Introduction
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Notes Introduction 1 “Beyond Anxiety,” editorial, New York Times, June 13, 1982, E22. 2 For the purposes of simplicity, this book refers to the assemblage of actors engaged in various types of activism against nuclear power, nuclear weapons, and other related threats as the “anti-nuclear movement.” Although I detail individual movements within the larger whole, the existence of substantial cross-pollination among movement organizations and coalitions indicates that a more appropriate term is the singular. On the idea of a “movement of movements,” see Van Gosse, “A Movement of Movements: The Definition and Periodization of the New Left,” in A Companion to Post-1945 America, ed. Jean-Christophe Agnew and Roy Rosenzweig (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002), 277–302. 3 On this diversity, see Jo Freeman and Victoria Johnson, eds, Waves of Protest: Social Movements Since the Sixties (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999). See also Simon Hall, American Patriotism, American Protest: Social Movements Since the Sixties (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). 4 See Fred Halliday, The Making of the Second Cold War (London: Verso, 1983). 5 On beginnings, see Lawrence S. Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition: A His- tory of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the Present (Stan- ford: Stanford University Press, 2003), Chapter 1. On the dwindling of the movement, see “Movement Gap,” editorial, Nation, 4 November 1991, 539–40. 6 The phrase “the challenge of peace” recalls the controversial pastoral letter issued in 1983 by the US National Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee on War and Peace. Entitled “The Challenge of Peace: God’s Prom- ise and Our Response,” the letter attempted to define the Catholic Church’s opposition to the nuclear arms race. While this book does not deal explicitly with this variety of religious anti-nuclear sentiment, the premise of the pas- toral letter fits loosely within the book’s overall argument. 7 On the “long 1960s” and the periodization of the sixties more broadly, see Andrew Hunt, “‘When Did the Sixties Happen?’ Searching for New Direc- tions,” Journal of Social History 33, no. 1 (1999). 8 Hendrik Hertzberg, “It’s Time to Start Worrying About the Bomb Again,” WIN, August 1, 1974, 7–9. 9 Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition, 9–10. 10 See Paul Boyer, “From Activism to Apathy: The American People and Nuclear Weapons, 1963–1980,” Journal of American History 70, no. 4 (1984), 844. 11 See Lawrence S. Wittner, One World or None: A History of the World Nuclear Dis- armament Movement through 1953 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 170 Notes 171 1993), Chapter 4. On communist opposition to the arms race in the United States, see 202–09. 12 See Lawrence S. Wittner, Resisting the Bomb: A History of the World Nuclear Dis- armament Movement, 1954–1970 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 51–60. 13 There exists an abundance of scholarship on these issues, but for a thorough treatment of the peace movement during these years, see Charles DeBened- etti and Charles Chatfield, An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990). 14 See Van Gosse, Rethinking the New Left: An Interpretative History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). 15 This “conservative ascendancy” or “right turn” since the 1960s commands a sizeable amount of literature in histories of both politics and social move- ments. See, for example, William C. Berman, America’s Right Turn: From Nixon to Clinton, 2nd ed. (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998); Jean V. Hardisty, Mobilizing Resentment: Conservative Resurgence from the John Birch Society to the Promise Keepers (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999); Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001); and Bruce J. Schulman and Julian E. Zelizer, eds, Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s (Cam- bridge: Harvard University Press, 2008). 16 Key examples include Michael S. Foley, Front Porch Politics: The Forgotten Hey- day of American Activism in the 1970s and 1980s (New York: Hill & Wang, 2013); Hall, American Patriotism; Bradford Martin, The Other Eighties: A Secret History of America in the Age of Reagan (New York: Hill & Wang, 2011); and Robert Surbrug, Beyond Vietnam: The Politics of Protest in Massachusetts, 1974– 1990 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2009). 17 On participatory democracy in social movements, see Francesca Polletta, Free- dom Is an Endless Meeting: Democracy in American Social Movements (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002); and on the historical development of egal- itarianism and protest on the left, see Richard Ellis, The Dark Side of the Left: Illiberal Egalitarianism in America (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998). 