Nuclear Consciousness Raising

By KURT ANDERSEN

Ground Zero Week features a flurry of speeches and happenings

Why was a 5-ft.-long mock-up of a bomb propped up in Tucson's El Presidio Park? Why was there a standing-room-only crowd at a Palm Beach, Fla., high school auditorium for a movie about nuclear-blast casualties? And why, in the middle of Iowa, did 200 residents of Pella (pop. 6,700) gather in the town square to listen to a talk about World War III?

These and hundreds of other improbable events, along with scores of more predictable demonstrations in places like Palo Alto, Calif., and Boston, were part of the largest collective outpouring to date of ordinary Americans' worries about the prospect of nuclear conflict. Ground Zero Week, a seven-day marathon of films and sober teach-ins, performances and lectures, was designed to illuminate issues of nuclear strategy and, more pointedly, the ultimate horror of nu clear war. It was conceived and led by Roger Molander, 41, until last year an expert on strategic arms limitation for the National Security Council.

Ground Zero Week did not feature the kind of emotional mass spectacles that typify the European peace movement, which is largely a creation of pacifists and the political left. Nor did Ground Zero's organizers want any chanting hordes. "If we had a rally with 100,000 people," explained Molander, "very few of them would know more about nuclear war at the end of the rally than at the beginning. I want people to know exactly what the dangers are, because they will be stunned that no one is doing anything about it, and they will be moved to take action."

This deliberately low-key approach produced turnouts in some cities that obviously disappointed the nuclear consciousness raisers. Complained Ground Zero Volunteer Kathleen Conkling of her Tulane University classmates in New Orleans: "This campus is apathetic." Less blase were 250 students at Atlanta's Emory University, who rallied on a chilly night to hear an eyewitness account of the Hiroshima bomb's aftermath. In a campus referendum at Brown University in Providence, 96% of the faculty, staff and student body approved a mutual U.S.-Soviet weapons freeze.

The far-flung variety of Ground Zero participants may have been more significant than their absolute numbers. From Greenville, S.C., to Clackamas County, Ore., local officials issued declarations of support. In 200 of the 650 towns and cities that held Ground Zero observances, markers were installed, each signifying the center of a 12-sq.-rrfi. circle of total destruction that a one-megaton warhead would wreak. Around the Ground Zero spot in Billings, Mont., a mime group per, formed an antiwar piece; in neighboring North Dakota, 600 people in Grand Forks applauded a speaker's suggestion that the Government dismantle one of the state's 300 Minuteman missiles as a symbolic peacemaking gesture.

Volunteers in Spokane, Wash., Muscatine, Iowa, and Washington led local tours of hypothetical nuclear devastation. Hundreds of black, helium-filled balloons were released in Houston and Chapel Hill, N.C., each balloon carrying a note about windswept nuclear fallout. In Belle Glade, Fla. (pop. 18,000), as in many communities, local churches sponsored a showing of The Last Epidemic, a film distributed by Physicians for Social Responsibility about nuclear war's medical horrors. Doctors from several hospitals described the same bleak scenario at a rally in Philadelphia.

Dozens of sign-carrying demonstrators dodged rush-hour traffic in downtown Memphis to pass out leaflets to motorists. Ron Thomas, a clean-cut Memphis State University junior, wore a sheet and a homemade death mask for the event. "I call myself a Christian," he says, "and if I'm really serious about the religious commands of peace, then I felt I had to do something about nuclear weapons." At Yale, 1,000 people filled the university chapel to hear Evangelist Billy Graham, a very recent convert to the cause, denounce nuclear war as the ultimate sin. In Rochester, Mich., a well-to-do Detroit suburb, a crowd of 500 paid $10 apiece to be enlightened by four speakers, including SALT Negotiator Paul Warnke.

Molander himself preached at twelve functions across the country, including a 7 a.m. breakfast rally with 300 citizens of his home town, Marinette, Wis. (pop. 12,600). "It's good to be back," said Molander, before getting to the point: "After a nuclear war, Marinette would never be inhabitable again."

Molander's organization does not endorse any specific arms control proposal, but the Reagan Administration is fearful that the spreading obsession with nuclear holocaust could pressure the U.S. to undertake an arms freeze prematurely. Both on the eve of Ground Zero's kickoff and during the week, the President felt obliged to express his sympathy with the fundamental fears of the participants. Yet he repeated his objection to an immediate freeze on nuclear weaponry; such an agreement, he argued, would simply lock in a supposed Soviet missile advantage.

Nevertheless, sponsors of a U.S. -Soviet nuclear freeze initiative in California chose Ground Zero Week to file 750,000 petition signatures, more than twice the number necessary to put the proposal on November's ballot. The measure would require the Governor to call on the President and Congress to propose to the Soviets a mutual halt to all nuclear arms development. According to a new survey, if the election were held now, California voters would approve the freeze by a 2-to-l victory.

--By Kurt Andersen. Reported by Benjamin W. Cate/Los Angeles and Gary Lee/Washington

With reporting by Benjamin W. Cate, Gary Lee

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