Keep the peace

Marina Goloborodko believes in a world without war and weapons. Sounds reasonable. But why won't anyone listen?

by Kristen Lombardi

It's amazing the hostility you encounter mobilizing a peace movement nowadays. Take Marina Goloborodko, lone leader of the fledgling Westborough group, Central Massachusetts Peace Action, as she stands outside that town's library on a sunny Saturday afternoon. Goloborodko, 42, a boxy woman with cropped red hair, clutches at a clipboard.

She had agreed to collect signatures for Mass Voters for Clean Elections, a group that got proposed legislation on the November ballot that limits campaign spending and contributions. The issue isn't obviously related to peace, but Goloborodko sees it linked to her work toward a non-violent world: to have a government that emphasizes social over military demands, activists must elect the right politicians; to do this, politics must be rid of big money's influence.

Several dull minutes pass before Goloborodko ventures inside; she slinks through the library's reference area, seeking voters among the people huddled over newspapers. An elderly man skirts conversation, holds up his hand as if to say, "I don't wish to know." Another man grimaces, says he doesn't believe in campaign-finance reform.

Minutes later, a stern-faced librarian motions to Goloborodko. The librarian tells her that she's disturbing patrons. She must go.

As Goloborodko leaves, she sighs and says, "I see too much apathy in society. People don't want to know about anything unless it's in their own back yards."

She speaks from experience. In the past year, she has tried, almost single-handedly, to build up a Central Massachusetts group that works toward peace, human rights, and democracy by holding monthly meetings and by doing community outreach or letter-writing campaigns. Suffice to say, she's experienced a rather rude awakening.

"I don't understand how people can't believe in something," she says, still miffed over the library episode. She now drives across town to a shopping plaza on Lyman Street. In the parking lot, she approaches anyone who happens onto her path.

"Excuse me. Would you mind signing this petition to put the clean money back into politics. . . ." she says to a gray-haired man. But as soon as she says the word "politics," the man purses his lips and shakes his head as if she were uttering something blasphemous.

She turns away. "Okay. He doesn't want to get involved."

Goloborodko then hustles into a Caldors store and spots a lanky man wandering through the kids clothing section.

"Excuse me. Would you sign this?" she asks. The man offers up a blank stare and she continues, "It's to get the dirty, big money out of politics . . ."

"I don't have a problem with that," he replies.

The man scribbles his name. After an hour of diligent canvassing, his is only the fourth signature that Goloborodko's attained.

When people ignore what you're fighting for, you just can't win.

CENTRAL MASSACHUSETTS PEACE ACTION (CMPA) blossomed as quickly as it's wilted. Just over a year ago, Goloborodko, a kindergarten teacher, called up Massachusetts Peace Action (MPA), a state organization in Cambridge that lobbies for "peace, democracy, and a nuclear free world," in search of like-minded activists who might be interested in starting a local chapter.

Fifteen or so people -- most of them peace-movement veterans living in the Framingham area -- came to Westborough for a June 1997 introductory meeting. Attendees agreed the suburbs, in particular, lacked a forum to speak and act on peace issues; thus CMPA was born.

Today, it's not an overstatement to say that Goloborodko is CMPA. Aside from a few members she relies on for activities like canvassing and letter-writing, she is the one guaranteed to attend every meeting, to plan the agenda, to spend her money whenever CMPA needs to buy postage stamps or make long-distance phone calls.

There's little doubt, in fact, that without her dedication, CMPA would no longer exist. Several members have quit since January citing hectic workloads, but Goloborodko, a Ukrainian immigrant who arrived here 21 years ago, attributes her tenacity to a deep conviction, saying flatly, "Everyone has to take a stand on something."

There are, certainly, new opportunities for activism, especially since the nuclear scare has heightened again. Just consider the five atomic-bomb tests that occurred in May in India's Rajasthan desert, which were followed by Pakistan's own tests. Or consider that impoverished tyrannies, such as North Korea and Iran, are expected to build bombs in a few years. Then ponder the United States' role in the threat: how the US and Russia currently have about 10,000 nuclear warheads; how the US has performed 350 nuclear tests since 1970 (in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, an agreement among 186 nations to stop the spread of nuclear weapons); and how the US stockpiles thousands of weapons.

All of this inspires a sense of urgency in Goloborodko. Yet she doesn't just believe in the movement; she still recalls the politically intolerant society of her youth. The fact that she can now publicly question government priorities without fear of retribution seems to prevent her from giving up -- even when the rest of Westborough isn't paying attention.

Goloborodko chuckles, then says, "It's almost impossible to start a peace movement today, but I have faith in what I'm doing."

AS ANY PEACE ACTIVIST will tell you, the movement's always been a tough sell to mainstream America. And most will offer up a host of theories as to why. People, for one, tend to view any challenge to the government as unpatriotic. Sue Malone, a Westborough resident who got into peace issues during the Vietnam War, says, "There's a my-country-right-or-wrong mindset that makes [peace activism] difficult."

People, in addition, tend to avoid painful information. If given a choice, many of us would rather ignore graphic details of the damages done when the US dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, for example. Michael True, a retired peace and conflict studies professor at Assumption College, calls the behavior "pain avoidance" and explains that psychologically, "We don't want to know of our government's [destruction] because we feel responsible."

