ARNIE, LET'S BEGIN WITH THE TOWN MEETINGS IN 1981. IS THERE ANY ACTIVITY AROUND THE FREEZE MOVEMENT THAT YEAR?

There were 15 or 18 towns in Vermont that year that voted in favor of the freeze at town meeting. There were also three towns in New Hampshire that did the same. Now, it's really the first time that the nuclear freeze proposal came to the New England town meeting.

I KNOW THAT YOU WEREN'T DIRECTLY INVOLVED, BUT DO YOU RECALL — HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?

Well, it actually — it started in Western Massachusetts where the three state senatorial districts in Western Massachusetts voted on a freeze referendum question during the November 1980 election. From there the idea went to the North to Vermont where people decided that it was also appropriate to put it on the agenda for the town meetings in March. And a couple towns in Vermont got the idea from friends in Vermont – people in New Hampshire got the idea from friends in Vermont and it – that's how it started.

THERE WAS A MARCH IN NEW HAMPSHIRE —

Vermont.

WASHINGTON TO MOSCOW. COULD YOU TELL US —

Okay. Yeah, in a — from August 5th, which is the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and August 9th, which is the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, every year, are dates in which groups which are concerned about peace and concerned about the danger of nuclear war hold events to mark that occasion, to commit ourselves to continue to work so that nuclear bombing never happens again. And in Vermont the American Friends Service Committee organized a very creative march in 1981 which started in the town of Washington, Vermont, and went to the town of Moscow, Vermont, a walk of about three days. And along the way they spoke to people about the importance of stopping the nuclear arms race and about the nuclear freeze proposal. It drew a good number of people. It was starting to draw a lot of attention. And then as fate would have it, the Federal Government stepped in and decided to bar a spokesperson from the Soviet Embassy from speaking in Moscow, Vermont. And that made it then a big national issue which drew even more attention and gave it even greater power than it had. Anyway, it was a very good idea. It was very creative and it's really the kind of creativity that came up from the grassroots that marked the nuclear freeze movement, that made the nuclear freeze movement distinctive and significant in the history of social movements in this country.

YOU BEGAN IN CONCORD AS AN ORGANIZER FOR THE AMERICAN FRIENDS SERVICE COMMITTEE. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? WHAT DO YOU DO? WHAT DID YOU DO THEN WHEN YOU...NOW AUGUST '81.

When I started in August of 1981, and looked at what was going on in the world and looked around New Hampshire — and one of the things that — that we concluded, myself working with the New Hampshire Support Committee of the AFSC, we felt that there were a lot of people who were interested in issues having to do with peace and nuclear disarmament around the State of New Hampshire. But there was not anything that could be identified as a peace movement. There were not actively meeting grassroots organizations based in communities in this state. And that if anybody was not real closely involved or didn't know those few people, they would not have thought that there was a peace movement. And we felt that it was important to do what we could to support the creation of the peace movement, to encourage grassroots activists, to form organizations in their communities that would work on peace. And we saw the nuclear freeze as something that was right there and was going to provide an excellent vehicle for doing exactly that.

WHEN YOU SAY YOU KNOW THAT PEOPLE WERE INTERESTED IN PEACE, BUT THERE AREN'T VERY MANY OF THEM, HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT? WHO ARE THESE —

Well, the American Friends Service Committee is an organization that's been in existence now for 70 years. We are an organization that has a track record, has a reputation, so that we're relatively well-known to people who are interested in the issues having to do with peace and social justice, humanitarian assistance to people in the developing world, non-violence, reconciliation, that type of thing. So that we are in touch with grassroots activists, with people in the churches, with educators, with people in communities across New Hampshire who share those types of concerns. And by talking to those people, we found a substantial number who agreed with us that the nuclear freeze proposal presented a very good way of mobilizing people in their communities to work to stop to stop the nuclear arms race and take steps to prevent nuclear war.

