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AI: Well, it sounded to me that when you first began the organizing around the peace issue, you must have had some very high ideals. And I'm wondering, did you really have a personal feeling that it was possible to bring the U.S. and U.S.S.R. to new positions that would make peace, real peace, and the end of the Cold War a real possibility? Did you personally believe that at the time that you were beginning your peace organizing?

PI: We really did. And the reason is that we felt that if you can just reach people and tell them what the dangers are of nuclear weapons and nuclear testing, that there would be this sort of groundswell. People would rise up against their governments and demand that they ban nuclear weapons. As I said, the Cuban Missile Crisis changed all that. We realized that on both sides, the leaders were prepared to go to war, and we almost did at that time. But, and a lot of us, many people who face situations like that become cynical and drop out. And they're not in it for the long haul. And we realized, particularly in our political campaigns, the people said, "Oh, yes. I'm going to vote for you. I'll give you some money. I'll help put up a sign." They are not going to follow through if they perceive that their country is in danger, that they might personally suffer from this.

So, at any rate, after those elections in 1962, I decided not to go back to college. First of all, I still didn't have the money for it. I hadn't really earned any money in that work. And I went back to Washington without any idea of what I was going to do. But I had met somebody earlier that year who worked in the United Autoworkers Union. He was on the staff of the UAW in Washington, a man named Lewis Carliner. And I'd actually met him by having a blind date with one of his daughters. And as it turned out, we didn't get along at all. But I spent hours and hours talking with her dad and just being fascinated by what he did -- sort of political organizing work in Washington, representing the union which at that time was a powerful union with over a million members. And went back to Washington without any idea of a job and walked into Lew Carliner's office. I remember this, it was on a Monday morning. And he had sort of vaguely said months and months before, before I went to New England, he'd said, "Well, if you're ever in Washington and you need a job, come look me up." So I went back in, and I said, "Remember? You offered me a job?" And he said, "Yeah. When can you start?" And I said, "Right now."

So I started working for the Autoworkers Union. I had never been in an auto plant in my life. Still haven't. I was strictly a, what they call a "pork chopper." It used to be that the staff, the union members who paid the dues and had the dirty, hard jobs, they'd say, "Well, we've got to eat scraps, and these people, they eat pork chops." And they called them pork choppers. And so I worked in the union, and I was a very, very junior lobbyist and political, I wasn't an organizer, but I was a political representative. And what I did for the union was to edit their weekly Washington newsletter that was sent to all union officers and local union officers and staff, about 30- or 40,000 of them. It didn't go to the entire membership. We had a monthly newspaper that did that. It's called the UAW Washington Weekly. And I modeled it very consciously on I.F. Stone's Weekly. But it was very different. We had color, and I used to steal Herblock cartoons from the Washington Post. But I spent my time going to congressional hearings and keeping up with all the bills in Congress that affected the union very widely, Medicare, civil rights. This was the time when Medicare was passed. John Kennedy was president. It was very exciting to be in Washington. I was actually earning a living. I think I made $8,000 a year. And I loved that job.

And I spent three years working for the union, feeling, and at the same time being involved in other political activities. I was still active in the student peace movement. And we organized the very first, to my knowledge, the very first demonstration against the Vietnam War. It was at the National Press Club in Washington. I think it was March of 1962. This was before I started working for the union, or '63, I don't remember. But the wife of the Vietnamese dictator, President Nhu was giving a speech. She was known as Madame Nhu. She was also a very, she was politically powerful in Vietnam. She gave a speech at the National Press Club. And we picketed that speech. And our message was to the president, don't send troops to Vietnam. They had, at that time the American commitment to Vietnam was very, very small -- just a few hundred so-called "advisors" who weren't in combat, advisors to the South Vietnamese Army. And largely through I.F. Stone, reading him, talking to him, becoming aware of the, what was happening in Vietnam, which most people in this country had no idea about, I, that was an issue that I really focused on.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2000 Densho. All Rights Reserved.