New-Breed Activism : Beyond War Enlists Professionals for Peace in Arms-Minded South Bay

In a Torrance living room with a copy of Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s best-seller on the coffee table, Paul Sincock was planning to bring about peace on earth.

Casually dressed in an argyle sweater, the trim Sincock little resembled the Christmas-card image of the Prince of Peace that December night. And the group surrounding him hardly looked like the disciples. Nor, for that matter, did they look like members of some wild-eyed group of left-wing radicals.

Yet there they were--in the heart of the nation’s aerospace industry, where defense contracts help keep the local economy thriving--a computer software consultant, a former Air Force intelligence officer, a TRW staffer, an electronics saleswoman, a data processing specialist, a family therapist, a public relations consultant, a retired teacher, a real estate investor, a housewife and a lawyer--all at Sincock’s house to promulgate a revolutionary idea: that, notwithstanding thousands of years of history, war and violence have become obsolete in the nuclear age.

The informally dressed group sipped hot apple cider and tea and munched home-made brownies. Sincock saw everyone settled comfortably and began the meeting promptly at 7:30 p.m. “We have a heavy schedule,” he said.

Sincock and the others are part of a new breed of peace activist coming to the fore in the South Bay.

In increasing numbers, they are becoming involved in the Beyond War organization, a national peace education group whose soft-sell, war-is-obsolete message is gaining acceptance in an area where political action more often means preserving neighborhoods than saving humanity.

“They seem to be making major inroads,” said Jon Mercant, a member of the executive board of the state Democratic Party, who for several years has been active in South Bay peace efforts.

Sincock is not only the local leader of Beyond War, but is representative of its membership. Like most Beyond Warriors, he is white, upper middle class, college-educated, professional. He is 47, has no previous background as a political activist and admittedly no deep knowledge of foreign relations.

For him, the role of committed peace activist is a departure from decades spent as a father of growing children, as a businessman, and as a developer.

Ten years ago, he never would have had the time for activism. His two boys were teen-agers, and he was getting a solar-energy consulting business off the ground.

“My children are now out of the house, you know, and it gives me time,” he said. “. . . When they were younger, I was preoccupied with their soccer games.”

His career as peace worker has taken him to Washington, where he held his own with senators and representatives, urging them to support the Contadora peace process in Central America. He was briefed by former CIA Director William E. Colby and Washington Post columnist David Broder.

Sincock spoke on a nationwide satellite hookup that was broadcast to thousands of Beyond War supporters. As local coordinator, he gives speeches and conducts seminars.

He appears to wear his new role comfortably. With an easy fluency, he puts the catchwords of Beyond War into language a businessman can understand.

“I have owned my own business for quite a number of years and been involved in large companies before that,” he said, “and I know that from a practical standpoint, if the environment or the marketplace changes, business has to change or it doesn’t survive.

“Now what I saw was that the ground rules by which countries had governed their relationships have changed in the last 40 years. With our capacity to literally end life, with nuclear weapons and things like that, it significantly changed the ground rules under which nations can relate to one another. . . .

“So I felt a concern for the amount of money that we’re spending on (the) military, a concern for the fact that we’ve got something like 50,000 weapons--nuclear weapons--on the face of the planet when 400 is enough to destroy every country there is. And it just seemed irrational.

”. . . It’s my belief that it’s not a matter of if we’re going to have a nuclear war--it’s just when--under the current thinking. So we have to change our thinking.”

Total Rejection of Violence

As a movement, Beyond War got its beginning in Palo Alto, where a predecessor group formulated the basic position that nuclear weapons make all war an obsolete way to settle disputes because armed conflicts sooner or later will lead to a full-scale nuclear war. The way out, the group decided, was to abandon violence and confrontation as a way of resolving conflict, in foreign policy and in personal relations.

Since 1982, when Beyond War was founded as a tax-exempt, nonpolitical, nonprofit educational organization, the group has grown until it has about 400 full-time unpaid workers, plus perhaps 15,000 part-time volunteers in 33 states. Since 1983, the organization has made an annual award each year to a group or individual for peace efforts. Peace Corps volunteers were honored this year.

Beyond War’s philosophy and tax-exempt status keep its focus not on demonstrations or political campaigns, but solely on the attempt to change minds.

The latest weapon in its peace arsenal is a book that was the basis for the meeting in Sincock’s living room.

Entitled “Breakthrough,” it is a recently published group of essays on U.S.-Soviet relations commissioned by Beyond War and written by American and Soviet researchers and commentators. In mid-January, two of the Soviet writers, a psychologist and an author, will swing through the Los Angeles area as part of a promotional tour for which the organization is paying.

South Bay Itinerary

Sincock had called the meeting to decide how to arrange their schedule in the South Bay.

