Christchurch couple to join U.S. peace march

Press, 28 February 1986, Page 7

Christchurch couple to join U.S. peace march

A Christchurch couple plan to take part in the Great Peace March across -the United States. The march will begin tomorrow at Los Angeles and reach Washington D.C. nine months later. Mr Evan Webb and Ms Margaret Vissers would like to join the march in Mid-West America during August.

Two Waiheke Island women, Ms Anne Macfarlane and Ms Maynie Thompson, plan to join an expected 5000 participants throughout the march.

All four New Zealanders are anti-nuclear campaigners and want to help provide Americans with information about New Zealand and its nuclear-free policy.

Peace marchers have been supplied with 100

pamphlets about New Zealand products, according to the New Zealand Nuclear-Free Zone Committee’s secretary, Mr Larry Ross. “We feel that the growing volume of trade with the United States could be boosted even more with more Americans showing their support for our nuclear-free policy by buying our goods,” he said yesterday. “In response to a request for help with the march from Marilyn Waring, in the United States, we have also sent $6O worth of peace items such as T-shirts and stickers, and plenty of information.”

Ms Waring was trying to give New Zealand as high a profile on the march as possible, Mr Ross said. “We feel the march will

help show the Americans that our nuclear-free policy will help them as much as it helps us,, because the arms race cannot go on indefinitely without bringing annihilation for all.” In her letter to the committee, Ms Waring said that no news media network in the United States was willing to carry the New Zealand point of view .on its nuclear weapon-free stand. “Millions of Americans are sympathetic but utterly ignorant,” she said. “There are so few of us on the ground speaking on behalf of the New Zealand viewpoint.” Mr Ross said that the peace marchers would sponsor educational activities on the way and "come within 40 kilometres of a quarter of American’s population.”