strong, central leadership that would be financially accountable and guide the March toward coalition building, staging media events, fundraising, and the pursuit of major donors.89

Walking mostly existed for strategists as a metaphor. Another portion of marchers, though, argued the March’s prefigurative politics could serve strategic goals. While sharing the objectives of coalition building and inspiring a mass movement covered by the national media, former PRO-Peace staffer Coleen Ashly pressed for the Board to acknowledge those in the camp resistant to replacing PRO-Peace with another bureaucratic structure. She wanted to “assure an environment where marchers experience the power and freedom to be creative, where marchers feel their talents can be fully utilized,” including the ability to endure over a long-distance walk.90

87 Heidi Evans, “Easter on the Road with Peace March: A Renewal of Spirit,” Los Angeles Times, March 31, 1986, OC_A1. 88 Affeldt, “The Vision,” 8. 89 “The Following Candidates Believe,” Series I, Box 1, Candidate Statements file, in the Great Peace March Records. See also “A Plan by Franklin Folsom, Candidate for Re-election to the Board: How to Get a Board Whose Members Can Work Together,” Series I, Box 1, Candidates Statements file, in the Great Peace March Records. 90 Coleen Ashly, “Candidate Statement,” Series I, Box 1, Candidate Statements file, in the Great Peace March Records. 149

Gary Stahl identified a potential middle-ground shared by the staunch pragmatists, those committed to the prefigurative community, and the intractable walking purists. “There are excellent reasons for doing any or all” of the activities geared towards concrete political outcomes, he deduced, but also “for marching.”91 Neither path – the coalition-building or the experiment in peaceful existence – had a clear route forward, or sole claim to success. “Any of these choices,” Stahl argued, “is better than the psychic numbness that pretends we can go on with things as they were.”92 Stahl’s quote exemplifies the hybrid qualities of endurance activism as a strategy that links prefigurative, strategic, and mobilization politics through the theme of endurance, and the value of ongoing commitment to some form of action for social change.

Regardless of these disparate calls for ways to integrate walking with strategy and building community, a vocal portion of marchers adhered to the notion that walking every single step, every single day, was essential to the purpose, philosophy, and objectives of the Great Peace

March.

The Spirit Walk

Martin Sickler, also known on the march through his self-identified name “Born Again

Hippie,” claims to be the only marcher who walked each step across the country on the Great

Peace March.93 The continuity of the March as a walk came to be known as the “Spirit Walk.” In general, most marchers understood the Spirit Walk not as the effort of any one individual to walk the entire way, but that different marchers at different points ensured the collective had walked each step of the route. Though constituting a relatively minor portion of the whole, some of the

Spirit Walkers, especially Hippie, chided the blossoming march initiatives, task forces, and

91 Stahl, “Footsteps,” K9. 92 Ibid. 93 Hippie, Spirit Walk, 137. 150

“jobs” that did not include walking. For him, leaving the march by car, truck, or bus – for safety, to fundraise, obtain mailing lists of peace and justice organizations, plot events for the media, or because of police orders – was anathema.94 Spirt Walkers wholeheartedly believed that the

March had to rely on walking across the country to draw attention to their message; paradoxically, they were also largely unconcerned with the March’s strategic goals.

The issue came to a head early and often in the march, since PRO-Peace failed to obtain the permits and authorizations it needed. On March 6, the California Highway Patrol refused to escort the March through a dangerous path over Cajon Pass between the San Bernardino and San

Gabriel Mountains in southern California. A designated group of six people were allowed to walk over the Pass and “maintain” the March’s “continuity.” At a contentious meeting, the right to walk over Cajon Pass reflected tensions over the purpose of the March: some felt they had come to walk across the country, while others insisted the point was to eliminate nuclear weapons, with or without walking. As it became apparent that March organizers were creating rules that would not allow any one particular individual to walk the entire way, some started to question who had “ownership” of the March. Disagreements over the purpose and structure of the March surfaced between those supporting individual freedom to determine one’s actions, and those demanding personal sacrifices for uniformity.95 The former view linked long-distance walking to participatory democracy and prefigurative leanings, while the latter accords endurance activism with organizational rules, structure, and order. “Some people are glad that we are not marching all the way,” Hippie noted, “and they have surrendered to the Establishment.”

He equated taking a bus over Cajon Pass as an alignment with state and corporate forces that he

94 Folsom and Fledderjohann, Great Peace March, 48-52; Hippie, Spirit Walk, is the most radical and vocal representation of this commitment to walking each step of the march. 95 Hippie, Spirit Walk, 53-54. 151

argued the peace marchers were trying to confront. For Hippie, “It was still a Peace March, and that meant walking.”96

Walking every step of the Peace March became Hippie’s mission in defiance of conformist pressures that he felt were trying to exert control over the March. He also believed that something critical would be lost if marchers accepted rides between sites. Many marchers felt like Roger that it was important for the legitimacy of the collective to have “walked” every step of the way for the cause.97 For example, Karen thought the Spirit Walkers provided “a great service which was that connectivity…there's something sort of magical about the physicality of that…I can see a glowing line across the country where the march has been.”98 Christina argued completing the continental walk on foot demonstrated the March had made “an absolute complete connection, we said we're gonna do it, and we've done it. So, that I think is extremely significant.”99

This support for the Spirit Walk illustrates a strong belief in the March as a metaphor of endurance, and that achieving the coast-to-coast walk was a symbol of the difficulty, but necessity, of uniting the country in an effort to eliminate nuclear weapons. But marchers disagreed with Hippie on the significance of any one individual maintaining this continuity. Not selected as part of the designated six, he and a friend decided to disobey orders from leadership and walk over Cajon Pass. An angry March official admonished them for “endangering the

March” and threatened that they would have to face consequences determined by the march community.100 Long-distance walking and the disagreements over the purpose of the Spirt Walk

96 Ibid., 57, 85. 97 Solberg, interview. 98 Jeffers Tracy, interview. 99 Tomacic, interview. 100 Hippie, Spirit Walk, 58-63. 152

illuminate several aspects of endurance activism. These include the commitment to walking each step of the March as representative of symbolic endurance and requiring literal physical endurance, but the debates also evinced marchers’ concerns about the relationship between long- distance walking, strategy, and building community.

Tom claimed Hippie was a “spiritual leader” who represented marchers who felt strongly about the significance of walking. Many marchers, however, were angry at the Spirit Walkers’ defiance of Peace March authorities. The determination to walk, as evident through the creation of the Spirit Walk, offers an example of how competing methods and modes of physical activity influenced the divisive politics of the Great Peace March. On one hand, the Spirit Walk could be interpreted as an important symbol of the marchers’ desire for disarmament, but on the other, it was viewed as a selfish act that fractured unity and threatened the March’s media image.101

In addition to the Spirit Walks over Cajon Pass and large segments of Utah, the March was forced onto busses near Grand Junction, Colorado, a stretch between Omaha and the Iowa border, and other sites.102 Moreover, on a daily basis, marchers accepted or voluntarily took rides for any number of reasons related to their march jobs, or because they simply did not want to or could not finish a given day’s march. The purist commitment to walking also excludes, categorically, those whose bodies, whether due to ability, injury, or illness, precluded long- distance walking. For Hippie and those aligned with his views, intentionally not walking, though, was a betrayal of the March’s purpose, and a sell-out to March attempts at centralized authority.103 Conversely, some marchers felt betrayed by how the Spirit Walkers put their needs above the rest of community. This point of contention illustrates that the physical act of walking,

101 Ibid., 126-135. 102 Ibid., 163, 278, 357. 103 Ibid., 163. 153

and the attempts to prevent marchers from walking at certain junctures, informed the development of conflicting activist identities and debates over the purpose of the March. At varying extremes, Hippie argued that walking every step was practically the March’s sole purpose, and that the “normalizing” of bussing undermined their campaign.104 At the other end of the extreme, some disarticulated the physical act of walking from the March’s purpose, such as

Luis who said that “the whole idea was to gather signatures for the petition,” whether it involved walking or driving.105

In between these positions, marchers communicated moderate views about the implications of the Spirit Walk. Evan felt that it was a personal matter. Her philosophy was that

“everybody gets to do it their way” and that her job as a City Manager was to help validate different people’s realities.106 Similarly, Karen, Tom, and Roger thought the community grew through the Spirit Walk debate in learning tolerance and respect for different voices and understandings.107 In this way, Spirit Walking informs endurance activism as a lens for the value prefigurative politics. Christina viewed their commitment to walking as “another level of dedication,” but also claimed “that’s all they did, that was their job. They didn’t wash dishes.”108

She, and most marchers, did not feel their dedication was “less than” because they could not walk every day. Ric, Susan, and RJ remembered the Spirit Walk debate as one that may have been very significant for some, but hardly registered for others.109 Lala also felt that the debate was not particularly pressing: “I don't think that there were a lot of people that were really up in arms about that, I mean, if you walked, you walked.”110

104 Ibid., 191-192. 105 Pardo, interview. 106 King, interview. 107 Atlee, interview; Jeffers Tracy, interview; Solberg, interview. 108 Tomacic, interview. 109 Driver, interview; Hoffman, interview; RJ, interview. 110 Palazzolo, interview. 154

March Potatoes and Turnips

There is some disagreement on this point, however, and evidence to suggest that walking informed the boundaries between marcher identities and the purpose of the March. Donna expressed a view that the Spirt Walkers exhibited “marchismo” in their need to be “glorious heroes” who walked across the continent. On a smaller scale, though, marchers took note of how far they or other marchers walked on a given day, and how frequently throughout the week.

Some marchers Donna knew felt like they “were falling short of the mark” if they could not walk their “whole shift.” Though she pushed herself to her limits, Donna could not walk much past 17 or 18 miles. She was often resigned to taking the bus the final mile or two into camp. “Oh, crap,

I’m not doing this today, again,” she reflected. 111 Christina stated that she “wanted to walk” and if she could help it, avoided taking the bus that transported marchers to the next site.112 The nicknames for the bus, coincidentally – the “sag wagon,” “wimp wagon,” “weary wagon” – playfully connoted weakness. She explained that most marchers took the bus with varying degrees of regularity because of march jobs or other commitments.

However, there was a notion that some people rarely walked at all, and marchers called them “march potatoes.” Christina simply claimed these were the people who “took the bus all the time,” while Donna, speaking for how the March defined the term, claimed they were “those lazy people who aren’t…really there, they’re just hanging out and having a good time because they’re not really dedicated to the cause, because they’re not marching every day.”113 Donna’s comments, especially, reinforce the centrality of physical movement and endurance as key measures of involvement in the March movement and organization.

111 Williams, interview. 112 Tomacic, interview. 113 Williams, interview. 155

The fact that nearly all of the interview participants were familiar with the terms “Spirit

Walk,” “marchismo,” and “march potato” indicates the labels circulated widely. Closely related to the march potatoes were the “turnips” who according to Roger, and Donna Rankin Love, were opportunists who “turned up” for meals and big events that might draw media attention.114

Moreover, the terms appeared in the marcher-produced books about the March. Love suggested the potatoes and turnips were the “young, unkempt, fringe-members of the march who overslept, and rarely walked or worked.”115 Anne Macfarlane’s view was very similar, as she claimed they were teenage runaways rebelling against their parents.116 Sue Guist acknowledged the term but doubted it could be pinned on one segment of marchers since so few were walking during the hot and humid stretches in eastern Colorado and through most of Nebraska.117 Hippie also attributed the “often embarrassingly small March column” to the potatoes, while Franklin Folsom and

Connie Fledderjohann simply argued potatoes were “noticeable” and a “drain on March resources.”118 Perhaps most tellingly, however, the terms appeared in a press packet the March produced to acquaint media personnel with the march culture. This guide defined “marcho” as

“one who marches all the time, refuses to be bussed ever, and never works during March hours.

Calls everyone else a potato.” In turn, the march potato was defined as “someone who seldom marches.”119

What the guide did not articulate however, was the way each term showed how walking, something mostly taken granted, became intertwined with debates about what constituted a

“marcher” and the work they did to contribute to the March. Depending on one’s priorities, Spirit

114 Solberg, interview; Love, Walking for Our Lives, 96. 115 Love, Walking for Our Lives, 96. 116 Macfarlane, Feet Across America, 99-100. 117 Guist, Peace Like a River, 104-105. 118 Hippie, Spirit Walk, 250-251; Folsom and Fledderjohann, Great Peace March, 36, 133. 119 “Guide to the Great Peace March,” Series IV, Box 16, in the Great Peace March Records. 156

Walkers and March Potatoes could both be perceived as a hindrance on strategic efforts for nationwide mobilization, and the participatory nature of building a prefigurative community.

Whether one walked all day or slept all day, they were neither participating in the March’s fundamental operations to maintain the camp and community (e.g., child care, sanitation, maintenance, kitchen) or mobilizing mass support for nuclear disarmament (e.g., outreach, media relations, fundraising, public speaking).

Some, however, came to see a given portion of “noncontributing” members as a natural reflection of any community or society, and that the March should handle them graciously.120

Others, like Susan, felt like marchers mistook parts for the whole. “They’d see the half dozen sleeping 17-year-olds and go, ‘Oh, god, they’re just mooches…but they didn’t turn around and go, ‘but, look who’s loading all the trucks every day…who’s up at 2 in the morning doing security…who’s cooking pancakes at 4 in the morning…They’re running the camp!”121 In addition to these debates over the quantity of walking, marchers disagreed on the qualities of how they marched. This controversy further revealed how walking and physical activity were related to the ways endurance activism influenced the purpose of the March, and the constitution of enduring divisions over competing views of structure, strategy, and community. Those who felt a given percentage of noncontributing marchers drew out the March’s capacity for compassion viewed endurance activism through prefigurative values, though some argued inactive marchers did not help to build community.

City Mode and Country Mode

The March assigned different labels to different types of marchers, but they also developed categories for different “modes” of walking. The press packet “guide” to the March

120 Atlee, interview; Williams, interview. 121 Hoffman, interview. 157

defined the different modes, and in doing so, indicated which one it felt better served the

March’s purpose. “City Mode” the guide reads, is “a marching style, consisting of a tight march column lined up neatly behind the flags like a parade. Used in cities, this style looks like the march people expect.”

Figure 11 The Great Peace March in City Mode. The photograph on the left captures an ideal image of the march for organizers concerned with strategy and media coverage. Marchers are in a united formation and stretch on as far as one can see. The image on the right, though also reflecting City Mode, shows a much smaller contingent of marchers actually walking, which concerned both strategists and walking purists. Photographs in the Great Peace March Records (DG 147), Swarthmore College Peace Collection. Country or “Rural Mode,” is “a loose marching style used in lightly populated areas. Marchers are strung out for several miles, allowing for solitude, enjoyment of the sounds of nature and time to talk to local people along the way. This mode is a controversial subject on the march.”122

In short, City Mode aligned with a preference for structure, order, and projecting an image of the march that would appeal to the media and hopefully, further strategic initiatives. Country Mode, on the contrary, better served individual marcher needs, freedoms, and the prefigurative community building aspects of the march. As with the marchismo-potato debate, some marchers

122 “Guide to the Great Peace March,” Series IV, Box 16, in the Great Peace March Records. 158

were less invested in the controversy than others. Still other segments viewed the conflict from a distance, as illuminating ways the March found compromise, tolerance, and acceptance of difference. Ultimately, these prefigurative values served strategic goals on the March by helping the group endure and keep moving despite contentious division.

Figure 12 The Great Peace March in Country Mode. Though difficult to capture in a photograph because marchers were spread out over several miles, this photograph shows marchers walking solo or in pairs, in loose formation, and separated from a clear front. Photograph in the Great Peace March Records (DG 147), Swarthmore College Peace Collection. City Mode reflected the desire of those on the March to use the march’s display of collective endurance as an appeal for media coverage to spread their message for disarmament.

One of the ways City Mode could be operationalized for the media was through state border crossing ceremonies. In these ceremonies, the entire march shouted the names of the states they had traversed, and then simultaneously, bellowed the name of the new state as they walked over the border. But, as the name implies, this style of walking was also utilized when walking through cities, particularly for parades, events, and rallies. Some, like Hippie, felt these actions were contrived and did not actually allow for outreach. In City Mode, he explained marchers mostly talked among themselves as people observed the curious mass. This version of the March,

159

for him, was “phony and cheesy,” all “hype and hoopla and speeches.”123 Moreover, Hippie described walking in City Mode as restrictive and unnatural, and claimed “all our actions were coordinated and dictated by the DMAC (Day March Coordinator) giving directions from the front of the column through a walkie-talkie to the Monitors and other March support people. We were told when we could (and must) rest, how fast to walk, when to cross the street, and which streets to take.”124

Walking at his own pace, however, felt more like authentic work for peace. He noticed passersby in the rural areas were more likely to approach individuals or small groups. “Cars honked, and people waved, and some…stopped to talk with us about the Peace March. I felt energized and alive, walking and making peace in a simple and direct way.”125 Hippie was not the only marcher with these views. But he was perhaps the most vocal proponent for Country

Mode, and his comments crystallize the debate over how the March walked and what different modes communicated about their overarching purpose. Endurance activism and different forms of long-distance walking reflect attempts to resolve tensions between strategic and prefigurative politics.

The tension over these competing modes of walking came to a fore at what many marchers commonly referred to as the “fertilizer factory meeting” held about 65 miles northeast of Denver.126 March leadership had grown weary with the decreasing number of participants in the daily march column. The “aliveness” quality that sparked the March during its reorganization in Barstow and its march through the desert to Las Vegas had been diminished by the Spirit

123 Hippie, Spirit Walk, 111, 215, 225. 124 Ibid., 241. 125 Ibid., 242. 126 Williams, interview; Solberg, interview; Atlee, interview; Hunter, interview; Hippie, Spirit Walk, 257; Folsom and Fledderjohann, Great Peace March, 59-60; Guist, Peace Like a River, 104; Macfarlane, Feet Across America, 49-52. 160

Walk debates that separated marchers, literally and figuratively, through Utah. Some excitement was recaptured as many marchers experienced a peak moment during their ascent of Loveland

Pass on U.S. Highway 6 near Keystone, Colorado. There, the Continental Divide marked the geographic high point, in feet, on the march route. Camera crews and reporters had gathered to capture the spectacle of hundreds of peace marchers crossing the Continental Divide. Marchers celebrated this as a momentous occasion. But as the March descended into the flat plains of eastern Colorado, the days grew longer and hotter, towns dispersed further apart, and marchers on the route were fewer. In Fort Morgan, Colorado, only 76 marchers walked into camp.127

Figure 13 The Great Peace March near Loveland Pass at the Continental Divide in Keystone, Colorado. Photograph in the Great Peace March Records (DG 147), Swarthmore College Peace Collection. The “infamous” all-city meeting to discuss modes of walking proceeded as follows. At a camp site near Wiggins, Colorado, it began raining very hard and marchers gathered inside an abandoned fertilizer factory building to wait out the storm before dinner. March leaders spontaneously called a meeting to discuss the ways the March had divided into those walking

127 Guist, Peace Like a River, 102; Macfarlane, Feet Across America, 49. 161

together with the column, and those walking whenever they wanted at their own pace. Sue Guist recalled that “all who wanted to speak were allowed to,” though it was “obvious the leadership hoped we’d decide to walk together in a substantial group.”128 In the end, there was no official decision reached about the different modes. Rather, it was just an understanding of a “reality” as

Guist suggested, “marchers couldn’t be made to do anything” they opposed.129 Hippie interpreted the “official” demarcation of the modes as a “pre-determined resolution” by the Council.130

Many interview participants shared this “ho-hum” attitude towards the City Mode/Country Mode resolution as something they were not terribly invested in, or just another issue for contentious factions to argue over.131

As with the Spirit Walk issue, however, there is evidence to suggest the debate was tied to understandings of the March’s strategic aims. Evan, for example, claimed the discussion over modes was not a “critical issue in terms of effectiveness” because she did not view City Mode as guaranteeing success. However, she also contended that preference for different modes of walking revealed different beliefs over what constituted the march, indicating a relation to questions of strategy. “The question is…what's the march? Right? So, what's the purpose of the march? If you think the purpose of the march is by walking into a city we are gonna affect hearts and minds, um, I don't think so…I think the power of the march are the people who walked and the people we connected with.”132 Tom also viewed the debate as carrying a heightened significance. He elaborated the fertilizer factory meeting as an experience of “emergent understanding…we were at the point of ready to break up…people were saying, ‘I don't wanna

128 Guist, Peace Like a River, 104. 129 Ibid., 104-105. 130 Hippie, Spirit Walk, 257. 131 Tomacic, interview; Williams, interview; Hunter, interview; Driver, interview; Hoffman, interview; Rubin, interview. 132 King, interview. 162

be on the march that you're all on if you're gonna do that.’ We didn't make a decision, we didn't have any consensus process, there wasn't any voting, but we sort of knew we were gonna march…all loose in the country and together in the cities and it just made total sense from all the stuff that we were arguing about…that was such a watershed for me because I'd never been in a group where the group coherence emerged without any…formal process of converging.”133 For

Evan and Tom, the “resolution” of the debate accorded with a view of the March’s prefigurative impulses toward process and means instead of centralized, hierarchical control and decision- making toward ends and outcomes. Their views expand and clarify conflicts inherent in the concept of endurance activism insofar as long-distance walking relates to questions about what marchers are marching for, how long-distance walking is imagined in City Mode as a tool for gaining media coverage, and which mode of walking – City or Country – marchers variously interpreted as physical work for the cause.

As the squabbles on modes of walking persisted well after the fertilizer factory meeting, it became apparent that the Country Mode and City Mode issue was not only tied to questions about purpose, but the demarcation of marcher identities. As Roger said, the mode conversations related to the “visual rhetoric of the march.”134 For the faction wanting to build a mass movement, appealing to mainstream “Middle America” was key, and being in City Mode was their preferred method for showing the March as a “force.”135 As RJ questioned, where was the line drawn to switch from Country Mode to City Mode, or vice-versa? What community was

“large” enough to warrant coming together for strategic goals? Conversely, how did the March

133 Atlee, interview. 134 Solberg, interview. 135 RJ, interview. 163

determine which towns were “small” enough to justify supporting individual marcher styles and paces of walking?

The fertilizer factory resolution did not answer these questions. However, the meeting reflects how debates over long-distance walking and endurance activism relate to participatory democracy and what Francesca Polletta calls “deliberative talk,” in which social movement participants expect “each other to provide legitimate reasons for preferring one option to another.”136 A process not as strict as consensus, which can leave little room for differences,

Polletta contends the goal of deliberative talk is not “unanimity so much as discourse…governed by norms of openness and mutual respect.”137 In this regard, the March was successful in making each side of the walking mode debate understandable to the other. Further, articulating the opportunities that each mode afforded the March gave participants skills and practice in discussing strategic goals, and highlights the interplay between organization (City Mode) and spontaneity (Country Mode) as it existed through physical movement.

Figure 14 Some of the marchers’ attire upset factions within the Great Peace March who wanted to present a mainstream image in City Mode. Photograph in the Great Peace March Records (DG 147), Swarthmore College Peace Collection.

136 Polletta, Freedom is an Endless Meeting, 7. 137 Ibid. 164

Personal Transformations and the Cultivation of Political Identities

The controversy over modes of walking illustrated that the March was much more than just a march for global nuclear disarmament. By the end, in fact, many marchers came to understand the March as a catalyst for personal empowerment, connection, and belonging, but also a collective that demonstrated the struggle to live peacefully through difficult circumstances, genuine social differences, and multifaceted cultural divides.138 As much as some might have wanted to keep the focus singularly on nuclear weapons, groups such as the Women’s Collective demanded the recognition of difference, and highlighted the links between militarism and multiple forms of oppression. The Women’s Collective formed early on the March as an affinity group primarily for lesbians, but also feminists and a few gay men. They countered the emerging dominance of white men in hierarchical structures by having “circle meetings” to share their feelings, play guitar, sing songs, and discuss the challenges facing the March in a nonlinear fashion.

