So Picketing the
White House Doesn’t Work?
11-5-17
by Lawrence Wittner
Dr. Lawrence Wittner (http://www.lawrenceswittner.com)
is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford
University Press).
The reckless threats of nuclear war flung
back and forth between the North Korean and U.S. governments remind me of an
event in which I participated back in the fall of 1961, when I was a senior at
Columbia College.
At the end of August 1961, the Soviet government had
announced that it was withdrawing from the U.S.-Soviet-British moratorium on
nuclear weapons testing that had halted such tests for the previous three years
while the three governments tried to agree on a test ban treaty. The resumption
of the Soviet government’s nuclear weapons testing that followed was topped off
that October by its explosion in the atmosphere of a 50-megaton hydrogen bomb,
the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated. Meanwhile, the Kennedy administration,
determined not to be outdone in a display of national “strength,” quickly
resumed U.S. nuclear testing underground and began to discuss the U.S.
resumption of nuclear testing in the atmosphere.
From the standpoint of many people in the two
countries―indeed, in the world―this renewed plunge into the nuclear arms race
was quite alarming. At Columbia my college roommate Mike Weinberg and I
considered the whole business quite crazy. Nuclear testing in the atmosphere
sent huge clouds of radioactive nuclear debris (“fallout”) into the air,
bringing with them cancer and birth defects for vast numbers of people around
the world. In addition, these tests of hydrogen bombs―weapons that could be
produced with a thousand times the destructive power of the atomic bomb that
had annihilated Hiroshima―were in preparation for their use in nuclear war.
This nuclear arms race seemed to be a race to disaster.
As a result, some time that fall, Mike and I―spotting a
leaflet announcing a student bus trip to Washington, DC to oppose the
resumption of U.S. atmospheric nuclear tests―decided that the time had come for
us to get out in the streets and protest. People had already been taking part
in antinuclear demonstrations. But we had not been among them. In fact, neither
of us had ever taken part in any sort of political protest campaign.
On the morning of the student trip to Washington,
we turned up wearing our suits (to impress any government officials who might
see us) at a chartered bus, parked next to the Columbia campus, only to find
ourselves in the midst of a rather bohemian assemblage. The young men sported
sandals and beards, the women fishnet stockings and long braids. Despite the
differences in style, though, we formed a friendly, congenial group as we
hurtled down the highways from New York City to the nation’s capital for our
confrontation with government power.
Arriving at the White House, I picked up what I
considered a very clever sign (“Kennedy, Don’t Mimic the Russians!”) from the
pile that someone had brought along and, together with other demonstrators
(supplemented by a second busload of students, from a Quaker college in the
Midwest), formed a small picket line that circled around a couple of trees
outside the White House. Mike and I, as zealous new recruits, circled all day
without taking a break for lunch or dinner.
For decades, I looked back on this venture as
little more than the subject for an amusing anecdote. After all, we and other
small bands of protesters couldn’t have had any impact on U.S. policy, could
we? Then, in the mid-1990s, while doing research at the John F. Kennedy
Presidential Library in Boston about the history of the world nuclear
disarmament movement, I stumbled on an oral history interview with Adrian
Fisher, deputy director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament
Agency. He was explaining why Kennedy delayed resuming atmospheric nuclear
tests until the end of April 1962, despite continued Soviet nuclear testing
during the previous eight months. Kennedy personally wanted to resume these
U.S. nuclear tests, Fisher recalled, “but he also recognized that there were a
lot of people that were going to be deeply offended by the United States
resuming atmospheric testing. We had people picketing the White House, and there
was a lot of excitement about it―just because the Russians do it, why do we
have to do it?” Fisher concluded: “And that’s the reason we didn’t resume
atmospheric testing.” A little more than a year later, in August 1963, after
intense public pressure, the U.S., Soviet, and British governments signed
the Partial Test Ban Treaty,
banning nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere.
In the midst of today’s nuclear crisis, would
America’s Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un be as sensitive to public
protest? Perhaps so; perhaps not. But governments―even those headed by
arrogant, mentally unstable individuals―are not impervious to public opinion.
And who knows what will happen if enough people insist, loud and clear, that
nuclear war is simply unacceptable?
Copyright 2017. All rights reserved.
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325
E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001
[at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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