Sunday, July 08, 2018

Chapter 10: The Committee for Nonviolent Action | Schumacher Center For New Economics

Chapter 10: The Committee for Nonviolent Action | Schumacher Center For New Economics

Chapter 10: The Committee for Nonviolent Action

A project of the Schumacher Center for New Economics   |   The Autobiography of Bob Swann

 

Chapter 10


The Committee for Nonviolent Action—Part I: "The Golden Rule" and Civil Disobedience at Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Sites

While I continued to build houses, other events began to impinge on our lives. In 1957 the U. S. government announced plans to test nuclear bombs in the Pacific Ocean. A number of activists came together to develop a nonviolent strategy to resist the testing. Out of this meeting two organizations emerged: the Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA) and the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE). Many leaders in the nonviolent movement, including Bayard Rustin and A. J. Muste, played a key role in organizing both groups. CNVA's purpose was to take radical nonviolent action (civil disobedience) whereas SANE intended to carry out broad educational campaigns around the issues of nuclear power and its destructive nature. SANE members would organize protests, vigils, marches, and teach-ins, and CNVA members would do civil disobedience. SANE would then use the media coverage to educate the public about why folks were being arrested.

The resumption of nuclear testing in 1957 in the Pacific Ocean stimulated not only peace groups like ours in the United States but similar groups all over the world. The national CNVA organizers decided to sail a boat, "The Golden Rule," into the test area. The boat didn't make it to the test zone (all three crew members were arrested in Hawaii), but the media coverage provided SANE with the needed publicity for continued organizing. The action produced the desired result: a great deal of interest and support within the United States and around the world. Recently I've heard that the original organizers of Greenpeace got their inspiration from CNVA's "Golden Rule" project.

The second major CNVA action took place in 1958 when the United States announced a first in the escalating arms race with Russia: the construction of an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) to be built near Omaha, Nebraska. CNVA planned an action to protest this "city killer" before it could be built by "invading" the construction site with the intention of stopping construction. At the time I was the sole breadwinner so Marj and I agreed that she, who also had more experience in such things, should join the vigil being held near the fence that defined the property. After several days of waiting with no response from the government, the group of fourteen or fifteen CNVA members began climbing over the fence. As they did, they were arrested and handcuffed. A. J. Muste, one of the key leaders of CNVA and head of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, was the first to be arrested on charges of trespassing. When the judge handed down his verdict of six months in jail for everyone, he gave Marj a free lecture, calling her a "bad mother." "You Are a Bad Mother" was the title of a very sympathetic article that appeared subsequently in  Redbook magazine.

Without a strong support group, of course, I could not have managed for the six months Marj was in jail. Friends took turns staying with the kids, especially our old friends Wally and Juanita Nelson, veterans of peace and civil rights struggles. Wally had spent several years in jail as a CO, and after his release he became one of the first members of the Congress On Racial Equality. During this period of Marj's incarceration, our youngest daughter, Carol, stayed with another family for an entire year. Laura and Don Rasmussen, who were also veterans of civil rights causes, had lived in Alabama, where they taught in an integrated private school. But when Carol lived with them, they were running their own private school near where we lived. For us and for Carol it was a lucky break, not only for her to attend their remarkable school but also to live with them as part of the family during that difficult period.


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©2001 Robert Swann



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