NOW, FOR A KIND OF CYNICAL PERSPECTIVE OF THESE ...WHEN YOU SPEAK ABOUT MOVING PEOPLE, WHAT JUMPS TO MY MIND, YOU KNOW... THEY'RE KIND OF OUTSIDERS, THEY'RE NOT REALLY PART OF THE MAINSTREAM COMMUNITY LIFE. WHAT'S IT LIKE IN VERMONT?

We're in New Hampshire.

YOU KNOW WHAT I'M SAYING?

Yeah. There's a variety of people, many of them are active in their churches, people who are concerned about environmental issues. Many people who were important in this movement in the early '80s are people who had been and still are involved in the opposition to the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plan, which has been very important in New Hampshire. People concerned about public issues really across the whole wide range – spectrum of people in the community. And they are people who are part of their communities. And that — if you feel that must compare the peace movement of the early '80s to the anti-war movement of the '60s, that is, perhaps, one of the major differences. Is that these are the community people. These are people with roots. They're not primarily students. The age group is much older. In some of our groups, especially in the Carroll County area, in the north country of New Hampshire, most of the people in the peace qroups are more than 60 years old. A lot of gray hair in the peace movement here.

DURING THE FALL OF '81, WERE YOU ORGANIZING TOWARD THE TOWN MEETINGS SCHEDULED – THE TOWN MEETINGS THAT ARE HELD EVERY YEAR IN '82? WAS THAT KIND OF AN ORGANIZING GOAL?

Beginning in the late summer or early fall, knowing that people in Vermont were going to be making a major effort of organizing for the town meetings, we decided also that we would do that. This was important for two reasons. The first reason is because the town meeting is a traditional forum for the community. Was an excellent way of making a public that, many people in New Hampshire — which is thought to be a very conservative state — would favor a stopping the nuclear arms race — and the town meeting was a great way to do that. There was a second reason, and that was simply by organizing for the town meeting the couple of most active people in the community were given a vehicle for organizing — getting people together. [INTERRUPTION AND RESTART] That by organizing for the town meeting — for starters, the way to get a resolution on the town meeting and in a New Hampshire community is by getting ten or more registered voters to sign a petition. So, for very starters, you have to go out and talk to people and get them to sign a petition. So, for starters, you're doing education. You're identifying your supporters. You're beginning to find out who is with you and who is against you. You're beginning to find people who are interested in doing more than just signing a petition. In short, you are doing the necessary steps to start a locally–based peace group, a grassroots organization that will not only be able to organize in the community for a successful outcome of the town meeting, but hopefully will continue beyond the town meeting to continue doing education in the community, mobilizing people for — for social change. Mobilizing people to write letters to Congress, if that's what necessary. Mobilizing people to get in the bus and go down to a peace demonstration in New York, if that's what's necessary. Organizing people to do a peace vigil in the community on Hiroshima Day, if that's what necessary. The town meeting campaign was a great way of getting the process started.

I'D LIKE YOU TO TRY TO BE EVEN MORE SPECIFIC ON – YOU WORK ON THE TELEPHONES, YOU GO TO A CHURCH GROUP OR YOU'RE CALLING PEOPLE AT RANDOM OR YOU'RE BUTTONHOLING PEOPLE IN THE STREET.

What I'm doing specifically during that time is at the time the American Friends Service Committee had a mailing of perhaps 1,500 people in New Hampshire. So, through our newsletter in the fall of 1981, we announced that activists would be putting the freeze proposal on the town meeting agendas in March, which meant that a petition had to be submitted to the town clerk and each of those communities by the end of January. That we would provide people with information, both about the nuclear freeze and the need to stop the arms race, but also about how to get the freeze proposal on the town meeting agenda, and how to organize a grassroots peace group. So, that information starts going out. We start getting responses from people. Or you look at an area, for example, like Peterborough, New Hampshire, where some of the people in the community had participated in the Washington to Moscow walk in Vermont the previous summer. And they came back very excited about working on the nuclear freeze in their communities and putting the freeze proposal on the town meeting. So, they then start reaching out to other people in their community, so you not only have Peterborough, but people in Hancock, in Harrisville and Jaffrey and Rindge and all of the towns that surround Peterborough. People in each of those communities start getting together and talking about haw can we advance this agenda our communities. And they form a group called the Monadnock Peace Coalition, which then creates some of a network of the activists in the Monadnock region or the Peterborough area, which begins to work very specifically in their communities towards that goal.