Documents in the Great Peace March archive indicate the Women’s Collective organized as “a feminist support group to confront issues of sexism, homophobia, and sexual harassment within the March community.”139 As Evan explained, in addition to providing a safe and nurturing space for women and lesbians to be – to find places to shower, do laundry together, share meals and the like – the Women’s Collective served an important function as the March’s

“symbol of feminism,” a reminder that peace was integrated with other forms of oppression and violence.140 Though details on specific incidents are scarce, the Women’s Collective noted there

138 Love, Walking for Our Lives, 51, 90, 115; Guist, Peace Like A River, 11, 16, 29; Hippie, Spirit Walk, ii-vii; 139 “Letter Inviting Local Womyn to Our Encampment,” August 28, 1986, Series II, Box 12, in the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament Records (DG 147), Swarthmore College Peace Collection. 140 King, interview. 165

had been “documented cases of sexual abuse to women on the Great Peace March.”141 Books written by marchers and several interview participants confirmed that harassment, abuse, and allegations of rape had occurred.142 In response, the Women’s Collective installed several educational and infrastructural initiatives to address sexual assault and rape on the March.143

These initiatives included a 24-hour rape crises service to provide emotional aid; an ongoing support group; co-educational programs on date rape, blame, harassment, and rape myths; and efforts to further outreach with women’s groups along the route to “utilize their hotlines and experiences.”144 As it turned out, the Women’s Collective was a strong advocate for social justice, egalitarianism, and inclusivity throughout. They frequently reminded their fellow marchers of the connection between nuclear weapons, militarism, hypermasculinity, and patriarchy, as well as the sexist attitudes and behaviors present within the March.

Gay men did not have as large of a presence on the march. However, Luis described an active gay men’s community on the March that formed a group they named IGUANAS

(Impatient Gays United Against Nuclear Arms). Like the Women’s Collective, the IGUANAS offered gay men a social support system. They also conducted external outreach and networked with gay men’s groups, student unions, churches, synagogues, and activists in cities throughout the country, that provided meals, showers, laundry, fundraisers, social outings and safe places to be along the route.145 This support was especially important in cities like Omaha, Luis recalled, where police were known to have been conducting “entrapments,” and arresting gay men for

141 “Minutes of the City Council for the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament, Inc.,” May 1, 1986, page 2, Series I, Box 2, in the Great Peace March Records. 142 Macfarlane, Feet Across America, 89-90; Folsom and Fledderjohann, Great Peace March, 44; Atlee, interview; King, interview; Hoffman, interview. 143 King, interview; “Minutes of the City Council for the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament, Inc.,” May 1, 1986, page 2, Series I, Box 2, in the Great Peace March Records. 144 “Minutes of the City Council,” May 1, 1986, page 2. 145 Pardo, interview. 166

alleged sexual encounters with minors.146 In addition, Luis noted the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Bowers v. Hardwick took place during the march on March 31, 1986. The court ruled it was constitutional for the state to prosecute gays for consensual sex acts in private residences.147 Further, anti-gay backlash and homophobia intensified nationwide during the

HIV/AIDS crisis. By 1987, nearly 25,000 in the United States had died from AIDS, and 150,000 were infected each year. AIDS hysteria fueled further extreme right-wing attacks on gay and lesbian civil rights, such as proposals for quarantine measures.148

Though Luis acknowledged that some marchers were “a little awkward” about interacting with gay men, in general he found the community to be gay- and lesbian-friendly. He also did not recall any external violence directed at gay marchers.149 Given the legal, political, and cultural contexts, however, he and the IGUANAS were vulnerable to certain risks that other marchers were not. Nevertheless, Luis’s experiences stress his and other gay men’s agency in creating links and collaboration between the March and gay rights activism.

Some marchers, however, fought ardently to keep a singular focus on nuclear weapons.

Donna felt the March was an “open community” in terms of sexual expression but observed that marchers concerned with the March’s “image” were uncomfortable with what the gay and lesbian presence meant for gaining popular support for disarmament.150 Many marchers expressed a viewpoint that that a focus on feminist, women’s, or gay and lesbian issues detracted from the March’s message and mission. Karen recalled organizers in Utah being very concerned that the Women’s Collective “openly gay agenda” would detract from the “message” and turn

146 Ibid. 147 Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986). 148 Kauffman, Direct Action, 107-108. 149 Pardo, interview. 150 Williams, interview. 167

people “off.”151 Sue Guist grew frustrated with the intersection between disarmament, gender, and sexuality during her participation in a demonstration at Seneca Falls, New York. “I didn’t walk clear across this country to talk about somebody’s sex life,” she told local opponents who had gathered at their demonstration, “I feel cheated. Nobody told us we were coming up here to defend lesbianism.”152 Guist’s interpretation dismisses gay and lesbian politics as a “lifestyle” or

“personal” issue. Further, she added that “it felt wrong to mix gay rights with disarmament.

People need to see one clear line of truth. Not mix things together so they can’t choose one without the other.”153

Some indicated they were not opposed to women’s issues or gay rights, but that outward advocacy did not fit with their purpose and what they envisioned for the Great Peace March. Ric, for example, was frustrated by those engaging in civil disobedience, and felt that regardless of which group he belonged to, or which message, philosophy, or strategy he advocated, “every single one of us felt that ‘that person over there is saying something different that I don't want to say…That [message] is not what I’m here for. That’s not my march.’”154 For him, the primary goal was “to get people’s minds focused on nuclear weapons.” Therefore, his “most difficult and most challenging” experiences were with the constant need to “re-amalgamate, and say yes, this is one march, and we have lots of different voices.”155 In a similar vein, RJ expressed that what she found most stressful was the “interference” of “other elements, other than just walking for global nuclear disarmament.”156 She was supportive of the March as a “nurturing community that

151 Jeffers Tracy, interview. 152 Guist, Peace Like a River, 156-157. 153 Ibid. 154 Driver, interview. 155 Ibid. 156 RJ, interview. 168

dealt with all kinds of problems of humanity,” but regretted that what she called “real world” issues infringed upon what she carved out separately as “the peace march world.”157

The Women’s Collective ensured that feminist and social justice concerns would be a part of the movement. As Susan aptly summarized, “I’m sorry, we didn’t come on a walk for liberation to be told, ‘don’t hold your girlfriend’s hand.’”158 They had their own advance team that concentrated on setting up events with feminist and women’s communities along their route across the country, and the group frequently attended local women’s, lesbian, and gay groups’ meetings, events, and workshops. In turn, the Women’s Collective offered speakers, musicians, outreach, softball games, a newsletter, and a national network of women who supported the

March.159 For Evan, the Women’s Collective was like a “parallel experience” that was “very woman-centric” while also “part of the larger march.”160 The reverse was also true. Ben cited the

Women’s Collective as inspiration for his conversion to feminism. Others were also influenced by their insistence that the March could not successfully oppose nuclear weapons if sexism, homophobia, and violence against women went unchecked in their own community.161

Before moving forward with a discussion of personal transformations and the March’s strength in its diversity, it is important to note the March’s racial homogeneity, and therefore the limits to such claims. According to one March estimate, 97 percent of marchers were white.162

Organizers were aware that that they could hardly claim to represent the national will with such a lack of participation from what they referred to as the Black community, Hispanics, Spanish speakers, Asians, and Native Americans. “We don’t think any Peace Movement can succeed

157 Ibid. 158 Hoffman, interview. 159 See reports on Women’s Collective activities in Denver, Boulder, Lincoln, Omaha, Ann Arbor, Des Moines, Iowa City, and Harrisburg, Series II, Box 12, in the Great Peace March Records. 160 King, interview. 161 Atlee, interview; Atherton-Zeman, interview; Tomacic, interview. 162 “Peace March Update,” September 15, 1986, 6, in the Great Peace March Records. 169

without their active participation,” one organizer wrote in a budget proposal to the City Council for “inner-city/minority” outreach. “We must actively go into their communities and seek their support,” the proposal surmised.163

Figure 15 Many Great Peace March sources posit that inner-cities and “ethnic” neighborhoods across the country were among the most supportive communities the march encountered. These images illustrate how the whiteness of the march constructed the blackness and brownness of the inner-cities, and vice-versa. Photographs in the Great Peace March Records (DG 147), Swarthmore College Peace Collection. Dual forces internal and external to the march influenced marchers’ personal transformations. On one hand, within their own ranks, the March struggled with power relations along lines of gender, sexuality, and class. Intergenerational conflicts often undergirded clashes over organization, image, and political strategy as well. Yet, many in the group ultimately viewed the ways in which they reconciled diversity in age, gender, sexuality, nationality, religion, cultural beliefs, political commitments, occupation, and so forth as one of the March’s greatest lessons and strengths.164 On the other hand, encounters with the farm crisis, Rust Belt

163 See examples of the March’s efforts to recruit and increase their involvement with racial and ethnic minorities, such as, Untitled budget proposal, July 11, 1986, Series II, Box 6, Ethnic/Inner City Interaction file, in the Great Peace March Records; also “The Yes We Can Van,” July 15, 1986; “Some Accomplishment in Ethnic Interaction,” October 28, 1986; “Great Peace March (Ethnic Involvement Committee),” no date, reports on actions in Omaha, Nebraska; “Ethnic Interaction Proposal for New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington,” no date; and Terrance Allen, “Ethnic Involvement Outreach Recap of Cleveland,” no date. 164 Folsom and Fledderjohann, Great Peace March, 109-111. See also Kathleen Hendrix, “Peace March for Nuclear Disarmament Reaches a Rocky Mountain High: After a Cloudy Start, a Chance to Walk in the Sun,” Los Angeles Times, June 6, 1986, H1. 170

devastation, and military installations along the route gave previously abstract concerns over the arms race concrete shape. Endurance activism helped marchers not only to express but also cultivate their political identities.

When marchers tried to leave their slog through the Great Plains behind them, many embraced and felt embraced by struggling farmers in the Iowa and Illinois “Heartland.” They were similarly moved by poor, working-class communities anguishing in the Rust Belt. The

March anticipated marchers could make connections in Iowa between the expanding U.S. military budget and shrinking federal support for farmers. Nevertheless, they also expected to encounter conservative-minded folks hesitant to critique their president, government, or military.

Instead, they found an “all-out welcome,” and described “the heartland as a highlight…that raised their spirits.”165 From the start, Iowa seemed an improvement from the unease and eerie silences marchers had experienced too often in the 90-degree days of Nebraska. For instance, on

July 3, an all-Black marching band and drill team from Omaha escorted the Great Peace

Marchers into the state as they crossed the Missouri River.166 Further, field offices in Des

Moines and Iowa City had been planning for their arrival since the March’s inception as part of

PRO-Peace, spawning extensive programs with peace communities in both cities.

Iowans’ hospitality also confirmed marchers’ perceptions of Midwesterners as a kind, gentle, caring people. In Amana, the volunteer fire department doused sunbaked marchers with firehose showers. In the small town of Oakland, ministers relieved marchers with 45 gallons of ice cream. They were well-fed by churches in Colfax, and received 700 pounds of freshly picked corn from a farmer in West Branch.167 At Lake Anita, according to a March newsletter, they

165 Kathleen Hendrix, “Peace Cruise,” H1. 166 Folsom and Fledderjohann, Great Peace March, 117. 167 Ibid. 171

“arrived at march heaven – a rolling green campsite by a sprawling Y-shaped lake,” complete with “shade, free showers, a beach and giant tractor inner tubes to play in.”168 The scenes marchers painted of Iowa were idyllic: a grocery store clerk selling them inexpensive ice cold melon slices; a community band playing for them on top of a flatbed truck; children dipping wands into jars of bubbles, and presenting handmade paper cranes; another band thumping out polka tunes; and a backyard picnic with Davenport’s mayor.169

In addition to feeling refreshed and reinvigorated, the walk in Iowa created links between the march’s nuclear politics and the plight of farmers. The march used the slogan “Farms not

Arms” to show their support.170 Evan expressed the ways that walking through farm country deepened her appreciation of the farmers and the surrounding environment. She recalled, “I remember in the Midwest watching the thunder and lightning storms come, and at night we would…sit in our tent and…watch that happen. And I'd never seen that before. I'd never seen fireflies before.” She also cited special significance in “watching the corn grow…day by day seeing the changes in it as we were walking through that in Nebraska and Iowa and Illinois was amazing…And then we got to eat it…that was spectacular.” Further, she stressed that she was

“happy to be a compassionate witness” to what the farmers “were facing with agri-business.”171

Donna also stated that her interactions in the Midwest educated her on “how the family farm was going belly-up, and the money was going down into the missile silos instead of into the farms.”172

168 “Peace March Update,” July 20, 1986, in the Great Peace March Records. 169 Hendrix, “Peace Cruise,” H1. 170 Guist, Peace Like a River, 108. 171 King, interview. 172 Williams, interview. 172

Marchers’ connections to the farmland extended to a sense of reverence for life and community in small midwestern towns. These encounters were performed at the ground level through long-distance walking and endurance activism. Roger expressed that “seeing these little towns…you know cornfields in Iowa…you think, wow! This is the stuff that’s at stake…[walking] connects you more with the sense of purpose of what we’re here to do.”

Recalling a memory of walking through Oakland, Iowa, and visiting the town’s museum brought

Roger to tears. “When you’re walking from little town to little town,” he averred, “you get a sense of here’s a life being lived. That’s where it really hits home…I’ll always remember that guy who ran that little museum, you know [tone rising], that this little county has its history that means something to these people.” By walking through these areas, Roger felt little connections to a “person’s house in Paxton, Nebraska” or a small museum in Oakland, Iowa meant America was no longer an abstraction but “something tangible.” One of the contributions of endurance activism is giving marchers a “greater appreciation for what’s there,” which Roger suggested made the people and the places “real, and because they’re real, it makes the problem more real.”173

Figure 16 A drawing by marcher Guy Colwell illustrates the hopeful outreach the Great Peace March conducted with farmers in the “Heartland.” Image in “You Can Prevent Nuclear War,”

173 Solberg, interview. 173

Figure 16—continued 16, External Accounts File, Series IV, Box 16 in the Great Peace March Records (DG 147), Swarthmore College Peace Collection. Christina similarly recalled a series of strong emotional connections she had to small acts of kindness. These gestures held special meaning and have had enduring impacts. For example, in Girard, Ohio she remembered children from a Catholic school who had “made these handmade signs and they were lined up along the street [breathes, fighting back tears] and they were just, cheering, and wonderful! And one little girl ran up to me, and she handed me her little poster, and gave it to me. And I took it with me to D.C…every person that we met, came with us on the march. [with emotion] That was the most powerful thing.” Christina linked memories and moments such as this one to her career as a social worker and her lifelong conviction “to speak for people who do not have a voice.”174 Enmeshed in tangible, one-on-one encounters with supporters and other activists, some physical instances could turn into intensely personal experiences that reinforced marchers’ political identities.

Figure 17 A group of schoolchildren greets the march with signs and flags. Marchers expressed that gestures like this had an elevated significance in providing an emotional lift. Photograph in the Great Peace March Records (DG 147), Swarthmore College Peace Collection. Starting in Gary, Indiana, the march encountered the first of many depressed industrial areas on its path. On August 19, the march stopped at the U.S. Steel plant that had once provided

174 Tomacic, interview. 174

jobs for over 30,000 steelworkers. Only 5,000 employees remained.175 Some March leaders had for so long resisted making their march outwardly about anything besides global nuclear disarmament. But in the Rust Belt, as with their concern for the state of the family farm, the

March more explicitly linked the plight of impoverished industrial workers to the arms race.

Marchers joined union pickets in a rally at the U.S. Steel plant, where Gary’s Mayor, Richard

Hatcher said, “Peace is a complex of many issues. Those who care for peace enough to walk across the country in support of it must also be for racial equality, women’s rights and job opportunities for the young.”176 The Mayor’s view of long-distance walking links the March’s politics for peace with a wider range of issues.

Many Marchers could not have agreed more, and the close encounters with communities through endurance activism strengthened these connections. Their advance teams, community interaction department, education, and outreach groups often worked earnestly to link the

March’s cause with local concerns.177 On September 4th and 5th, several dozen marchers attended a prayer vigil at Maumee, on the outskirts of Toledo, Ohio, to “End Racial Violence and Promote

Peace” after hearing reports of racial tensions. On September 10, hundreds of marchers fasted in solidarity with a veteran, Vic Tolley, who had been exposed to ionizing radiation during his active service. Tolley was protesting the government’s refusal to compensate him for his radiation injuries. And on the 21st of September, 40 women left the March in Ohio to visit the women’s Peace Encampment near the Seneca Army Depot in Romulus, New York.178

175 Folsom and Fledderjohann, Great Peace March, 123. 176 Ibid., 124. 177 For example in the Great Peace March Records, “Notebook: Community Interaction Planning,” Series II, Box 5; “Ethnic/Inner City Interaction,” Series II, Box 6; “Religious Task Force,” and “Education Department,” Series II, Box 9. Other files include information about marcher-led food drives, environmental initiatives, unity and diversity workshops, and other projects. See files for each in Series II, Box 5, in the Great Peace March Records. 178 “Peace March Update,” September 15, 1986, and November 14, 1986, in the Great Peace March Records. 175

As summer turned to fall, the march journeyed through Ohio and again encountered the crumbling steel industry and its effect on the community in Youngstown.

Figure 18 Many marchers expressed despair and a strengthened link between the Great Peace March and labor politics after witnessing economic deprivation in the Rust Belt. Photograph in the Great Peace March Records (DG 147), Swarthmore College Peace Collection. The March now emphasized its multi-advocacy approach in connecting with organized labor and by taking part in a local “Hispanic culture day parade” and festival.179 Though many of the individuals that joined the peace march had initially anticipated going out and educating the

American people on the need for nuclear disarmament, they increasingly realized they were receiving an education from the American people as well.180 In Youngstown, retired steelworkers educated marchers on how the continuation of their health and life insurance depended on their company’s contracts with the military. Calling for an end to the military-industrial complex threatened their livelihood because of the bleak demise of manufacturing. In this area, marchers

179 Folsom and Fledderjohann, Great Peace March, 133. 180 Williams, interview. 176

advocating nuclear disarmament also needed to have a message and plan for creating employment opportunities.181

Humbled by what they had seen and heard in places like Gary and Youngstown, the

March crossed into Pennsylvania on September 22. The “spectacle of economic collapse” continued to affect marchers’ psyche as they traversed the Monongahela Valley.182 “We went past miles and miles of shut down steel plants. They were like dead dinosaurs; there weren’t even birds flying around,” remarked marcher Pam Telleen.183 Donna explained how walking through places like the Monongahela Valley crystallized links the March had been making through its physical encounters all along. “You'd walk all day and see acres and acres and acres of steel mill plants that were abandoned and rusting. And you'd see 'em on the other side of the river as you're walking along. It was just incomprehensible how deeply, deeply economically depressed that region was…It's like when you go to weed out a crabgrass from your lawn? And then you realize there are all of these runners, and they just spread everywhere…I never understood how we were so stupid to build nuclear weapons but then I begin to see how the entire economy of the United States was tangled up in this venture. And it affected everybody…from downwinders in Utah to people suffering higher cancer rates in Seneca Depot,

New York.”184 Similarly Roger questioned, “we're going through the Rust Belt, you sort of get that end of it…are our resources being used as wisely as they should be?” Endurance activism was the mode of social movement participation for many marchers that fostered a greater consciousness of issues that intersected with the cause of peace and disarmament.

181 Folsom and Fledderjohann, Great Peace March, 133. 182 Ibid.; Tomacic, interview. 183 Folsom and Fledderjohann, Great Peace March, 133. 184 Williams, interview. 177

Conclusion

This chapter expanded an understanding of endurance activism by clarifying how walking, marching, endurance, image, and marchers’ expressions of physicality were intimately tied up in debates about marcher identities, organization, strategy, and the purpose of the March.

Marchers’ descriptions of the physical, mental, and emotional challenges they endured document the Great Peace March as an instance of endurance activism. In light of the competing ways to define the march and identify its members, in this chapter I argued that walking and physical activity were important factors used by marchers to understand the nature of the march and to socially and symbolically define its participants. In particular, I suggested that the quality of endurance, and its many forms of embodiment, constituted a site from which to understand the individual meanings marchers assigned to their involvement.

In many cases, marchers themselves avowed that the visceral experiences of being and doing on the march were fundamental in helping them form activist identities, when previously, they had not thought of themselves as actively engaged citizens in a democratic society.

Participatory endurance activism, for many marchers, established a concrete sense of working with others for peace and disarmament. These experiences included events and incidents such as visiting sites of nuclear weapons production and testing, and meeting people in communities who had been afflicted by nuclear fallout and waste. They were also referenced through experiences and encounters with towns and communities ravaged either by the farm crisis or the decline of industrial manufacturing. It also meant physical labor, including the completion of countless physical tasks such as preparing food, washing dishes, or loading and unloading gear.

Cumulatively, this range of activities helped to illuminate endurance activism as an analytical frame.

178

Walking on the March influenced marchers’ experiences in multifaceted ways, just as their physical, emotional, and mental endurance informed the organizational and strategic debates about what constituted the march and marcher identities. The visceral level of work on the march was a key part of helping some of these formerly self-described “apolitical” individuals form political subjectivities. “I wanted to do more than just talk about peace,” argued

26-year-old Blake Ludwig. Similarly, 43-year-old Pat Smith contended she had moved from

“awareness” to “active” because of the march. Smith, Ludwig, and others, would look to the slow, methodical, and at times painful nine-month “walk” as critical to solidifying their commitment.185 Marcher Tom Witz, 29, reiterated the march had produced a coterie of hardened, seasoned, and trained activists. “The march re-instilled in people the need to keep active (in working for peace),” he stated. “We have to be there for the long haul because it’s not going to change overnight.”186 Several marchers I spoke with as well stated their participation with the

March had a significant impact on their political identities. This was true particularly, though not exclusively, for those for whom the Great Peace March was an initial or early foray into activism. Consider the following sample as illustration:

Ben: It shaped all the other activism I did from then on.

Christina: Everything I learned about social activism, I learned on the march…I started thinking, more and more, I could actually put myself out there.

Donna: I think everything I ever learned about politics, I learned on the march.

Tom: I don’t know what I’d be doing, if I hadn’t been on the march…it was a watershed event in my activism, my world view, and my relationships to everything.

185 Brown, “Forged Commitment,” OC_C1. 186 Judith P. Josephson and Edith H. Fine, “Encinitas Couple Joins Their Son at the End of 9-Month Trek for Peace,” Los Angeles Times, November 17, 1986, SD_C1. 179

Jerry: It was a life-changing experience.

Karen: That laid the groundwork then for my life! My life’s work.

Lala: It was probably the single most defining moment of my life…it was soulfully me.

Ric: I had no idea if I changed anything in the world. But I changed myself…I knew that I was going to be devoting my life to peace after that.

RJ: I learned how to live in the gray on the march.

Susan: The thing that remains…is the feeling of having both meaning and belonging…and again, to have such agency.

This chapter, among the aforementioned arguments, contains an implicit claim that the

March was an assertion that the public still mattered. As apathy, consumerism, and an increasingly dominant “free market” economic ideology gutted the social safety net, undermined democratic citizenship, and questioned the role of government, peace marchers sought to demonstrate that by walking across the United States, they characterized the will of the masses and called upon elected leaders’ duty to respond to their constituents.187 Gaining coverage from the state-corporate-media nexus, however, was essential for the March to “matter” in these ways.

The next chapter turns to a focus on the Great Peace March’s strategies for media coverage and national newspapers’ representations of the march.

187 David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). 180

CHAPTER 4 COMMUNICATING ENDURANCE ACTIVISM: COMPETING PUBLIC NARRATIVES OF THE GREAT PEACE MARCH

In the Introduction, I argued that long-distance walks can function as expressions of remarkable physical feats that circulate as newsworthy events and help groups or organizations to spread awareness of their political activity, message, vision, or cause. Further, I have suggested that attempts to attract and sustain media coverage through long-distance walking is a central characteristic of endurance activism. Endurance activism also highlights the complexities and contradictions of media coverage – a frequently contested and fiercely debated goal of social movement actors weighing the benefits and costs of gaining attention through specific tactics and staged events.

This chapter expands upon endurance activism as a ploy for media coverage. Using the

Great Peace March as a case study, I clarify aspects of endurance activism that operate as a media strategy that strives to articulate long-distance walking to meanings associated with endurance, such as the successful completion of a “record-setting” physical feat. In cases such as

Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay’s ascent of Mount Everest, or Roger Bannister’s four- minute-mile, the physical achievements – astonishing in their own right – are linked to much larger meanings like achieving the impossible, and representing not only one’s home country, but all of humankind. The Great Peace March endeavored to be the largest group of people to ever walk across the United States for a social cause. They did not do this to set a physical record. They did so, in significant measure, as a media strategy to communicate their desire for a seemingly out-of-reach goal: nuclear disarmament. By making clear and reiterating the motif of walking across the United States, the March deployed endurance activism as a media strategy to mobilize mass participation and represent “Americans” as unified in support of their mission.

