Marchers’ Credibility on the Line : Celebrities Join Group to Publicize PRO-Peace Trek

Today, the steadily receding calendar reads, “The Great Peace March: 148 days to go.”

Every time David Mixner walks out of his office at PRO-Peace (People Reaching Out for Peace) headquarters on Beverly Boulevard on the Westside, he sees the calendar and panics, he says. But judging by the behavior of Mixner and his colleagues in the bustling office complex, the mood at PRO-Peace seems one of exhilaration rather than panic.

They have put their credibility on the line this week, vowing to turn out 1,000 people on Saturday morning--146 days to go--in the Sepulveda Basin for the shooting of a public service commercial.

Mock-Up of Peace March

They could have done a studio shot with a couple of enthusiastic celebrities. Instead, they are taking those celebrities, dozens of Hollywood’s young stars, such as Judd Nelson, Mare Winningham, Rosanna Arquette and Rae Dawn Chong, and putting them among the 1,000 or so folks they’ve been urging to show up. It will be a mock-up of the great peace march--a swarm of people appearing on the horizon, stars and “just folks” mixed in together, just marching along for peace like anyone else. Can they do it?

“I’d like to see 5,000 show up,” Mixner said to the dismay of Saturday’s organizers. “I’d like to see what the real thing’s going to look like.”

The real thing: On March 1, 5,000 people will set out on foot from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., by way of New York. As the back of the PRO-Peace T-shirt anticipates, it will take “15 miles per day, 255 days, 2,500 tents, 3,235 miles, 20,000 pairs of shoes, 1,275,000 showers, 3,825,000 meals, 65 million Americans’ lives touched, and 50 billion steps.”

People will be doing this for one reason--to try to bring about global nuclear disarmament, or, as Mixner is fond of saying, to “bring those suckers down.” The intent is not to dismantle the weapons on the walk across the United States, but to create the moral and political climate in the country, and in the world that will be watching, to make it all happen. And to use that climate to create the formidable organized movement necessary to take down the missiles.

There is a schedule: The peaceful, law-abiding walk across the country, the interaction with millions of people in 15 states, the development of a computerized list of 5 million to 10 million names to be used for future action.

Following the march, a nationwide campaign of civil disobedience, where people will fill the jails if that is what it takes to get the point across, followed by international marches, such as one across West Germany into East Germany and on to Berlin. And PRO-Peace’s “alternative communications systems technological advisory committee” is exploring ways to take the campaign to the people of the Soviet Union.

That will keep them busy. Question No. 1 about this overwhelmingly grandiose scheme, of course, is will they ever make it out of Los Angeles?

“We realized in August we were going to make it,” Mixner said calmly, by which he meant out of Los Angeles, into Washington and on with the mission. “We’re just about right on schedule now.”

A year ago, the march was just an idea Mixner arrived at after his 7-year-old niece, Elizabeth Annison, told him she thought she was going to die in a nuclear war. Mixner, a long-time political organizer and fund-raiser, thought about it, decided the real problem was the lack of hope. If people could take on the impossible, at tremendous inconvenience to themselves and do the impossible, the situation could be turned around, he reasoned. He thought up his impossible dream and got going.

By last spring, he had a nonprofit, nonpartisan corporation, a suite of offices, 30 paid staffers, $100,000 in donations, and organizers on campuses.

Today, the offices have encroached on three floors of the building; the paid staff has grown to 75; there are seven regional offices across the country; two advance teams are on the road, charting the route, scouting campsites; a recruitment drive for marchers is under way; close to $3 million in cash and kind have been received. There is, as has been observed more than once, enough action going on to elect a President.

Consider this week.

On Monday night, Mixner and Paul Newman gave briefings on the march to the business and entertainment communities. At the gathering of the latter in a palatial Art Deco home in the Hollywood Hills, Newman and Mixner were joined by Frank Wells, president and chief operations officer of Walt Disney Productions, as they told a crowd of about 150 what was happening.

More Celebrities

Sally Field, Robert Walden, Roddy McDowall, Richard Dreyfuss, Casey Kasem, Bonnie Franklin, William Christopher, Ed Begley Jr., Marjoe Gortner, Barbara Bain and Carl Reiner were among those looking at the scale model of the “campscape” that PRO-Peace volunteer Lauren Weingarten has designed, a hexagonal arrangement of six color-coded “towns,” each with its own mess hall, and community center. (The colors correspond with the trucks that will carry the gear and deliver the mail.) The whole thing will be taken down each morning and set up 15 miles to the east each night. Outside, on the lawn, one of the two-person sleeping tents was set up.

Although the evening was not a fund-raiser, contributions of money to this effort, which will cost a projected $20 million, were acceptable and Eve Hallinan of the PRO-Peace staff told the guests at one point that a $250,000 deposit for 3,000 tents was needed soon so the tent company could start sewing, “or we aren’t going anywhere.”