IT SOUNDS LIKE AT THIS POINT YOUR LIFE IS TALKING TO PEOPLE WHO ARE EASILY PERSUADED, THAT IS PEOPLE WHO ARE ALREADY KIND OF ON YOUR SIDE, REACHING OUT... IS THAT THE CASE OR ARE YOU RUNNING INTO, YOU KNOW, FOLKS WHO ARE INDIFFERENT OR UNINTERESTED OR —

A basic organizing –

A basic organizing principle, whether you're working in a political campaign, whether you're organizing a local grassroots group or a coalition, whatever the issue is, if you have to start with your supporters, you start out with the people who agree with you and who are — not only that — are willing to do something about it. You go from there to people who are sympathetic but perhaps less active to encourage them to become active and through that whole process you start to reach the broader public which perhaps has not thought about it at all and begin to encourage people to think about it and once they've thought about it, to do something. So, you're always conducting education and encouraging people to take some kind of action whether they feel they are informed and want to do something.

MOVING CLOSER TO MAYBE THE WEEK BEFORE THE TOWN MEETING, WE KNOW THAT AT THAT POINT IT WAS NOT YET A NATIONAL NEWS STORY OF ANY BIG SIGNIFICANCE. WAS IT A LOCAL NEWS STORY? WAS IT BEING TALKED ABOUT IN THE PRESS?

We were starting to get attention. Again, you have in a local community – it probably is getting talked about in letters to the editor, in news stories in the local news that people are talking about what's going to be coming up in town meetings. In the period before the town meeting, it starts to become a statewide news story, as the reporters realize that this is something that's happening in 70 or 80 – I forget exactly how many towns it was. But you've got — when you've got 70 or 80 towns in the state that are going to be considering the same thing and, further, when that one issue is something that is unusual, in terms of town meetings — you have to realize that most of the time and most of the issues that these town meetings deal with are very much local issues having to do with the town budget. Do you spend the money to buy a new dump truck? Are we going to put a new roof on the library? Can we afford to buy a new police cruiser? Can we upgrade the Xerox machine in the town offices? That's what town meeting is mostly about. So that when people start talking about stopping the nuclear arms race and people start talking about that in 70 or 80 communities in the state, that is something that is unusual and that's the sort of thing that reporters pick up on.

NOW, THE VERMONT VOTE TAKES PLACE, I THINK, A COUPLE OF WEEKS BEFORE THE NEW HAMPSHIRE –

Yes.

AND WHAT I'M WANDERING IS...A MOOD OF YOU FOLKS WHO ARE ORGANIZING AFTER THAT BIG VERMONT...–

Let's say — two weeks before the New Hampshire town meetings — as I'm putting out news releases — and talking to reporters about this, suggesting that this is something important. And, in general, the reaction that most people — in the public as well in the news media — had was why — what makes you think that anybody in Washington or Moscow cares what voters in Peterborough or Jaffrey or Rindge, New Hampshire, think about the nuclear arms race. This is not something that is significant or meaningful. This is not how these decisions get made. This is not how this debate takes place. This debate takes place in think tanks, in ivory towers, in Congressional hearing rooms and across conference tables in Geneva. It does not take place in church basements and town halls in New England. So, people were very skeptical about it. 180 or so towns in Vermont in the first week of March of 1982 voted in favor of a nuclear freeze proposal. And when most or all of these towns are towns that had voted for Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election, politicians who are very savvy to that sort of thing start to take notice. And suddenly the freeze moved from being sort of a funny little grassroots tendency to become a major national story. So, that within the space of a few days it starts getting talked about on the op-ed pages of the major newspapers. It starts getting the attention of the network news commentators and anchor people. And the date, that the New Hampshire town meetings started, which would be the second Tuesday in March, was the same day that Senators Kennedy and Hatfield jumped very quickly to the front of this bandwagon and announced the introduction of the first nuclear freeze resolution into the United States Senate. So, suddenly we have become national news and the mood does very much – does very much shift. And people realize at the grassroots level, at the state level, at the national level, that the voice of citizens can be heard. And it's very clear that it's the voice of citizens at the grassroots level in little towns in Northern New England that is making waves that are making changes in the nation's capital.