181

The Great Peace March sought media coverage utilizing a strategy of endurance activism that positioned their long-distance walk as worthy of news coverage. They were also influenced by the antinuclear movement media strategies of their immediate predecessors in the early 1980s that stressed a professional, polite movement that disavowed radical transformation, direct action, or civil disobedience in favor of political realism and liberal reform. What set them apart from the polite movement, however, was their alternative vision encapsulated through endurance activism signifying a message of the value of enduring in the work for nuclear disarmament. The

March sought to raise awareness for denuclearization by linking their commitment, sacrifice, and enduring collective striving to the disarmament movement, regardless of political outcome. They operationalized literal and symbolic meanings of collective walking for the purpose of media representation that could deliver on a broad scale their message for the government to drastically reduce or eliminate nuclear weapons.

The press frames and themes elaborated in this chapter show that their strategy was largely unsuccessful, however. The March was mostly contained in frames that marginalized their movement as insignificant and ineffective. Marchers had some success in drawing attention to their physical acts of endurance. But these meanings were not articulated to the larger political goal of achieving nuclear disarmament, or frames that suggested they had mobilized “America” in support of their cause or represented the views of most Americans. Instead, they were assimilated into press constructions of the prevailing world view, which framed the March as more of an extension of the polite, professional, middle-class antinuclear movement led by the

Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy and the Freeze Campaign. These frames effectively narrowed and blunted the March’s opposition to nuclear weapons.

182

Unanimity – over anything – was rare on the March. As the previous chapter demonstrated, disagreement and discord abounded. I do not infer that marchers necessarily embraced, supported, or followed a media campaign uniformly. These media strategies were developed and deployed from within a simultaneously ordered and frenzied environment, by marchers who had worked as media professionals, and volunteers with no experience whatsoever. Some marchers adhered to directives from march “authority” figures, but others rejected them. The same can be said of marchers’ attitudes toward March strategies for gaining media coverage. Many opposed staging events or presenting a certain image for the media, while others carefully crafted events and promoted images they hoped would attract the media. Yet, the

Great Peace March as a whole sought national newspaper, radio, and television coverage, and activists negotiated the ways they hoped marchers and their messages would be communicated across the country. For example, a document introducing the reorganized March, its planned activities, and finances mentions the design of “larger events” to “promote media presence,” rallies and festivals to “attract major national figures,” and the need for an additional $20,000 to drive a “national media campaign.”1

In order to demonstrate endurance activism as a media strategy and assess how the press covered and framed the March’s tactic of a long-distance walk, I conducted a discourse analysis of print news media about the Great Peace March during the collective’s walk across the United

States in 1986. This form of media coverage is important to my study for several reasons. As scholars have long recognized, there is a tension between social movements and media coverage.

The former organizes public demonstrations to attract media attention to issues they deem

1 Prepared by Ann Drissall and Stephanie Wald, “The Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament, Incorporated,” 4, 15, Series I, Box 1, in the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament Records (DG 147), Swarthmore College Peace Records. 183

important, but news reports are often framed in ways inconsistent with protestors’ aims. Thus, even when actions successfully obtain coverage, the media may undermine the movement’s agenda.2 Though movements engage in other forms of self-produced communication to affect public interpretations of their messages, the media is a powerful institution that influences how activists and social movements are likely to be understood by the public. In covering the March and occasionally bringing it to the national spotlight, the print news played an important role in shaping meanings of the March as it endeavored to influence the public and impact policy.

For the media portion of my research for this chapter, I reviewed and analyzed newspaper articles, editorials, and letters to the editor about the March in The Los Angeles Times, Chicago

Tribune, The New York Times, and The Washington Post during the calendar year of 1986.

Nationally, organizational factors during this period such as budget ceilings led to a shortage of bureaus, correspondents, and crews, increasing the press’s reliance on wire services and the New

York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, justifying an examination of these sources as national communicators of Great Peace March activities.3 Further, a survey of over 1,000 registered voters commissioned by Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament (WAND) in 1985 found that 48 percent of respondents relied on newspapers or a combination of newspapers and television equally to access news.4 Great Peace March Board of Directors meeting minutes notes show that the Board was aware of the WAND report, discussed its implications for the march,

2 Jackie Smith et al., “From Protest to Agenda Building: Description Bias in Media Coverage of Protest Events in Washington, D.C.,” Social Forces 79.4 (2001): 1397; Todd Gitlin, The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980); W. Lance Bennet, News: The Politics of Illusion (New York: Longman Press, 1983); W. Lance Bennet and Robert Entman, eds., Mediated Politics: Communication and the Future of Democracy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 3 Gitlin, Whole World is Watching, 264. 4 Kyle Harvey, American Anti-Nuclear Activism: 1975-1990, The Challenge of Peace (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 62. 184

and advised that copies of the report be distributed to all March field offices throughout the country.5

I focused on these four newspapers not only because they were easily accessible, but because they represented major national markets and circulated among populations the March traveled through and hoped to influence as part of their national campaign. My examination of these newspapers allows for an analysis of how the press covered events and outreach the March planned in each of these urban areas. Originating out of Los Angeles, the March received the most consistent coverage from its “home” state from its departure through the early collapse and revival. The Los Angeles newspaper also reported March activities in Las Vegas and Denver as well – two cities the march approached with high expectations.6 Several days on the March in

August were dedicated to events in Chicago as the March desperately tried to gain momentum for its final leg toward the east coast. The Tribune provided coverage during the period of the

March’s visit but scanted them otherwise. Lastly, The New York Times and Post were also selected because of their widespread influence, readership, and emphasis on national politics.

The March did not exist in a vacuum; it took shape alongside the celebratory narrative of

Reagan’s presidency, the political shift to the right, and a range of social movements that opposed conservative ascendancy, such as the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign, the college student-led divestment campaign against apartheid in South Africa, and grassroots efforts to constrain U.S. aggression in Nicaragua, among others. In order to understand the nature of their debates and disagreements over media strategy, this chapter provides an overview of the media

5 “Board of Directors Meeting Minutes,” July 22, 1986, 10, Series I, Box 1, in the Great Peace March Records. 6 For details on the high hopes for these two cities, see Franklin Folsom and Connie Fledderjohann, Great Peace March: An American Odyssey (Santa Fe, NM: Ocean Tree Books, 1988), 43-44, 51-55, as well as “Field Department: Priorities and Strategies,” Series I, Box 1, Great Peace March Board Proposals, in the Great Peace March Records. 185

contexts in which the march took place. The movements against nuclear power and nuclear weapons between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s were working within the media-oppositional social movement dynamics and patterns of coverage established during the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations and protests. I use Todd Gitlin’s adaptation of Herbert Gans’ theory of the news as my framework for understanding the media landscape that March organizers encountered in the mid-1980s.7 This chapter is also indebted to Kyle Harvey’s analysis of the advertising, publicity, and image strategies of three leading antinuclear movements between 1982 and 1985.

These organizations that sought to present a “mainstream” movement were The Nuclear

Weapons Freeze Campaign (or simply Freeze), the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear

Policy (SANE), and WAND.8 The March inherited the challenges of its 1960s antiwar predecessors to gain favorable media coverage, just as they drew from, modified, and tried to adapt tactics and strategies of peers in the antinuclear movement.9

Beginning with a discussion of both movement and media contexts, the chapter identifies the strategies Great Peace March organizers used to attract media attention, elaborates the patterns of press coverage, and analyzes the strengths, weaknesses, successes, and failures of the

March approaches. Together, the four newspapers illustrate the ways the March occasionally existed “as news,” but mostly remained on the margins or confined to local coverage. Walking may not have had a direct link to arms reductions, but the March operationalized symbolic and metaphorical meanings of collective walking for the purpose of media representation. Most centrally, the emphasis on long-distance walking as an urgent citizen action response is situated

7 Gitlin, Whole World is Watching, 250-268. 8 Harvey, American Anti-Nuclear Activism, 42-67. 9 For example, one report details advice for Great Peace March strategy in Washington, DC, following a coalition meeting with representatives from over a dozen peace groups and organizations at the Center for Defense Information. “Director’s Forum,” September 8, 1986, Series I, Box 1, “Board of Directors Meeting Minutes,” September 19, 1986, in the Great Peace March. 186

as a counter to the failure of movements earlier in the decade such as the Freeze Campaign to turn widespread popularity into concrete political gains.10 But it is also representative of the fracturing antinuclear movement’s experimentation with different methods after Ronald

Reagan’s convincing re-election in 1984. Activists strained to find new ways of forwarding an antinuclear agenda, despite declining participation and media interest. The following section examines theoretical approaches to the relationship between social movements, news media production, and representation in order to explain the ways in which oppositional social movements prior to the Great Peace March had been “othered” and disparaged. Marchers deployed endurance activism as a media strategy that presented the Great Peace March as a respectable, responsibly organized, mainstream movement. Simultaneously, they hoped the spectacle of long-distance walking could garner empathetic and respectful representations, and inspire favorable treatment for messages about the value of endurance and collective striving they signified.

News, Cultural Hegemony, and Social Movement Coverage

Press coverage of oppositional social movements can be understood through a consideration of theories of news developed by Herbert Gans, which purport to explain how certain stories are selected as news.11 These theories include journalist-centered news (news a product of professional judgments, with journalism assumed to be an autonomous profession that serves the public interest with objectivity), and conceptualizations of news as the result of organizationally-driven habits that emphasize commercial imperatives and the structure of media

10 Harvey, Anti-Nuclear Activism, 2-3 discusses a rally in New York City in June 1982 that attracted an estimated one million supporters, as the zenith of the antinuclear movement, though it did not lead to legislative change or an electoral sweep. 11 Herbert J. Gans, Deciding What’s News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek, and Time (New York: Pantheon Books, 1979). 187

operations. Additional theories cite the centrality of human agency in the social construction of news through implementation of informal rules and codes in the expedient selection and repackaging of information, and popular event-centered rationalizations that maintain the news mirrors or reflects the actual world. The latter was a common metaphor and understanding adopted by news executives in the late 1960s.12 According to Gitlin, this remained a commonsense approach among many journalists and media executives in the early 1980s, despite having been discredited by the convincing critiques of the systematic selectivity of the news.13

Other frameworks locate the cause of what becomes news in institutions or social conditions outside the news organization, such as technological factors, economics, culture, the audience, the most powerful news sources, and dominant, status quo ideologies. Synthesizing these theories together, Gans offers that news can be viewed as information transmitted within a system of sources, journalists, and audiences, with journalists, who are both members of a profession but also employees of bureaucratic commercial organizations, shaping information into pieces suitable for audiences. But the news is also an exercise of power, as it has real consequences, and thus its production and distribution are contested by groups and individuals that have the power to influence or hurt journalists and their organizations.14

Gitlin adapts Gans’s theories of the news to provide a “more ample” theoretical domain that is both structural and historical to understand the framing process as it applies to the media- movement relationship. His approach is attuned to the particular procedures of journalism as they exist alongside and interlocked with other professions and institutions with ideological functions

12 Gitlin, Whole World is Watching, 250. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid., 251. 188

as part of an entire social system. In addition to accounting for news and its frames, this approach accounts for changes in journalistic procedures and products over time, and also movements’ identities, goals, and strategies. This approach sees both the news and movements as

“contending conveyors of ideas and images of what the world is and should be like.”15

Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony guides Gitlin’s application of theories of news to the contexts of mid-twentieth century US media-movement relations. Historicizing movement and media actors within hegemonic dynamics illustrates the sources of news frames for the New

Left and opposition movements in general. From this framework, we can begin to understand the terrain of media coverage of the antinuclear power and nuclear disarmament movements into which the Great Peace March entered.

Gramsci, though ambiguous and inconsistent in the usage of the term, specified the concept of hegemony through his writings from within an Italian Fascist prison between 1926 and his death in 1937. While Gramsci did not deny the role of force in securing the power of the state, he centered on the ways the “ruling” class could dominate the subordinate classes by means of engineering consent systematically through ideology elaborated into common sense and everyday practice. Gitlin draws from the ways Stuart Hall applied the notion of hegemony to analyses of popular culture, specifically the notion that dominant class fractions or alliances

“actively organize so as to command and win the consent of the subordinated classes to their continuing sway.”16 In capitalist societies, understandings of the world and its inequalities through hegemonic lenses “seeps” into popular “common sense,” where it is reproduced, and from where it may also appear to have generated.17

15 Ibid., 251-253. 16 Stuart Hall, “Culture, the Media and the ‘Ideological Effect,’” in Mass Communication and Society, eds. James Curran et al. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 332. 17 Gitlin, Whole World is Watching, 254. 189

The functioning of the system encourages and tolerates competing and conflicting values, but ultimately, they are prescribed by the ability of the corporate-controlled media to absorb them within the parameters of one set of dominant ideals ostensibly set against another.18

Raymond Williams writes of hegemony that its internal structures “have continually to be renewed, recreated and defended; and by the same token . . . they can be continually challenged and in certain respects modified.”19 Further, hegemony resists strict categorization and totalization, and encompasses “the whole of living. . . It is a lived system of meanings and values.”20 It is always in motion, needing to be recreated to sustain itself which necessarily allows for the formation of counter-alternative hegemonies. This awareness provides rich opportunities for this chapter to analyze “the hegemonic in its active and formative but also its transformational processes,” through a consideration of the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune,

New York Times, and Washington Post coverage of the Great Peace March.21

As noted above, Gitlin demonstrates that the frame applied to the New Left was far from neutral and “held reporting within definite limits.” Therefore, he weaves hegemony to the media- movement relationship through a “totality of techniques, assumptions, and choices.” One convention of reporting is the organization of news as promoting social stability. A story that starts out about disorder is likely to turn to the restoration of order under official or authoritative agencies. Stories about destabilizing forces such as a mass demonstration or a new style of political deviance might conclude with a confirmation of “the inherent rightness and necessity of the core hegemonic principles.”

18 Ibid., 255-257. 19 Raymond Williams, “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory,” New Left Review 82 (1973): 8. 20 Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 110. 21 Williams, Marxism and Literature, 113. 190

In a related technique, a certified social problem and legitimate solution are ordinarily framed together. When there is legitimate ground for “controversy,” the frame suggests it will be defined and taken care of by authorities, though marginal demonstrators such as peace marchers indicate to some a different model of social action, and that the dominant views of the world “do not totally fill the ideological space.” The dominant actors’ preferred definition of the problem is relayed, while conflict with alternative movements are “denatured, managed, and contained,” distinguishing “acceptable” from “unacceptable” forms of opposition.22 In terms of the Vietnam

War, this meant respectful treatment of moderates who saw the war as unsuccessful and perhaps wrong, but that ending it was the task of authorities, not radical movements. In terms of the

March’s position on disarmament, this frequently translated as respect for the individuals exercising their democratic right to state their opposition, but rebuke of the notion that disarmament was sound policy. Finally, journalists often employ stereotypes. They are an easy way of transmitting and manipulating information that needs to be edited, interchangeable, and reorganized. Though using stereotypes solves practical problems for journalists, these caricatures are contestable and not frozen in the social construction of news.23

As oppositional movements make claims for coverage, interested segments of the public demand attention from journalists as part of their profession’s claim to credibility and objectivity. In turn, reporters may change their views of their audiences, or about what they deem newsworthy or important. These changes might be facilitated by personal or organizational contexts, or even shifts in culture and the range of permissible ideologies. But they also form a symbiosis with their movement beat, as their ability to generate the commodity of “news” depends on ability to achieve rapport with a particular group. Reporters might get pulled into the

22 Gitlin, Whole World is Watching, 272, 274. 23 Ibid., 258, 267-268. 191

“magnetic fields generated” by the movements they cover, and the “cognitive worlds of their sources.” Regardless, “the news routines do not easily represent demands, movements, and frames which are inchoate, subtle, and most deeply subversive of these core principles.”24

Challenges for Movements Working Within Hegemonic Media Coverage

In the 1980s media landscape, journalists had extended the frame of legitimacy to certain activists and movement organizations that shared political values with the corporate and media elites, and particularly those that advocated for only particular reforms. For example, in the environmental movement, institutionalized agencies such as the Environmental Protection

Agency and the Council on Environmental Quality served as legitimate news sources and news makers, while social movements that questioned mass production were slighted. Gitlin argues that the concept of a “movement [had] been certified; an activist, left or right, is now a stereotyped persona accorded a right to quickly parade through the pageant of the news.”25

Thus, by the 1980s, social movements and activists had been assimilated into a frame and pattern of news coverage that simply made alternative opinions and viewpoints seem common place. Further, such coverage created an impression that opinions and interests contended freely in a society full of political vitality. Movements extended their reach by accepting these premises of news coverage, but they also were made susceptible through such publicity.26

Gitlin identified two internal factors that increased a movement’s dependency on the mass media at this time: the narrowness of its social base and its commitment to specific society- wide political goals. The March was a mostly white and middle-class movement, and their advocacy for nuclear disarmament did not have wide social support. Two additional factors, in

24 Ibid., 269-271. 25 Ibid., 284. 26 Ibid., 285. 192

concert with the narrow base and society-wide goals, produce the negative consequences of media dependency. These include a turn to revolutionary desires and rhetoric in a nonrevolutionary situation, which create a destructive glare as revolutionaries can only gain coverage as deviants. Revolutionaries can make good copy as being susceptible for derogation, but eventually, if they are perceived as dangerous to the State, they can be subject to blackout.27

Simple awareness of media routines and frames does not guarantee the movement can achieve publicity for its messages on its own terms, but ignorance of the codes and conventions likely condemns a movement to marginal status.

The twin aspects of the movement against nuclear energy and against nuclear weapons emerged in the wake of anti-Vietnam War protest. This umbrella of “anti-nuclear” activism shared an affinity with other progressive social movements gaining traction in the early to mid-

1970s around issues such as environmentalism, gay rights, hunger and poverty, and women’s rights. Though each can be conceived of as different movements, political scientist Kyle Harvey suggests the movements and the activists who were a part of them claimed nuclear power and nuclear weapons were linked with a broader, complex web of dangers to “human life, health, safety, and dignity.”28

Movements against nuclear power in the late 1970s faced the problem of getting over the threshold for coverage. For example, in August of 1976, 177 demonstrators with the Clamshell

Alliance in New England were arrested for attempting to block the construction of a nuclear reactor in Seabrook, New Hampshire. The Post and Los Angeles Times did not cover this at all, while The New York Times provided two short paragraphs. The following year, in May 1977, nearly 1,500 members of the Alliance returned to Seabrook to occupy the reactor site and were

27 Ibid., 285-286. 28 Harvey, Anti-Nuclear Activism, 2. 193

arrested. At the time, this was one of the largest nonviolent demonstrations in American history, and the largest of the 1970s. The New York Times provided lengthy and respectful coverage, and other papers and network television described the peaceful nature of the protest and the logistics of housing the arrested. But the case against the reactor itself in the Times, Post, and NBC

Nightly News was pushed aside.29

The 1979 Three Mile Island disaster in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, altered the prevailing frame, according to Gitlin, as elites in the media began seeking out anti-nuclear groups for information about reactor safety. Academic experts became “quasi-legitimate” sources and were cited frequently in the press as a counter to statements by the operators of Three Mile Island, the builders of the plant, and in rare instances, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.30 Coverage of the disaster did not extend to coverage of the movement against nuclear power, however, as the media continued treating the movement with a mix of trivialization, respect, and disparagement.

For example, in April 1979, approximately 20,000 people rallied against the opening of a nuclear plant at Diablo Canyon, 200 miles south of San Francisco. The New York Times buried a brief report and reported only 5,000 demonstrators. At the rally, speakers such as Daniel Ellsberg denounced ongoing nuclear weapons research, mortality rates of Native American uranium miners in the southwest, and the export of nuclear reactors to the Philippines, but these comments went unreported.31

Movements against nuclear weapons received far less national coverage in the 1970s.

While a smaller movement, the lack of coverage was suspicious for its actual size and activity.

For example, the plutonium triggers manufactured at Rocky Flats, Colorado, generated regular

29 Gitlin, Whole World is Watching, 287-288. 30 Ibid., 288. 31 Ibid., 289. 194

rallying and sit-ins since the spring of 1978, with hundreds of demonstrators arrested, tried, jailed and fined. There was only one minor story in the New York Times about the largest demonstrations, while the Post and Los Angeles Times ran nothing. As Gitlin notes from a 1978 interview with the Washington editor of the Times, the news frames had shifted to a viewpoint that “America is tired of protest.” The central conflict among the policy elite was not the premise of the arms race based upon its institutional and ideological underpinnings, which oppositional movements such as the Great Peace March questioned and debated. The media organized the frame of debate as between deterrence and preparation for nuclear war. The movement against nuclear weapons thus remained marginal and outside of the debate.32

Therefore, the challenge for opposition movements in the media-movement relationship is a “fundamental and inescapable dilemma.” Stand outside the conventional realm of discourse and face irrelevance, trivialization and containment of the movement’s deeper challenges to the social order. On the other hand, if movements play by the political rules to gain an image of credibility through well-mannered appearance, ordered actions, simple slogans and “reasonable” objectives, they are liable to assimilation within the prevailing world view and the narrowing and blunting of its issues and opposition.33 This, in effect, is the condition the March found itself in with regards to the media.

But the March was also formed in the wake of the post 1960s and 1970s movement media coverage. Through the hegemonic process and permutations in the arrangement of radical identities, rhetoric, and imagery into cultural commodity forms, opposition transforms and moves into other channels. The New Left’s political spirit and “search for participatory democracy for personal worth” split and fragmented into local counter-institutions, working-

32 Ibid., 290. 33 Ibid., 290-291. 195

class militancy, middle-class privatism, a scatter of “human potential” psychologies and mysticisms, socialist and liberal feminisms, the struggle against shrinking public goods, religious cults, and managerial approaches to self-actualization. Gitlin characterized the radical project for the 1980s to be a regathering of the “elements of cultural revolt, to form of them a coherent political opposition, and to overcome the centrifugal tendencies of the seventies.”34 The March was partially faced with and took on this task – a rather daunting one, considering the media’s hegemonic role in absorbing, framing, and disparaging cultural resistance as a commodity.

Building on approaches from others such as SANE, Freeze, and WAND, the March tried to

“sell” itself as a mix of professional, middle class interests that tempered its more radical left auspices.

Strategies for a “Mainstream” Antinuclear Movement in the 1980s

On June 12, 1982, one million demonstrators marched in New York City rallying for an end to the nuclear arms race. At the time this event was the largest political demonstration in

American history and is heralded as a high point of the anti-nuclear movement of the 1970s and

1980s. According to Harvey, the movement was made up of “an extraordinarily diverse array of individuals, groups, organizations, collectives, and coalitions, each with different ideas, aims, and strategies about how to confront a nuclear danger.” Their goals reflected this diversity, including a freeze on the nuclear arms race, unilateral, bilateral, or multilateral nuclear disarmament, an end to nuclear power, the diversion of military budgets to social services, and other single-issue and multi-issue peace group initiatives. The New York Times however, was not persuaded by the mass demonstration, as it critiqued the “size” and “fervor” of the movement as

“inarticulate.”35

34 Ibid., 291-292. 35 Harvey, Anti-Nuclear Activism, 1. 196

As illustrated by the estimated million people participating in the 1982 New York City

March, those concerned at some level with the dangers of nuclear power – from invisible radiation and meltdowns to fears of a nuclear attack – were not just progressives on the left.

Antiwar activists were joined by the middle class, religious figures and institutions, and professionals such as lawyers, teachers, and doctors, each with different ways of understanding the issue as moral, strategic, economic, social, political, and personal.36 They put forth competing methods of challenge, dissent, and resistance, and incorporated unevenly the dynamics of gender, conservatism, media coverage, community, and the practice of democracy into their philosophies, processes, and tactics.

The so-called “rise of the right,” anti-communist suspicion, an unreceptive public, and internal division were central to anti-nuclear activist experiences in this era as well. As they navigated this shifting political terrain, the reignition of Cold War tensions during the Carter and

Reagan administrations spurred the growing public profile of the anti-nuclear movement. In part the upstart movement was fed by local campaigns opposed to nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons assembly and production, such as the Clamshell Alliance at Seabrook, the demonstrations against Diablo Canyon power plant, and the Rocky Flatts plutonium trigger manufacturers. Longstanding moderate and liberal peace organizations that had been dormant since the late 1950s swiftly resurged, joined by the return of pacifist organizations focusing on nuclear weapons. Further, coalitions of religious bodies, scientists, teachers, athletes, women’s groups and neighborhood collectives operated alongside the national membership-based

36 Ibid., 3. 197

organization SANE, which functioned as the largest mainstream peace movement organization until the late 1980s.37

What is key here for the media contexts of the March is that the wider movement was both one of national membership-based organization as well as decentralized collectives and local communities of resistance struggling over methods for how to convince the public that action was necessary. The Great Peace March coalesced in 1986 as PRO-Peace’s international call for action drew individuals from around the United States and different parts of the world

(though in smaller numbers). The march survived following the PRO-Peace collapse as a decentralized collective with official nonprofit status. It is important to understand, then, that many marchers remaining with the March were middle or upper-middle class professionals compelled by PRO-Peace’s corporate message and structure. But there were also a substantial portion of marchers who were attracted to the March apart from its slick image, who came to live out the principles of endurance activism in a mobile community conceived as a collective capable of demonstrating and living peaceful societal relations.

