Video: ''March For Disarmament' Anti-Nuclear Rally video - New York City, June 12th 1982'
(Saturday, June 12, 1982, protesters were scheduled to converge in Central Park at 1:00 p.m. EDT for a program of speeches and music that ended at 7:00 p.m. EDT; during the Cold War) — In the largest political demonstration in American history, one million people gathered in New York City’s Central Park today to demonstrate against nuclear weapons and call for an end to the cold war arms race.
Video: 'Anti-Nuke Rally,NYC ,June 12,1982'
The vast parade and rally, organized by a coalition of peace groups, brought together pacifists and anarchists, children and Buddhist monks, Roman Catholic bishops and Communist Party leaders, university students, and union members.
Video: 'Anti Nuke Rally NYC part 2'
There were delegations from Vermont and Montana, Bangladesh and Zambia, and from many other places. The smiling, hand-clapping line of marchers was more than three miles long, and the participants carried placards in dozens of languages.
Video: 'Anti Nuke Rally NYC part 3'
Coretta Scott King, the widow of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., spoke of the acres of people as a political force. ”We have come here in numbers so large that the message must get through to the White House and Capitol Hill,” she told the gathering.
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“There’s no way the leaders can ignore this now,” said Alex Willentz, who drove overnight from Utica, New York, for the event. “It’s not just hippies and crazies anymore. It’s everybody.”
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The sponsor of the demonstration was the June 12 Rally Committee, an umbrella organization of religious and secular peace groups. The groups participating ranged from radicals seeking immediate unilateral disarmament by the United States to moderates asking for a resumption of negotiations on arms cutbacks.
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The rally was to mark the United Nations Second Special Session on Disarmament, which began June 8, 1982. The demonstrators had massed in blocks between First and Third Avenues from 47th to 56th Streets for morning speeches in the Dag Hammarskjold Plaza near the UN and the march across 42d Street, up Fifth and Seventh Avenues, and on to the Great Lawn in Central Park at 81st Street.
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At the rally, between speeches, entertainment boomed from the huge stage over the hundreds of thousands of heads camped on the dusty lawn. Among those who sang were Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Bruce Springsteen, Joan Baez, and Linda Ronstadt.
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