There is, they were told, a Give Me Shelter program, where $350 buys a tent, the tent going back to the donor at the end of the march. And for $1,000, there is the Adopt A Marcher program being coordinated by Vietnam veteran Jon Randolph Floyd.

If she had to choose, however, between Hollywood’s time or money, she would ask for time, Hallinan told them. The producers, directors and technicians behind the scenes were needed for special events. Those known to the public were needed to attend fund-raising events outside the Los Angeles area, where people seldom saw a celebrity. And they were needed to “entertain the troops,” just like the USO, when the marchers were in “MON” territory, she said--middle of nowhere.

His First Commercial

Nicholas Meyer, who directed “The Day After” and will be directing Saturday’s 30-second public service spot, invited them to come out for this, his first commercial. They would be in Woodley Park in Van Nuys from 9 a.m.to 1 p.m. he told them, saying “do it for yourselves. Peace is a good thing.”

Pacy Markman, from Doyle Dane & Bernbach advertising agency, was there too. Involved with PRO-Peace since May, he thought up Saturday’s Cecil B. DeMille-style commercial. Communications director Howard Cushnir and media adviser Josh Baran got together with him, he said privately, and speculated, “What if we could get some younger stars for a series of PSA (public service announcement) shots?” Not the way to go, Markman told them. One star would be talking, another not. Wouldn’t work. Why not just stage the march? That’s what it’s all about.

Stephen-Charles Jaffe signed on as producer, Victor Kemper as cinematographer. The sound, editing, catering, filming equipment is all being donated.

“I doubt if we’ll spend a penny,” Markman said.

It remained for Newman and Mixner to describe the Great Peace March itself. Newman’s remarks were brief. He recalled the great nuclear freeze demonstration in Central Park several years ago that brought out 750,000 people.

“But not one organizer who had jacked them up to be there told us what to do next. There was no follow up. We lacked staying power. . . . No one was taking names. This time we’re going to get computerized, the same way the other guys are. And we have David Mixner to thank.”

Mixner spoke to the celebrities the way he speaks to anyone who listens, the only difference from this performance and his private conversations about the march being his shaking voice. He made an appeal to greatness.

Activist Roots

At 39, he has years of political organizing and activism behind him. He worked for Eugene McCarthy in 1968, was one of four coordinators of the Vietnam Moratorium, helped defeat California’s Proposition 6, an anti-gay initiative, directed Mayor Tom Bradley’s 1977 reelection campaign and recently co-chaired Gary Hart’s presidential campaign. His activist roots, however, go back to the civil rights movement when he was a New Jersey high school student, and that is where he seems to take much of his inspiration.

He invoked the names of his heroes, Fannie Lou Hamer, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Mahatma Gandhi, President John F. Kennedy. And he recalled historic times of moral courage and challenge--the war for independence, the abolition movement, the early days of the labor movement, the years of the Second World War, the Vietnam protest.

By the time he got to the march, he had reached oratory, describing how they would be led through St. George, Utah, by radiation victims, welcomed by Hopi tribal leaders, accompanied across the plains of Nebraska by farmers and their tractors, and be joined outside of Washington on Nov. 14, 1986 by 1 million people to march the final journey at sunup past the embassies of the nuclear powers and to the Capitol.

Great Moments

“It’s not an act of conscience. It’s not a symbolic effort. We must be successful if we’re to have any dignity as a civilization,” he said to the room of visibly moved people. Reminding them again of great moments of the past and what people can do, he said, “It’s our turn. I give you my word. Each of us will live to see our children grow up and the missiles taken down.”

Meanwhile, the campaign gears up. Recruitment started in earnest in September and will continue through November. PRO-Peace estimates from 40% to 50% of the marchers will be students and is recruiting heavily on campuses. Not exclusively, however. They want the march to be reflective of society, and are advertising in minority and ethnic publications. There will be scholarships available to help some marchers finance the trip.

One 71-year-old man, who says he walks 15 miles a day anyhow, wants to go. If he can pass the physical, he can go. The 12,000 camping, marching, transportation and speaking permits are being systemically gathered by the legal departments. Physicians for Social Responsibility and the American Civil Liberties Union are sending the word out to local doctors and lawyers that the peace marchers are coming. The campscape design completed, Lauren Weingarten is at work planning the art projects that will encircle the moveable town during weekend encampments when local communities will be invited to visit.

Singing and Dancing

Mixner described the beginning of the march this way: Marchers will gather at the Coliseum on March 1. The stadium will fill with 100,000 spectators. There will be music and well wishes and singing and dancing. Bells will be ringing in the city. And the marchers will set out on the first 8 miles before camping for the night.

“I think almost everybody at the Coliseum is going to want to join us on that first leg, and I hope they do. It’ll probably be the longest, biggest march in L.A.,” Mixner said, his exhilaration taking on a brief look of disbelief. “And then we’re off!”