10/15/2024
On Sunday, sitting silently in Quaker Meeting in a chilly meeting house, I noticed people going to the pile of blankets and shawls on the back bench and selecting items to keep them warm. My thoughts took me to a particular sweater that I once owned, how warm and comforting it was, and I wondered where it was now. I got it in Denmark in 1964. Its vertical ribs allowed it to accommodate both large and small bodies, sometimes with multiple layers of clothing beneath it. I often lent it to friends on cold nights in Arizona, Wisconsin, Long Island, Connecticut... When I was at CNVA Farm, a pacifist commune in Voluntown, Connecticut, I hung it on a peg at the main entrance to the office, where I worked on the newsletter mailing list and mimeograph machine in the late 1960s. CNVA existed to promote nonviolent direct action. When I left the farm for the last time, I forgot to take it with me, and when I returned more than 20 years later, on my way to attend Marj Swann's wedding, it was still there. I debated at the time whether to reclaim it... it was still in good condition... but I decided to leave it there for whoever would be using the office as part of the newly-formed Voluntown Peace Trust, hoping it would be honored and used again and again.The article linked below is about the valiant work of CNVA several years before I was involved, and about its connection to Pete Seeger and New Hampshire.
Recently, we heard a claim that Pete Seeger’s famous song “Bring Them Home” was inspired by the Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA), specifically when a mob of students at the University of...
