Honk For Peace At Lake Merritt

As we walked, I spoke with people around me. One was Mark Boynton, who is old enough to remember World War II. He grew up in the area and used to come to the lake to fish for smelt. In the 1950s he was a logger, cutting down redwoods in the vicinity of Garberville. “Some of those redwoods were well over a thousand years old,” Mark told me, “so large they had to be split in two to be hauled by truck. There was a width limit. Those huge logs were called ‘pumpkins,’ and the splitting was done with dynamite.”  

This was approximately the 75th time Mark had walked around the lake, he told me, adding that the peace walk actually originated in 1991 when one person took up an antiwar banner and held a nightly vigil by the lake. Others joined him and they turned it into a weekly walk. At the end of that war the peace walk was discontinued until 1999 when the U.S. attacked Serbia. Members of the old group got together again. Beth and Steve Wagner set up an email list. 

“For the next couple of years we contacted people to go with us to various anti-war events, especially in support of Palestine and against the sanctions on Iraq,” Steve told me. “After the attack on the World Trade Center, it was obvious that Bush would be dropping bombs somewhere or other very soon. Due to all the jingoistic manipulation of people’s genuine grief, we had some anxiety when we broke out the signs and started the walks again in September 23, 2001 with banners calling for ‘Justice, Not Revenge.’ 

“The response from the community was overwhelmingly positive from the very beginning,” he said. “The attendance has ebbed and flowed, but we’ve been out here every Sunday presenting a presence for peace to the neighborhoods surrounding the lake.” 

Steve Wagner was born in Albion, Washington, which is downwind from the Hanford Atomic Works. “Albion was a wonderful place to be a child,” Steve had testified to a government health effects subcommittee. “Little did we know what living downwind from Hanford was doing to our health.” One of his cousins died of leukemia and another of a brain tumor. “My family often wondered why Jerry and Karen died at such early ages and now we have a pretty good idea why.” Steve has a thyroid disease for which he’ll have to take medication the rest of his life. 

Other lake walkers have also had poignant experiences of one sort or another, which motivated them to become activists. There’s Ed, a retired orchestra musician. As a teenager Ed spent nine months living with relatives while studying music in Germany—that was in 1933, the year Hitler came to power. He remembers that the Nazis began forcing Jewish musicians out of the profession. “I was 14 at the time and those months following the Nazi takeover radicalized me,” he said. 

Cathy Green was working on her master’s thesis in geography and she talked about the lake. “Lake Merritt is a cultural and transit hub, popular with joggers, walkers, and bicyclists,” Cathy explained. 

“The best thing about this peace march is that the people who see us are probably the most diverse group in the Bay Area. We have immigrants from all over the world—Latin America, even parts of Africa like Ethiopia and Senegal. There’s a large Chinese population, as well as many people from the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos.

“Oakland has a substantial African American component and the Fruitvale neighborhood is a mix of Latino and Southeast Asian. The Islamic Cultural Center is nearby; it was established by Iranian immigrants. You couldn’t ask for a more mixed audience.” 

I originally heard about LMNOP (Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace) from Jeff, a postal worker. Jeff had been attending since the previous October. At first he’d felt really shy of participating in a visible, on-stage activity, he told me. Eventually he’d gotten used to it and found he got a positive feeling from it. “Taking part in this makes me feel good about myself,” he said. “The great response we get from people around here is a big part of it.” 

Many of the group affirmed this feeling of being part of a good cause. There was also a social aspect, meeting and talking with like-minded people. Unlike most antiwar marches, there was no chanting; instead, everyone chatted and exchanged the latest news. Many of the conversations were about politics. Books, newspaper clippings, and audiotapes were exchanged. Among the favorite authors were Howard Zinn and Michael Parenti. Computer information was also shared; people helped each other get on-line and learn to access the Internet. Friendships formed. Even romances began at the peace walk. 

The circuit of the lake took an hour and a half; it was about 4:30 PM when we reached the Colonnade where we’d started out. 

T he second war against Iraq began on March 19, 2003 and there were many demonstrations in the San Francisco area. Judging by the number of people who participated, the antiwar movement seem- ed to have massive support. Or did it? According to polls being published in the corporate media, the war had suddenly become a popular cause. Even here in the Bay Area over 60 percent supported the war, the polls reported. So, on the following Sunday at Lake Merritt, I was wondering what sort of response our peace walk would receive. In recent weeks some 40 of us had been participating; that day there were over 100. As for the response, the honking of autos went way beyond anything I had experienced during previous Sundays. 

“The polls report that 60 percent of the people in the Bay Area are pro-war,” a woman near me remarked, “Doesn’t sound that way to me.” At that moment somebody in a passing car yelled, “Fuck you. Fuck all of you.” 

“There’s the 60 percent,” someone remarked and everyone within hearing chuckled. To be sure, if large numbers of people had been booing us and shouting obscenities, it wouldn’t have been so funny. But the few negative responses we got were so unrepresentative that they struck us as amusing. What we were seeing for ourselves was entirely different from what the media had been reporting. 

