My Peace Movement Mentors: 1961

Dear Editor,

This issue’s focus led me to recall my major ego ideals, role models, and mentors in becoming a committed anti-war activist. I am inclined to think that “ego ideals” are simply projections, perhaps fantasies of one’s identity. I hope psychohistorians will know how to interpret what follows.

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I was born in the summer of 1940 and by the spring of 1961 had achieved direction lessness—except for what one’s genes or upbringing, or momentous youthful experiences might contribute unconsciously to “direction.” What I knew of religion I felt no affinity for, but did prefer it to what I knew of science. I had tried college without liking much there, except listening to Richard McKeon and Paul Tillich, philosophers, and David Grene, the Greek translator.

My summers did, however, have a direction: west. I liked rock climbing and had been hired to represent the Sierra Club as its full-time employee in Yosemite Valley in the summer of 1961, providing mountaineering information and caretaking Ansel Adams’ “This Is the American Earth Photo Exhibit.” But first, after a wet 1960-61 winter of working in Seattle, I headed east with two climbing friends who had heard about a San Francisco-to-Moscow Peace Walk. We located a motley band of American Gandhians 40 miles west of Cleveland. They were camping overnight inside a like-minded Brethren or Mennonite church. That evening at a public meeting, I listened while some of the more articulate “peace-walkers” advocated nuclear disarmament, nonviolent action, and simple living. Those ideas resonated with me, for I had a Quaker pacifist uncle whose ideas had always interested me, even though they usually reached me second-hand through my like-minded Lutheran father. The uncle lived rustically in a spacious rural Quaker commune of Celo in western North Carolina and my family had visited him at length the summer I reached age nine. After that I read many library books about “intentional communities” devoted to a more communitarian, egalitarian life than we lived.

In the spring of 1960, after dropping out of college and steel-working for a while to save up money, I went to see Celo and my uncle again for a longer visit. By the next winter (1960-1961) I had applied for status as a conscientious objector and had in fact had a contentious meeting with my draft board, in which I was told, “We ask the questions here, not you.” An elderly gentleman on the draft board had served in the 1898-1902 Philippine War and I had asked him if he saw anyone tortured, to which he defensively replied, “We did what we had to do.” This disgusted me.

So it was that when my climbing friends and I managed to

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find the San Francisco-to-Moscow Peace Walk in Ohio in spring 1961, we promptly joined it. The next evening it camped (indoors again) at Oberlin College, where the Student Peace Union of those days was trying to organize a “mass” return of 50 draft cards.

Now, the military draft had already caught my attention. I had been late in registering for it when I turned 18, but while attending the University of Chicago in 1958-1959 I had been told I was automatically exempted from the draft as long as I remained a student. That had affronted my egalitarianism and I complained to the Registrar’s Office, where a young woman explained to me that, legally, male students were required to personally apply in writing if they wanted a student exemption—but that in fact UC and most other colleges simply sent Selective Service all their male students’ names and then they all received exemptions. She promised to promptly have my student exemption voided.

After listening to the peace-walkers and the Oberlin activists criticize the draft, I found total draft refusal attractive. As we peace-walked through Cleveland, I dropped my draft card into the mail addressed to my local draft board back home, accompanied by a letter explaining that I no longer intended to comply at all.

By the time the peace walk reached New York City seven weeks later, its leaders had designated who would be allowed to continue on to Europe and Moscow, and I was not among those selected. After hearing battered-and-bandaged Freedom Riders report on their Southern experiences at New York’s Community Church, I next visited a longer-term project of the same direct-action-minded American Gandhians, the Polaris Action project at New London, Connecticut. There I met a man I would soon learn a great deal from, not so much about organizing as about alternative economics—Bob Swann, whose life and ideas are the subject of Stephanie Mills’ book On Gandhi’s Path, set for release this spring. In retrospect, I realize that Bob Swann and his wife were my chief mentors in life. But first, I fulfilled my promise to be Sierra Club’s employee in Yosemite Valley that summer of 1961—and while there failed to convince Ansel Adams and other Sierra Clubbers that conservation groups and peace groups should set up a process for exploring their commonalities.

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Back at the Polaris Action project in Connecticut, I acquired a working knowledge of organizing, not so much from Bob Swann as from his remarkable wife Marjorie. It was a harsh winter (1961-1962), much of which we spent passing out leaflets during the shift changes at Electric Boat Company, the division of General Dynamics that was building the Polaris nuclear subs, and that later built the next generation, the Trident subs. Fortnightly we would dash down the Connecticut Turnpike to New York City for the impressive national committee meetings. Bayard Rustin and Dorothy Day would lock horns with each other on Castro’s Cuba and other issues of the day—politics vs. principles—oblivious to A.J. Muste’s injections of soothing compromises. It was educational by any standard. At one meeting I suggested reaching out to civil rights activists by sponsoring a peace walk from Nashville to Washington, D.C., coincident with two other walks to converge on Washington, one from Dartmouth and the other from Chicago. Those took place in the spring of 1962 and I organized the one from Dartmouth to D.C. Meanwhile, back in October or November 1961 I had been ordered to report for induction into the Army, and at Christmastime had held a vigil at my draft board for 23-plus hours before finally being arrested for failure to report as ordered for induction into the Army. The judge ordered me to “stay put” while they did a pre-sentence investigation, but I headed back east to organize the Dartmouth to D.C. peace walk. Apparently in June 1962 they noticed I was gone, and just as the three peace walks were about to converge in Washington, I was ordered to report in three days for sentencing.

I was sentenced to three years’ incarceration, which proved interesting. Morton Sobell, Chuck Berry, and the Birdman of Alcatraz befriended me. Upon my release in July 1965, I went back to Polaris Action—which by then was based on a large Connecticut farm with an adjacent children’s summer camp. There I started trying to actualize an idea for a United Nations-related non-violent peacekeeping profession. It didn’t get far, except to help start the International Peace Academy, which still publishes books and occasional papers on world trouble spots. Bob Swann’s initiation of the Community Land Trust movement, in which I participated, proved potentially more fruitful. Eventually we both got

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involved in issuing local currencies to supplement the U.S. dollar as a way to reduce Americans’ need for dollars and thereby reduce the growth of dollar-debt, and in the process to reduce the outsourcing of goods and services that could be provided locally.

Such were my ego ideals, role models, and mentors. I hope it is clear that 1961, the year I turned 21, turned out to be my life’s pivotal year since that was when I acquired a direction. In retrospect, I have no regrets whatsoever about becoming an antiwar activist. In fact, even though I’ve now ended up in academic life since age 40 I think the education I received from Bob Swann and other activists was better suited to someone of my high-spirited temperament than a University of Chicago education would have been. Some people learn better via role-models and direct experiences than they would learn through purely mental efforts.

Sincerely,

Paul Salstrom

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