'82 TOWN MEETING. BIG ENTHUSIASM FOR THE MARKEY-KENNEDY RESOLUTION. WAS THERE ANY ACTIVE OPPOSITION TO THE FREEZE RESOLUTIONS AT THAT POINT IN THE TOWN MEETINGS?

There really was not any organized opposition that we were aware of in 1982. It was something that really was — was not 'til later that the movement was taken seriously enough by people in the Administration and the supporters of the nuclear arms build-up. And it wasn't until that that a — an active, organized opposition started to take shape in New Hampshire.

YOU TOLD US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT HOW TOWN MEETINGS WHAT THEY MAINLY DO. COULD YOU TELL, US HOW LONG A TOWN MEETING, IS, WHEN THIS...AGENDA. HOW IT CAME UP.

There is a lot of —

IF YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT ONE SPECIFIC PLACE.

The role of the town meeting has changed. I mean, it's a tradition that is hundreds of years old. It predates the US Constitution. Goes back to colonial days. It initially was done to, I think, elect the minister of the church. And the church – there was no separation between church and state in early New England, so that the town meeting was an annual event. It takes place in March. The snows have melted. People have been holed up in their farmhouses all winter. The snow is starting to melt and people work their horses and buggies through the mud and come to the church in the community, so that it's both a social event as well as being a political event. And it's very important in the life of the town and in the life of town government in early New England. The role of it obviously changes to some extent as State government and Federal government become more important, as more decisions are made at other levels. The town meeting actually would have less control over what it is actually able to do in terms of the political life of the town. But there still are a lot of things that the town meeting discusses, most of which have to do with the town budget. And the agendas have gotten rather long in some places. So, that in some places the town meetings may start on a Tuesday night at 7 o'clock and they might 'til 10 o'clock and adjourn and meet again the following Tuesday in order to finish up. Most of the issues are — could be called mundane, local topics having to do with what the town is going to spend its money on. Do we build a new playground? Do we — in my community there's an issue because the — we are in the same school district as the neighboring towns, which has a larger population. So that sometimes people don't like paying for improvements for school, because they think that the people in the other community should pay for more of it. Building a playground at the school is something that people end up arguing for 45 minutes about or whether to — this year there was a long debate about whether to buy radar equipment for the local policy to track speeders in the community or some people who don't like radar getting up and arguing against it. That's the type of thing that normally takes place in a town meeting. Discussions about nuclear weapons and national political issues are very rare. They are generally held until the end of the agenda.

NEW HAMPSHIRE IS A VERY SAVVY POLITICAL STATE. I MEAN, YOU HAVE...PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS. AN OPPOSITION MUST HAVE GOTTEN ORGANIZED AFTER '82 AND — WHAT ARE YOUR — AND TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THAT AND WHAT HAPPENED IN '83.

Well, there's a couple things that happened. One was that — let's say that later in '82 was the second United Nations special session on disarmament in New York City and in conjunction with that, there was a massive march and rally which drew roughly a million people to New York City on June 12th, 1982, which was the largest political demonstration in this nation's history calling for a nuclear freeze, calling for a halt to the nuclear arms race. That also sent a very strong signal to people across the country, in Washington and around the world that this was a movement that was very popular, that it had great strength and public sentiment behind it and that it needed to be taken seriously.