18 There is a wealth of scholarship here, but for three excellent studies, see Scott H. Bennett, Radical Pacifism: The War Resisters League and Gandhian Nonviolence in America, 1915–1963 (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2003); Marian Mollin, Radical Pacifism in Modern America: Egalitarianism and Protest (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006); and the clas- sic Charles Chatfield, For Peace and Justice: Pacificism in America, 1914–1941 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1971). 19 On the Catholic Worker and personalism, see Patrick G. Coy, “An Experi- ment in Personalist Politics: The Catholic Worker Movement and Nonviolent Action,” Peace and Change 26, no. 1 (2001); Robert D. Holsworth, Let Your Life Speak: A Study of Politics, Religion, and Antinuclear Weapons Activism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989); and Paul Vincent Stock, “The Original Green Revolution: The Catholic Worker Farms and Environmental Morality” (Ph.D. diss., Colorado State University, 2009). On identity politics and activ- ism, see William Chaloupka, “Immodest Modesty: Antinuclear Discourse, Lifestyle Politics, and Intervention Strategies,” International Studies Quarterly 172 Notes 34, no. 3 (1990); and Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), Chapter 7. 20 As Wini Breines summarizes, “The crux of prefigurative politics imposed sub- stantial tasks, the central one being to create and sustain within the live practice of the movement, relationships and political forms that “prefigured” and embodied the desired society.” In the context of the peace movement, prefigurative politics eschewed strategy and organization in favor of living as closely as one could to a peaceful and just world, by enacting its essence in one’s personal and communal life. Wini Breines, Community and Organization in the New Left, 1962-1968: The Great Refusal (New York: Praeger, 1982), 6. See also Barbara Epstein, Political Protest and Cultural Revolution: Nonviolent Direct Action in the 1970s and 1980s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 196–97. 21 See Tamar Hermann, “Contemporary Peace Movements: Between the Ham- mer of Political Realism and the Anvil of Pacifism,” Western Political Quarterly 45, no. 4 (1992). 22 Classic texts here include Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: Ameri- can Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (New York: Norton, 1978); and Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Commu- nity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000). 23 See, for example, Hall, American Patriotism; and Foley, Front Porch Politics. 24 Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition is the best and most detailed history in this field. 25 This book deals with this idea sporadically. The argument that the idea and reputation that the Sixties influenced American politics and culture during the 1970s and beyond has been explored in various ways in several vol- umes, including Dan Berger, ed., The Hidden 1970s: Histories of Radicalism (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010); Van Gosse and Richard Moser, eds, The World the Sixties Made: Politics and Culture in Recent America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003); and Surbrug, Beyond Vietnam. The latter’s chapters on the beginnings of anti-nuclear activism in Massachu- setts in the 1970s are particularly instructive. 26 See Lawrence S. Wittner, “Problems and Opportunities in Researching Nuclear Disarmament Movements,” Peace and Change 36, no. 2 (2011), 285–92. 27 There are many excellent and detailed histories in this field, including Len Ackland, Making a Real Killing: Rocky Flats and the Nuclear West (Albuquer- que: University of New Mexico Press, 1999); Ken Butigan, Pilgrimage Through a Burning World: Spiritual Practice and Nonviolent Protest at the Nevada Test Site (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003); Thomas Wellock, Critical Masses: Opposition to Nuclear Power in California, 1958–1978 (Madi- son: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998); and John Wills, Conservation Fallout: Nuclear Protest at Diablo Canyon (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2006). 28 I use the term “mainstream” as a means of identifying those organizations, groups, campaigns, and ideas that did not seek to challenge political author- ity or the legitimacy of the state in any radical way. The “mainstream anti- nuclear movement,” then, operated as a loose collection of organizations, activists, lobbyists, and analysts whose challenge to the nuclear arms race Notes 173 was one of liberal reform, and sought to achieve political influence through accepted forms of democratic engagement. 29 The literature here is vast, but for