These groups had competing views on how to deal with the media, and different philosophies regarding the implications of seeking mainstream media coverage. These debates reflected and shaped splits within the March, but they also occurred within a media environment riven with the kind of hegemonic forces outlined earlier. At the same time, in a more direct sense, March organizers were influenced by the antinuclear movement of which they were a relatively small and isolated part. The following sections provide a portrait of the advertising and publicity strategies of the leading antinuclear organizations which immediately preceded the

37 Ibid., 4-6; Vincent J. Intondi, African Americans Against the Bomb: Nuclear Weapons, Colonialism, and the Black Freedom Movement (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015), 85-108. 198

Great Peace March. These sections also lay out the successes and failures of these strategies, in order to demonstrate how the March positioned itself as taking a similar, but new, approach.

A Polite Movement

As the nuclear freeze movement took shape in 1979 and 1980, proponents developed an institutional approach that emphasized conventional strategies such as ballot initiatives, educational outreach and advertising in anticipation of capturing public interest and mobilizing public opinion. This “polite movement” stressed political realism and liberal reform which contrasted with the more radical approach of traditional peace groups. The desire to appear inoffensive and nonthreatening was part of a reactionary effort to promote nuclear freeze as a mainstream endeavor. Unlike their Vietnam-era antiwar predecessors, the polite movement eschewed a radical analysis of the state-military-industrial complex in place of a simple message that would not alienate a US Congress distrustful of the Soviet Union. In sum, the early 1980s antinuclear movement strategies for publicity highlighted a liberal campaign and mainstream image infused with professionalism, corporate culture, and the use of public relations and advertising firms to communicate a departure from pacifist roots.38 Plans included outreach for public education, lobbying, electoral and legislative remedies, and media coverage. Freeze,

WAND, and SANE worked to take peace activism to the mainstream.

The Great Peace March adopted and modified these organizational approaches as it lived out endurance activism, and attempted to establish endurance activism as a separate, legitimate social movement strategy. Endurance activism, through the continuity and progress of long- distance walking, is not direct action protest or a coalition-building effort. It is also not reflective of the technical expertise and bureaucracy of professional activism. The March, however, did

38 Harvey, Anti-Nuclear Activism, 42-43. 199

borrow from SANE, Freeze, and WAND as it hoped to harness the power of the media to mobilize a national grassroots campaign that could influence legislative action on the issue of nuclear weapons proliferation and the arms race. Similar to these organizations, the March had a diverse range of participants, but sought to amplify their middle-class sensibilities. In contrast, however, endurance activism and the Great Peace March contained a prefigurative longing for a sense of community and togetherness that characterized the civil rights movement and New Left activism.

WAND was formed by Australian-born physician and anti-nuclear activist Helen

Caldicott as Women’s Party for Survival in 1980, whereas the Freeze movement was revived in

1977 under director David Cortright and merged with SANE in 1983. Each aimed to achieve political influence by appealing to the widest possible audience and gaining support from both liberal and conservative business and media. WAND favored public education and civic engagement, positing politically safe messages such as freezing the arms race bilaterally, explaining the scientific and medical consequences of possible nuclear war, and providing an overview of the social and economic costs of the Reagan administration’s nuclear arms policies.

The movements’ rhetoric and image portrayed an anti-nuclear base of “largely mainstream, politically moderate, ordinary Americans,” a conservative movement, per Caldicott, led by doctors, lawyers, and the churches.39

Freeze adopted an approach of fundraising and advertising to increase membership and its public influence. The organization did not endorse candidates for office. They lobbied through Freeze Voter, however, an independent body that channeled more specific electoral goals through a massive phone bank, direct mailing, and door-to-door canvassing efforts in 40

39 Ibid., 43-45. 200

states. They became a Political Action Committee with high profile support from Hollywood players such as film producer Lisa Weinstein, Barbara Streisand, Olivia Newton-John, and the

Pointer Sisters. This image allowed Freeze to target citizens it believed had been “traditionally excluded” from the electoral system, illustrating a glitzy approach for turning its broad, safe appeal into a political success.40

Celebrities and endorsements could help the movement appear popular and respectable with a concrete political program. Enlisting and marshaling public figures was one way to promote the movement to a wider audience and this formed a central part of maximizing its appeal. As non-experts, the stars spoke as “average people” and early 1980s celebrity support included household names such as Sally Field, Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin who made television appearances on the Merv Griffin Show and Donahue with Dr. Caldicott. These episodes generated significant audience responses, many from women. WAND, for instance, received 6,000 letters after Caldicott’s Donahue appearance.41

Freeze, WAND, and SANE each worked within existing institutional frameworks and adopted safe, nonthreatening rhetoric and protest. This strategy was informed by a desire to be seen by the media as civil. These organizations certainly had grassroots support, but they were also marked at this time by having paid, professional staffs. They also sought endorsements, large membership bases, donors, and benefactors, and operated with the notion that more money could garner more publicity and a strengthened position for political campaigning. A new vocabulary of corporate marketing, public relations and advertising appealed to some organizers

40 Ibid., 49. 41 Ibid., 52. See also Donal Carbaugh, Talking American: Cultural Discourses on Donahue (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1988). The Great Peace March also made an appearance on Donahue when it traveled through New York and another guest cancelled at the last minute. Ironically, the Donahue appearance was likely the March’s most successful media event, generating favorable national exposure, hundreds of letters, and $16,000 in donations from viewers. See Folsom and Fledderjohann, Great Peace March, 142. 201

striving for mainstream media coverage without the “1960s revival” themes. Collectively, this strategy projected the movement as a microcosm of American society – conservative, self- interested, patriotic, with a desire to preserve human life, health, and safety. Their challenge was how to mobilize this targeted conservative base against the nuclear arms race.42

The movement had shifted away from public demonstrations and rallies and focused more on increasing media attention, public relations, endorsements and fundraising to sustain a mainstream, corporate style of organization. Freeze, WAND, and SANE worked in a different sphere from pacifist organizations who used direct action tactics. Rather than opposing the system, they attempted to be more appealing to those “tired of protest.” This decision led to a continual process of revision and renewal of media and publicity strategies, and a balancing act between the base of grassroots activism and elite echelons of professional pragmatism.

SANE attempted to generate support through nationwide advertising, taking out expensive New York Times 1-page ads in May of 1982. These spots led to little fanfare, evidenced by a result of 260 responses that brought in $6,000. The advertisement was critiqued for being text heavy, featuring large headlines proclaiming “how to stop feeling hopeless and helpless” about preventing nuclear war. SANE lost $22,000 in the campaign. Cortright felt it was an “abysmal failure” and he ended SANE’s contract with the high-profile advertising firm Rapp

& Collins, Inc. The disappointing ad campaign was a stark lesson that slick promotions and hiring outside help did not guarantee national clout. Following this disaster, Cortright vowed

SANE would turn away from an overly cold information-driven media approach to “personal” and “emotional” appeals that resonated with the public’s desire for action on the issue and what the individual could do to help.43

42 Harvey, Anti-Nuclear Activism, 43-46. 43 Ibid., 46. 202

This change in approach was informed by critiques of SANE garnered through focus group research participants that chastised SANE for being too elitist and intellectual. The message was that their professional/corporate rhetoric and assumptions were not appealing to

“ordinary, blue-collar Americans” for how they could be involved. Asking for more money and loading messages with facts and figures about dangers did not resonate. Cortright deemed that they needed a “rhetorical, image message” not a “detailed rational argument.”44 Yet, SANE continued its mass informational approach in advertising to the general public, state representatives, senators, schools, civic groups, and unions. It did not evolve, though its reach was extensive with 40 chapters active in 375 congressional districts, a nationwide phone tree, a legislative alert system, and a doorknocker network.45

SANE pushed its message of citizen empowerment and local organizing through polite and savvy activists that combated stereotypes of the “disheveled” antinuclear activist. Television coverage was a central feature of public relations through the use of commercial networks as part of its controlled, systematic, serious and well-financed campaign. Despite the New York Times ad flop, SANE continued operating under an assumption that more publicity would have an effect on Congress.46

The Freeze Stalls

The turn to professionalism initially yielded impressive results. The antinuclear movement became a more mainstream political force as it challenged the idea that peace activism existed solely within fringe political and cultural spaces. Strategies of involvement in local and state processes of legislative initiatives, referenda, and town meetings were popular

44 Ibid., 53. 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid., 54. 203

ways to register anti-nuclear power and weapons sentiment. For the 1982 midterm elections, the movement succeeded at forwarding 10 statewide referenda and 37 city and county referenda.

Voters representing nearly one-third of the electorate endorsed a freeze by strong margins, even though these were in amenable political areas such as California and New England. For the 1984 presidential election, though, Freeze, SANE, and WAND hoped to move further into swing states and more conservative areas while attempting to garner greater support around the nation.

Demonstrating some of their achievement, SANE’s membership grew from 12,000 in 1980 to over 100,000 by the end of 1984, but they had made no concrete gains in political influence to show for it. SANE had worked with a direct marketing agency to mobilize its successes, with carefully planned advertising including an all-media campaign of direct mail, advertisements on radio, television, and newspapers. Rapp & Collins had expanded SANE’s appeals for membership from mainstream Americans.47

But the national strategies encountered local contradictions. Members of local movement chapters working in very conservative areas faced citizens that did not brook progressive activism, even if it was presented in a well-mannered style.48 Freeze, SANE, and WAND shortsightedly labeled themselves part of a broad-based movement in an environment of political conservatism. Further, their goals of becoming a national player in politics were quite ambitious considering that notion depended on their ability to turn previously uninvolved participants into active supporters. Such an objective required national media coverage that would make not only their opposition visible, but also communicate that such opposition had become a palatable alternative to the arms race for a suddenly much broadened base of supporters.

47 Ibid., 48-50. 48 Ibid., 47. 204

The Freeze resolution ultimately stalled in Congress in 1983, and Reagan decisively defeated Walter Mondale in the 1984 presidential election with 58.8% of the popular vote and

97.6% of the electoral vote.49 Reagan’s re-election squashed any momentum of the polite approach to working through the media as mainstream change agents trying to influence legislative channels. The electoral losses were deflating, but they also reinvigorated debates about movement methods. The professional, corporate structures had placed antinuclear activists into a world apart from grassroots political confrontation. They found themselves competing among forces with greater resources for advertising and the ability to manipulate the media.

By turning more vigorously, of necessity, to the physical and political practice of endurance itself, the Great Peace March offered an alternative vision for how the antinuclear movement could capture and sustain the media’s attention. The March embarked early in 1986 amid a decline in antinuclear activism, the wider public’s absence of a perceived crisis, and further drops in media coverage. They would step into treatment from the news media that had generally contained the professional model of activism espoused by SANE/Freeze and WAND.

The March, too, at some levels, desired to embody a professional and polished movement with pragmatic goals.

But on the heels of the mainstream movement’s idling, the March showed people there was another, potentially personally and collectively invigorating way to participate in the movement. Their strategy of endurance activism demonstrated efforts to create a community that models a future society rooted in nonviolence, egalitarian relationships, and cooperative decision-making. As a movement that actually moved, their alternative to the polite movement was that walking and working were crucial qualities that shaped the group’s continual

49 Ibid., 55. 205

regeneration during their trek. The March hoped to communicate, through endurance activism, that the antinuclear movement could not be stopped by losses in electoral politics. Marchers added the novelty of physically using their bodies on a long-distance walk over the course of nearly nine months to show that the professional and polite movement was willing to do more, go further, and connect the country on a symbolic thread from west to east in order to try reverse the nuclear arms race.

Great Peace March Strategies for Media Coverage

Specifically, the Great Peace March wanted to raise awareness of the dangers and costs of the nuclear arms race, increase knowledge of strategies for the reduction and elimination of nuclear arms, and call people to commit to taking action against nuclear weapons and for peace and security.50 Though hotly contested internally, and never fully complete or supported, the

March’s organizational efforts strove to convey images of marchers as ordinary middle-class citizens, families, and professionals. The March’s policy of refusing to endorse civil disobedience actions was perhaps the most obvious reflection of its desire not to offend what it understood to be its target audience of “ordinary” people and “Middle America” that would not relate to people breaking the law.51 Moreover, March organizers struggled over the issue of appearance and dress. Some argued that the “poor dress,” disheveled appearance, or “strange” alternative look of many marchers turned off the conservative middle class the March desired to influence.52 But others suggested that diversity in appearance and identities could be positive for press coverage because it allowed the March to reach more people and illustrate how diverse groups could overcome their differences to unite against nuclear arms.53 One board member,

50 Drissall and Wald, “The Great Peace March,” 3. 51 Folsom and Fledderjohann, Great Peace March, 36. 52 “Board of Directors Meeting Minutes,” August 20, 1986, 9, Series I, Box 1, in the Great Peace March Records. 53 Folsom and Fledderjohann, Great Peace March, 111. 206

Coleen Ashly, posited a hybrid strategy that emphasized how the March represented “people from all aspects of society” but also sought a “national posture” designed for “major media coverage.”54 Though these debates continued among marchers and organizers, the Great Peace

March Media Department that walked and worked along with the march exerted the greatest influence strategies for media coverage.

After PRO-Peace fell apart, three marchers with experience working in the media headed up the new March Media Department: Elizabeth Fairchild, Chris Ball, and Bill O’Neil. They were staffed as well by marchers without experience as media professionals.55 The media department team filed regular reports called daily and weekly roundups which they delivered to media personnel and representatives in news, radio, and television, as well as national wire services and other sources of publicity. These were in effect, spoken press releases. As the March did not have access to a telephone in “Peace City,” its mobile encampment, marchers working in the department regularly walked or caught a ride to the nearest payphone. There, with stacks of quarters, the marcher called media contacts and read the press release over the phone. Writing and working on these press releases and roundups is representative of the physical labor characteristic of endurance activism that constituted and communicated the March.

The Media Department viewed the function of these “roundups” as fulfilling the purpose of a press release: to promote information and events about the march that it found worthy of news coverage. The “# # #” centered underneath the copy, a traditional symbol used by public relations professionals to indicate there is no further content, demonstrates that the March took these roundups seriously as press releases. These press releases represent a compelling source

54 Coleen Ashly, “Candidate Statement,” Series I, Box 1, in the Great Peace March Records. 55 Folsom and Fledderjohann, Great Peace March, 96-97. 207

from which to identify a consistent March media strategy, as they were in control of writing what they hoped the media would pick up on as newsworthy.

Figure 19 The Great Peace March Daily Roundup, also referred to by the Media Department as a Press Release. These communications were read over payphones by marchers to members of the news media to attract coverage for the March. Roundups are located in Series IV, Box 17, in Great Peace March Records (DG 147), Swarthmore College Peace Collection. In addition to phoning press releases, marchers working ahead of the march route arranged interviews and created and mailed press kits. Further, the March’s Community

Interaction Agency department facilitated media coverage by organizing events for local activists, peace groups, churches, and the general public in towns, cities, and large metropolitan areas along the route. In turn, the media department promoted these events, rallies, ceremonies and occasional demonstrations or vigils in its press releases.56 In larger cities such as Chicago,

New York, and Washington, D.C., individuals taking time away from the march worked in

March field offices for weeks in advance in anticipation of making a successful media splash.

56 Ibid., 97-98. 208

Following disappointing results in Las Vegas and Denver, the March hired professional publicists to direct strategy and events for Chicago, New York and D.C.57

This fluid and contested strategy was aimed at obtaining a steady, supportive mass media presence that organizers believed would help the Great Peace March to spark a nationwide movement. Despite internal opposition from some factions, as an organization, the March never totally abandoned the PRO-Peace dream of mobilizing the public into a force capable of pressuring the United States Congress and Reagan administration to take action on nuclear disarmament. The March’s organizational leadership continued advocating for a strategic public relations and media campaign that would not lose sight of this consistent, overarching objective.

Press Releases

In this section, I describe the dominant March strategies for attracting media coverage through the communication of endurance activism. I selected 25 press releases archived in the

Great Peace March records at the Swarthmore College Peace Collection for analysis. They were written between late March and mid-September 1986, when the March traveled through

California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. The earliest example reviewed was written on March 26, when the march reorganized in Barstow,

California. The latest example in the sample is from September 14, as the March culminated its third day of events in Cleveland.58

The demonstration of marchers’ commitment through the amplification of their physical feats was a key strategy. This central media strategy highlighted Great Peace March “statistics”

57 “Board of Directors Meeting Minutes,” August 20, 1986, Series I, Box 1; The Lamb Group, “Planning National Press Coverage,” September 9, 1986, Series I, Box 1, in the Great Peace March Records. 58 This section does not analyze reports from the final two months of the march, which is a limitation to the research. However, I discern the Great Peace March’s media strategies for the final three months in the next section by analyzing other documents that speak to the March’s efforts for publicity in Chicago and Washington, D.C. 209

that were linked to the demonstration of marchers’ physical commitment and ability to endure difficult circumstances. The lead in press releases stressed the number of days the March had been on the road, how many “sites” or places the march had stopped to set up camp, how many miles the march would be walking that particular day and had accumulated total. In Grand

Junction, Colorado, on May 8 for example, the roundup noted that marchers “will hike 14.7 miles today,” crossing the Colorado River on their way to St. Joseph’s Catholic Church.59

Walking was a significant feature of several press releases in Colorado. The Media

Department promoted the march’s mountain climbs as worthy of news coverage. One such account led the May 22 press release. “At 7 a.m. today, three hundred twenty (320) participants .

. . marched from their Dillon, Colorado campsite to begin a 14.5-mile hike, mostly uphill trek over Loveland Pass.” The press release then links their ascent to meanings of activism that the

Great Peace March was helping to foster: “The arrival at the more than 11,000-foot summit of

Loveland Pass marks the crossing of the legendary Continental Divide and represents a symbolic victory of perseverance and endurance for the Peace Marchers.”60 The collective March arrival at the Continental Divide was interpreted as representative of marcher grit and commitment, highlighting themes articulated to endurance activism.

Press releases also sought media coverage by promoting the hardiness of marchers based on the combination of mileage walked and their ability to withstand difficult weather extremes.

On May 2, the press release described at length how the March had faced its coldest weather yet, completed its longest single-day hike, walked through a ten-minute hailstorm, and had tabulated

103.3 miles in the most recent six-day span.61 On June 7, the March endured a 25.5-mile walk –

59 “Thursday Morning Roundup,” May 8, 1986, Series IV, Box 17, in the Great Peace March Records. 60 “Daily Roundup,” May 22, 1986, Series IV, Box 17, in the Great Peace March Records. 61 “News from the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament,” May 2, 1986, Series IV, Box 17, in the Great Peace March Records. 210

“the longest one-day stretch since the march began three months ago.”62 The weekly roundup on

June 9 further stressed walking feats, firsts, and records. “The march had never done back-to- back 20-milers before; this week we did five straight 20-plus-mile days,” in “sweltering heat of the Great Plains.”63 An exemplar summary of using march statistics and figures to grab media attention reads as follows: “After five weeks in Colorado, the march crosses into Nebraska on

June 12th. The 8th marked our one-hundredth day on the road; we’ve walked nearly 1300 miles since we left Los Angeles on March 1.”64 Marchers withstanding the summer heat and humidity of the midwestern states continued to lead press releases as the March traversed through

Nebraska and Iowa, citing 95-degree heat through Des Moines inciting rampant “lethargy” even as the March “passed the 2100-mile mark.”65

The press releases promoted a group of “Spirit Marchers” that took “every step” across the continent to attract media coverage. Chapter Three developed the significance of Spirit

Walking to the March’s construction of activist identities and purpose. The press releases, however, indicate this aspect of endurance activism was also key to amplifying March commitment and dedication to the press. The May 2 press release was the first to address the need for this select group to “maintain the continuity of [the] cross-country journey” because the state of Utah wanted the entire march bussed over a 200-mile stretch on Interstate 70. On May 8 the release mentions that a group of 52 marchers are preserving the “continuity” of the march by taking an alternative route.66 Then, on May 16, the release comments on the Spirt Marchers’ endurance and perseverance in completing “a difficult 300-mile pass that the main march had

62 “Monday Morning Roundup,” June 2, 1986, Series IV, Box 17, in the Great Peace March Records; “Saturday Morning Roundup,” June 7, 1986, Series IV, Box 17, in the Great Peace March Records. 63 “News from the Great Peace March, #8,” June 9, 1986, Series IV, Box 17, in the Great Peace March Records. 64 Ibid. 65 “News from the Great Peace March, #14,” July 21, 1986, Series IV, Box 17, in the Great Peace March Records. 66 “Thursday Morning Roundup,” May 8, 1986, in the Great Peace March Records. 211

been transported over . . . [They] told us of the beautiful scenery and a strenuous walk through a sudden blizzard.”67 While promoting the walking of the Spirit Marchers, the media department used press releases to address the potential public relations “crisis” for the March: a march with

200-300 “marchers” riding busses.

As the previous chapter demonstrated, different modes of walking, as well as how much or how little individual marchers walked, was a point of contention and controversy for both those with prefigurative leanings and strategic goals. The media department was largely concerned with communicating the long-distance walk and endurance activism in service of strategic goals. Therefore, they framed the irony of not-walking on a continental March for peace positively, as shuttling the March allowed marchers to undertake unexpected outreach in Salt

Lake City that furthered instrumental aims of mobilization. “Rallies, home visits, tree plantings and prayer sessions replaced marches as the main order of business,” the weekly report intoned.68

May 16 represented day 77 and site 46 for the march in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. Here, the media department noted “a combination of bussing and marching will move the Great Peace

March 31.2 miles closer to Washington, D.C., today!”69 Bus transportation is framed positively as bringing the March nearer to its final destination, and as a necessary “strategy” to “safely move the main body of marchers through Glenwood Canyon.”

Even on a typical day when marchers were not required to take vehicles over hazardous stretches in Utah and Colorado, it was common for less than half of the total March population to actually be marching. A press roundup in early May spent several paragraphs explaining and justifying the contradiction in ways that emphasized the hard, physical labor exemplified by

67 “News from the Great Peace March, #3,” May 16, 1986, in the Great Peace March Records. 68 “News from the Great Peace March, #4” May 9, 1986, Series IV, Box 17, in the Great Peace March Records. 69 Friday Morning Roundup,” May 16, 1986, Series IV, Box 17, in the Great Peace March Records. 212

endurance activists. “About 100 people are working during the day,” in various jobs including moving Peace City, meal cleanup and preparation, tearing down and setting up the larger community tents, transporting equipment and vehicles, or providing services such as daycare, media outreach, maintenance, sanitation, security, and much more.70 An estimated 150 marchers unaccounted for during a given day’s walk could be away from the march on the separate Spirit

Walk, doing advance site and permit work, or speaking engagements central to the March’s strategic goals. Some dispersed to other towns to staff March offices or conduct further outreach in towns they had already visited. This was a strategy to highlight the work ethic of marchers, establish the March as respectable, and ward off perceptions that marchers were “lazy” or loafers.

The Media Department used press releases to inform news organizations that the march walked in different “modes.” “Since the marchers have a variety of natural walking paces, the community agreed to walk in a stretched-out line while in slightly populated areas [rural mode] .

. . the march line can stretch out several miles, a marcher here, a half dozen there, thirty or so marching with the flags in the middle. Nearing a community, the marchers regroup . . . and pass through town in parade style, the ‘city mode.’”71 These accounts suggest that part of the March’s media strategy stressed walking and physical activity as a symbolic but also literal way to confront and oppose nuclear weapons. Press releases reconciled marchers who were not walking by stressing other positive activities they were doing. Overall, the press releases promote physical action as a legitimate form of democratic participation, with a heritage endowed from early American settlers. As one marcher wrote in a piece for the Denver Post, the March showed that “Americans can, indeed must, move forward to control their own destiny” against “powerful

70 Ibid. 71 “News from the Great Peace March, #11” June 30, 1986, in the Great Peace March Records. 213

forces,” just like the settlers of “Denver and Glenwood Springs, Fort Collins and Trinidad.”72

The tallying of miles, days, and campsites, in addition to narratives of marcher resolve and persistence “in the elements” operated as a frame conveying preferred understandings of the

Great Peace March as a collective of committed activists. Ideally, the frame communicated that these activists were devoted enough to “not stop” until they reached D.C., where they would demand action to eliminate nuclear weapons. There, they would argue that such action was supported by the public which they constituted through their activities mobilizing celebrities, communities, state and national representatives along the way.

