asked Ingram to sponsor a speaker for the other side. The speaker came, and the letters columns filled with talk of Ingram’s communism. Most marchers, Ingram thought, had little “real perception of what could be awaiting them—that they could suffer some ostracism, coolness, or be tagged crazy. Or worse yet be the victims of some violence, however minor.” But individuals had to find their own understandings of the risk, and realize that “if people survived marching on Selma and on the Pentagon, they ought to survive a march from Poynerto Francis Marion College.” Then Ingram smiled behind his salt and pepper beard. “Do you know what it means for a bunch of Baptists to sit respectfully silent in the presence of a rabbi leading them in prayer in Florence, South Carolina, the by-God buckle of the Bible Belt?" He said having the rabbi was a deliberate statement, “because this thing not only transcends our faith and our particular sectarianism, it transcends our very humanity.” f f this was a time when the efforts of Xordinary humans might well determine whether or not the species continued, these efforts were not without their cost. One hundred and thirty miles from Florence, the South’s oldest newspaper, the Augusta Chronicle, described protestors at a planned rally and civil disobedience action at the Savannah River Plant, South Carolina’s plutonium production facility, as “shiftless failures as human beings,” who were either “knowingly helping America's enemies,” or “venting their spleen on an orderly society with which they cannot cope.” Here, however, the Florence Morning News supported the walk with an editorial explaining that because of the “insanity of the expanding nuclear arsenals,” it was appropriate for “upstanding citizens and loyal Americans” to “ have decided for the first time in their lives that the cause compels them to be activists.” Yet, even with an unusually sympathetic local paper, involvement in the issue raised fears. In part this was related to the ultimate stakes. But citizens were also attempting to reclaim a sovereignty over choices they’d been conditioned to believe were not theirs to address. As political scientist Richard Falk explains, we have been living since Hiroshima under what is in a sense a “permanent emergency,” where an implicit state of war concentrates power in the executive branch, and critical national decisions are kept secret in the name of national security.. Although the Constitution mandates Congress with clear responsibility for the declaration of war, the legislative branch now attempts vainly to rein in military actions unilaterally initiated by the president. Following our Lebanese intervention, Ronald Reagan denounced even congressional discussion as having increased American casualties. For the Florence marchers to take on the nuclear issue was thus to challenge significant aspects of this political order—and the vested interests of all who feed off the weapons economy or perceive it as a necessity. They faced as well, a national heritage of tarring dissenting movements as beyond the pale; a heritage extending from the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts and the jailing of those who spoke against World War I, to Mc- Carthy-era blacklisting and Nixon’s Coin- telpro burglaries, IRS investigations and use of violent provocateurs. Even as the marchers were given legitimacy by respectable scientists, clergy, and breakaway policymakers (like former Ambassador to the Soviet Union George Kennan), and even as most sought a very modest utopia—of merely preserving home and hearth—it is understandable that many feared being branded and shunned. For some, these fears centered around the same intimate community that could also give nurturing sustenance. A Florence counselor who coordinated peace walk pledges remembered how, when she was a high school student in Montgomery, Alabama, her parents received threats for discussing racial relations with black activists. The paper of the local White Citizen’s Council published their names and the license number of their car. The midnight phone calls rang endlessly. She retreated, frightened of judgment by peers, and of becoming marked for the crimes of those who did not know their place. And she watched in silence until Bill Cusak drew her in, twenty years later, saying, “There’s going to be a nuclear film shown at the Baptist church. Sure think y’all would enjoy seeing it.” The counselor ended up meeting a young nurse who was part of the Ebenezer Baptist congregation, who had done nothing more controversial than wear a POW/MIA bracelet her freshman year at Clemson. Together they formed a chapter of Peace Links (the women’s disarmament organization founded by the wife of Arkansas Senator Dale Bumpers), brought in a dozen other members, and began to show their own film—on nuclear weapons and children—to groups culled from a Chamber of Commerce list. But activists’ apprehensions extended beyond the potential reactions of friends and peers, employers, agencies of state, and others wielding institutional power. They touched as well on the paths they might be led to follow. Participation in even the Freeze walk, or any other mild initial step, marked a point of departure from a stance in which critical decisions were automatically left to sanctified experts: politicians in Washington, D.C., or the Carolina State House, executives running the local textile mills, heads of distant oil companies and banks. Finding an alternative to compliance began with the insistence that ordinary citizens should judge these matters that so affect their future. And it meant perhaps following their judgments into whatever harsh and winding night they might lead. The town of Florence had long been isolated and innocent. A Francis Marion administrator recalled the student body president’s polite reaction to her shock at Kent State; he could have been consoling her at the death of some distant aunt. But with the development of the college and with new industry the community changed. It helped that the newspaper was sympathetic and the economy rested on tobacco, soybeans, a PepsiCola plant, General Electric, and Union Carbide, and not on the military. Yet the peace effort grew primarily from chains of individuals overcoming their own hesitancy and uncertainty to stake integrity and reputation on the simple belief that the atomic arms issue must be addressed. Again, small town visibility could personalize resistance as well as support. Yet those who marched in Florence addressed a community more intimate and perhaps less jaded than an urban metropolis, and risked far less the pride and factionalism that often accompanies beliefs that one’s actions matter more when located in a center of wealth and power. And like their compatriots in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, they began with the risk of discussing what had been unmentionable. If our present crisis is propelled not only by blind trust, but also by cynical acquiescence, it is appropriate that those who choose to grapple with these issues do it in part for the hope they consequently find. Though this gain need not be sanctimonious, it does involve a sense of linkage to some larger context. In the words of another marcher, a big bear of a college-educated Navy vet, and a sometime truck driver: “I like being serious about the walk or a Sierra Club meeting, but when it’s over I like being able to watch Carolina football, drink a half dozen beers and cuss out Southern Cal or whoever they’re playing. If there is a God, I’d like to be able to say, ‘Yeah I drank a lot of Coors, but I cared’.” Writer Paul Loeb lives in Seattle. An Associate Editor of CSQ, his book Nuclear Culture was just re-released by New Society Publishers. 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