The disarmament movement in New Orleans is new. It started last Thanksgiving with the initiative and hard work of only three people. They began holding weekly prayer vigils on Sundays outside the cathedral at Jackson Square. In a short time the core group had grown to fifteen people, with many more supporters. They held lengthy meetings each night for the past week to ensure that the World Peace March would have a successful beginning today.
One problem they had dealt with was the $500 fee the city originally demanded for the parade permit. Clearly such a fee was out of reach of the fledgling organization. Finally the city agreed to the march without fee or police escort. The problem of parade permits was to come up often, in many forms, between New Orleans and New York.
At the gathering place, Gary and I saw that there was now a third monk. His name was Nagase and he had just arrived after getting out of jail in Europe, where he had been repeatedly arrested for "disturbing the peace" by praying outside a NATO meeting at The Hague. I was happy to find that all three monks spoke English fairly well.
As we were assembling, six middle-aged men in business suits arrived for a counter-demonstration. They were members of Young Americans for Freedom. For half an hour the YAFers walked in a circle in front of the city hall. Sometimes they chanted, "Reagan, Reagan" (Ray-gun, Ray-gun) or "More Nukes, More Nukes!" They seemed like a parody of mindless jingoism and I failed, then, to sense that they were like us. They were earnest devotees of a cause.
At noon we had a 15-minute prayer service to begin the walk. Morishita opened the service with the Buddhist chant: "Na-Mu-Myo-Ho-Ren-Ge-Kyo.' Then Catholic Bishop D'Antonio blessed the walk and prayed for our safety and success. The service concluded with three minutes of silence in memory of the victims of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Then we were off, walking behind a large banner carried by two people which read, "World Peace March 1982, New Orleans-New York, Set the Dates for Nuclear Disarmament." This was followed by the Buddhist banner, carried by Sakamaki. Next came the other two monks, Morishita and Nagase, and finally the rest of the walkers. This was the order that we followed until we merged in D. C. with the walk from Los Angeles.
I later learned that the very famous Trappist monk, Thomas Fidelis, had wanted to walk the entire distance and that Morishita had badly wanted him. But Thomas had been refused by his superiors. (We were to hear from him again in Atlanta, where he reapplied to join the walk.)
The weather was warm with temperatures in the sixties and light rain. Most of us walked in shirt sleeves and shorts. We were in a festive mood. There had been about 150 people gathered at city hall to give us a big send-off and about 50 of them walked with us the first day to Kenner, about ten miles. As we walked along the sidewalk through the city of New Orleans, many people waved to us and asked us where we were marching. We would shout back, "New York" or "To the U.N." They would shout back: "Nah!", "You're kidding!"
The monks and a few others were chanting. The rest of us walked behind, talking to new friends about the MX, cruise missiles, Greenham Common, verification.
At our meeting after supper that night in Kenner, we took time to be sure we were all aware of the objectives of the walk. This was an interfaith walk in support of the United Nations Second Special Session on Disarmament. The objectives of SSD-II were three: first, to freeze the arms race; second, to set dates for steps ending with the total abolition of nuclear weapons; and third, to use the money currently being spent world-wide on defense (550 billion in 198l) to remove the causes of war, e.g. hunger, illiteracy, poor housing, inadequate medical care. It was necessary that one accept these objectives before joining the World Peace March. Also, it was necessary that one accept a fundamental feature of the means to these objectives -- non-violence.
The long-distance walkers then discussed what non-violence meant to them. Though much practical information is available, there is no single blueprint on the practice of non-violence. We held a brief training workshop on how to stop violent acts, which we could encounter on the walk, without being violent ourselves. Our comprehension increased during the walk as we dealt with such acts and then talked them over.