Forty years ago this month, in February 1979, the people of Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action published their first newsletter, Ground Zero, Volume 1, Number 1.
The Ground Zero Newsletter forty years later
First issue of the Ground Zero Newsletter
The inaugural newsletter represented a much different era (technologically) than the one we know today. And yet the spirit behind, and within, it remains much the same. Ground Zero’s Glen Milner puts it in perspective: “Mimeograph machines were a modern technology in the 1970s. Technologies change but a lot of things haven’t.” Ground Zero co-founder Shelley Douglass remembers that the newsletter was “typed on a stencil if I’m remembering correctly” (and I’m pretty sure she is!!!). The highly technological word processor of that epoch was a typewriter, and correcting typing errors was a messy proposition. Spell check and intuitive spelling were the stuff of science fiction.
Much else has remained over forty years – the aggressive, patriarchal, misogynistic system into which Ground Zero was birthed as a response to the madness; an experiment in truth. And so, the first newsletter issue, in explaining some of the fundamental principles in which we, at Ground Zero, believe, stated a fundamental truth; that “FEMINISM IS BASIC“! Shelley Douglass, with input from others, wrote:
What this means to us is quite simple: our Western culture has been founded on the notion that women are less than human, do not have the same capabilities and rights as men, and are to be considered the property of men. We have further compounded the problem by dividing human characteristics into ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ and developing men and women to fit this mold. This process has led to overwhelming personal injustice against women in every area of life. Until recently women could not vote, hold property, or gain legal custody of their children. We are gradually correcting these most obvious injustices in our society, but we have barely begun to address the deeper issue: the patriarchal bias with which our entire culture is endowed.
Because political and economic power has been held exclusively by men, and because men have been forced into certain stereotyped ways of thought and action, our political system rewards and incorporates “masculine” characteristics such as aggressiveness, competitiveness, technical and intellectual ability, and the suppression of feeling. Western social structures reflect this bias, and we at Ground Zero believe that building up a peaceful society will require the building up of a whole new concept of human-ness, and a new structure to fit it. We don’t believe either capitalism or communism is and adequate model: the adequate models have not yet been created.
Because we believe that patriarchal attitudes and structures are a prime source of our world’s problems, we try to raise consciousness of them at the same time as we raise consciousness about the arms race. They are two sides of the same face of a multi-faceted construct which includes racism and other forms of institutionalized destruction. It makes no sense to oppose the evil of nuclear war without opposing the attitudes which prepare for it. Ground Zero is an effort to do both.
This first issue also delved deeply into the concept of “WORKING WITH THE WORKERS“, of how we “at Ground Zero… have tried to relate to the Bangor worker in the spirit of compassion and nonviolence described by [the Trappist monk] Thomas Merton.” You will have to read the Newsletter yourself to better appreciate and understand how this has always informed, and been central to, our work resisting Trident.
In reflecting on this long-running experiment in truth, and the role of our newsletter, I recall what Shelley Douglass said (in A Disarming Spirit: the Life of Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen), and I think it sums up the heart of our work at Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action:
We’re not primarily into getting the most number of people doingthings, like blockading the submarine. We’re into helping people think and grow.
We do not claim to have a corner on the market when it comes to truth. We do our best to remember that each of us possess a part of the truth, and we therefore listen with compassion and empathy to those on the other side of the fence, having respectful conversations, and breaking down the artificial barriers created by the power structures.
At a moment in history in which the patriarchal power structure is engaged in a futile and desperate effort to hold onto its power, even as the empire in which that power resides crumbles beneath its own feet, the Ground Zero Newsletter reminds us that there is another way, one that involves going ‘to the root of violence and injustice in our world and experiencing the transforming power of love through nonviolent direct action’ (from the Ground Zero mission statement).
The Ground Zero Newsletter editorial staff, led by Editor in Chief Alice Zillah, will continue publishing this fine publication until the day that every nuclear warhead (everywhere) is retired. Until then the newsletter will continue to be a voice of nonviolence in action and resistance to Trident (and all nuclear weapons). And we give thanks to those who led the way for us, blazing a trail where there was none.
We hope our Newsletter helps people everywhere “think and grow”, and may the fruits of our labors be a just, peaceful world free of the threat of nuclear annihilation.
Click here to read the Ground Zero Newsletter, Volume 1, Number 1.
