By Christopher Overfelt
On September 26, the International Day for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, three members of Veterans for Peace set sail down the Mississippi River on their boat, the Golden Rule. The sailing voyage will take them down the Mississippi River, out through the Gulf of Mexico, and eventually back up the Eastern seaboard of the US. Along the way will be 100 stops at different cities with the goal of bringing awareness to the nuclear catastrophe threatening the world right now.
In 1958 Quakers sailed the Golden Rule to from Costa Rica to try to stop the US from testing nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands. Her skipper, Albert Bigelow, had previously served as Lieutenant Commander in the US Navy. The entire crew were arrested leaving Honolulu en route to Enewetok atoll, enjoined against continuing and then sentenced to 60 days in jail for violating the injunction. Since then the boat sank twice, was restored and sailed the length of California from Eureka to San Diego with a side trip to Sacramento.
Now the Golden Rule is sailing to try to prevent nuclear war between the US and Russia. Complete nuclear abolition is the end goal. You can follow the progress of the Golden Rule at vfpgoldenruleproject.org.
Copyright 2022 Chris Overfelt and Spencer Graves, Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International License