Press releases also stressed the March’s local public outreach to emphasize the support they gained from city officials, governors, and representatives of congress. These efforts stress the employment of endurance activism as a legitimate form of mainstream activism, and attempts to influence local, regional, state, and national policies. The March used “Keys and Trees” ceremonies to make these connections, and again press releases expressed their significance in numbers. The ceremonies were arranged by the March’s “Community Interaction Agency” and

“Mayor’s Office,” the latter a public relations position that gave “Peace City” a veneer of hierarchical governance that made it easier for cities and towns to greet the march. Press releases represented one strategy to extend the visibility of the “Mayor” to the public and media. The mayor’s position helped the March and Peace City interface with local groups and government in a traditional and ordinary manner, as the Keys and Trees ceremonies were rituals of goodwill and exchange between the mobile Peace City and the host community.73

72 Joseph Broido, “A Peace Marcher’s Colorado Roots,” May 24, 1986, Denver Post, Series IV, Box 17, in the Great Peace March Records. 73 “Thursday Morning Roundup,” May 8, 1986, in the Great Peace March Records. 214

Figure 20 Diane Clark served as the “Mayor” of Peace City. The Media Department promoted her activities in press releases to gain positive media coverage. Photograph in the Great Peace March Records (DG 147), Swarthmore College Peace Collection. The tree planting was an addition to the key exchange that developed as the march went along. Trees were either purchased at local nurseries or donated and then planted at city halls, parks, elementary schools, and the like. The Day 83, Site 51 daily roundup on May 22 detailed

250 marchers who were greeted by Frisco, Colorado Mayor Doug Jones, as Clark and Frisco residents watched a councilman and two marchers plant a “blue spruce peace tree.” A press release marked the planting of the 50th peace tree on June 30. Another remarked that these trees, after the 135th had been planted, created “what some have called the world’s longest and thinnest forest,” further highlighting meanings of the March’s representation of endurance activism as a way to connect the continent as part of its expression of a hoped-for mass movement.74

In addition to marking these ceremonies as significant, press releases were careful to note support of the March’s political objectives from the offices of mayors and governors, which could grant legitimacy to the efficacy of endurance activism. The June 2 press release noted the

March’s “growing collection” of peace ribbons, with the addition of those signed by Governor

74 “News from the Great Peace March, #21,” September 8, 1986, in the Great Peace March Records. 215

Richard Lamm of Colorado, and the mayor of Denver. Further, the March wanted to stress the

Denver mayoral declaration that the March was “one of the most ambitious and monumental civilian undertakings in history,” that “has the ability to realize the vision of global nuclear disarmament.”75 The Media Department amplified this quote as an endorsement of the March’s physical endurance and collective striving. This example also illustrates an instance of linking the March’s endurance activism to “monumental” or successful social movements in “history.”

As the Great Peace March left Colorado and entered Nebraska, the news release indicated that US congressional candidate David Sprague walked with the March.76 In Lincoln, Nebraska, the June 30 press release indicated that seven marchers had met with governor Robert Kerrey, who endorsed the march. The roundup also noted that Kerrey met with the group “immediately” before he gave a speech to delegates at the Nebraska Democratic Convention. In the speech, he

“mentioned the critical need for global nuclear disarmament.”77 In Iowa, a press release noted that Tom Harkin was the first US Senator to visit the march. Harkin vowed to walk with the

March in D.C., and offered encouragement, calling them “a great voice for sanity in a world of institutionalized insanity.”78 Support from representatives in Ohio was also noted when the

March rallied in Cleveland.79 Detailing these kinds of interactions and linking them with statements of support for the March’s policy position on nuclear arms can be seen as part of the

March’s own media strategy to demonstrate and create the political efficacy of endurance activism.

75 “Monday Morning Roundup,” June 2, 1986, in the Great Peace March Records. 76 “News from the Great Peace March, #9,” June 16, 1986, in the Great Peace March Records. 77 “Monday Morning Roundup,” June 30, 1986, in the Great Peace March Records. 78 “News from the Great Peace March, #14,” July 21, 1986, in the Great Peace March Records. 79 “News from the Great Peace March, #22,” September 14, 1986, in the Great Peace March Records. 216

Press releases further highlighted Peace City governance and finances. The way marchers organized themselves and funded their movement are an important part of communicating the symbolic meanings of endurance activism and long-distance walking apart from the literal, physical movement. The Media Department discussed organization and finances to stress marcher commitment, persistence, and resiliency in striving to build a mass movement and influence political leaders. This strategy also communicated endurance activism as a movement that had structure, rules, and order – a counter to notions that could delegitimize the March as merely a bunch of wayward drifters and hippies. A march that operated as a city, with governing boards, judicial boards, city councils, accountants and fundraisers, as well as departments providing for the march’s day-to-day needs, health, and sanitation, could further underscore the march as a professional, ordinary, middle-class movement.

The press release issued immediately before the March resumed its march out of

Barstow, California, stresses these governance and structure themes. “A city-wide referendum on a proposal for a new governmental structure for Peace City will be held tomorrow. The administrative task force assisted the facilitators council in developing the proposal, which calls for a two-branch government,” the release pronounced.80 The release further explains that the

Great Peace March City Council “will represent marchers as citizens” and handle policy, while the “Operations Council” will consist of “workers” who handle logistical functions.81

Descriptions of the emerging governance structures communicate that the March wanted the media to know marchers valued the transparent dissemination of information and democratic decision-making, as the proposal would be held to a vote.82 This press release strategy hints at

80 “Wednesday Morning Roundup, March 26, 1986,” Series IV, Box 17, in the Great Peace March Records. 81 Ibid. 82 Ibid. 217

the March’s self-interest in its prefigurative politics, which did not as easily translate into effective media framing. Moreover, the March had an organizational structure operating in the

“real world,” as the release indicates an arrangement of 13 state or “regional” offices that would work with the March’s “National Field Director.” Notably, the March’s internal divisiveness over its governance structure was muted to a statement that “political fever runs high in Peace

City.”83

The press releases also speak to marchers’ concerns that financing and funding communicated the soundness and respectability of their march. As demonstrated in Chapter Two, the national press had publicized the financial struggles and eventual bankruptcy of PRO-Peace.

When they reincorporated as the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament, Inc., press releases communicated March purchases in ways that illustrated the march was solvent and moving forward. For instance, the March 26 press release noted the march purchased six storage trailers at the price of $5,000, had put down another $1,000 as the “first weekly payment” for the use of a 4,000-gallon water truck, and received a “major donation” of free advertising space and

$10,000 from LA Weekly.84 One week later, the March press release opening paragraph stressed that the march had leased a “shiny” new water truck “at an amazingly low cost” for the duration of the march. This lead paragraph weaves together themes of the March’s financial wherewithal to pay a total of $16,700 for use of the truck along with information about the vehicle’s owner, demonstrating the March’s responsibility and accountability. The release also indicated the

March’s mainstream appeal by noting the support of the Vail business community, which had donated the use of several private lodges for one or two nights’ stay.85

83 “News from the Great Peace March, #10,” June 23, 1986, in the Great Peace March Records. 84 “Wednesday Morning Roundup,” March 26, 1986, in the Great Peace March Records. 85 “Sunday Morning Roundup,” May 18, 1986, in the Great Peace March Records. 218

Contributions and financial donations highlighted the March’s appeal for media coverage when celebrities or other notable figures lent the march support. For example, a press release from the March’s time in Iowa notes that the March welcomed a $10,000 donation from

“Yoko Ono, widow of ex-Beatle John Lennon and a longtime peace activist.”86 In Chicago, the

March wanted to publicize the support of popular disc jockey Casey Kasem, host of the weekly

American Top 40 countdown. Kasem lent the March support by “leading a twelve-hour telethon on a local radio station that raised $2200 and a lot of awareness.”87 Actor and director Ron

Howard was also noted for his support in Chicago. These references indicate that PRO-Peace’s strategy of celebrity activism to appeal to mainstream America and corporate sponsors survived as the March balanced endurance activism between its strategic functions and prefigurative capacities.

The press releases sought media coverage by publicizing support from entertainers such as singer Jackson Browne and television star of Hill Street Blues, Betty Thomas. Browne surprised the marchers with an impromptu 1:30 a.m. concert at their campsite outside of Iowa

City, while Thomas visited the March numerous times, including in rural Nebraska, Chicago, and Washington, DC.88 Of Thomas, the release stated “Betty walked most of Friday’s 20-mile hike and spent another evening in camp before heading back to L.A. She’s been a strong supporter of the march and we appreciate her willingness to speak on our behalf.”89 Celebrity visits to the March formed part of the press release strategy to communicate the mainstream appeal of the marchers, and that their objective of disarmament was supported by some recognizable figures from U.S. mass culture.

86 “News from the Great Peace March, #14,” July 21, 1986, in the Great Peace March Records. 87 “News from the Great Peace March, #18,” August 18, 1986, in the Great Peace March Records. 88 Ibid,; “News from the Great Peace March, #10,” June 23, 1986, in the Great Peace March Records. 89 “News from the Great Peace March, #10,” June 23, 1986, in the Great Peace March Records. 219

Press releases also strove for media coverage by occasionally promoting stories of marchers attending vigils, bearing witness, staging “die-ins,” or protesting at military sites. On

May 26, near Lawson, Colorado, the roundup promoted 150 marchers or so that attended a vigil at the Rocky Flats plutonium trigger plant. “There was music and tears as people held hands and wept together as marchers tied blue ribbons to the fence and prayed,” the release described.

Moreover, it stressed that a single ounce of the “radioactive metallic element could kill thousands of people.”90 On June 7, Day 99 and Site 62 of the March, the Media Department included the side trip of seven marchers who visited an MX missile site in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

There, marchers stayed with ranchers who had one of the missiles – a first strike weapon carrying 10 warheads at the cost of $150 million – on their land.91

One press release promoted the joining of fifteen marchers with members of the

Heartland Peace Pilgrimage, “a group of 150 Catholic women from 21 cities who will converge in Omaha from four directions.”92 Left unmentioned in the release is that several of the women from the Pilgrimage and the March chose to participate in civil disobedience at the Strategic Air

Command Offut Air Base. Instead, the release notes a more palatable July 4th rally to be held in

Omaha by the two organizations and Nebraskans for Peace.93

In Rock Island, Illinois, the press roundup included a blurb that 100 marchers participated in an early morning “protest vigil at the Rock Island Arsenal, a weapons production plant.

Twenty-six marchers and three area residents crossed a bridge leading to arsenal and were detained for several hours by base security.”94 Around the same time as the protest, the

90 “Monday Morning Roundup,” May 26, 1986, in the Great Peace March Records. 91 “Saturday Morning Roundup,” June 7, 1986, in the Great Peace March Records. 92 “News from the Great Peace March, #11,” June 30, 1986, in the Great Peace March Records. 93 Ibid. 94 “News from the Great Peace March, #17,” August 11, 1986, in the Great Peace March Records. 220

remaining 400 marchers “froze in their steps for two minutes” while crossing the Centennial

Bridge entering Illinois, in order to demonstrate their support for a nuclear weapons production freeze.95 News from the March while it was near Cleveland, Ohio, explained that marchers had

“experienced up close a nuclear power plant (Davis-Bessie) that concerns locals.”96

Figure 21 Press releases promoted the Great Peace March’s occasional staging of dramatic street theater such as this “die-in” to promote a freeze on nuclear testing. Todd Gitlin argues events such as this had become routine to the mainstream media. Photograph in the Great Peace March Records (DG 147), Swarthmore College Peace Collection. The March demonstrated different ways that endurance activism could be used and made visible to enact opposition to nuclear weapons. These methods were not combative or hostile, but nor were they passive. Walking could take shape in dramatic street performance and bearing witness to nuclear weapons facilities, but it could also manifest in silence and prayer. These stories relay narratives of marchers protesting what they felt was at stake, where it was happening, and whom it was happening to. They did so in a legal and respectful manner that some March leaders and organizers hoped middle-class conservatives would find inoffensive.

Ribbons, prayer, vigils, fasts, and street theater were safe and nonthreatening ways to

95 Ibid. 96 “News from the Great Peace March, #22,” September 14, 1986, in the Great Peace March Records. 221

communicate opposition to the arms race, with bodies cloaked in religious, moral, and spiritual overtones.

Press releases also promoted marchers’ endurance activism away from the March as a strategy for media coverage. The Media Department noted that Geoff Mercer, a New Zealander, left the March to run in the Moscow Peace Marathon on August 9th, as part of a 20-member

Athletes United for Peace team.97 Another five marchers left the continent to walk in the

“German-American Peace March from Berlin to Munich.”98 These accounts also demonstrate the

“global” aspects of the March’s objective of disarmament amid Second Cold War tensions.

Further, the March was eager to promote its intersection with another mobile group for peace, when it met with “53 Soviet citizens on a Mississippi [River] Peace Cruise” in Davenport,

Iowa.99 There, they touted peace and understanding between US and Soviet citizens, united in their stance for disarmament. These examples reiterate the ways the March tried to amplify meanings of literal and symbolic movement through a strategy of endurance activism.

Big Cities and Outsized Expectations

The Great Peace March’s plans for events in large cities are an important resource for analyzing the march’s strategies for media coverage. Following the PRO-Peace collapse, some in the March still hoped these metropolitan events, rallies, festivals, concerts, and fundraisers could signal to the nation that the March was “alive” and well. Based on Gitlin’s analysis, they were right to hypothesize that (dramatic) events in metropolitan areas would garner media coverage and the public’s attention. The hoped-for impacts did not materialize in Las Vegas or Denver, however.

97 “News from the Great Peace March, #14,” July 21, 1986, in the Great Peace March Records. 98 Ibid. 99 Ibid. 222

In Vegas marchers anticipated being seen by a large number of people, including national audiences through media coverage. Promoters had promised the march “thousands of dollars from concerts and fundraising activities, but these events did not materialize.”100 Part of their strategy in Vegas was to marshal television actor Robert Blake to garner attention and money, but the results were mediocre. Following a lukewarm reception in Vegas, the March expected better returns in Denver, the next major city on its route. Denver had been advertised to the march as a community supportive of their goals and eager for their arrival. The March planned three days of concerts, rallies, speeches, parades and a “marcher for a day” fundraiser. Yet, they again fell flat, getting outdrawn 75,000 to 3,000 by a nearby People’s Fair during their rally at the state capitol.101 The lesson increasingly seemed to be that the March would not be able to generate effective publicity. Minutes from a Board of Directors meeting in June illustrate the

Board’s frustrations with advance work for media coverage, stating “our organizers are competent but very short on reliable labor!”102 Moreover, the minutes indicate reporters from

Life and Newsweek magazines had cancelled plans to do stories about the March because not enough people were marching.103

Thus, for some marchers, Chicago loomed as a “make it or break it” site for building the fantasized nationwide mass movement. Las Vegas and Denver could be chalked up as learning experiences for the grassroots movement, as growing pains resulting from their collapse in

Barstow. By Chicago, they hoped a more professional approach to public relations and media coverage could yield better results. And even though reality had set in by New York and

Washington, D.C., the March wanted to make a good showing for themselves, their supporters,

100 Folsom and Fledderjohann, Great Peace March, 43. 101 Ibid., 51-55. 102 “Board of Directors Meeting Minutes,” June 5, 1986, Series I, Box 1, in the Great Peace March Records. 103 Ibid. 223

and the people they met in the rural areas, towns, and smaller cities along the way. As an “in between” space for the March’s media aspirations, and the often-touted culmination point in

D.C., this section focuses on March media strategies for Chicago and their completion at the nation’s capital.

Unlike the press releases, which volunteer marchers had the autonomy to craft and disseminate, much of the strategizing for the metropolitan areas took place among the Board of

Directors, other self-appointed leaders, and marchers working in March field offices. Again, many marchers scoffed at the notion that the March had any central leadership with any sort of authority. Marchers were free to ignore the recommendations or policies of such governing boards. At the same time, however, these governing boards took themselves seriously, and had marcher support from some segments. And, even if many marchers disapproved their policies or ignored their activities, the Board and field offices did strategize for media coverage in the metropolitan areas and enact events and fundraising efforts. While the press releases demonstrate the media strategy across the country, the following section considers March efforts for media coverage in two large cities where some hoped it was still possible to capture the media eye, raise awareness, and fuel a nationwide movement.

Chicago

A document crafted by the Great Peace March as an introduction to the organization, its activities, and financial status contains a preliminary plan for events in Chicago. This plan demonstrates that the March emphasized “conducting visible and effective events in major population centers.”104 Their proposed tactics for visibility in Chicago included four days of events, including a parade through downtown and rally in the Loop; a “Peace City Open House”

104 Drissall and Wald, “The Great Peace March,” p. 6. 224

offering education and entertainment; a “Street Festival” with speakers and crafts; outreach in churches, and a “Survival Walk” billed as a “major city-wide event” that would include marchers, local residents, and to-be-announced celebrities.105 The budget for the Chicago special events estimated spending $4,000 for a publicist and an additional $4,500 on advertising, publicity, and permits for the “major” Sunday walk.106 The end of this document contained a page listing dozens of notable individuals endorsing the March, including numerous celebrities such as Ted Danson, Richard Dreyfuss, Emilio Estevez, Carole King, Rob Lowe, Madonna,

Demi Moore, Paul Newman, Bonnie Raitt, Martin Sheen, and Barbara Streisand.107

The decision to hire a publicist – Falk Associates – for Chicago was deemed “wise” by the March Media Department, as the “market is huge.”108 Falk Associates compiled a document for the March Board detailing their tactics for drawing media attention. This document described dozens of specialized mailings that were sent to 180 Chicago area media contacts, public service announcements to nearly 100 area radio and tv stations, and hosts of other press alerts, press kits, and overviews of specific events and benefits.109 Some of these messages urged the media to

“feature the March” and offered spokespersons for programs.110 Falk Associates also coordinated print publicity through several articles in the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune, among other outlets, prior to their arrival and entry into the city. Further, the report indicates TV coverage on WGN (reaching 22 states) and a host of ABC, NBC, and CBS affiliates, especially for the Welcoming Ceremony and Survival Sunday events.111 Falk also facilitated over a dozen

105 Ibid. 106 Ibid., 14. 107 Ibid., 22. 108 Elizabeth Fairchild, “Evaluation of Chicago Media & Events,” August 19, 1986, Series I, Box 1, BOD Support Documents, in the Great Peace March Records. 109 Amy Falk, “Memo: Review of Media Activity,” August 18, 1986, Series I, Box 1, BOD Support Documents, in the Great Peace March Records. 110 Ibid. 111 Ibid., 3-4. 225

appearances on radio interviews and talk shows. Finally, Falk created several promotional tie-ins for the Chicago visit, including four area Budweiser electronic signs which featured two different messages for the March, National Public Radio station WBEZ airing remotely from “Peace

City,” and attempts to coordinate appearances of between 30 and 40 celebrities. Only Betty

Thomas actually came to Chicago, as the majority of celebrities wrote regrets or did not respond.112

A press release crafted by Falk Associates reaffirms the March’s emergency and participatory endurance activism approach. The release opens with a plea for attendance as it states, “if you ever thought of how to stop this constant threat, now is your chance to have your voice heard by joining the efforts of The Great Peace March For Global Nuclear Disarmament on August 14 through 18, when they bring their message to Chicago.”113 The release further draws attention to witnessing the arrival of “hundreds of marchers walking across the country” in

Chicago’s downtown business district as a spectacle to observe. Free admission to Peace City is offered for a “Taste of Peace City” event featuring seminars, lectures, videos and food from a variety of march menus available for purchase. The release then promotes the “Survival Sunday:

Legs Against Arms” fair as an event for “Chicagoans of all ages” to attend at Lincoln Park, “with national celebrities expected to lead the afternoon walk.”114 Descriptions of the marchers crossing deserts, mountains, and plains on their way to D.C. closes the release, with an impact statement that the March travelled by 65 million Americans that live within 20 miles of its route.115 In sum, the Falk Associates press materials reveal a strategy for coverage that relied

112 Ibid., 5-7. 113 Falk Associates, “Great Peace March Brings Message for Global Nuclear Disarmament to Chicago August 14 through 18,” Series I, Box 1, BOD Support Documents, in the Great Peace March Records. 114 Ibid. 115 Ibid. 226

upon making marchers and Peace City a spectacle in and of themselves. The release then links participatory endurance activism to March objectives for mobilization by inviting Chicagoans’ to join and connect with the March. Finally, the release stresses marchers’ bodily commitment through walking as delivering a message of disarmament to mobilize “millions” of Americans.

A separate report filed by the March media team argued the use of a professional publicist allowed the march to “reach a wider audience and to reach the specific people we needed to reach. It also suggested the March continue to hire outside help where funding allowed, especially for New York City and D.C.116 The report indicates the media team tried to promote the March’s arrival in Chicago weeks in advance using radio and magazine interviews to promote endurance activism.117

The Chicago review describes several activities designed for media coverage. The first was a “welcoming ceremony” with the Mayor taking place during weekday business hours as the

March arrived downtown. Organizers hoped Chicagoans and the local peace organizations would turn out in larger numbers for the ceremony and attract media attention. Next, the March executed its “Peace City Open House” to attract curious residents and the media to experience a glimpse of life on the march. “Survival Sunday” was the March’s theme encouraging active participation in a rally/fair mix of events at Lincoln Park. In addition to the rally and festival atmosphere, the March held a 5K race, further connecting physical activity to their strategy to mobilize support and wider participation.

Washington, D.C.

Despite the services of Falk Associates to aid publicity efforts in Chicago, results were more of the same. Though the Board deemed media coverage for Chicago a success, meeting

116 Ibid. 117 Ibid. 227

minutes indicate they were disappointed by lower turnout than expected, felt the “Mayor’s event was not big,” and were discouraged by the “poor dress of some.” The “march cannot pull off large events on its own,” the minutes admitted, as the Board advised a policy of hiring professional publicists “at reasonable cost” when possible for the remaining large cities. Further, board members agreed that the March should narrow its focus to a message supporting a test ban treaty.118

This section relies on minutes from a Board of Directors meeting held two months prior to the March’s arrival in Washington, D.C. to analyze the march’s ongoing adjustment of strategies for coverage in large cities.119 The minutes include key information and reports from

John Records, a March board member who had traveled to D.C. to meet with congressional representatives, media personnel, and a coalition of national peace group directors to collaborate and get their advice for strategy in the area.

The minutes include a memo from The Lamb Group, a firm that had been selected to coordinate and plan national press coverage for the March’s arrival in D.C. The memo details a two-part plan by Lamb that stresses a reinforcement of the strategy of endurance activism to

“maximize the number of marchers arriving in D.C.” and to “give credit” to those who had

“given up a year of [their] lives to walk across this land in the name of global nuclear disarmament.”120 The Lamb Group memo proposes to leverage local and regional coverage as much as possible, focusing on the march as a human interest story that makes connections between marchers and their home towns and states. Lamb argued the March should provide lists

118 “Great Peace March Board Meeting Minutes,” August 20, 1986, Series I, Box 1, in the Great Peace March Records. 119 “Great Peace March Board Meeting Minutes,” September 10, 1986, 2-9, Series I, Box 1, in the Great Peace March Records. 120 Terrell Lamb, “Memorandum to Board of Directors/The Great Peace March,” September 9, 1986, p. 1, Series I, Box 1, Board of Directors Meeting Minutes, in the Great Peace March Records. 228

to the media of its marchers organized by city and state, and make it easy for bureaus of various local and international presses to find the people they need. Instead of momentum for nuclear disarmament, “it’s all of you that the story is about,” the memo advised.121

John Records’ report about the March’s prospects in D.C. discouraged high expectations.

Peace group leaders did not feel they had resources to turn out large numbers of people for

March events, nor did they appear willing to divert from their own election work agendas or intra-organizational issues. The leaders claimed there was little chance of a testing moratorium passing through legislation without a Democrat majority in the Senate, and they offered conflicting viewpoints on whether the March should join lobbying efforts or conduct direct action. Fasting and civil disobedience might “undermine positive reputation,” they thought, and both would be difficult to “sell.” Further, the March would need a promoter if it hoped to do anything “big.” They urged the March to keep their time in D.C. positive by focusing on the marchers to attract media attention. In short, Records claimed their reaction was “dull” and a

“non-response.” Meanwhile, the tenor of his meetings with congressional representatives was slightly more hopeful. There was potential for collaboration to get “inside information, contacts, and speakers for a rally.” He received instruction to simplify a March slogan to “Stop Testing!”

