The 12th of June
Powers, Thomas
Of several minds: Thomas Powers THE 12TH OF JUNE LESSONS FOR A YOUNG MOVEMENT THE 12TH OF JUNE was a perfect day for a demonstration-no threat of rain, but not sunny either. Marching in the sun...
...What does it take to write a letter...
...The threat of nuclear war presents a knottier problem because it is inseparable from the threat of war itself...
...As a practical matter the new movement cannot frogmarch the chiefs of staff, National Security Council staffers and think-tank strategists out of public life...
...All of these will be difficult to achieve...
...The marchers on the 12th of June were spared anything like that...
...The new movement's job is to send them back to the drawing board...
...The movement is already there, and it is amazingly sophisticated...
...This is a task for political persuasion and argument, not a purge...
...At its heart a demonstration is a simple thing...
...People are not afraid of the Russians, but of what fear of the Russians seems to be pushing us towards...
...They have built the sort of military machine we have, and they are the ones who must alter or even dismantle it...
...THOMAS POWERS...
...Imagine...
...The new movement will find it easy to be generous with the Russians, harder to be generous with ourselves...
...the absence of a common program, then the world may look very different in a year or two...
...A round of applause followed the name of each state-Pennsylvania, Ohio, Oklahoma, California, Alaska...
...Despite much press to the contrary, the defense community has no appetite for nuclear war...
...1) If the solution were easy, there wouldn't be a problem...
...Six months ago there was no whisper of the magnitude of public feeling on this issue, which I take to be a visceral conclusion that nothing can justify not just the fact of nuclear war-the woolliest strategists in the think tanks accept that-but the risk and even the threat of nuclear war...
...Reagan's political advisors, if not Reagan himself, will be asking themselves what else all those who marched on June 12th will be willing to do...
...American military programs are highly visible and politically accessible...
...It is a characteristic of movements to think success would be automatic if everybody only signed on to a common program...
...What did that piddling response demonstrate...
...Unilateral moves which get only a feeble response from the other side, or no response at all, will simply set the stage for a reaction...
...This was shortly before the Moratorium, which brought out twice as many people in the actual flesh as mere letters and telegrams elicited by Nixon's television appeal...
...This is a chimera...
...A year or two later a hundred thousand was getting to be routine...
...Everybody gets thirsty, and than everybody gets sweaty, and finally everybody gets restless, irritable, and impatient to go home...
...The Moratorium in September, 1969, brought out several hundred thousand, and the May, 1970, demonstration was a half million or more...
...Hundreds of thousands of people voted with their feet, with their time, and with their money...
...Marching in the sun is hot, nasty work...
...For three years beginning in the fall of 1967 I covered a lot of demonstrations as a reporter for UPI...
...It is the total effort which counts by changing the political climate...
...They have built so many nuclear weapons because they can't think what else to do...
...Covering demonstrations is a lot easier than marching in them because you get to come and go as you please, and hang around the speaker's platform, and push up close to the violence-and crowd violence, back in the 60s, was like the threat of a wreck at a road race-without running much risk of arrest or injury...
...The occasional wild man finds his way into a position of responsibility, but most defense people would be as alarmed at the pros-pect of nuclear war as the tenderest mother with babe in arms...
...In April, 1965, a demonstration against the war in Vietnam in Washington brought out 25,000 people and was considered a rousing success...
...Sitting there, I remembered an image of Richard Nixon behind a pile of letters and telegrams on his desk in the Oval Office-demonstrations of support for his policy on Vietnam...
...It's quite an undertaking to convince ordinary citizens they have something to contribute to large public issues...
...The stories were hard to write because either too little happened or too much happened without rhyme or reason...
...The opposition wanted an end to the war and didn't much care how it came about...
...I remember a line at a drinking fountain an hour long...
...3) The guys who got us into it, are the guys who must get us out of it...
...Back in the 1950s, when concern was beginning to run high about nuclear weapons-testing, it was a considerable feat to get 5000 people in the same place at the same time...
...The important thing was its general size-too big for any political leader, much less a president mulling reelection, to ignore-and the fact it came out of nowhere...
...None would free us from the danger posed by nuclear weapons...
...I don't think anyone has seriously tried to count with exactitude, and I'm not sure it would matter if we really knew...
...2) If it's not their fault, then it's not our fault either...
...That really showed something...
...It was the same on June 12th...
...So it is no longer a question whether a popular movement can be organized around this issue...
...The June 12th demonstration was made by hundreds of groups from as many places...
...It's the crowd, not the demonstration committee, which ultimately pays the old debts by standing there listening to someone of whom they have only dimly heard shouting strong words on a subject in which they are only faintly interested...
...It is customary at such rallies to recognize groups from faraway places...
...The new movement will find it difficult to see beyond the Pentagon, and yet the threat of war is something the United States and the Soviet Union must address together...
...The June 12th demonstration was arguably the biggest in American history, at least half a million, perhaps even 750,000, possibly more...
...Most people in most places are unwilling to intervene because they think it will be futile or dangerous...
...It's hard to see what else might do the trick...
...It was sunny the day of the big demonstration in Washington in May, 1970, a couple of days after the kids were killed at Kent State...
...Alaska...
...4) Everything works...
...Now comes the hard part...
...In dealing with them the new movement will have to be inventive, persistent, clear-headed, forbearing, and patient...
...You might define a demonstration as a gathering of many people to hear a speech they would never think of reading...
...But any tendency to put the sole blame on us will only spur the opposition while obscuring the importance of a Soviet-American attempt to ease the problem together...
...A great deal of politicking is involved in deciding who gets to speak...
...We can't simply walk away from it, as we did, in the end, from Vietnam...
...The Soviets' are harder to reach...
...War is the oldest of human problems...
...The movement-it is still too young to have acquired a name-has no program, and the problem has no obvious solution.Deciding what to do about the war in Vietnam was easy by comparison...
...The history of the old movement against the war in Vietnam suggests four principles which might help the new movement to focus its efforts and ease the acrimony inevitable when any large group of people want roughly the same thing without knowing how to get it...
...Some will work better than others, but it's hard to say which in advance...
...Imagine standing in line for an hour for a drink of water...
...Each war comes with its peculiar historical context, but the context only sets the stage for war without explaining it...
...I liked covering demonstrations because I got to see people I hadn't seen since the last demonstration, and because there was always plenty of time to stand around and argue the issues with people of strong or deeply felt or naive or eccentric views...
...A big movement is bound to try many things at once...
...That Nixon was practically naked of support...
...Before joining the main march we attended a rally at the Presbyterian Church on Park Avenue and 64th Street...
...We might even say the 1960s constituted a kind of dry run for this more fundamental, and much more difficult struggle to interrupt the drift of recent history...
...This suggests that the new movement will have to make up its program as it goes along with only the most general sort of goals as North Star-a steady easing of the military rivalry of the United States and the Soviet Union, a shift away from nuclear threat as the basis of military policy, attempts to find arenas other than the battlefield for the settlement of conflict, absolute reductions in the number of nuclear weapons ready to fire on the opening day of a big general war...
...The group from Alaska demonstrated their willingness to intervene in the most convincing possible manner...
...If they go on working back home, content with a common goal in...
...I marched as part of a local church group...
...A couple of minutes...
...nothing works enough...
...A group of people came all the way from Alaska to walk up Fifth Avenue and scuff their feet in the dust of the Great Lawn of Central Park-lawn in name only-and listen to the weird echo of the speakers over the sound system...
...It reveals a willingness to intervene...
...The United States and the Soviet Union have both had their moments of foolishness and their moments of wisdom since 1945...
Vol. 109 • July 1982 • No. 13
