Camp Pendleton
A dozen people engaged in the California State Peace March for Nuclear Disarmament were blocked Thursday from walking through Camp Pendleton on their way from San Ysidro to Sacramento.
Camp Pendleton spokesman Maj. Tom Mitchell said the group was denied permission to use the 17-mile-long public bike path because hiking has recently been banned and “it is inappropriate for the base to align itself with any political or ideological group or cause.”
The banner-carrying demonstrators, who had been notified in May that they would not be allowed on base, were met by Marine guards as they walked toward the main gate of the base just north of Oceanside. The confrontation was low-key, and there was no attempt to forcibly enter the base.
The demonstrators later took a bus on Interstate 5 to a state campground at San Onofre. Citing safety concerns, the state Department of Transportation had refused permission for the group to walk along the freeway.
Ellen Murphy, 51, a poet from Lakeside, read a poem for the occasion titled “Let Peace Go Through.” It read, in part, “Raise the Teflon Curtain/Dare to know/You are our brothers and our sisters/GI Jane and GI Joe.”
The group plans to meet with other peace activists in Sacramento on Aug. 6, the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
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