The Nation - News from June 12, 1988

About 60,000 demonstrators, many of them schoolchildren and Japanese survivors of the World War II bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, rallied in New York’s Central Park to protest nuclear weapons. Police said that 11,000 marchers stepped off from the United Nations and that their numbers swelled to more than 60,000 by the time they reached the rally in the park. The rally was held in conjunction with the third U.N. special session on disarmament that began June 1 and continues to June 24. International delegates to the conference have called for the abolition of nuclear weapons by the year 2000. Demonstrators hoisted enormous puppets of papier-mache and cloth made to look like doves and carried hand-lettered signs reading: “Say No to Star Wars; Save $200 Billion for Peace” and “To End War and Nurture Peace.”