leaders
to stop the arms race.The Peace Center is a small office packed with materials. Pamphlets and filing cabinets line the walls as if they were thick wallpaper. Linda Musmeci Kimball works here three days a week coordinating for the Oxford Citizens for Peace and Justice. She works for a small stipend that comes from the group’s funds, but her past shows that she has a passion social and political activism.
Born, raised and educated in New Orleans, she did her graduate studies in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Her husband, Jeffrey Kimball was hired as a professor at Miami University in 1968, the couple moved here that year.
For 35 years she has been politically active in Oxford, taking a stance on issues affecting everything from national security to welfare reform.
Linda Musmeci Kimball: I had already taken my first step into activist work. I was involved in the civil rights movement. After all, I grew up in the segregated South. After moving to Oxford, I very quickly became involved with an organization that was called Oxford Citizens for Peace in Vietnam.
The sole aim for this group was to stop war in Vietnam, but this organization of Oxford citizens became the precursor for groups to come. When the war in Vietnam ended, the organization disbanded; but in 1979 the Oxford Citizens for Peace was reorganized under the direction of Kimball and others. The group again focused on a single issue.
Kimball: I was a coordinator
of the group since 1979, when we were against the arms race. The single issue
was a change in the U.S. nuclear policy from a deterrence strategy to a first-strike
capability. And that frightened a great many people in this country, including
us. We believed that the danger of an outbreak of a nuclear war, and that the
nuclear arms race itself between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, was the biggest
threat to everyone’s security. We organized a small, local, grassroots
group and wrapped our work around what was called a “Freeze proposal.”
A freeze-the-nuclear-arms-race proposal. It called for a halt on the production,
testing and deployment of nuclear weapons, and the delivery systems of nuclear
weapons. A halt on the arms race. It was a very important movement, and the
Oxford Citizens for Peace had focused entirely on public education, influencing
media and pressuring political leaders
to stop the arms race.
The movement was widespread in America at the time, with support throughout the nation. Kimball thinks that the movement may have helped to sway some legislators although it wasn’t immediately successful in ending the nuclear arms race.
By the early ’80s the Oxford organization had broadened its agenda to include a variety of issues, including U.S. foreign policy in Central America, the ongoing arms race, and social and economic justice issues. The group fused with The Central America Peace Coalition, which Kimball was also involved in, and was now known by its current and broader name, Oxford Citizens for Peace and Justice.
The organization has tried to affect change at a local level, making an impact where possible, and hoping that change can balloon from Oxford, or that Oxford can be a part of a larger, national movement.
In 1990, the organization began charging dues to official members in order to keep it running. However, even those who do not pay dues can be considered members and can receive mail and be a part of the e-mail network. Membership is not denied to anyone, and the larger the organization gets, the more influence it can have. Dues-paying members number around 200, as many more members participate in the organization by other means such as receiving e-mail messages.
Inevitably, the membership has grown in the last year since the war with Iraq has become an issue.
Kimball: When the government gives people a war, they come to the organizations working for peace. Peacemaking is a full-time activity, but people do tend to relax in between armed conflicts and think that things are going OK. But the root causes of jumpstarting another war with the U.S. involvement are still there.
Aside from trying to affect change at a local level, and by encouraging members to contact public officials and be politically aware, the OCPJ has expanded its constituency using an e-mail listserve.
Kimball: The (e-mail) listserve is for everyone to use. The e-mail message service is for only the organization to use, and it isn’t used very often, maybe once every two weeks. It posts notices and alerts, and legislative alerts, when we ask people to take action. We are capable of generating calls, letters, e-mails or faxes to legislators.
Recently the email service has urged people to contact state representatives on state welfare reform.
Kimball: We have an alert that was sent out on reauthorization of welfare reform laws in the state that were attempting to take more Draconian measures against the poor, and requiring more work hours of them without providing more childcare supports and other supports that were needed like job supports for those who fall well below the poverty line.
Another alert asked people to contact representatives in the U.N. encouraging them not to sanction war in Iraq.
Kimball: That was a very interesting and new way for us to give support to those in the U.N. who didn’t want to be bullied by the U.S., and to encourage them to stand their ground.
Government involvement in environmental issues also fall into the realm of the OCPJ.
Kimball: What we were asking people to do, was to register their public comments to the EPA, which is supposed to take it as the equivalent of having a congressional hearing, but by mail and by a federal agency rather than one of the houses of Congress.
Now, as always, several issues press on the OCPJ’s agenda. The first is a petition asking the city of Oxford to take a stand against the U.S.A.P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act, which the OCPJ feels takes a stand against terrorism at the expense of the civil liberties of U.S. citizens. The OCPJ has to pick and chose what to support because the world is too large and busy for it to take a stand on everything at once.
Kimball: We pick and chose and depending on what we see as more urgent, or what we see as less urgent for others but equally important, we will choose our focuses on that basis. Certainly the war, and the impending war that we have had for an entire year, is a focus right now.
The OCPJ has been an important outlet the Oxford community to participate in affecting national change since its first inception during the Vietnam War. Kimball and others plan to continue using the organization to push for a peaceful and more caring world, and give the residents of Oxford a group in which they can voice their political opinions and take action to affect national change.
OCPJ's Agenda from 1987, Compiled by Linda Musmeci Kimball