Records’ contacts in the media hinted that the Today Show and Good Morning America were considering coverage.

Internally, apart from Records’ meetings in D.C. and the hiring of the Lamb Group, the

March was frustrated by its lack of definitive plans at the capital. The Board assessed that the

March was becoming more realistic about what it “can and cannot do,” reflecting that long- distance walking and endurance activism were not effective strategies to gather crowds for large

121 Ibid. 229

events. For the Board, the March’s appeal was beginning to reflect the group’s more prefigurative aspects, such as their “integrity and commitment” which granted them “some sort of ‘moral authority’ in D.C.,” that “should be used carefully.” Overall, Records surmised “the march just has not yet communicated to the right people what and who we are,” though there was still potential to increase the march’s “legislative and electoral politics efforts.”122 Nearing the conclusion of the March, these comments reflect an ambiguity and uncertainty of how to best mobilize the March for strategic aims and objectives. The March was more effective at communicating the values of endurance activism in smaller towns, through personal interaction, and Keys and Trees ceremonies, than at being a marquee focus for events in large cities.

Interfacing these ambitions with the rest of the March community was described as

“somewhat tense, and somewhat emotional.” Many in the community had been coming up with an expansive list of proposals for what the march should do on its final days. Many assumed a decision would be made as a whole through community vote and/or consensus processes.

Confusion runs through these planning notes with numerous questions over the extent to which the Board or the marchers should decide the decision-making processes for large city event planning, and to what extent “involving marchers” helps facilitate “accomplishment of goals.”

Most seemed to agree by this juncture that the March’s strengths were in “non-large events” such as “small group speaking; keys and trees; and potlucks.” Ultimately, the Board advised its D.C. field office to arrange a gathering in the vicinity of The Mall, “other events consistent with the march community input,” and focus messaging to maximize “impact of global nuclear disarmament” and “stopping nuclear testing.”123

122 Ibid. 123 Ibid. Suggestions for D.C. from the wider community included somber rallies, joyous rallies, fireworks demonstrations, school and campus blitzes, planting trees at the White House and Pentagon, a street theater freeze, a candlelight vigil, launching further caravans across the country, and an extended encampment. 230

In fact, business as usual would be the order of the day for the March in D.C., with its traditional mix of state border crossing ceremonies, rallies, songs, speeches, banners, parades, and a candlelight vigil to close the official march. As marcher Dave Miller suggested to the

Board, “We lack organizational and communicative skills. Let’s do what we do best . . . move bodies.”124 His was a suggestion not to make the March the main appeal for events, crowds, and fundraising. Instead, Miller wanted to direct the March’s impressive collection of bodies toward visible military and nuclear installations, attach the March to the work of other peace groups, and make clear the links between walking in opposition to nuclear weapons when and where it was needed. Miller’s conclusion that marchers should stop trying to attain national media attention and instead rely on their bodies promoted a view that the March should turn toward the more radical edge of direct action that others such as American Peace Test and EarthFirst! had adopted more earnestly post-Reagan’s 1984 reelection. The March leadership, however, disavowed such actions in the name of appeasing middle America and remaining a fully legal march. Advocacy for civil disobedience was still absent from the March’s public and media relations strategies.

Having grounded the March’s strategies for media coverage through a consideration of several months’ worth of press releases and debates over big-city hopes – that were increasingly directed by professional publicists and filtered through internal discord – I now discuss patterns in press coverage. I explain how these patterns produced representations that marginalized the

March as insignificant and ineffective as a social movement campaign. This analysis illustrates the degree to which long-distance walking and the strategy of endurance activism were mostly

“captured” and neutralized by the news-making practices and processes of cultural hegemony consistent with the social movement-media representation relationship theorized earlier in this

124 Dave Miller, “Vehicle Acquisitions Report: Equipment Disposal,” Appendix B, p. 4, Board of Directors Meeting Minutes, September 1986, Series I, Box 1, in the Great Peace March Records. 231

chapter. The Great Peace March attempted to convey ideas and images that would further their cause in support of nuclear disarmament. Illuminating Gitlin’s contention that journalistic procedures exist alongside and interlocked with other institutions and ideological functions, however, press frames absorbed the Great Peace March’s messages within the hegemonic dynamics that set their ideals and values against those of the status quo.

“The Whole World is [Not] Watching”

David Mixner, PRO-Peace’s founder, had believed the Great Peace March’s nine-month walk across the country could be a successful media event. Inspired by his experience as one of the four organizers of the Moratorium to End the Vietnam War in 1969, he averred that the march could yield comparable results in reaching hundreds of thousands of people through media coverage. Mixner and other March leaders had inherited the legacy of the 1960s antiwar and civil rights movements that organized direct action as mediated events to broadcast state brutality against nonviolent protesters. L.A. Kauffman argues that every major movement since has looked to those tactics “as model and inspiration.”125 Many Great Peace Marchers strategized about how to attract media coverage in 1986 and argued that media portrayals of marchers’ self- sacrifice was essential for effectively mobilizing the middle-class in favor of nuclear disarmament.

The media coverage of the March primarily repeated some of the framing patterns Gitlin identified in the newspaper and television coverage of the Students for a Democratic Society

(SDS) between 1965 and 1970. In his study, Gitlin illustrated how news media ignored and selectively emphasized aspects of the student antiwar movement. They often treated SDS as an oddity, made polarizing celebrities out of its leaders, inflated revolutionary rhetoric, and

125 L.A. Kauffman, Direct Action: Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism (New York: Verso, 2017), xi. 232

destabilized the organization while occasionally amplifying its issues.126 Moreover, coverage of the antinuclear movement in the late 1970s and early 1980s revealed similar themes that made activists susceptible to being discounted through the publicity process. But movements against nuclear power and nuclear weapons faced the additional challenge of crossing the media threshold for coverage at all, as many actions, once effective, had become “old hat” to the

“novelty-obsessed corporate media” by the mid-to-late 1980s.127

Despite the March’s optimism, news coverage of movement politics did not automatically further activists’ causes. Gitlin argues that in a late twentieth century American society “dominated by a consolidated corporate economy” and “centralized commercial culture,” political movements relied upon large-scale media communications “in order to matter.” In doing so however, they were “caught in a fundamental and inescapable dilemma.” When opposition movements submitted their events and messages to journalistic rules and implicit codes of newsworthiness, they were “consigned to marginality and political irrelevance” or otherwise “assimilated” and “identified with narrow” reform issues. In the end, the Great Peace

March ended up “mattering” in a way its organizers did not intend, through ridicule and misrepresentation.128

Patterns in Press Coverage

As the march continued beyond California and Las Vegas, the press coverage framed the march as invisible and insignificant. There was a dearth of coverage during the months of April,

May, June, and July. The March reappeared briefly in the Los Angeles Times during its time in

Denver in early June, though this period was ignored by the Tribune, Post, and New York Times.

126 Gitlin, Whole World is Watching, 2-4. 127 Kauffman, Direct Action, 132. 128 Gitlin, Whole World is Watching, 3, 290-291. 233

But even the LA Times coverage was unfavorable, as it doubted the efficacy and purpose of the march variously as an “adventurous and rewarding walk,” an “experiment in peaceful, communal life,” a “mildly effective consciousness-raising program,” and an increasingly unlikely “mass mobilization of the populace.”129 The article describes that marchers disagreed whether the march was a way to start a mass movement for nuclear disarmament or an important experiment spiritually and practically in peacemaking.

Press coverage also centered on portrayals of marchers in terms of their identities, motivations, and goals. Descriptions of marchers were generally respectful, but they were also depicted as oddities. Contrasting views of the march community thread through narratives of the

March, framing the collective as a mix of “legitimate” marchers that had taken leaves from work or school, alongside those implicitly “illegitimate” marchers that were from “the fringes of society and beyond.”130 Schemas of these binary “types” of people that made up the March community were linked to messages about the group’s political effectiveness or ineffectiveness, the soundness or weakness of their operations, and to whether anyone was even paying attention.

Marginalization

A frame commonly applied to the Great Peace March was that of a 1980s washed-up version of a 1960s social movement. Bob Sipchen of the LA Times employed the stereotype of the naïve college dropout with heroic visions of participating in a social transformation. Sipchen noted that Joe Reese, 20, “should have been born 20 years earlier.” Reese relied on small family contributions to help fund his participation, though he saw the march as his “turn to take part in history.” He also hyperbolically suggested the march’s significance would be “one of the greatest

129 Kathleen Hendrix, “Peace March for Nuclear Disarmament Reaches a Rocky Mountain High: After a Cloudy Start, a Chance to Walk in the Sun,” Los Angeles Times, June 6, 1986, H1. 130 Kathleen Hendrix, “Unlikely Saga of Great Peace March Nears Its Climax,” Los Angeles Times, November 9, 1986, I1. 234

things since Martin Luther King freed the blacks from social injustice.”131 In addition, Sipchen cited Tim Carpenter’s comparison of the Great Peace March to the black freedom struggle when he stated that marchers “are dedicated to nuclear disarmament, just as Martin Luther King, who liberated a people, was dedicated.”132

Early in the march, the Chicago Tribune referred to marchers as “die-hard peaceniks” who “scrambled” to reorganize after PRO-Peace’s collapse.133 Though marchers were elsewhere often framed as middle-class professionals, this article replaced the doctor, professor and lawyer labels with images of “hikers” and “peaceniks” who were disillusioned and frantic. Paul

Galloway, also with the Chicago Tribune, portrayed the march as a “motley, sun-burnished, born-again caravan” as it traveled across Illinois in August, consisting of a “profusion of beards and sandals, braless breasts and denims,” in some sort of 1960s and 1970s revival.134 Despite efforts to appear modern and middle-class, the March could not shed its associations in the media as a collective of 1960s-era flowerchildren and hippies. The Chicago Tribune noted the March closed its march with “Sixties-style rallies in Washington.”135

The press repeatedly remarked upon the emergence of distinct marcher identities and behaviors that contrasted with the “real world.” Apart from the presence of the hangers-on and fringe element, “regular” marchers too had adopted what could be construed as strange behaviors, dress, and language, or simply values and beliefs that did not resonate with an individualistic consumer culture. In May, the LA Times depicted Suzanne Mendleson, 75, as someone who had disavowed being someone with a “luxury house.”136 She is described as

131 Bob Sipchen, “Their Tales of the Great Trek for Peace Begin,” Los Angeles Times, February 23, 1986, OC_D1. 132 “Bob Sipchen, “Taking Their Message Across America,” Los Angeles Times, February 20, 1986, OC_D1. 133 “Peace Trek Marchers Drop Out,” Chicago Tribune, March 14, 1986, 18; “Die-hard Peaceniks Plan New March,” Chicago Tribune, March 16, 1986, 12. 134 Paul Galloway, “Peace Marching in the Heartland Heat,” Chicago Tribune, August 5, 1986, D1. 135 “Milestones, Deaths: 86,” Chicago Tribune, December 30, 1986, F6. 136 UPI, “Peace March at Capitol in Salt Lake City,” Los Angeles Times, May 4, 1986, V_A9. 235

wearing a t-shirt exclaiming, “Don’t Let Our Children Die, Mr. Reagan.” The portrayal of this marcher projects an image of a wealthy person rejecting her material successes in the name of disarmament. In June, Kathleen Hendrix portrayed marchers who had “adjusted” to the culture of the March. Part of this culture included acclimating to a diet of “barley, sprouts, grains and beans.” The March also featured a clown who frequently dressed in costume, rode a unicycle, and juggled as the march approached a given community, giving the march a carnivalesque flair.137

In Chicago, the Los Angeles Times noted the March had its fair share of “drifters, seekers, lost souls, misfits, crazies. Unwashed, unkempt, often unshod, uninformed, unconcerned and anti-social – they are a problem.”138 And as the march neared its conclusion, the Tribune critiqued the inexperience of the young, middle-class “Outward Bound” contingent of marchers alongside the mix of “faded flower children, long-time activists, modern hippies . . . New

Zealand grandmothers against nuclear weapons, retired clergy, young families, Vietnam veterans, gays of both genders, a few punks, and four Buddhist monks who bang drums every step of the way.”139 This coterie of the March core were positioned in contrast to the “Johnny come latelies” and “weirdos” who were “not quality marchers.”140

Initially planned as a celebrity-supported social movement, LA Times reporter Kathleen

Hendrix outlined a march that has “involved no stars, no glitter, no comfort and no bucks.”141

Hendrix continued to outline the march’s financial woes and its issues with “hangers-on and latecomers, many looking like old flower children, and a few appear to be from the far fringes of

137 Kathleen Hendrix, “Peace March for Nuclear Disarmament Reaches a Rocky Mountain High: After a Cloudy Start, a Chance to Walk in the Sun,” Los Angeles Times, June 6, 1986, H1. 138 Kathleen Hendrix, “Peace Marchers Make It to Chicago,” Los Angeles Times, August 21, 1986, G1. 139 John N. Maclean, “Coast-to-Coast Peace Walk Reaches Last Tired Leg,” Chicago Tribune, November 11, 1986, 10. 140 Ibid. 141 Hendrix, “Peace Marchers Make Their Point,” I1. 236

society.”142 The March shad a difficult time “containing” its image when it was relatively easy for anyone to attach themselves to the march. But these labels also created a boundary around acceptable and unacceptable “marcher” identities. Hendrix dismissed these individuals for attracting negative media coverage as unofficial marchers.143

Media narratives, then, were biased toward marginalizing the Great Peace March as weak, ineffectual, politically insignificant, myopically-focused, and out of touch with reality. For example, as the march left Los Angeles on March 1, The Washington Post described the 1,300 marchers as “westerners, people under 30, female, or retirees” that “limped bravely off today on the first leg of a 3,235-mile route littered with legal and financial obstacles.”144 The statement constructs identities of marchers as marginal, hinting that the aforementioned women, young people, Californians, and retirees should not be taken seriously as a social movement.

Bob Sipchen of the LA Times openly wondered if marchers worried “that the whole thing will backfire, then fizzle out? That it will be seen as just one more publicity stunt in an escalating series of media events that are pushing to the point of absurdity?”145 The March’s message of sacrifice and urgency was difficult to maintain within the contexts of coverage and a wider public that did not evince similar tones of crisis and concern. For instance, the Washington Post portrayed the marchers’ frivolity in “singing, waving balloons and posters, [and] pushing strollers.”146 The Post piece doubts the usefulness of the March by closing with a reminder that a majority of voters “endorse the Reagan administration’s approach to arms control.”147

142 Ibid. 143 Ibid. 144 Jay Mathews, “‘Great Peace March’ Is Heading Here: Los Angeles Departure Undeterred by Dearth of Funds, Support,” Washington Post, March 2, 1986, A16. 145 Sipchen, “Taking their Message.” 146 Mathews, “Heading Here,” A16. 147 Ibid. 237

Further, the press continued to disparage the reorganized March as a “few hundred stragglers . . . wandering through the Mojave Desert,” when it was to have been “a mighty host of 5,000.”148 This Post piece slammed the march as a “tattered remnant, begging alms as it goes .

. . as good a metaphor for peace prospects as can be found.”149 The author claimed the March did not have a chance up against the “indifference of the country” and “public apathy.”150 The piece rebuffed the marchers as not knowing where they were going or how they were going to get there. At best, the article argued the March illustrated the desperation of peace activists in the era of “peace through strength.”151

The press turned to questioning the March’s purpose and the strategy of endurance activism as a logical way to achieve it. Narratives depicting the march as ineffectual and insignificant were not limited to comments about the March’s organizational instability or objectives. Press coverage also took shape through admonishment of the method of walking across the United States, as the press noticed the peace march sometimes seemed to lack marchers and marched separately. The Los Angeles Times queried what walking across the country had to do with global nuclear disarmament. One marcher, a former Rhodes scholar, is quoted for his belief that the March had “a practical possibility of success” by acting as a

“stimulus” for “every existing peace organization” to persuade Congress to “end nuclear war.”

And another spokesperson defended the March as having the potential to generate social change by “bringing about a certain level of consciousness, awareness of an issue.” The Times doubted

148 Mary McGrory, “Peace Hope: Straggling in the Desert,” Washington Post, March 30, 1986, D1, D5. 149 Ibid. 150 Ibid. 151 Ibid. 238

if the hassle of the march logistics could not be replaced with “something more effective” and

“better” for nuclear disarmament.152

Hendrix discussed internal march dissension. She outlined discontent over the issuance of march “contracts,” the process for accepting and funding new marchers, people leaving the march in advance work crews, and resentment of the March’s governance structure and leadership, among other issues. Though some claimed that mass mobilization and a political groundswell were still within reach, Hendrix notes there was “no steamroller effect in evidence” and that “considerable organizing and advance work will have to be done” before Chicago – the next major city on the route.153 The press demonstrated there was a lack of external enthusiasm for the March while internally, the group’s “bickering” and disagreements “hurt the movement.”154

Occasionally, the press marginalized the Great Peace March as a march without marchers. Though a piece from the beginning of August noted the march had accumulated 2,271 miles and pitched camp at 106 sites, it also mentioned that not all of the March’s participants

“are in camp at any given time.”155 In Chicago, the Los Angeles Times claimed the March’s ranks had “thinned” and again noted that “not all are on the march at any given time.”156 The

Washington Post remarked that the March seemed split after Denver between 250 marchers walking and another 250 “driving trucks and vans . . . meeting with local officials, residents and reporters.”157 Meanwhile, the New York Times noted the March’s numbers had dwindled from an initial 1,200 to about 600, but that near Chicago “only about 250 people are walking at any one

152 Hendrix, “Marchers Make their Point,” I1. 153 Ibid. 154 Churm, “Being a Patriot,” SE_A2. 155 Kathleeen Hendrix, “Great Peace March, Peace Cruise Cross Paths,” Los Angeles Times, August 1, 1986, H1. 156 Hendrix, “Limited Public Reaction,” G1. 157 “Peace Marchers Camp,” Washington Post, June 5, 1986, A16. 239

time.”158 Further, the press noted that “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.”159 While some reports described those not marching as engaging in other advance or publicity work, the press also noted the presence of individuals attached to the March who “neither march, nor work, nor take an interest in the issues,” who were known as “potatoes.”160 Cumulatively, this provided negative coverage as narratives of where marchers were, how they marched or appeared to do nothing took “energy and focus from the issue” of global nuclear disarmament.161

Assimilation

At the same time as these frames disparaged the March, the press also foregrounded segments of the Great Peace March as respectable middle-class citizens. Early press coverage of the March focused on PRO-Peace’s announcement of the march, and its subsequent planning and fundraising activities. As the actual march itself approached, the press took an increasing interest in the people who would be attempting to complete the cross-country journey. Once it became clear that PRO-Peace would not match its hype, the narrative surrounding the Great Peace March shifted away from the group’s mission. As the Los Angeles Times noted in late December 1985, the “strength of the march is really these individuals who are dropping everything to make this statement.”162 Through this frame, the focus more intensely became the individuals undertaking the march and their putative sacrifices, with walking a personal expression of their politics and citizenship. As Bob Sipchen remarked on February 23, 1986, the marchers were an “eclectic band” who have “tales to tell.”163

158 AP, “Antinuclear Group Marches into Chicago,” New York Times, August 15, 1986, A8. 159 Hendrix, “Unlikely Saga,” I1. 160 Hendrix, “Limited Public Reaction,” G1. 161 Ibid. 162 Kathleen Hendrix, “‘The Great Peace March’ Forming Up in L.A.: Activists Are Gathering for 3,325-Mile Trek Across United States Starting From Coliseum,” Los Angeles Times, December 27, 1985, G1. 163 Bob Sipchen, “Their Tales of the Great Trek for Peace Begin,” Los Angeles Times, February 23, 1986, OC_D1. 240

The press recurrently discussed the sacrifices and hardships middle-class marchers made to participate in the March. The New York Times summarized the march community as made up of “college students who have delayed their education” and “families who have uprooted their children from school and abandoned their homes.”164 Don Leith, a 37-year-old father, husband, and gardener, was joined on the march by his 13-year-old daughter, Prudence. To go on the

March, he left behind his job, his wife, Faith, and his 18-year-old daughter, Dawn. Prudence is described as being in tears because she will miss her family, friends, house, cat, and other

“normal everyday luxuries.” Don suggested that “sacrifice is one of the most important aspects to [the March],” however, and that giving up time with family and his work to meet the threat of

“global nuclear destruction” was “worth it.” “People are dying from the arms race right now,” he claimed, due to military expenditures at the expense of domestic needs.

LA Times reporter Kathleen Hendrix portrayed marchers’ sacrifices as having significant personal consequences. Stephen Nelson, a 39-year-old marcher, was currently in between jobs and left his wife behind in a “financial lurch.”165 In March, the Washington Post noted others that drained their savings or sold their homes.166 However, these marchers are mostly identified as professionals – professors, lawyers, businesspeople, doctors, nurses, technicians, and the like. A tenured professor on the march claimed he had never missed his computer, hot tub, or the luxury of a cold martini so much.167 In early April, the New York Times promoted the view of Franklin

Folsom, respected as the “senior marcher of the group,” that the Great Peace March is “a middle- class movement trying to influence members of the middle class to think that there are 50,000 nuclear warheads in the world and all it will take is one idiot to make a mistake and obliterate

164 “Peace Marchers Set Off on a Cross-Country Trek,” New York Times, March 2, 1986, 27. 165 Hendrix, “Forming Up,” G1. 166 Gary Stahl, “Footsteps on the March Toward Peace,” Washington Post, March 23, 1986, K1, K9. 167 Stahl, “Footsteps,” K9. 241

life on this planet.”168 In these reports, marcher sacrifices were intended to be understood in the contexts of middle-class lives, and justified when linked to the emergency of a supposed impending catastrophe.

In addition to middle-aged, middle-class families and couples, a substantial proportion of marchers were college students. While this group ostensibly had less to give up in terms of marriage, family, and careers in order to be on the march, sacrifice remained a theme for in explaining the meaning of their participation. For example, the LA Times noted that Leslie

Nanasy was a 22-year-old graduate from a fashion institute who took a leave from her junior year of college to be on the march. The article explains that she dropped out months in advance and worked three jobs in order to raise money for gear and equipment.169

When PRO-Peace collapsed, the New York Times portrayed an image of respectable middle-class marchers who had “revived the march.” The article notes the March “pared participants to a carefully screened 475” who say “good morning!” and pick up trash along the road.170 Further, the March had “rejected” an “assortment of hangers-on,” and privileged patriotism by carrying “the Stars and Stripes at the lead” of the march as it stirred an “upswelling of emotion” for passersby. The Times compared the Great Peace March procession to the

“Olympic flame being carried across the country in the summer of 1984.”171 Further, a standalone photo of the March in the Chicago Tribune with the caption “Peace through strength,” and granted that marchers “hardships” had “strengthened their resolve.”172 Frames highlighting marchers’ endurance increased as the March neared its completion in Washington,

168 Iver Peterson, “500 Hardy Souls Press Peace March in Desert,” New York Times, April 26, 1986, 6. 169 Hendrix, Forming Up, G1. 170 Peterson, “Hardy Souls,” 6. 171 Ibid. 172 “Peace Through Strength,” Chicago Tribune, April 30, 1986, 14. 242

D.C. The Los Angeles Times argued the March was “amazing” in that “hundreds of Americans, unorganized civilians, undertook this extraordinary journey on behalf of an abstract and lofty goal and persevered to the end.”173 In sum, journalist Kathleen Hendrix who had followed the march most closely claimed the March was a “different kind of national story” that found its way into small towns and cities with stories of “sore feet, tent life, and the campsite.”174 These references to the Olympics, patriotism, the March’s preservation, narratives of bodily wear and tear and long-distance walking as an alternative version of “Peace through Strength” illustrate some of the minimal success the March had in communicating endurance activism as a media strategy.

Trivialization

Through media coverage, March officials tried to communicate a narrative of the March as middle-class Americans delivering an antinuclear message to other middle-class Americans.

They strove to build and convey this image through the statements they made about who they were, and what they were doing to reach the “mainstream.” Mixner, PRO-Peace’s founder, had stated that the march was not about antagonizing or alienating people. Kathleen Hendrix of the

LA Times showed that marchers had made a pledge against civil disobedience and emphasized the March’s desire for cooperation. The March’s strategy to placate the middle-class’s distaste for direct action and civil disobedience, however helped construct a frame that dismissed the more radical factions on the March.175

The LA Times framed marchers as distancing themselves from the negative connotations of more militant “1960s activism” characterized by anger, violence, and fighting the system.