Rob Lancefield, a lawyer who now works full-time for Beyond War, drove in from Claremont to brief the group on the book tour. He is part of Beyond War’s national task force on U.S.-Soviet relations.

“We felt it was important for Rob to be here,” said Beverly Sincock, Paul’s wife, “because he can present a holistic point of view: What is the right thing for us to be doing, for us as a movement.”

In the South Bay, the movement has been active. Sincock, as a member of Beyond War’s national task force on Central America, went to Washington in the spring.

Beyond War followed up Oct. 21 with a forum at Torrance’s South High School on the role of the United States in Central America that was co-sponsored by the local chapter of the American Assn. of University Women and the Palos Verdes League of Women Voters.

Council Resolutions

More recently, members of its political study group approached a number of South Bay city councils and were successful in obtaining adoption of six resolutions in late November and early December condemning war and violence. Cities approving such resolutions were Torrance, Carson, Redondo Beach, El Segundo, Rolling Hills Estates and Hermosa Beach.

Much of its work is less visible. The group uses a sort of Tupperware-party approach to membership recruitment, sponsoring orientations in the home of a member.

The group is not without critics and skeptics, Sincock concedes.

He has frequently had to answer objections that the group is unrealistic in its goal of getting people to accept nonviolence as the only way of resolving conflicts.

“People say it is a good idea but it doesn’t deal with the nitty-gritty of the way the world works,” he noted. “(They say,) ‘You’re talking about something we can all agree with-- motherhood, apple pie, but it’s too idealistic.”

One such skeptic is Tom Needles, press secretary for Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Long Beach), who met with Sincock when he was in Washington last spring to lobby for the Contadora peace proposals.

Needles said he was impressed that Sincock had done his homework, was neatly dressed and well-spoken. “Those things are all very important in the total makeup of anybody trying to sell a product,” the aide said.

Human Fallibility

But Sincock failed to make a sale.

“I really don’t know about the goal of making war obsolete,” Needles said. “I would say it is impossible because humans aren’t perfect.”

After the meeting, Sincock acknowledged a certain frustration with his trip to Washington. “We got into the front rooms, but not the back rooms where policy is made,” he said.

Mercant, the Democratic Party official and peace activist, said he considers Beyond War more “an entrance-type group” than an effective political action group.

“They are for people who feel that something ought to be done, but feel nervous about politics. They have to be walked into the issue in a nonpartisan kind of way. It is good in the sense of not putting people off, but bad in the sense that, once you want to do something about the issue, you have to register and vote and lobby your congressman. In a sense, they are more appropriate for the South Bay because South Bay people are nonpolitical, nonpartisan.”

Internal Dissatisfaction

Sincock acknowledges that a number of people are not satisfied with what they perceive to be a fuzziness in the Beyond War program and a feeling that the organization avoids battles.

“You know people come in and say, ‘But what are you doing?’ ‘Well, we are educating. . . .’ ‘But, but what are you doing? ‘ “

Sincock and Beyond War’s reply to questions on their effectiveness is to talk about how their message of peaceful resolution of conflicts applies to interpersonal relations as well as global concerns. He says:

“Here’s how you find out: Does it work in your life? Either those premises are true or not true, and you can test this out and find out if this works in your life.

“Now this is not a religion. This is not an esoteric psychological movement, and yet the principles that are needed in a world beyond war are needed in the fabric of an individual’s life.

“Now it is going to take time,” he went on. “The question is, ‘How do we influence the decision-making process in this country?’ Now that doesn’t mean politics necessarily. . . . We’re trying new things all around the country to see how we can penetrate the business community, the religious community, the educational community.”

In line with this approach, the group in Sincock’s living room hope to use the January book tour not so much to sell volumes but to involve people in the issues that the book raises.

Nuts and Bolts

It discussed whether the authors should mainly meet Beyond War people or the public, the amount that should be charged for an evening meeting with the authors, whose house they would stay at, how tired they would be, whether they would want to see Disneyland or go to a shopping mall.

Outside the South Bay, the group is working to set up meetings with members of the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times, MGM executives and students and faculty at California State University, Northridge.

In the South Bay, a sympathetic El Segundo official is trying to arrange a breakfast for the authors with chief executive officers of the aerospace firms there, and a small dinner is being set up for a selected group of South Bay Beyond War activists in the hopes that they will strengthen their commitments.

The major South Bay event is to be a $5 invitation-only presentation before 250 people in the meeting room of the Torrance public library. As the discussion wandered over the feasibility of serving coffee afterward to encourage informal discussion, Sincock had an idea:

“What about having Paragon Cable covering it? They have this public access channel,” he said enthusiastically.

But others objected that bright TV lights would be disruptive. The idea was shelved pending further study. The meeting ended, as scheduled, at 9:30 p.m. All agreed that it had been a good one.