GOLDEN RULE, a 34-foot wooden sailboat, sailed toward the Marshall Islands in 1958 to disrupt American atmospheric nuclear weapons testing. More than six decades later, the same boat arrived Tuesday at San Francisco’s Pier 39 to begin a voyage to continue to champion peace amid ongoing arms negotiations between the U.S. and other countries.
Veterans for Peace, a nonprofit organization of military veterans and allies promoting peace and nonproliferation talks, was approached in 2010 to restore the peace boat that had been abandoned in Humboldt Bay, where it sank due to a gale.
For the next five years, dozens of volunteers from Veterans for Peace, Quakers and other groups restored Golden Rule in a boatyard. Some volunteers from the restoration project became part of the crew of the peace boat.
The voyage will include port visits throughout San Francisco Bay that will include guest sailing, public events and opportunities to engage in community discussions among veterans, peace activists, educators, youth and more.
Golden Rule’s project manager Michelle Marsonette said that as a part of the boat’s tour, they will take some members of the San Francisco-based “Comfort Women” Justice Coalition out sailing on Aug. 22 to create an opportunity for them to discuss confronting wartime brutalities.
“Groups like that, we like to take out, because then it gives them an opportunity to dramatically talk about what they have going on, not just to us,” Marsonette said.
Anti-war message still resonates
Since the Golden Rule’s relaunch in 2015, Gerry Condon, president of the Golden Rule committee and a national board member of Veterans for Peace, has sailed with it to advocate for a nuclear-free world and raise awareness about nuclear threats and peace efforts.
For Condon, nuclear weapons and nuclear war can be considered a local issue in the Bay Area, or anywhere in the U.S.
“Nuclear weapons and nuclear war (are) usually not considered a local issue, right? But on the other hand, all the money that’s going to nuclear weapons this year, with about $100 billion alone to modernize nuclear weapons and almost a trillion-dollar Pentagon budget — it’s stealing from people’s health care, Social Security and housing. So, in that sense, it is a local issue,” he says.
Dominick Favuzzi, a member of a contingent for the Veterans for Peace Sonoma chapter and an Air Force veteran, emphasized the importance of environmental preservation and highlighted the pollution caused by fuel and ammunition as key issues authorities must address in Northern California. The Bay Area is home to many former military bases, including the Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo, The Presidio of San Francisco and Naval Air Station Alameda.
“We have the Travis Air Force base and other military bases in Northern California that have been abandoned, but are still quite dangerous cleanup sites,” said Favuzzi.
According to the anti-war grassroots organization World BEYOND War, military bases damage the environment in many ways, from the exhaust of U.S. vehicles and planes to toxic chemicals that can be released from the bases and enter local water sources.
Educating the next generation
Susan Lamont, also a member of the Sonoma chapter of Veterans for Peace, said they got to talk to students at a Bay Area high school and also Sonoma State University about the cost of war.
Lamont thinks it was a “wonderful opportunity to do that in schools” since she thinks people are becoming indifferent about the dangers of nuclear weapons, or even nuclear war itself.
“People just aren’t paying attention,” she said. “We can have the real thing, even unintentionally.”
Jim McKinney, an associate member of the Veterans for Peace San Francisco chapter and a former educator at City College of San Francisco, believes that younger generations want to be included in conversations revolving around America’s role in shaping global relations.
“They’re definitely listening. But I think we need to get the ball rolling. And I think the voyage of the Golden Rule is helping,” said McKinney.
The Golden Rule has planned stops in San Francisco, Alameda, Oakland, Berkeley, Richmond and San Mateo until Aug. 29. The full schedule and more details about the tour can be found online.
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