173 Hendrix, “Unlikely Saga,” I1. 174 Ibid. 175 Kathleen Hendrix, “Marchers Prepare to Start Long Walk for Peace: Despite Delays, Problems and Changes, Symbolic Journey Begins,” Los Angeles Times, February 28, 1986, H1. 243

Sipchen quoted John Bogner, 40, who offered that he had “closed the door on the ‘60s,” and that being on the march felt like fulfilling a “patriotic debt.”176 Similarly, 44-year-old Patti Dornan stated she did not she herself as a political activist or the March even as a political movement.

Meanwhile the New York Times profiled Dona Ridgeway, with husband Morris and 3-year-old son Adam, and stressed that the march illustrated the peace movement was finally putting “a bunch of real people out there to get the message across.”177 Here, “real” is construed as a white, heteronormative, nuclear family.

In June, however, Hendrix reported that perhaps two-thirds of the marchers approached the March variously as a spiritual exercise; an experiment in peaceful, communal living; or were simply “along for the walk” with a lack of commitment to the wider movement.178 In August,

Paul Galloway doubted the significance of these forms of the march as it existed mostly “on the back roads . . . practically living off the land” with a “minimum of fanfare from the national media.”179 Through a dismissive nod to the prefigurative politics of the New Left, he claimed the March was “old-fashioned” with its fleet of “cobbled together” support vehicles and “fervid feel of the ‘60s.” He further questioned what they accomplished beyond “self-congratulation” and feeling “very good about themselves for having participated.”180 And as the March approached New York and later Washington D.C., the New York Times described them as a

“disheveled band of visionaries,” and “weary marchers” losing their fight as the U.S. conducted its 12th announced nuclear test of the year.181

176 Sipchen, “Tales of Great Trek,” OC_D1. 177 “Peace Marchers Set Off On A Cross-Country Trek,” New York Times, March 2, 1986, 27. 178 Hendrix, “Rocky Mountain High,” H1. 179 Galloway, “Peace Marching,” D1. 180 Ibid. 181 Dennis Hevesi, “Peace Marchers Walk From Sea to Shining Sea,” New York Times, October 24, 1986, A16; UPI, “Peace March Ends in Rally at Capital Park,” New York Times, November 16, 1986, 26; Kenneth B. Noble, “Peace Marchers Arrive,” New York Times, November 15, 1986, 8. 244

A letter to the editor in the Chicago Tribune aptly summarizes opposition to the Great

Peace March that manifested in disdain for marchers’ image and stereotyped lifestyles. As an exemplar of the mocking and trivialization of the March, I quote the passage at length. It provides an interpretation of marchers as narrow-minded, hopeless, self-righteous idealists avoiding real work while walking on a leisurely march. G.P. Luchhetti sarcastically titled his diatribe “Ain’t It the Life?” and feigned, “I feel so much better and safer now that the Great

Peace March has passed, leaving a trail of peace behind it . . . Why do I feel so morally inferior for not putting on an old torn T-shirt with a simplistic slogan on it, rugged, old Wild West-style red bandana and raggedy pants and sneakers and joining that holier-than-everyone crew to tell all us simple-minded clods that war isn’t simply fun and games? Why don’t I quit the money- grubbing grind and walk for some glorious goal along with a pack of like-minded happy-go- lucky foragers dedicated to eradicating some pernicious evil in the world while scavenging the wherewithal to maintain that untrammeled, ulcerless style. Peace. Man. Ain’t it the life?”182 This was clearly a harsh rebuke of the March community as a whole, as it condemned and belittled the participants to a marginal and peripheral societal status.

Another piece exemplifies a more positive frame of coverage for endurance activism.

One favorable and beautifully written, if somewhat romantic feature in the Washington Post

Magazine declared that the March walkers “march for many different reasons, personal and political. But it is the sheer achievement of walking across a continent, of touching base, quite literally, with the nation’s geography as well as its people, that has given them the will to keep going.”183 Reporter Kathleen Hendrix similarly highlighted how marchers expressed the adventure of walking as one of the main reasons for their participation on the March. But, their

182 G.P. Lucchetti, “Ain’t It the Life?” Chicago Tribune, August 30, 1986, 10. 183 Mike Sager, “Marching to Save the World,” Washington Post Magazine, November 9, 1986, 22. 245

backgrounds also further implied their middle-class status. Jerome Eisner, a retired manager of an insurance company, did not view the march so much as a sacrifice as an adventure and perhaps a necessary action.184 In addition, Connie Fledderjohann presumed that many on the march were like her, “unsure of what to do next” and were going on the march for some

“breathing room” to figure out future plans.185 A “lifelong walker,” she admitted that walking across the United States weighed heavily in her decision to join. Jennifer Looney was between jobs and offered the same reason. She learned of the March during a time of transition, and claimed “it just would not leave me, the idea of walking across America for disarmament.”186

These views further illuminate the ways marchers communicated the centrality of long-distance walking and endurance activism as a motivating component of their participation.

Hendrix further discussed marchers’ physical efforts in lieu of their political messages.

Several claimed they prepared with training and practice walks. For example, the Leiths walked five miles per day for practice, while Fledderjohann prepared for the march as a full challenge for the body and mind by “working out daily, riding an exercycle 20 miles a day, walking eight miles or swimming laps.”187 She anticipated “severe” psychological and emotional stresses in addition to the demands of “weather, climate, and terrain.”188 For some, the march incentivized physical activity when they were previously inactive. Eisner, the 68-year-old retiree, stated he started training for the march months in advance, walking up to ten miles a day and dropping 20 pounds.189 Patti Dornan, who identified as a housewife and homemaker, trained by walking or

184 Hendrix, “Forming Up,” G1. 185 Ibid. 186 Doug Smith, “2,000 Plan to Walk to Washington: Peace March’s Tent City Rises in Reseda,” Los Angeles Times, February 4, 1986, V6. 187 Hendrix, “Forming Up,” G1-G6. 188 Ibid. 189 Ibid. 246

running eight miles per day, while Dell Herndon, a 67-year-old veteran of World War II, walked

15 to 20 miles once a week to prepare for the march and reported “improved conditioning.”190

In addition, the press adopted a frame that life on the March and the logistics of its mobile “Peace City” themselves were newsworthy. These comments received more space than a discussion of the March’s politics, which were usually slighted altogether or left to a one- sentence reference that the Great Peace March was marching to eliminate nuclear weapons. For example, Doug Smith with the LA Times noted Peace City’s “self-indulgent touches,” such as a

“pretty upscale” campground with “traveling showers and a kitchen.”191 Of course, the traveling showers were not part of the eventual march, but the resulting portrait of the marchers trivializes their sacrifice. In spite of marchers’ espoused beliefs that the March could make a difference

(either politically or on the national consciousness), the press was quick to identify the March’s glaring struggles. Bob Pool with the LA Times noted the march was “worrying more about storm clouds than war clouds,” in February, as they grappled with poor weather and the elements.192

The article describes mundane and banal issues such as marchers dealing with leaky tents and muddy grounds. Marchers are depicted as standing around in the cold, rain, and mud, setting up and tearing down tents, and using porta-potties. It was a vision that focused on the day-to-day logistics of the March rather than its political objectives, which in and of itself, accords with a view of the physical labor and tasks required of endurance activism. But the article does not validate or link endurance activism to any larger purpose for prefiguration or solidarity. The portrayal of marchers is largely passive rather than active.

190 Steven R. Churm, “At One Time, Being a Patriot to Dell Herndon was Going to War. Now It’s Marching for Peace,” Los Angeles Times, July 24, 1986, SE_A2. 191 Smith, “2,000 Plan to Walk,” V6. 192 Bob Pool, “Peace Marchers Bear Up in Mud,” Los Angeles Times, February 15, 1986, V_A6. 247

A brief in the New York Times subtly delegitimized the March’s efforts by putting the organization’s name in quotes (“great peace march”) implying “so-called.” Similar tactics are not usually applied when journalists quote government authorities or other officials (e.g., the

Department of Energy, not “Department of Energy”). Further, the report remarked that marchers held a “pep rally” and discussed ways to raise funds “for an extra water truck and other supplies they needed for the march to abolish nuclear weapons.”193 Pep rallies are usually associated with high school students, which creates an immature image for the March. Further, the explicit linking of a water truck and other miscellaneous supplies with abolishing nuclear weapons reads as incongruous and laughable. Moreover, news about the March’s financial difficulties associated March insolvency with disrepute. A subsequent New York Times piece painted a dire and pathetic picture of the Great Peace March as “out of money and resources,” with hundreds of marchers left “stranded” in the Mojave Desert.194

Circularly, a consistent theme the press used to frame the March was the marchers’ important failure to attract media attention and wide public interest to their cause. The press reported the March’s disappointing public reception in Chicago. “As far as the general public was concerned, there were times when it seemed Chicago couldn’t have cared less,” the LA

Times observed.195 Big expectations for the city were described as not being met. The March appeared unimpressive and uninspiring, generating neither cheers nor jeers, but mostly silence, passivity, and inattention. The March’s largest event for the four days in Chicago, tabbed

“Survival Sunday,” drew “hundreds, not thousands” to Lincoln Park.196 The most significant story generated by the March’s time in Chicago narrowed the march to a family dispute between

193 UPI, “Leaders of Peace March Seek Funds for Supplies,” New York Times, March 14, 1986, A10. 194 “Peace March Organization Disbands Hastily,” New York Times, March 15, 1986, 8. 195 Hendrix, “Limited Public Reaction,” G1 196 Ibid. 248

a “hippie father” on the march and his conservative son leading a Young College Republicans counter-demonstration.197 The father dons a “Sixties Survivor” t-shirt and red bandana, while his son, who calls the marchers “peaceniks,” dressed in suit and tie and is part of a “coalition for peace through strength and a realistic foreign policy.”198 The story reads as a playful nod to the role-reversal of the prior generation represented by the conservative parents and antiwar youth, as “confrontations were limited to words” and both sides “agreed to disagree.”199

In the Chicago suburbs, the Tribune reported similar levels of public inattention, but with greater hostility towards the marchers and the movement. The article describes only “a few curious residents, motorists and road workers” observing the March through Lisle, Illinois.

Reinforcing a preferred March media department strategy, “Mayor” Diane Clark claims the march is patriotic, and not protesting “like in the ‘60s.” Opponents are cited that view the marchers as a “bunch of wimps” who do not appreciate the military. Another observer trivialized the movement stating, “anybody in their right mind would be against nuclear holocaust. I think disarmament is a good idea, but it’s not feasible.”200

In New York City, the press reiterated the pattern of large cities tending to ignore the march as most of the “7 million” people here “never saw them.” “At no point during their visit here did people line the streets to see them. There was no ticker tape from Wall Street” noted the

Los Angeles Times.201 The New York Times relayed a narrative of “each marcher” turning to

“indelible, private images” as they arrived in New York City, eight months “since their dreams of awakening Americans to the possibility of a world blowing up seemed dashed in the dust.”202

197 Katherine Seigenthaler, “Peace March Knotting up Family Ties: Hippie Dad Faces Off with Conservative Son,” Chicago Tribune, August 18, 1986, A1. 198 Ibid. 199 Ibid. 200 Robert Blau, “In Lisle, Demonstrators Quest in Peace,” Chicago Tribune, August 13, 1986, A2. 201 Kathleen Hendrix, “Peace Marchers on the Sidewalks of N.Y.,” Los Angeles Times, October 29, 196, I1. 202 Hevesi, “Sea to Shining Sea” A16. 249

Until the end, one journalist thought the March maintained its image as “a band of shepherds looking for a flock,” having gone “unnoticed in the Big Apple” and attracting perhaps 15,000 supporters in D.C.203 At the March’ conclusion, the Los Angeles Times described the march overall as “broke every step of the way, in the nation’s peripheral vision at best, forgotten by all but a few of Hollywood’s stars . . . disorganized and undisciplined.”204 This oppositional frame to the oppositional movement painted the marchers as having become obsessed with the processes of the march so much that they lost sight of the global goal. The paper assessed the march did not come close to creating a climate “sufficient to end the arms race.”205

Conclusion

The preceding media analysis demonstrated coverage of the March according to three major frames: marginalization (showing a movement as unrepresentative), assimilation (middle- class, moderate containment) and trivialization (making light of the movement). Overall, a dominant construction of the March as politically ineffectual and irrelevant emerged alongside portrayals of marchers as oddities. A frame depicting marchers as respectable middle-class citizens sometimes countered the disparagement of the March’s “lost souls.” By association, however, centering middle-class marchers further denigrated and muted those pursuing prefigurative community on the March. Finally, by emphasizing the walk as an adventure, the logistics of life on the march, and employing stereotypes, the press largely neglected the political edges of endurance activism and ignored the March’s message for nuclear disarmament.

The March hoped the public would empathize with their message and identify with marchers presented as “ordinary” people who had quit or taken a leave from their jobs, uprooted

203 Hendrix, “Peace March Ends,” F1: Hendrix, “Loeb Learns There’s Hope in Hard Times,” Los Angeles Times, December 19, 1986, K1. 204 Hendrix, “Unlikely Saga,” I1. 205 Ibid. 250

their families, sold or rented their homes, or emptied their savings accounts. Press accounts adopted framing devices that emphasized certain themes and scanted others. Deprecatory themes emerged and reverberated that made light of marchers’ appearance, dress, language, and style, as journalists barely engaged with the March’s goal of nuclear disarmament. They disparaged the

March’s lack of participants, at times, and the movement’s lack of impact, throughout.

Additional themes emphasized the March’s internal dissension, constructed the march as unrepresentative of mainstream political sensibilities, and vocalized views of opponents. The

March’s strategy to present a “middle-class ordinary” march emerged as one of the frames, but it was both difficult to sustain and ineffective as media frames highlighted the March's “fringe” as much as it did its “familiar.”

This analysis clarifies aspects of endurance activism as an approach for media coverage.

The March’s strength as a prefigurative community that built solidarity and conveyed a message for the value of ongoing struggle fell well outside of the dominant frames. In comparison with earlier marchers, such as Coxey’s Army and the Suffragette Hikes, the tactic of a long-distance, continental walk was not seen as terribly novel or spectacular, but more as bemusing and curious. Further, the March’s willingness to present itself as a mainstream movement made it susceptible to judgment in the press according to mainstream social standards and cultural values. The March’s inability to inspire a mass, nationwide movement and pose a credible strategic threat to the Reagan administration’s stance on nuclear weapons informed hegemonic frames that occasionally presented the marchers’ efforts as respectable for affirming traditional, patriotic values such as the right to assemble and freedom of speech, but they also denigrated the soundness of their operation and their ideologies on nuclear weapons.

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CONCLUSION

For many marchers, using their bodies and toil provided a visceral connection to their stated interest in abating others’ supposed apathy and indifference. Marching for nuclear disarmament was an attempt to transform a complex issue – a distant, complicated, and abstract threat – into something concrete and urgent that could be communicated simply and straightforwardly. Marcher Karen Jeffers Tracy explained that, in her estimation, walking informed the Great Peace March’s approach by bringing marchers down to a “natural human scale” and “speed” that made them accessible to the media and the public.1 Karen interpreted walking as an effective and suitable strategy because it communicated that the public’s apparent acceptance of the nuclear arms race between the United States and Soviet Union was dangerous.

She claimed that walking “shows in a visual, physical, very real way that ‘this is a crisis! I am not going about my life as usual. I am not walking for the fun of it. I am not on a vacation. I have left my normal life, and am doing something out of the ordinary, something unusual, because this unusual situation demands that we not go about business as usual but take action to address an emergency situation.’”2

Karen’s comments provide an appropriate segue for reviewing what I have argued throughout this dissertation. She indirectly provides a concise overview of the operation of multiple signifiers and functions of long-distance walking in relation to political activism. First, her choice of words that she was not on vacation or walking for fun illustrates the belief that physical activity is quite literally directed toward the purpose of achieving a political objective.

In addition to the embodiment of a movement or campaign’s strategic goal, Karen’s reflection on collective long-distance walking as an effective visual tool, as something “unusual” and “out of

1 Personal communication with author, September 16, 2016. 2 Personal communication with author, October 28, 2016. 252

the ordinary,” supports my claim that endurance activism is also an appeal for media coverage to spread awareness of a political statement. Finally, Karen’s notion that walking manifests in the perceived demand to not go about “business as usual” highlights meanings of endurance activism as going about “business” of another sort: the significant commitment to work and taking action for the desires of the cause. Overall, she implied they were making certain kinds of messages with their bodies by undertaking a long-distance walk; messages about the nation in a state of crisis that she and other marchers assessed did not transfer to the widest possible audience by exclusively working through petitions, ballot initiatives, electoral politics, and public education.3

Endurance activism offered an alternative and invigorating route into social movement participation.

While the literature on long-distance walks for change explores themes of organization, social relationships, and ideological commitments, scholars have not concentrated as much on how marchers physically experienced the relationship between long-distance walking and their cause, or the ways physical and endurance acts are both constituted by and constitutive of marches’ social differences, cultural dynamics, and their internal and external politics. This dissertation has instead examined how walking, marching, endurance, image, and marchers’ expressions of physicality were intimately tied up, literally and symbolically, in debates about marcher identities, organization, strategy, and the purposes of the Great Peace March. The physical, mental, and emotional challenges that marchers endured situate the Great Peace March as an instructive case study and instance of endurance activism.

3 Jerry Rubin, interview with author, July 6, 2016; Roger Solberg, interview with author, June 30, 2016; Lala Palazzolo, interview with author, August 31, 2016; Donna Williams, interview with author, July 2, 2016; Sandy Perpignani, interview with author, July 1, 2016; Kim Hunter, interview with author, October 5, 2016; Ric Driver, interview with author, October 24, 2016. 253

I also examined the ways understandings of endurance and long-distance walking, as elaborated in the first chapter, influenced and were applied to the non-sport context of antinuclear activism. Coxey’s Army and the Suffragette hikers established historical precedence for the staging of long-distance walks to Washington D.C. that petition the government against a set of grievances. Walking from town to town, and city to city, marchers endured a wide range of natural elements and encountered as wide a range of hostile and supportive reactions. They also demonstrated that long-distance marches were carefully organized and crafted for press coverage to raise awareness, mobilize support, gain momentum, and build anticipation as they ambled towards their destination. Though officials in the capital refused to acquiesce to the demands of endurance activists, their reticence did not suppress the increasing popularity of shorter, single- day marches and parades on Washington.

Further, the extended period of time activists spend walking, working, and living together precipitates or facilitates aspects of prefigurative politics as walkers become part of “a network of relationships more direct, more total and more personal than the formal, abstract and instrumental relationships characterizing state and society.”4 While variously attempting to achieve larger structural changes related to employment opportunities, nuclear disarmament, racism, and economic inequality, the history of long-distance walks for change presented in the first chapter illustrated that participants valued communal connectedness, meaningful personal relationships, and direct participation and control over their walks on the basis of the needs of the individual and community.5 Equally important to note, however, is that such idealized commitments to egalitarianism often remained just that that: idealized. As the walks in this chapter demonstrated, endurance activists did not simply escape dominant social and cultural

4 Breines, Community and Organization, 6-7. 5 Ibid. 254

values on long-distance walks. Hierarchies, exclusions and societal inequalities are often replicated in the long-distance walk community’s practices, processes, organizational forms, and personal relationships.

The second chapter demonstrated how the Great Peace March was initially envisioned as a commercially sponsored, corporatized affair with celebrity appearances, and was designed to muster that influence in order to pressure the government to act on the issue of nuclear weapons.

Once the March’s sponsor folded, furthermore, most of those who remained quickly disavowed the organization’s top-down, corporate structure and Hollywood flair. They continued the walk as an exercise in traditional forms of citizenship and as an experiment with participatory democracy. Moreover, as elaborated in the third chapter, marchers viewed grassroots participation as essential and aimed to further critiques of military spending as an economic and social injustice deepening poverty, hunger, and homelessness in the US heartland, rust belt, and inner cities. Occurring in the era of “running for a cause” in the 1970s and 1980s, I have argued that the Great Peace March’s strategy of endurance activism, while initially inflected with corporate privatization and individualism, was not entirely co-opted for the privatization of giving and the sanitization of protest. Endurance activism is not confrontational, however, like direct action or nonviolent resistance, or an effort to undermine the authority of established institutions. It is an extension of the traditional march on Washington that combines a strategic goal to influence established institutions with appeals to cultural and ideological forms of change.

This dissertation developed endurance activism as an apt lens for examining the Great

Peace March. The third chapter showed that endurance activism entailed a consideration of the physical, mediated, and political formations that were key to the March’s strategy. The

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organization viewed endurance walking as central to communicating its political statements and objectives regarding nuclear weapons. The literal act of walking across the United States was linked with the seriousness of their commitment, and designed as a spectacular endurance feat, symbol and metaphor for the ongoing dedication they hoped to inspire in order to create a world free from nuclear weapons.

Further, the way in which marchers walked, using different methods they called City

Mode and Country Mode were linked to specific political objectives and the desire for media coverage. Marchers labeled the dedication to walking on a continuum ranging from “Spirit

Walkers” and “marchos” who held an absolutist position to walk every step, to “march potatoes” and “turnups” who rarely walked at all. These labels were articulated to debates about March identities, strategies, and fueled inner conflicts and divisions. Overall, the March’s long-distance walk was key for communicating marchers’ encounters with communities supporting disarmament throughout the nation, which they sought to represent upon arrival in Washington,

D.C. The March attempted to literally and symbolically represent a unified national public – one they tried to bring into existence – in support of their cause.

The collective Great Peace March effort was an assertion that the notion of the public as a community of interpersonal, social, and local relations matters. It was a statement for the endurance of collective action. Moreover, they demanded that public views including dissent and opposition be included in democratic decision-making processes reflected by representative state and national bodies. The march was premised on the belief that marchers would interact with tens of thousands of people, reach millions through the media, and represent the will of the public duly constituted. In actual practice, walking across the country as a large, mobile

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encampment lent itself to the prefigurative model of attempting to build an inclusive, egalitarian, participatory community within the shell of existing social structures and power relations.

The marchers struggled to create egalitarian relationships and sustain a participatory political community.

The challenging dynamic between “fighting the system” or “being the change we want to see in the world” was not a new phenomenon taking place in the Great Peace March. Marianne

Maeckelbergh suggests, however, that prefiguration itself may be understood as strategic when movement goals are “multiple and not predetermined,” to which we might add, when goals are fluid and contested.6 Rooted in practice, prefiguration becomes strategic because the “trying out

[of] new political structures” requires “movement actors [to learn] how to govern the world in a manner that fundamentally redesigns the way power operates” in matters ranging from daily life to global politics.7 Countering Maeckelbergh, writers, activists, and brothers Mark and Paul

Engler contend that prefigurative politics are distinguished from “strategic politics” in significant ways, as the latter attempts to achieve power to create change in the social, economic, and political order. Strategic politics and mass mobilization – which the March’s sponsor certainly intended to be – share this orientation, seeking to directly change dominant institutions that affect peoples’ lives. Those with prefigurative leanings envision their modeling of open communities and mutual support as a contribution to social change that anticipates radical and participatory democracy in liberated public spaces, community centers, and alternative institutions.8 While practitioners of strategic or prefigurative politics each may engage in protest

6 Marianne Maeckelbergh, “Doing is Believing: Prefiguration as Strategic Practice in the Alterglobalization Movement,” Social Movement Studies 10.1 (2011): 1. 7 Maecklebergh, “Doing is Believing,” 1. 8 Mark Engler and Paul Engler, This is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-first Century (New York: Nation Books, 2016), 272-273. 257

and civil disobedience, they often do so for different reasons. Those with specific goals seek to sway public opinion, influence a target, or impact media coverage, whereas prefigurative communities may protest to emphasize the values or “expressive qualities” of its participants.9

Putting conceptual debates about movement models aside for the moment, the Great

Peace March was indeed a collectivity negotiating the clashes among those seeking to 1) transform existing societal structures, 2) to work within frameworks of the nation-state, or 3), instead, model social and political relationships that could serve as the basis for new forms of society. One could reasonably argue the Great Peace March attempted to work for change through all three of these routes. How successfully each was incorporated harmoniously in service of a unified goal, or how much these differing aims competed with one another and created conflicts, however, is up for debate. A collective long-distance walk across the United

States was not a perfect strategy to advocate for nuclear disarmament. But it offered an alternative mechanism for keeping the disarmament movement alive during a difficult period.