That day was one of the high points of our peace walk at Lake Merritt. It would’ve been great if that many people had been out there every Sunday, but that’s not what happened. As the months went by, our numbers slowly diminished. Our usual attendance of around 40 people went down to 30, then to about two dozen. Then suddenly the war was over—or at least it seemed to be—and the corporate invasion was on. Most of us expected Bush to start another war before long, but, for the moment at least, there was the illusion of being between wars. It’s hard to oppose a war that’s over and perhaps we seemed a bit out of tune. 

On the first Sunday in May, Beth Wagner announced that, due to ill health, she’d no longer be able to continue. She had a degenerative disease that made physical activity increasingly painful. During the year and a half, she’d participated in more than 80 circuits of the lake. So we felt this walk would be the last, at least till the next war. But by the end of the walk we’d unanimously decided that this was no time for us to quit. Bush and the neo-cons were out there building an empire. Peace had to be a lot more than a momentary absence of shooting. 

We soon came up with new slogans that were more in sync with the current between-the-wars era. “What price oil economy?” was one, and, when the WMD hoax was eventually exposed, “Fire the Liar.” Some of the “Honk for Peace” signs were replaced with “Honk to Impeach.” Meanwhile, there were some old ones that seemed appropriate, such as “Stop Mad Cowboy Disease.” 

Nevertheless, our numbers continued to diminish. By August there were only a dozen of us. Mark and Dorothy had been coming almost every Sunday, but one day Dorothy broke her ankle. Then Mark got sick and was absent for several weeks. Vern Krohn, the 87-year- old who’d brought his huge Honk-for-Peace “contraption,” was often missing, presumably because of health problems.  

Our thinning ranks also seemed to reflect the condition of the antiwar movement in general. There wasn’t much going on at this time, in the late summer and fall of 2003. The second anniversary of our weekly demonstration was in September and we considered it remarkable that our activity had lasted this long. On a Sunday in late October came the situation we’d been dreading—only three of us showed up.

M eanwhile, the shooting war in Iraq was heating up again, a guerilla war this time. A mass rally was held in San Francisco on Saturday, October 25 and some 10,000 people attended—not a large number in comparison with the hundreds of thousands who’d attended the rallies in January and February, but we could see that the antiwar movement was still alive. 

The following week six people showed up at the lake—fewer than we’d hoped for, but we did our peace walk anyway. “We need to keep the flame burning,” we told each other. But all through the fall and winter there were many Sundays when there were fewer than half a dozen of us. Still, it wasn’t all gloom and doom. An encouraging sign was the enthusiastic acknowledgement we continued to get from motorists and pedestrians along the lake. “The response is still out there,” one of our group noted, “We’re the ones who seem to be missing from this scene.” 

Eventually Mark recovered from his illness and rejoined us. In a tiny group like this, each person made a major difference and Mark’s reappearance was a boost to morale. However, Dorothy didn’t return. Vern Krohn went to stay with his son up north in Lake County and shortly afterwards we received word that he’d died. We remembered him for his perseverance. 

“I think that Vern’s life should be a model for all of us,” said Ken Knudsen. “Vern was always out there against the war, no matter how old he got. I was often amazed that he could survive going around the lake. By the end he was always so tired.” 

Jeff remembered him for his stories. “He would talk to me in that crusty voice and tell me about his experiences. He knew a lot about history that I had only a vague familiarity with. The depression and stuff before World War I.” 

Vern Krohn had spent his life in political activism and that’s how we remembered him. Barbara summed it up: “Bless his heart. Sorry to see him go, but you know, that’s how I would want to go—an activist right up to the end, out there with my signs and banners.” 

A utumn 2004 saw the third anniversary of the walk and we’re well into our fourth year now. Several generations of ducks and geese have grown up with us. We’ve grown too, from the friendships we’ve formed, from the events we’ve experienced together, and from our interactions with the motorists and pedestrians along the lake. 

Bob Miller comes in his wheelchair, carrying a huge hand-sewn U.S. flag with the stars arranged in the form of a peace sign. Pat Maginnis continues to distribute her cartoons in leaflet form. Catherine Jones brings her posters, some of which are displayed at galleries of protest art. 

A few people attend almost every week; a lot more of us come once in a while. Our group seems to be increasing to around 15 at the present time. While the huge rallies, varying from a few thousand to as many as hundreds of thousands, have been the most important events of the antiwar movement, such things can’t be done every week. In contrast, this Lake Merritt peace walk is a low-key, long-term activity which has become as much a part of the local scenery as the ducks and geese. With a handful of participants, LMNOP is helping to keep the antiwar movement visible here in Oakland. Although we get very little coverage in the media, we are in a real sense our own media, reaching out directly to the people around us. We believe that our activity helps to set a political tone in the community. 

Bush’s 2004 election victory, which many of us suspect was stolen, was a disappointment. But our numbers have increased since that election and so has the enthusiastic response we’ve been getting from motorists and pedestrians. As Mark Boynton put it, “So it’s going to be four more years of walking around the lake.”