It also that lots of people both jumped on bandwagon and also started to organize in opposition to it. So, as we move into the fall and winter of '82, we start getting articles in the Reader's Digest, for example, saying that we're all dupes of the KGB. We start getting peace through strength groups organized. One of the things that happened in New Hampshire was David McCauley, the Vermont organizer for the American Friends Service Committee showed a film about the nuclear arms race in a church in the town of New London. And a couple of people were giving them a hard time in the question and answer period, asking him, you know — oh, we can't...we can't trust the Russians. They always cheat. We're way behind. And he said, "Boy, you people have a lot in common. Maybe you should get together." Well, they did. And they formed an organization called the New Hampshire Association for Freedom through Strength, which began also to organize in some of the local communities and really on a very similar type of method that we had been using. Bringing in speakers, bringing in films, getting people together so that by next year, in some towns in New Hampshire, at least, there was an organized opposition. We also have the large daily newspaper in New Hampshire called the Manchester Union Leader, which is of extremely right wing views on national issues like this. And they began, in the period before the 1983 town meetings, on a daily basis, to attack the nuclear freeze proposal which gave local ultra-conservatives some real ammunition. So, they had stuff in black and white that they could get up and, in effect, recite. And if they get up and say, "It says here in the paper that these people are being manipulated by the KGB," or it says here that "experts say we can't trust the Russians to abide to this," or it says right here in black and white that we are behind. And in the context of a New Hampshire town meeting, where most people are not really well-informed on this, people's tendencies are going to be — are going to be much different.

WERE THOSE TOWN MEETINGS — WERE THERE SIMILAR VOTES TO BE HELD IN '83...–

So that by 1983, when people brought this up in town meetings, the results were different and they were more like 50/50 in terms of the ones that we won versus the ones that we lost.

GOING FORWARD INTO THE '84 ELECTIONS, THE FREEZE REMAINS ACTIVE IN NEW HAMPSHIRE?

Extremely, yeah.

CAN YOU TELL US A LITTLE BIT HOW THAT WORKS IN TERMS OF THE CAMPAIGN —

Sure. One of the things that happens during this period — again, coming out of the town meeting votes in 1982, we start getting a statewide organization, really an ad hoc network of local activists from around New Hampshire who are doing work on the nuclear freeze in their own communities, who start getting together on a roughly monthly basis to trade ideas, trade pieces of literature that they have found useful, talk about what they should do in the future, such as organizing to go to the march in New York. By 1983, especially when our success at the town meetings is what we called mixed, we realize that our organization really needs to be more formal, that if we're going to be confronted with an organized opposition, we need to be more organized ourselves. So, that we turn this ad hoc network of local activities into the New Hampshire for US-USSR Nuclear Arms Freeze, which starts meeting with an elected steering committee on a monthly basis and making much more definite plans.

It's — becomes evident to this group from the time it starts in May of 1983 that the Presidential primary in February of 1984 and the Congressional elections in New Hampshire that will be held in November of 1984 are likely to include candidates who are very good on these issues and candidates who are very bad on these issues. And that if the elections are going to be close and if the freeze movement can mobilize the voters who support the freeze to get out there and vote that it could be a decisive issue. So, right from the beginning of the formal stage of the nuclear freeze campaign in New Hampshire, people are talking about electoral politics. As the Presidential primary gets started in New Hampshire, as the candidates start appearing with increasing frequency in the summer of 1983, people start asking them questions about the nuclear freeze. And we find that all of the Presidential — the Democratic contenders — Ronald Reagan is the candidate for the Republicans, so it's really just a Democratic race — all of the Democrats with the exception of Reubin Askew, will state publicly that they support a bilateral US-USSR nuclear arms freeze. So that the freeze becomes, in effect, a position of the Democratic Party.

WHEN THE VOTE IS ALL IN IN '84 AND THE PRESIDENT HAS SUCH AN ACTIVE PLURALITY...VERY WELL, WHAT DOES THAT DO TO THE FREEZE? WHAT HAPPENED TO THE FREEZE?

