Waging peace
Daniel Flynn writes about an inspiring pacifist
Born in 1940, one year after myself, the Quaker, activist and writer David Hartsough has participated in the most significant protests for peace, justice and equality of my lifetime: protests against military armaments destined to kill millions of civilians, against racial bigotry tearing our society apart, and against dangerous nuclear power menacing destruction of our world. Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist is the provocative personal history of someone who has put his Quaker beliefs into vivid action.
The subtitle, however, is a little misleading. David Hartsough has put his life on the line not for ‘adventure’ but to publicise governmental and corporate practices that are inherently dangerous to our living together and our survival as a human race. He has attempted to use the Christian message of ‘the Golden Rule’ to counter greed, anger and hate. He has done what I could never have done.
In 1958, he organized a protest of young people against a Nike site in Pennsylvania. Three years later, I started two years of military service as a US army artillery lieutenant in the Chicago-Gary Air Defense – ready to shoot nuclear-tipped Nike Hercules surface-to-air missiles against Russian bombers that might be coming over the North Pole to attack Chicago. (We succeeded. The Russians did not attack.) This was cold war insanity!
Those Nike Hercules nuclear bombs might have knocked some Russian bombers out of the sky, but they would have caused catastrophic damage to the city of Chicago and its inhabitants for generations. It reminds me of the infamous quote of a US army major in Vietnam: ‘It became necessary to destroy the town to save it’, as recorded by Associated Press journalist Peter Arnett.
In his last speech as president in 1961, former general Dwight D Eisenhower warned against the acquisition of unwarranted influence by ‘the military-industrial complex’. A year later Hartsough was the youngest of six Quakers meeting with president John F Kennedy, encouraging him to pursue a ‘peace race’ with Russia, rather than an ‘arms race’.
‘If you guys are serious about us moving in that direction,’ Kennedy told them, ‘the military is very strong, so you are going to have to build a powerful movement to help me make that decision.’
The United States now spends forty-four per cent of federal taxes outside of the Social Security trust fund on military-related expenses – engaged in what some call ‘permanent war’. I was moved to ask Hartsough recently if he is an optimist. His answer was a big, broad, friendly smile. He is a self-described Johnny Appleseed (the legendary Swedenborgian minister and nurseryman who introduced apple trees to many states in the US in the late 1700s and early 1800s). Many of his protests have led to his arrest, but some have led to effective publicity and positive success. Perhaps his greatest success will be the peace movements in action today that he helped spawn and nourish, which include World Beyond War, Peaceworkers and Nonviolent Peace force.
David Hartsough has lived a life of learning first hand about the extreme disparities in our world, many of which are not reported in the media, and of taking direct action to attempt to make them right. Today, modern telecommunications have enabled us to not only know of such disparities, but also, as never before, of the threats to humanity’s survival. For anyone passionate about the future, I encourage them to read David Hartsough’s memories of his past three-quarters of a century of ‘waging peace’.
Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist by David Hartsough is published by PM Press at £14.99. ISBN: 9781629630342
Further information:
worldbeyondwar.org
www.peaceworkersus.org
www.nonviolentpeaceforce.org
