Sailing the Seas of Conscience: The resilient voyage of the Golden Rule.

• Author: Bradley, Doug

Growing up in the United States in the 1950s, my Catholic grade school classmates and I were drilled with the Sermon on the Mount maxim, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." The nuns told us that sacred saying was called "the Golden Rule." We even had twelve-inch rulers with "the Golden Rule" inscribed on them. Little did we know that while we practiced "duck and cover" drills to be prepared for a nuclear attack, another Golden Rule--a ship--had set sail in 1958 on a mission to stop nuclear weapons tests in the Marshall Islands.

Fast-forward to 2023, and the Golden Rule, once derelict with no masts or engine and at anchor, is again braving the winds and waves, propelled by crew and volunteers from Veterans for Peace (VFP) and motivated by the same timeless mission that first set the ship sailing.

"We realized that in order to get rid of the threat of nuclear war, we have to address the aggressive nature of the culture of war," Helen faccard, a VFP member and project manager of the Golden Rule, tells The Progressive. "We need to build a movement that dismantles the warrior culture and instead works on a cooperative culture with other countries."

By December, this renovated boat will have sailed throughout all the navigable waterways of the United States, including the Great Loop, which includes the Mississippi River, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Great Lakes. Its mission is to warn people about the growing danger of nuclear war and build support for the total abolition of nuclear weapons, demonstrating a sustainable legacy of peace and nonviolence. Sixty-five years on, the Golden Rule is a floating testament to the enduring power of human conscience and the unyielding quest for a world free of nuclear menace. And it's a reminder that we still have a lot of work to do.

"If we don't change the path we're on, we'll end up where we're headed," says Alfred Meyer, a longtime anti-nuclear activist who joined the Golden Rule on its New York leg in July (see his article in this issue, page 44). "Nuclear weapons, nuclear power, and climate change are a prescription for annihilation. We're running out of time."

Originally designed by Hugh Angelman, the thirty-four-foot, gaff-rigged wooden ketch was first crewed by a group of Quakers whose destination was the Marshall Islands, a nation comprising twenty-nine atolls between Hawai'i and Australia. Their goal was to end the twelve-year siege of nuclear bomb testing on the islands by sailing...