Nukewatch Quarterly Spring 2016
Nuclear weapons have long inspired monumental objections. In what is still considered the biggest political march in US history, at least one million people traipsed through New York City in June 1982, condemning the 17,000-warhead nuclear weapons build-up inspired by the Reagan Administration.
In a more personalized feat, the longest political protest in US history has been the 32-year-long anti-nuclear vigil kept in Lafayette Park behind the White House by Concepcion Picciotto, who died January 25, 2016. Friends believed she was 80.
Since 1984, Concepcion, as she was known around the world, held fast to her denunciation of nuclear weapons and war. One of her vigil/encampment signs read, “Live by the Bomb, Die by the Bomb.”
Among her many admirers were Public Citizen founder Ralph Nader, filmmaker Michael Moore, and Eleanor Holmes Norton, the non-voting Member of Congress representing Washington, DC.
—JL
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