The Continental Walk

“We believe that disarmament is the greatest and most urgent challenge facing humanity.” So reads a concluding sentence to a nationwide call for a coast-to-coast “walk” which will hope fully help to raise the issue of disarmament to the top of the public agenda.

The Continental Walk for Disarmament and Social Justice, as it has come to be called, began this past January 31 in San Francisco and is expected to end eight months later, sometime during October, in Washington, D.C. The Walk is likely to become a major focus for a wide coalition of activists throughout this year. Signers to the call included Joan Baez, Richard Barnet, Daniel and Philip Berrigan, Noam Chomsky, Dorothy Day, Dave Dellinger, James Douglass, Elizabeth McAlister, David McReynolds, Gloria Steinem, I.F. Stone, Art Waskow, and others. The sponsoring groups include American Friends Service Committee, Catholic Peace Fellowship, Catholic Worker, Clergy & Laity Concerned, Fellowship of Reconciliation, and War Resisters League, as well as others.

The danger of nuclear war is probably one of the most underestimated threats to human life today--a much greater danger today than it was 10-15 years ago. Although there has been a tremendous proliferation of nuclear weapons since Hiroshima and much vocal concern in the past about the dangers, the Vietnam war along with other pressing social concerns and the optimism produced by détente have taken the issue out of the public focus. The SALT talks have not been a serious forum for comprehensive disarmament, but they have produced a false confidence that something is being done; in fact the framework of the negotiations has been so narrow that the prospects for actually turning our swords into plowshares is nil.

Hopefully, the Walk will make disarmament as important and urgent an issue in the public consciousness as it continues to be in reality. Those who issued the call point to the following facts:

The United States, with a nuclear arsenal equivalent to 615,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs, already has the capacity to destroy every major Soviet city 36 times over, and yet continues to deploy one new strategic weapon every 8 hours. Likewise, the Soviet Union has the capacity to annihilate every major American city 11 times over and continues to deploy one new strategic weapon every 48 hours. Six nations already have nuclear weapons--the United States, the Soviet Union, France, Great Britain, China, and India. At least 22 other nations, which have or will soon have the technological skills is to produce nuclear explosives, threaten the uneasy peace among the “nuclear club” nations. There are already over 500 nuclear reactors operating in 45 countries. Besides the tremendous environmental hazards, one by-product of nuclear power is plutonium, which can be used to manufacture nuclear weapons. Especially terrifying is the research and development that is proceeding on the “cruise missile,” a new long-range nuclear missile that is a pilotless air craft launched by submarines or air craft and capable of flying at very low altitudes (under 200 feet). It has been described by some as a potential “nuclear Saturday night special” that practically any nation would be able to possess and use.

In addition to raising the issue of disarmament, the Walk is intended to focus on social justice and the need to shift economic priorities away from the military toward domestic and global human needs. Last year alone the total world wide military budget was about, $300 billion--one-third of that being U.S. expenditures alone. The U.S. Department of Defense outspends every 14 hours the yearly budget of the United Nations World Food Program. With about 55 percent of the actual U.S. tax dollar (funds collected from personal and corporate tax) being used for military programs last year, one study indicated that an average family of four would have spent almost $2,000 of their tax dollars for military purposes, but only $300 for health care, $257 for educational and social services, and $207 for community and regional development. President Ford’s military budget for next fiscal year, proposed last month, increases spending for arms again to a record high of $101 billion.

The idea for the Walk grew out of a desire by some activists to focus on disarmament. A task force was formed by the 1974 War Resisters League National Committee to look into doing a major project on militarism and disarmament. It was realized that disarmament could not be taken in isolation. The struggle against the arms race was intricately related at many different levels to the broader struggle for social justice. It was determined that a cross-country walk focusing on disarmament and social justice would be the most effective project.

The main route of the Walk will proceed through 13 states; over 12 branch feed-in routes will cut through 19 more, raising the total number of states involved to 32. Some of the feed-in routes will begin from Denver, Houston, Boston and Montgomery--the walk from the latter being organized by SCLC. Though there will be 15-20 long-distance walkers who will travel from coast-to-coast, the focus will be on local people walking through their own neighborhood communities and linking up with people in the next ones. The Japan Council Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs is also sending four teams of Buddhist monks to accompany the walkers. Each team will walk 1,000 miles. The Walk is expected to average 15 miles per day—20 miles per day on the open road, and 10 miles in urban areas.

Those who issued the call write about the symbolic relevance of the walking itself: “It may seem to many to be a small and weak action in the face of the high councils of government. But the case for disarmament must be taken to the people, town by town. There is a powerful symbol in this simple action of walking, a realization that great goals are reached slowly, and that so fundamental a change as we demand must begin in our neighborhoods and our communities. For here is where the issues must be discussed, and here is where true action will begin.”

In addition to raising the larger national and international issues of disarmament, there will also be a strong attempt to relate the Walk to local concerns. It is hoped that each local group will incorporate the Walk into their own on-going projects or use the Walk to initiate a project. Local issues will be connected to the national thrust, but will be determined by the people organizing the various links of the Walk. At the end of the journey in Washington D.C., walkers will simultaneously enter the city from different directions. Plans are being developed for a concluding rally which might involve a film festival, music, speeches, religious services, leaf- letting, seminars, preparations for continuing the work for disarmament, and the presentation of what may be a one-mile long petition signed by walkers along the way. Planners hope that walks in other countries will be spawned con currently with this one. Already the International Fellowship of Reconciliation will be co-ordinating an international walk for August 1976 in France starting from the World War I battleground of Verdun.

We are at the very edge of mass destruction and a “megadeath” that staggers the imagination. Given the reality of the Fall, we do not know whether a completely disarmed world will ever come into being, but as Christians we are called upon to identify those principalities and institutions and systems that have the capacity to wreak the greatest assault and destruction on human life and values. We must seriously question what the biblical teaching about nonviolence means for our all-too ready compliance with war taxes, and be ready to give up jobs and positions that relate us even indirectly to military research or defense spending. And corporately, as God’s people, we must seek to know the leading of the Spirit in actively resisting those values and institutions that run so counter to the kingdom.

Bob Sabath is web technologist of Sojourners.