Further, it gave participants an opportunity to embody and express their belief in democratic civic and national politics over and against what some described as the isolation and apathy of

“middle class myopia.”10

Prefiguration impulses in the March coalesced over and against those simultaneously working pragmatically through more traditional avenues and mainstream appeals for concrete, objective and verifiable disarmament. Despite disparate and competing modes of action, the physical nature of work and activity on the March is a lens through which to understand the

9 Engler and Engler, This is an Uprising, 274. 10 Sue Ann Pressley, “Peace Marchers Near Goal – and Crossroads: Group, in Md., Excited and Sad,” Washington Post, November 14, 1986, A1; Guist, Peace Like a River, 11, 19, 189-195; numerous comments by marchers in the documentary Just One Step, produced by marcher Cathy Zheutlin. “Just One Step: The Great Peace March,” YouTube video, posted by Cathy Zheutlin, July 5, 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bMkRvf1oyk. 258

proliferation of political identities, strategies, and tactics adopted by marchers while grappling with the challenges facing their movement and progressive movements in the mid-1980s more generally. Social movement historian L.A. Kauffman aptly summarized these obstacles, such as how to win meaningful victories; sustain communities of resistance; build movements that do not replicate dominant racial and gender power dynamics; create alliances that “respect the voice and autonomy of all partners”; and “inspire vision, hope, and action in hard times.”11

The Great Peace March can be aptly situated in Kauffman’s survey of post-1960s

American left radicalism, as a group whose goals shifted partially from trying to “take down the

Bomb” to a greater focus on first taking down and remaking its own structures. In doing so, they were one of the many “new movements [that] rejected hierarchical organizational structures, traditional leadership models, and rigid ideologies, [as] they sought forms of activism and political engagement that could preserve rather than subsume difference and multiplicity.”12

Reflective of some of the tensions on the march, in fact, it was “women, especially queer women, [that] played crucial roles in this process of political reinvention, infusing this new radicalism with feminist practices and values through the very process of movement-building.”13

In fact, the social and political climate was inhospitable for radical activism during the mid-1980s, and throughout a period of political retrenchment that arguably began after 1973 with the end of the Vietnam War. But this climate did not prevent the continuing proliferation of movements, causes, and political identities of many forms, like those for racial justice, LGBTQ rights, environmental justice and deep ecology, alongside strains of anarchism, socialism, and

11 Kauffman, Direct Action, x. 12 Ibid., xii. 13 Ibid. 259

labor-based radicalism. While some have had enormous impacts and helped to save lives, others have “only added a modicum of political friction as policies they opposed moved forward.”14

It is in this realization that the category of “endurance” informs the capacity to “keep a community of protest alive” amid defeat, marginalization, flawed campaigns, long odds, disappointment, and indifference.15 Sometimes, endurance just means having the will to register, on a single occasion, that another worldview exists in opposition to entrenched structures of power. But it can also enable activists to find forms of participation that allow them to carry on organizing and fighting for change. In the words of organizer Carol Anne Douglas, resistance during an age of reaction is incredibly wearing, as revolution is not “just around the corner. . .

The struggle is going to take all of our lives, not just a few, exciting, hectic years.”16 The Great

Peace March offers a site from which to examine and analyze notions of endurance activism, where those hunkering down for the long haul took to long-distance walking to try spark local pockets of action in service of wider, visionary, transformative change.

14 Ibid. 15 Ibid., 94. 16 As quoted in Kauffman, Direct Action, 39. 260

APPENDIX A GREAT PEACE MARCH FOR GLOBAL NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT ORGANIZATIONAL TIMELINE

Following the collapse of PRO-Peace, a few hundred marchers reorganized as the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament, Inc. PRO-Peace had left a vacuum in leadership and organization, however, that former PRO-Peace staff and remaining marchers debated how to replace. Disagreements led to intense divisions, infighting, and instability over the imposition of new structures and policies. Below is a selected timeline of key formations and disputes that illustrate the fluidity and fluctuations of the Great Peace March’s self-governance, organization, and structure. Some dates are approximations. 1986 March 1: 1,200 marchers with the PRO-Peace version of the Great Peace March leave Los Angeles. March 11: PRO-Peace internally decides to cancel the march and recapture its assets. Plans are set in motion to repossess vital equipment and gear. March 11-14: Marchers hold elections to fill an eight-member, central governing body called the “Policy Board” to deal with PRO-Peace’s imminent collapse. Two representatives are elected from each of the four “towns” in “Peace City.” (PRO-Peace originally arranged marchers into “towns” identifiable by either red, yellow, orange, or blue tents.) March 14: David Mixner visits the march at Stoddard Wells Road 108 miles out of Los Angeles to announce that PRO-Peace is bankrupt. A few hundred marchers refuse to leave and start to reorganize the march. March 19: In Los Angeles, a self-appointed, three-member “Board of Directors” (BOD) consisting of former PRO-Peace employees officially incorporate “The Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament” as a nonprofit educational organization. March 23: 30 marchers participate in civil disobedience at the Nevada Test Site. The BOD refuses to endorse civil disobedience actions throughout the march. March 27: In a nearly unanimous vote, Peace City elects to replace the Policy Board with an eight-member “City Council” (CC). The Council eschews majority rule in favor of consensus decision making. Facilitators are assigned to preside over CC meetings. March 28: The march leaves Barstow, California under its own auspices. The organization’s governance at this point consists of the Board of Directors (a formal legal entity), and the City Council (whose authority is derived from the marchers). The relationship between the BOD and CC is vague and unclear. The march also institutes an Operations Council consisting of City Managers and representatives from Great Peace March Departments. A sizable portion of marchers vocalize opposition to the centralized authority of the BOD, CC, sand Operations Council.

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March 30 – April 19: In an attempt to regulate participation in the Great Peace March and streamline the process for accepting new marchers, the BOD and CC ask marchers to sign a contract stating they will abide by certain rules and regulations, including the prohibition of alcohol and drugs. Many marchers refuse to sign. Disagreement over the issue persists for weeks before the BOD relents. The rebellion demonstrates the BOD and CC could not enforce their decisions. Bitterness on both sides of the contract dispute persists throughout the march as to what constitutes marcher status. April 4 – April 7: Marchers demand current BOD members be supplanted by a march-elected Board. The three BOD members refuse resignation but agree to a compromise. They will be joined by four Board members elected by the marchers. The new seven-member BOD sets general March policy, but agrees to leave internal March matters and daily decisions to the CC. April 30: A selected group of 50 marchers separates from the main Great Peace March body on the Utah Spirit Walk. The remaining marchers follow the Utah Highway Patrol’s mandate to take busses from Cove Fort to Salt Lake City. May 1: The BOD crafts a Statement of Purpose, refers to the CC for input, and circulates the Statement among marchers. Marchers express frustration that BOD created the Statement without march collaboration, but there is minimal opposition to its content. May 15: Half of the Utah Spirt Walkers abrogate a prior agreement with the BOD and CC to take busses and meet up with the rest of the Great Peace March in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. Their ongoing Spirit Walk fuels controversy in the March community over unity and purpose. June 4: The Great Peace March addresses the City Mode/Country Mode walking debate during an All City meeting, resulting in a compromise to use both methods. June 16: Following a consistent lack of marcher support, the Great Peace March holds elections for seven new members to replace the current BOD. 60 marchers register their candidacy. The newly elected BOD members are split philosophically and ideologically between preferences for centralized authority and decentralization of the March governance structures. June 20-24: Several elders in the “Over 50” contingent propose a “dress code.” Dozens of male marchers effectively squelch the proposal by wearing dresses in a fashion show during a pot-luck dinner. July 6: Many marchers participate in a civil disobedience action without BOD sanction at the headquarters of the Strategic Air Command at Offutt Air Force Base, near Omaha, Nebraska. October 29: Two BOD members that had sought to change the centralized, hierarchical structure of the Board resign two weeks prior to the conclusion of the March. November 15: The Great Peace March swells to 1,800 marchers on its last day, and concludes in Washington, D.C. The BOD dissolves the corporation. After payment of all debts and liabilities, and fulfillment of all obligations, the March transfers remaining assets to the Peace Development Fund.

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APPENDIX B GREAT PEACE MARCH FOR GLOBAL NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT DEPARTMENTS

Marchers volunteered in over two dozen departments which ensured that “Peace City” continued its day-to-day progress across the country. Below, arranged alphabetically, is a list and brief description of the major departments and task forces.17 Campscape: Cleaned campsites and filled in ruts left by the march. Set up, tore down and repaired Peace City’s three large tents knowns as the Great Peace March “Town Halls.” Childcare and Schooling: Provided child care and educational programming for the children and youth on the Great Peace March. Children were divided into groups for toddlers, kindergarten through 4th grade, and middle schoolers. High schoolers often helped with the young ones or worked in other March departments. Installed tables and bookshelves into busses and used them as schools. Secured donations of books and materials. Took children on field trips. CIA: The Great Peace March’s Community Interaction Agency conducted outreach in towns and cities along the march route. Received and shared information with peace activists, civic organizations, and religious organizations in communities the March visited. Co-directors split duties of arranging activities and hosting events within and external to Peace City. City Managers: Three City Managers coordinated the work of several departments. Met weekly with all Department heads as an Operations Council to exchange information, brainstorm, and address needs and challenges. City Managers held weekly All City meetings, and in rotation, attended meetings held by individual departments, the Great Peace March’s City Council and Board of Directors. Received budget proposals from departments and made recommendations to City Council and Finance for approval. Comm I: The “stationary “communication center for the march, housed variously in a motor home, van, and bus. Comm I was the final vehicle to leave each campsite. Operated via two-way radio, CB, and ham radio equipment. Used occasionally to contact marchers’ family and friends, but primarily for communication with drivers in Great Peace March vehicles and local authorities. Comm II: Communication center that accompanied the walking march. Equipped with CB and two-way radios. Maintained contact with Day March and local authorities. Carried emergency medical supplies, ice, and water. Scouted hazards and helped improvise changes to route as necessary. Day March: Conducted the daily march walk from one site to the next. Day March Coordinators, known as DEMACS, previewed the march route one day in advance to verify mapmaker’s information, identify potential problems, and schedule rest stops.

17 See Gerda Lawrence’s chapter “Nuts and Bolts: How We Did It,” in Franklin Folsom and Connie Fledderjohann, The Great Peace March: An American Odyssey (Santa Fe, NM: Ocean Tree Books, 1988), 65-104, for a fuller description of Great Peace March department activities and functions. 263

Communicated with local or state police regarding the Great Peace March’s route. Monitors walked with the march and communicated with DEMACS and Comm II regarding needs or emergencies. Dishwashing: Crews washed, rinsed, and disinfected hundreds of dishes. Stored large cooking and baking equipment. Packed and unpacked kitchen equipment at each site. Dry Foods: Staffed and managed a trailer that housed the Great Peace March’s rice, beans, flour, salt and other staples. Coordinated goods with Food Buying and Kitchen and Food Prep. Finance: Converted school bus served as headquarters for Great Peace March finances. The March worked almost entirely on a cash basis, sometimes carrying between $10,000 to $15,000. Allotted weekly budgets to departments. Managed Great Peace March bank accounts in Los Angeles and other local banks along the route. Staff included a Day Accountant and Duty Finance Officer responsible for cash counts, maintaining records, and reconciling receipts. Food Buying: Obtained food from suppliers, and coordinated donations with food banks, churches, and other wholesale distributors. InfoCenter/InfoComm: Distributed information about the Great Peace March. Published the Peace City News daily, as well as the daily route, site maps, other march publications. Posted bulletin board material regarding local facilities, as well as fliers, topical issues, and events. Staffed table to answer questions and provide information. Kitchen and Food Prep: Obtained permits to satisfy health regulations. Large-scale food preparation with different crews for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Cooks and volunteers worked nearly around the clock in shifts to feed between 300 and 1,000 people three meals every day. Packed and stored food, conducted inventory, and transported food and supplies between sites. Maintenance: Mechanics responsible for repairs and daily upkeep of dozens of Great Peace March vehicles, trailers, and heavy equipment. Mayor’s Office: Marcher Diane Clark served as the Great Peace March Mayor to aid in community relations. The office organized interactive events and official welcomes with city offices in hundreds of communities. Held “Keys-and-Trees” ceremonies and exchanges. Made more than 200 plaques and 500 keys for these events. Staff arranged bookings, meetings, handled paperwork. Media: Coordinated requests from television, radio, and newspaper personnel. Produced daily and weekly reports which were read as “press releases” over the phone to local media outlets, as well as national wire services and other sources of publicity. Arranged advance interviews along the route and made press kits for reporters. Medical: Registered nurses on the march provided nursing, screening, and first aid. Two march physicians occasionally tended to minor problems. Staff coordinated more serious needs with local physicians along the route, with assistance from Physicians for Social Responsibility.

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Merchandising: Sold Great Peace March t-shirts, posters, pins, buttons and bumper stickers. Set up tables near front gate of Peace City and at rallies and public events. Moving the City: Coordinated Peace City move from one site to the next with Transportation and Maintenance. Organized tractors and trailers. Identified vehicles that needed service, required registration or permits, and transportation laws that varied by state. A Receiver directed the setup of vehicles and trailers at each new site. Peace Academy: Education department accumulated literature to prepare marches for outreach and speaking engagements. Equipped a bus with a television, VCR, and generator to screen videos. Acquired 4,000 books and articles. Provided training, workshops, and education on nuclear issues and public speaking. Coordinated large quantities of external requests for speakers and arranged transportation to events. Post Office: Managed system for collecting and delivering mail. Collected mail from local post offices, transported to camp, sorted and arranged for pick up by marchers. Sanitation: Oversaw waste disposal and cleaned porta-potties. Coordinated with municipal authorities for use of waste disposal plants. Security: Dealt with thefts, hecklers, and potential threats to the campsite. Provided security for Peace City at each site in evening and overnight shifts. Consisted of Rovers who monitored the camp, Gate Security who greeted visitors and coordinated with Transportation, and a Security Day Officer that supervised the department and responded to emergency situations. Sites, Routes and Permits: Advance team worked ahead of the march to secure campsites with property owners, city, and county officials. Determined the roads and routes for the march. Created and distributed daily maps for marchers and drivers’ reference. Campsites needed to be able to accommodate the Great Peace March’s 200 small tents, three large tents, kitchen truck, refrigerator truck, an assortment of trailers, three sets of towed porta-potties, numerous busses, trucks, vans, cars, and motor homes. Transportation: A Sender coordinated driver assignments and schedules. Organized drivers and vehicles and moved Peace City from one site to the next. Coordinated support vehicles for transporting march families, children, food, water, and other materials as needed. Operated vehicles that transported marchers unable to finish a day’s walk to the next site. Arranged transportation of marchers to speaking engagements, doctor appointments, and hospitals. Ran shuttles to shower and laundry facilities where available.

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APPENDIX C INTERVIEW GUIDE

Demographic Information and Previous Walking Experience 1. Hometown 2. Age 3. “Race” and/or ethnicity 4. Gender identification or expression, if any 5. Highest degree received and college major (if applicable) 6. Current or most recent occupation 7. Parent or primary caregiver’s total years of education 8. Parents’ current or most recent occupation 9. Previous long-distance walking experience elsewhere? Where? When? For how long? How old were you at the time? 10. Activist experience elsewhere before the march? What? When? For how long? How old at the time? 11. Activist experiences after the march? What? When? For how long? 12. Have you walked across the country again or participated in other long-distance marches? When? Where? For how long? What motivated you?

General Questions about Great Peace March Experience 1. Previous experience walking or with sports or physical activities in general? 2. When did you begin your walk with the March? a. What did you leave behind at the time to join the March? b. How did significant individuals in your life react (e.g., family, friends, co- workers, etc.) to this decision? 3. Why did you decide to walk the March? a. What have other walkers told you about their decisions to begin walking with the march? Were they similar or different from yours? In what way(s)? b. What did you like most about the walk? What did you like least about the walk? c. What were some things you felt the march did really well? What were some things it struggled with? Tell me about this. PROBE (if needed): regarding fellow marchers, the organization/route, communities you passed through; outreach or other tasks/functions; marcher in the home; safety, physical or emotional challenges 4. Tell me about walking in country mode vs. city mode a. How did it come about? Why? b. In your opinion, what is the significance of walking in these different modes? What did it add or take away from the overall march experience with the March? c. What did you, personally, hope to communicate by walking? Through walking?

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d. What did you hope to communicate as a group by walking? 5. What do you recall about the physical task of walking across the country? a. How did your body feel? b. What were your emotions like? What was the experience like mentally? Spiritually? 6. What were your interactions like with the media? How do you feel you and/or the march were represented? 7. What were your interactions like with opponents of the march? a. How did they oppose the march? b. How did marchers prepare for facing resistance? c. How did you react to any opposition or forces of resistance?

Daily Life on the Great Peace March 1. Describe your average day to me. a. What did you expect or imagine this experience would be like? Were these expectations met? If not, why? PROBE (if needed): regarding fellow marchers, the organization/route, communities you passed through; outreach or other tasks/functions; marcher in the home; safety, physical or emotional challenges b. What jobs, task forces, or departments did you work in while on the march? c. Are there certain characteristics shared by long-distance marchers? If so, please tell me about this. PROBE (if needed): physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, career-wise, financially d. How did various identities influence the march in terms of race, gender, sexuality, class, religion, etc.? e. How would you describe the culture and any subcultures of the march community? 2. Sometimes the March took you through or nearby a local community, rural areas, major metropolitan area, sacrifice zones, or sites of toxicity and waste. Please describe your experiences with any or all of these communities and sites. a. How did this experience make you feel? What have other marchers told you about this? PROBE (if needed): in comparison to “ordinary” life on the march, similarities and differences in the environment, interactions with local versus interactions with fellow marchers 3. Sometimes walkers speak of something called the “spirit walk.” Have you heard of this? If so, please describe what this is exactly. a. How did this come about? Why? What does it say about those who are spirit walkers? Non-spirit walkers? b. In your opinion, what is the significance of the spirit walk? What does it add or take away from the overall march?

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4. What was the interaction like with other marchers? What role did other marchers play in terms of your own experience? 5. Tell me about the decision-making processes and organization on the march. a. What were the logistics like? b. How were decisions made? What impact did that have on the march overall? c. What was your involvement in these processes? Did it change over time? d. How did you fund your participation? 6. What would you estimate were the percentage of marchers who had to leave because of financial strain? What are other reasons people left the march if they had hoped to travel the entire distance?

Memorable Experiences 1. Thinking back over the time you have spent walking across the country with the March, what would you say has been your most memorable experience involving your surroundings or natural environment? With other marchers? With non-marchers? Why this experience? 2. Thinking back over the time you have spent walking across the country with the March, what would you say has been the highest point for you? What did you learn from this experience? a. What has been your most challenging experience? What did you take away from this experience? b. What have you learned about yourself since you began walking with the March? 3. Is there anything I did not ask that you feel is important in terms of understanding the Great Peace March experience, or your personal experience walking across the country with the March?

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APPENDIX D INFORMATION LETTER

We invite you to participate in a research study being conducted by investigators from The University of Iowa. The purpose of the study is to learn more about the relationship between the body, walking, activism and social movements. When finished, we hope to have more information about how individuals and groups who walked across the United States for a social and/or political cause understand (or understood) the role of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual endurance, and their bodies, in their activist work. We hope to better understand the effects of transcontinental walks for the marchers, culture and society, and the efficacy of transcontinental marches for a desired social, political and/or cultural change. If you agree to participate, we would like you to participate in one or two interviews. The interviews will last between 90-120 minutes. The first interview will take place at a time convenient for you, after your agreement to participate. The second interview will take place in September-October 2016. In the first interview, a series of semi-structured and open-ended questions will be asked. The questions will mostly be about your overall understanding of walking, activism and social movements. In addition, you will be asked about your general experiences and involvement with activism, physical activity, and/or sports. The second interview will mostly be about your experience walking across the United States with Great Peace March and you will be given an opportunity to review our interpretations of the meanings of your stories. The interview site and time will be your decision. You will have an option in how our conversations take place, whether in-person, through a computer video chat, or over the telephone. If you choose a computer video chat or telephone interview, the interviewer will contact you from a private place, i.e.: when no one else is present in the room. In-person interviews will be conducted at a location of your choosing. You are always free to skip any question that you would prefer not to answer. If you choose a computer video chat interview, you will need to register for a free account with Google or Skype, if you do not already have one. Google Hangout is a communication tool that lets users interact on smartphones, tablets, or computers via text or video. Users can only use the tool with other Google Hangout accounts, however, and you may not wish to provide Google with information about where you are logging in from, whom you’re chatting with, or what you are talking about. Please read Google’s Terms of Service for more information before deciding to register for and/or use a Google account for this study. Skype similarly operates through the above-mentioned electronic devices and also presents potential privacy issues. For example, Skype may retain information from calls to comply with applicable legislation and court-ordered regulatory requests. Please also see Skype’s Terms of Service for more information before deciding to register for and/or use a Skype account for this study. We will keep the information you provide confidential, however federal regulatory agencies and the University of Iowa Institutional Review Board (a committee that reviews and approves research studies) may inspect and copy records pertaining to this research. If we write a report about this study we will do so in such a way that you cannot be identified.

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Loss of confidentiality is a potential risk of being in this study. You may experience emotional discomfort (sadness, frustration) as a result of sharing personal stories. You may also experience fatigue during the interview process. We do not know if you will benefit personally from being in this study. However, we hope that others may benefit in the future from what we learn as a result of this study. Taking part in this research study is completely voluntary. If you do not wish to participate in this study, you won’t be penalized or lose any benefits for which you otherwise qualify. If you have questions about the rights of research subjects, please contact the Human Subjects Office, 105 Hardin Library for the Health Sciences, 600 Newton Rd, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242-1098, (319) 335-6564, or e-mail [email protected]. Thank you very much for your consideration of this research study.

Dain TePoel PhD Candidate Department of American Studies University of Iowa

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APPENDIX E RECRUITMENT MESSAGE POSTED ON GREAT PEACE MARCH FACEBOOK SITE

Hello Marchers! My name is Dain TePoel and I am conducting a study at the University of Iowa about walking across the United States, activism, and social movements. I am a PhD Candidate in American Studies who is working to better understand the role and meanings of the body and endurance in activist practices, particularly those with environmental and/or ecological concerns. I am seeking participants from the 1986 Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament to help with this study. You do not have to help, as this is your choice. To be eligible for the study, you must have participated with the Great Peace March for at least 30 consecutive days during the march. If you decide that you would like to participate, I will ask you to take part in a series of email, phone, video chat, or in-person interviews. It will take two meetings, and approximately 3-4 hours of your time between now and July 2016. You may be uncomfortable at times. You do not have to answer all the questions I ask, and you may stop an interview at any time. There are no direct benefits from this study for you. I will use the information learned in our interview conversations to learn more about how individuals consider the links between walking, endurance, and activism. You will have an opportunity to review parts of this research that include your responses prior to the conclusion of the research. Compensation is not provided. Risks include the unintentional disclosure of your identity, though appropriate steps will be taken to ensure your identity is not shared. If you would like to participate or discuss your questions or problems with this work, please contact me directly by telephone or e-mail to discuss further. You can reach me at (319) 383-9972 or by e-mail: [email protected]. You may also contact the University of Iowa’s Human Subjects Office that approved this study about any problems or concerns at (319) 335- 6564. Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Dain TePoel PhD Candidate Department of American Studies University of Iowa

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APPENDIX F EMAIL SCRIPT TO RECRUIT PARTICIPANTS

Hello Marchers. My name is Dain TePoel and I am a PhD Candidate in the Department of American Studies at the University of Iowa. I am contacting you regarding a study about walking across the United States, activism, and social movements. I am working to better understand the role and meanings of the body and endurance in activist practices, particularly those with environmental and/or ecological concerns. I am asking you to help with this work because you participated in the 1986 Great Peace March. You do not have to help, as this is your choice. To be eligible for the study, you must have participated with the Great Peace March for at least 30 consecutive days during the march, and be at least 18 years of age. If you eventually decide that you would like to participate, I will ask you to take part in a series of email, phone, video chat, or in-person interviews. It will take two meetings, and approximately 3-4 hours of your time between now and July 2016. You may be uncomfortable. You do not have to answer all the questions I ask and you may stop an interview at any time. There are no direct benefits from this study for you. I will use the information learned in our interview conversations to better understand the links between walking, endurance, and activism. You will have the opportunity to review parts of this research that include your responses prior to the conclusion of the research. Compensation is not provided. Risks include the unintentional disclosure of your identity, though appropriate steps will be taken to ensure your identity is not shared. If you would like to participate, or have any questions about this study, please contact me at (319) 383-9972 or [email protected].

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Dain TePoel PhD Candidate Department of American Studies University of Iowa

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