Randy Forsberg 1943-2007 - Remembrance and Appreciation

In the winter of 1979,  Randy Forsberg wrote a Call to Halt the Nuclear Arms Race which led to the Nuclear Freeze Campaign. The idea came out of a kitchen table discussion in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  

Centered in New England, the Freeze Campaign organized to place a simply worded question on local (and some state) ballots around the United States calling for a mutual, verifiable freeze on the testing, production and deployment of nuclear weapons systems.

For the first time since the detonation of the first nuclear bomb - Trinity -  in 1945, just weeks before the use of atomic weapons on Hiroshima (August 6, Little Boy) and Nagasaki (August 9, Fat Man), the general public had the opportunity to vote on nuclear weapons policy.  


Albert Einstein had said: "To the village square we must carry the facts of nuclear energy.  From there must America's voice."  

Yet, these weapons were developed in secrecy, used in wartime against civilians and stockpiled in vast quantities for "deterrence of nuclear war."  Nuclear power was promoted as being "energy too cheap to meter."  The use of atomic power with its tremendous risks had never been put to a vote.  It was a stroke of genius to figure out a way to challenge this situation and put the question to the people!  

Nuclear freeze referenda were approved by hundreds of cities, towns and even by eight states in the early 1980's.  Although these referenda were non-binding, the fact of the freeze campaign and the power of people's viewpoint brought about change in the mindset and politicians began to heed the call for arms reductions.  

On June 12, 1982 one of the largest peace marches in U.S. history was held in New York City calling to "Freeze the Arms Race-Fund Human Needs" in support of the U.N. Second Special Session on Disarmament.  

This struggle led to significant reductions in nuclear arms by the 1990's.

Randy Forsberg was a typist at SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) when she began studying the potentially terrifying consequences of nuclear proliferation.  She later earned a doctorate in international studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, focusing on disarmament.

Dr. Forsberg concluded that despite the limited nuclear test ban treaty (signed in 1963) that arms-control experts had given up on complete disarmament, and even on substantial reductions and held to the idea of managing a permanent arms race.  Her idea centered on the possibility of reducing nuclear stockpiles and halting the introduction of ever more lethal weapons.  

Dr. Forsberg received a MacArthur "genius" award in 1983 and was appointed to the Advisory Committee of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency by President Bill Clinton in 1995.  In 2002 she ran as a write-in candidate against Senator John Kerry (MA) to protest his vote authorizing military action against Iraq and received more than 22,000 votes.  

Addressing the 1982 rally, Forsberg said, "Until the arms race stops, until we have a world with peace and justice, we will not go home and be quiet.  We will go home and organize."  

Thanks to the New York Times obituary for some of the above information.