Unease Among the Freezers

By Ed Magnuson

Despite ballot-box appeal, the antinuke movement is worried

Millions of American voters may be surprised to discover on Nov. 2 that they are taking part in one of the largest national plebiscites since the repeal of Prohibition. The proposal that the U.S. and the Soviet Union should agree to a mutual freeze on nuclear weapons is on the ballot in nine states, the District of Columbia and such cities as Chicago, Philadelphia and Denver. Nearly a third of the electorate will have a chance to take a stand on the issue.

Polls show that the freeze proposals are expected to win in most statewide elections, sometimes handily. The most recent sampling for TIME by Yankelovich, Skelly & White reveals that Americans support the freeze idea 76% to 19%. Opposition is poorly organized and has little funding. In many races, moreover, candidates of both parties support the freeze. But not even the freeze movement's leaders claim that the issue is likely to affect many congressional races.

That is true even though President Reagan's opposition to the freeze is total and outspoken. The President, along with many arms control and foreign policy experts, believes a freeze is possible only after negotiations with the Soviet Union achieve an actual arms reduction, to a level at which the U.S. would be in no way inferior in nuclear strength. But the White House has not insisted that Republican candidates openly support the Administration's position. John Dolinsky, a leader of Californians for a Strong America, one of the few groups fighting the freeze, complains that White House aides have told state party leaders to place first priority on getting their candidates elected and have warned that "an antifreeze position might hurt their chances."

Few of the movement's leaders are ebullient about their issue's general popularity. "We are in something of a lull," concedes Harold Willens, a wealthy Los Angeles businessman who is leading the campaign to approve the freeze referendum in California. One reason for the uneasiness in the movement is its very success. In less than two years it mounted the largest protest rally in the nation's history: more than 700,000 supporters jammed New York's Central Park in June. In August it failed by only two votes to be endorsed by the U.S. House of Representatives. But the excitement of those heady days is fading, and recent freeze rallies in Arkansas, Iowa, Tennessee and Washington, D.C., have been disappointing. Asks David McCauley of the American Friends Service Committee in Vermont: "How do we keep the momentum?"

While conceding that the emotional urge to hit the streets in support of a freeze may be waning, movement leaders do not regard that as any test of their long-range staying power. Rather, they see themselves in something of a transitional period. "The drive is quieting down a bit, but it will continue," says Joet Lorion, director of Miami's Center for Nuclear Responsibility. "It has gone from a frenzied movement to a long-term political movement." The freeze issue, in fact, has been overwhelmed by interest in the current recession and the 10.1% unemployment rate. "The nuclear freeze is an issue of lasting concern," says New York Republican Congressman Bill Green, who supports it, "but jobs are an issue of anger." Agrees H. Jack Geiger, a founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility: "For the time being, the freeze has been washed out by the economy and unemployment."

Still, there may be deeper reasons for the current restlessness within the movement. Reagan, whose seeming lack of interest in negotiations of any type with the U.S.S.R. helped spur the freeze movement, has since presented a proposal for a deep reduction in nuclear arms. Many Americans have come to believe, with reason, that by insisting on a freeze now, they could undercut the President's bargaining position in the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks. Many others are realizing that negotiating a freeze is far more difficult than it seemed at first blush. As with most proposals for a nuclear agreement between the two superpowers, its validity hangs on the highly complex problem of whether adherence to a freeze can truly be verified. A freeze that cannot be verified could be a strategic disaster.

There is some confusion, too, within the movement over just what form the freeze should take. The most common phrasing of the freeze resolution calls on the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. to "halt the testing, production and further deployment of all nuclear weapons, missiles and delivery systems in a way that can be checked and verified by both." But in Montana, for example, the freeze proposal is partially aimed at preventing deployment of any MX missiles there. Such varied approaches reflect a failure in defining precisely what the goals of the freeze movement should be.

Reagan himself might have given the movement an unwitting boost two weeks ago when he charged that it was "inspired not by the sincere, honest people who want peace, but by some who want the weakening of America and who are manipulating many honest people and sincere people." At the least, Reagan's outburst fired up some of the freeze leaders. "People don't appreciate being called dupes," declared Katherine Magraw of the Council for a Livable World. Said Alan Sherr, president of the pro-freeze Lawyers Alliance for Nuclear Arms Control: "To suggest that lawyers, including six past presidents of the American Bar Association, are capable of being manipulated by anything but their own intelligence is simply silly. To suggest, on the other hand, that we are manipulators of a well-meaning but ignorant U.S. public is insulting."

The diversity of the movement, which is both a strength and a potential source of friction, was dramatically demonstrated last week when 26 groups with some 20 million members formed Citizens Against Nuclear War, a national organization backing a freeze proposal. The groups include the National Education Association, the American Jewish Congress, the American Association of University Women, the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union, the Y.W.C.A. and the Newspaper Guild.

Even as it heads toward probable successes at the polls, the freeze movement faces the task of transforming its often uninformed enthusiasm into sober thought if it is to help create a climate for the control of nuclear weapons. That life-sustaining goal is one on which no thoughtful American disagrees. Yet despite the prevalence of the freeze issue on ballots in November, the national debate over how to reach that common goal has only begun. --By Ed Magnuson. Reported by Anne Constable/Washington and William R. Doerner/San Francisco

With reporting by Anne Constable, William R. Doerner

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.