The other thing that happened in New Hampshire, why — looking at it from the New Hampshire perspective, once the primary is over, there is no Presidential politics any more in New Hampshire. We have only four electoral votes. We are — our state traditionally votes Republican in Presidential campaigns, Presidential election years, so that Presidential politics no longer really matters in New Hampshire. And whether New Hampshire's going to vote for Reagan or Mondale is not an issue. Attentions shift to the Congressional election where there is a very important Congressional campaign in the 1st Congressional District, which pit strongly pro-freeze candidates against strongly anti-freeze candidates. And we — in the freeze movement — understand if the election is going to be close that the vote to freeze supports could be decisive. So that energy shifts in the direction of work on the House race and the Senate race in New Hampshire. The results in November of '84 were very bad on the Congressional front as well as on the Presidential front in terms of these issues. So, that leaves the movement, in many ways — for one thing people are exhausted, because they've been working extremely hard. The freeze organization is out of money because they've spent it all, and people are discouraged because their efforts have not yielded the type of direct, visible success, the kind of success that you can really put your hands on.

WHY DO YOU THINK THAT THE FREEZE IS...CONGRESSIONAL RACE?

The freeze did not do so badly in the Congressional elections. What did badly were the candidates who supported the freeze. Now, I think that you can go back and look at Walter Mondale. And if you want to go back and watch the videotape of Walter Mondale debating with Ronald Reagan prior to the November '84 election, you will be hard pressed to decide which one of them is the supporter of the nuclear freeze. Because Mondale sounds like he's the one who wants to build up more nuclear weapons and wants to take a hawkish position with the Soviets on nuclear arms. So, I would argue that part of Walter Mondale's problem in '84 was he did not go into the campaign with a strong position in favor of the nuclear freeze. And if he had done so, he would have done better than he did.

WHAT ABOUT YOUR LOCAL CONGRESSMAN?

I think that the pollsters will tell you, your exit polls and all the other information, that the nuclear freeze was not a decisive issue. That where the freeze issue may have been able to affect, you know, part of a percent of a vote in some places — maybe it was more than that — that the large —

The margin of victory for the Republican anti-freeze candidates in that election was so great that the freeze was not able to swing enough voters to make a difference. It did make a difference for a small group of people.

LOOKING BACK ON A PERSPECTIVE OF THE END OF THE REAGAN YEARS, SPEAKING VARY NARROWLY, JUST IN TERMS OF NEW HAMPSHIRE, HOW WOULD YOU SUMMARIZE THE LEGACY OF THE FREEZE MOVEMENT.

The legacy of the freeze movement is that — the most important thing is — is — provided a reason and a method for concerned people in small towns in New Hampshire to get active, to do something, to develop a local organization to feel like they were making a difference, that they could make a difference and that it was important to keep going for the long haul. And many of the groups and many of those activists are still active today. They're not all working on nuclear weapons. Some of them are working on Central America. Some of those groups that got started around the freeze back in '81 and '82 have become multi-issue groups which still are concerned about nuclear weapons but also might sponsor a forum on the Middle East or might sponsor a forum on Southern Africa or on Central America. But they're still active and they're still going. It also led to the creation of a statewide organization, which is now called New Hampshire Action for Peace and Lasting Security, which is doing a very good job of educating — continuing to educate people in New Hampshire about the dangers of the nuclear arms race and what people can do to prevent nuclear war. These things grow out of the nuclear freeze movement.

IF A KIND OF REFERENDUM WERE HELD TODAY ...DO YOU THINK YOU WOULD SEE A 50/50 SPLIT AS IT WAS FOUR OR FIVE YEARS AGO?

I think that most people support the freeze. If people are presented with the question, "Do you think that the United States and the Soviet Union should agree to a mutual halt to all further testing deployment and production of nuclear weapons," most people will say yes.

ONE LAST QUESTION. IF YOU WERE WRITING A HISTORY BOOK 20 YEARS FROM NOW AND YOU HAD TO SAY IN A FEW SHORT SENTENCES WHAT IT WAS THAT THE REAGAN ERA STOOD FOR IN TERMS OF THE QUESTION OF WAR OR PEACE IN A NUCLEAR AGE, WHAT WOULD YOU SAY?

I would not credit it all to Ronald Reagan, but I will say that the peace movement in this country has gotten more organized during the past seven years than it ever has been in this country in previous times. And that drawing on experience of decades of work for peace and for social change, there is an incredibly strong peace movement in this country and an incredibly strong peace movement around the world. And the events that happened in the early '80s are part of a time line in which this – in which this process continues.