June 12, 1982
40th Anniversary of New York City March Against War, Nuclear Weapons and for Human Needs
June 12, 2022 marks the 40th anniversary of the historic New York City “March for Nuclear Disarmament and Human Needs.” More than a million people marched in 1982, effectively shutting down midtown Manhattan for the day. The numbers were such that people filled the streets from start to finish of the march. Many of the feeder marches never reached the starting point at the United Nations as wave after wave of people marched toward the UN or rallied where they stood. It was a powerful and united stand against the U.S. use, testing and buildup of its nuclear arsenal. No More Hiroshimas! U.S. Disarm Now! Fund Human Needs! Abolish Nuclear Weapons, March for Peace and Justice! were among the demands raised.
Poets spoke on street corners, dancers performed along the route, songs, puppets, street theater helped enliven the crowd as many waited hours to march. At the time towns in states like Vermont and Maryland were declaring themselves “Nuclear-Free Zones,” and calling on the federal government to do the same. People from around the country and all walks of life participated. An international conference and scores of cultural and educational activities also took place.
The UN at the time was holding its second Special Session on Nuclear Disarmament and the people made sure their voice was heard.
Opposition was expressed at the time by many in the anti-war movement to the tendency promoted since the 1960s to limit anti-war actions to the call to “Ban the Bomb.” That narrowing of the movement was pushed by the government and its “experts,” to separate the issue of nuclear weapons from criminal U.S. imperialist wars and aggression using non-nuclear weapons. It served the U.S. imperialist policy of using the ever-present threat of nuclear weapons as a “deterrent” against those fighting for national liberation and profound changes within the U.S. and other countries. The resistance to the U.S. war against Vietnam was raging at the time. While the U.S. presented the use of nuclear weapons as “unthinkable,” it in fact repeatedly threatened the Vietnamese people with just that. Use of this threat and nuclear blackmail were instruments used to disinform the movement fighting for peace, freedom and democracy at home and abroad to abandon its determined organizing against state-organized racism, discrimination, inequality and poverty at home and imperialist war abroad and focus instead solely on banning the bomb.
The 1982 march, like many others over the years, was a firm rejection of this long-standing effort by official ruling circles and their agencies in the U.S. to divert the anti-war movement into succumbing to the blackmail of what they called the nuclear taboo being the sole aim of the anti-war movement.
In celebrating this march today — still considered one of the largest anti-war actions worldwide — many are again rejecting U.S. efforts to use the threat of nuclear weapons to disrupt resistance. People persist in demanding that the U.S. Disarm Now! Be a Nuclear-Free Zone! and support such zones worldwide. The calls to Bring All U.S. Troops Home, Close U.S. Foreign Military Bases and Stop War Funding and Fund Our Rights are widespread, as is the call to Dismantle NATO. Indigenous peoples and allies are stepping up their demands against the dumping of nuclear waste on their territories, continued nuclear testing, mining, and reparations for the health and environmental damages from nuclear testing and storage.
Organizing is also advancing on the shoulders of the 1982 action and many others since then, to put forward the unifying aim to fight for an anti-war government. An anti-war government rejects all U.S. wars and aggression, dismantles NATO and NORAD, and stands for a peace economy and setting a new direction for political affairs that puts the well-being and affirmation of the rights of the people at home and abroad at the centre of all deliberations and cancel all heinous debts and unequal treaties. It is a unifying aim to rally all concerned to work out practical solutions to the dangers posed by the U.S. rulers as they seek domination and act to destroy what they cannot repress and control.
Now is the time to channel all actions toward bringing an anti-war government into being.
Fight for an Anti-War Government!
Let Us Not Permit Change in the U.S. to Become the Casualty Ever Again!
Voice of Revolution is a publication of the U.S. Marxist-Leninist Organization.
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