There are, of course, more basic reasons for apathy. Whit Larrabee, who heads the MPA office in Cambridge, credits public disinterest to misinformation. People, for instance, often assume Congress has dramatically cut back military spending since the Soviet Union dissolved in 1989. But Larrabee says, people don't realize that recent cuts only represent a fraction of military budget build-up during the Reagan administration. In other words, even though Congress has trimmed the military budget to its current $270 billion, he says, the amount still equals what it was in the 1970s, at the height of the Cold War.

"Most Americans don't understand these [spending] levels," he says. Once they learn the facts, however, "we find they're very supportive."

Maybe so. Yet accepting the peace movement is different from acting on its behalf. And ultimately, longtime activists admit that most people don't take the movement seriously enough to champion peace, love, and understanding; indeed, activists are too familiar with the common perception of them as peaceniks, hippies, throwbacks of the '60s who have yet to shed touchy-feely notions of a world without war.

But in the words of Malone, who deliberately got arrested in Westborough at a protest of GTE's missile-communications systems in the '80s, "It's a matter of standing up for your beliefs. . . . When something is the right thing to do, you do it."

Peace activism, activists say, stems from a commitment to non-violence as a way of life. Hence they lobby to halt war, close nuclear-weapons labs, and end weapons trafficking. Or advocate increased spending for education, social services, and health care. The movement comes down to a fight for justice, says True, who explains, "It's trying to see that legislators are more responsible to human needs, that laws and priorities will benefit many, not the wealthy few."

Jasmine Lai, 21, a senior at Regis College, in Weston, might have snickered at True's analysis not long ago, when she, like many of her friends, believed the movement was practically dead. But after an "eye-opening" experience as an MPA intern this spring, Lai's come to view activists as a "hardy" bunch, all too willing to brave bad weather and unfavorable public reception to spread their message.

That people, especially young adults, consider the '60s the golden age of activism, when ordinary citizens cared enough to strive for social change, bothers longtime activists -- mainly, they say, because the notion isn't true. Not only did it take years for the antiwar movement to build in size, it was also just that: a reaction to Vietnam.

Thus, True says, "The movement [back then] was superficial; the focus was on how to stop Vietnam, not on how to change our country's imperialistic, violent mindset."

Besides, he adds, difficulties that activists face today pale in comparison to the early '60s. True, who became interested in peace issues during civil-rights battles of the '50s, will never forget the time he was invited to a Veterans of Foreign Wars hall in West Brookfield in 1965. The group was sponsoring a debate on America's involvement in Vietnam; True argued the "against" side. By evening's end, he'd been heckled off stage and even got anonymous notes branding him a COMMUNIST!

What '60s activism did was to pave the way for today's movement, which may not be mainstream but certainly isn't dead, activists insist. Some even claim the movement's more vital now than ever before: consider the reams of peace newsletters like Peaceworks; or the evolution of peace studies as a college discipline; or the fact that peace groups have cropped up in other countries.

Recent local initiatives may back the assertion. Take the MPA and CMPA efforts to support the Treaty to Ban Landmines, which over 100 nations signed in Ottawa, Canada, in December. Activists like Goloborodko helped to generate 1000 letters to politicians, published signature ads that reached 135,000 readers, and hosted a Boston rally for international lobbyists touring the country in an attempt to raise awareness.

Such action convinces activists that the movement's growing, that social thought's shifting -- so much so MPA's Larrabee considers it "entirely feasible" for the movement to eventually become popular philosophy. MPA and CMPA must keep educating citizens, he says, informing them of facts they might not find in local news. But boosting outreach creates a need for more members. And though Larrabee has modest goals -- to recruit at least 50 people for future campaigns -- it still takes effort to lure folks to the cause.

IN HER ATTEMPTS to increase CMPA membership, Goloborodko's had to use drastic measures. She's solicited advice from established groups like Mustard Seed Catholic Worker and Food Not Bombs, both of Worcester, papered libraries in Marlborough, Northborough, and West Boylston with fliers, and scoured letters to newspaper editors, calling anyone who wrote on a peace-friendly topic. (She recruited one of the current three members this way.) Her attempts have become increasingly frantic, and now she says, "I am desperate to find members."

It is, no doubt, a discouraging situation, but one Goloborodko's prepared to endure -- at least through elections, when MPA and CMPA plan to distribute tens of thousands of Peace Voter Guides '98, or scorecards of congressional candidates' voting records. The booklets, which compare candidates on issues like a military-spending freeze and Medicare cuts, may represent CMPA's most inoffensive project so far, one Goloborodko hopes will appeal to and pull in a diverse crowd of new activists.

But if experience is any kind of indicator, people probably won't be too pleased to see CMPA on the streets again. Activists, in fact, have already learned to expect obliviousness, indifference, even hostility from others as necessary downsides to the work; after all, they say, the movement challenges the rest of America to rethink fundamental values.

"Persistence is most important," True advises. "If you fail the first time, you go out again and again until someone listens."

It may seem naive to push for a society without violence, a world without war -- at least, on face value. Yet not long ago, activists say, no one ever imagined that black and white kids would attend the same schools, that federal officials would repeal the draft. So if there is a lull in the movement's strength today, they add, it's certain to pick up.

As Larrabee surmises, "When the time is right, a shift in thinking away from [America's] war culture will happen."

Kristen Lombardi can be reached at klombardi[a]phx.com.