Walk of the People – A Pilgrimage for Life
In 1984, the global nuclear arms race proceeded at a furious pace. Some United States leaders talked of a winnable nuclear war against the Soviet Union. U.S. President Ronald Reagan and USSR Premier Konstantin Chernenko had not as much as met in the previous four years. More nuclear weapons had been installed in Europe on both sides of the Berlin Wall and Iron Curtain, pointing at each other. Military deployment had escalated along the East-West borders, particularly after the September 1983 Soviet shoot-down of Korean Air Lines Flight 007. Declassified documents published by the National Security Archive in 2013 showed that, behind the scenes, leaders of the U.S. and former Soviet Union drifted the countries closer to nuclear war than anyone previously admitted "through suspicion, belligerent posturing and blind miscalculation. "
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set its traditional "Doomsday Clock," which has marked the danger of nuclear war since 1947, to three minutes before midnight in 1984. That was the closest the clock had been to midnight in three decades, with it being at 12 minutes in 1972, when the U.S. and former Soviet Union signed SALT I.
Since political leaders were not even talking, the crucial times demanded extraordinary action from citizens. One method of trying to break through this wall of East-West division was a peace walk through Western and Eastern countries, of which several occurred in the early 1980s. A Walk of the People was the only one to pass through the longer route in the Deep South. It was organized primarily by Outhouse, who had participated in several other long peace marches, and O'Brien, a long-time organizer of peace, human rights, and social justice projects and member of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation. Outhouse was also inspired by Peace Pilgrim, a woman who walked for peace primarily alone for almost three decades. On March 1, 1984, a handful of people started walking from Point Conception. The participants continued through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, then the Deep South, picking up a few people along the way. Some walked for a few hours, others for a few days or weeks, and a smaller number for several months. By the time the project reached Washington, D.C. in November 1984, the number of core walkers was up to seven, with several other full-timers joining by the time they entered New York City. Along the way, participants met hundreds of people, including government officials and religious leaders. Besides meeting with Reagan administration officials at the White House, they spoke with representatives of the Soviet, Polish, and East German embassies in Washington, D.C., to lobby for visas to walk. They collected letters, poems, drawings, and other messages of peace from people to distribute to people beyond the Berlin Wall. Members flew to Dublin, Ireland, in January 1985 and walked through Great Britain, France, Belgium, and the former West Germany, meeting political and religious leaders and everyday folks. Several hundred people walked them into Aachen, Germany, in a welcome organized by local Green Party members. They were denied entrance into East Germany in June 1985 and settled in an old mill house in a border town to figure out a plan. A few weeks later, they walked to Vienna, Austria, then took a train to Budapest and some other cities in Hungary as part of a tour organized by the government's Hungarian Peace Committee. They were turned down again for visas to fly to Moscow. Eventually, several members took a train to Moscow from Geneva, Switzerland, following the November 1985 Geneva Summit between Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. They met with members of the Soviet Peace Committee and others, and distributed letters and drawings. Many people in Europe wrote to O'Brien to say how much the walk gave them hope and a different perspective of Americans, she said. Some organizers said the project likely made subsequent efforts to break down the Cold War barriers easier to implement in Russia. A 450-mile American-Soviet Peace Walk from Saint Petersburg to Moscow involving about 230 Americans and 200 Russians, which was organized by another group, occurred in 1987. Meeting with high-level Russian officials in Moscow and Geneva for several hours showed that "behind the scenes you were taken a lot more seriously than (Russian officials) were willing to admit," O'Brien said. The project raised much awareness through the media. The walk was covered by hundreds of newspapers, radio stations, and television stations in the U.S. and Europe, from CNN and The Associated Press, to national television in France, Germany, and other countries. Many people heard about the march and said it inspired them to work more diligently for peace. Numerous political, religious and peace movement leaders were touched enough to write letters of support or welcome. Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo wrote three times on the walk’s behalf, and former President Jimmy Carter wrote twice. Besides Gov. George Wallace, others who wrote letters or endorsed the project included: Some participants continued to join similar projects, including the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament and an international peace walk organized by world-wide walker Prem Kumar in India in 1987-88. Kumar walked with Walk of the People for a few weeks in Ireland and the United Kingdom in the midst of his 10,500-mile, four-year journey. As the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union dissolved, the "Doomsday Clock" rose to 17 minutes by 1991. But it has since gone down to less than two minutes, as of 2020. One participant, journalist Kevin James Shay, wrote a book about the inside story of the project called "Walking through the Wall". The book won a 2002 International PeaceWriting Award, sponsored by the OMNI Center for Peace, Justice and Ecology of Fayetteville, Arkansas, and the Peace and Justice Studies Association of Georgetown University. Shay donated many of his papers from the project to Swarthmore College. Many similarly-long peace walks involving a group have occurred before and after A Walk of the People. The following are a few:
Summary of walk events
Members met with officials from the Reagan administration at the White House, as well as Democrats such as Rev. Jesse Jackson. Walkers started on March 1, 1984, from Point Conception, California, and covered about 7,000 miles, ending in Hungary in late 1985 after the former East Germany and other countries denied the group visas to walk. Some members attended the Geneva Summit and arranged a trip to Moscow, Russia, and Warsaw, Poland, via train to meet with officials and others to distribute many letters of peace and other materials they had collected.