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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 8, 1986)
side walk yells "Way to go!", as the group passes. In front of the stadium the group waits. After a few minutes they're joined by a small band of late-comers. The crowd is growing very thin. The big game is about to be begin. There are now about 40 young men and women standing on the lawn in front of the stadium. Suddenly, in unison, all the members scream, point at something horrible over the capitol dome, fall and lie still on the grass. They're all dead now. They've all been blown away by the nuclear bombs. What got you started thinking about nuclear war? Lisa Friesen "It was on the news all the time, and it's a pretty scary thought, so I decided to do something about it, 'cause I don't want to be around when it happens, if it does. " Charlie Hammer, Lincoln High School, junior. "Mainly the group got me started. And the more I learned how bad it was, the more I wanted to learn more how bad it was. When I realized it was such a huge injustice going on with the people I started getting involved. Kathy Burgstrom "I've read a lot of literature about nuclear winter, and the effects, and how people say tf)at it's possible to survive, and it really isn 7. " Klarner steps into the middle of the circle of "dead" YNF members outside the stadium and reads out of a spiral notebook to the few fans still hanging around outside the stadium: "These are the victims of a nuclear holocaust. They are the victims of mistrust and narrow mindedness that results from fear. In order to avoid a nuclear war we must act now. With each passing day we experience that slight chance that may lead to a nuclear war. And then you will join these people on the grass! "Not only does the arms race take us further down the road to complete destruction, but it is draining the riches our economic system so quickly produces. It takes away from our education, and our domestic improvements that make a nation great! - 5 ' "We are members of a group called Youth Tor a Nuclear Freeze! Join us now! Join our protest And die with us!" ritonia Island, Nebraska coordinator for Tf the Great Peace March, said YNF staged a die-in at the State Capitol Building "so good and so professional" that Peace 1tm Marchers continued to stage die-ins themselves for the rest of the march. Island said YNF also has passed out pamphlets for a benefit that raised more than $450 for the march, and YNF members sent care packages and letters to the marchers, she said. "These kids aren't apathetic," she said. "They give me energy this aging hippie for peace." After the stadium, the next stop is the NBC Building at the corner of 14th and 0 streets, fliere they stage the die-in again. 0 Street is almost deserted, since the game is well underway, so a couple of YNF members take white chalk and make outlines of their friends' bodies, leaving a silent, macabre message for the people of Lincoln. Then there's a problem. Two security guards come out of the building and tell the members they can't deface NBC property. YNF members are indignant. "Why should we put up with this fascist regime?" one demonstrator asks rhetorically. The group leaders gather to talk and come to a decision: they send the rest of the group on ahead and ask the guards for a mop. The YNF's final stop of the day is the State Capitol Building. When they get there they sit on the steps and Larsen makes a short speech, thank ing the group for showing up and pronouncing the day a success. Larsen tells the group they're going to die one more time. Since the Capitol is public property, and since no security people are around, they're going to try the chalk outlines again, Larsen says. Sen. Don Wesley, Lincoln, an outspoken proponent of peace has addressed YNF meetings in the past. Wesley said he found the group "very sincere, try ing to learn. "They're not radicals, they're a very conscien tious group of kids. 1 feel real good about what they're doing," Wesley said. The final dying and chalking goes off without a hitch. Afterwards, YNF members mill around, talk, take pictures, climb around on the Capitol steps. Their mission over, they are free to just be normal kids again. t Just normal kids. Except for the fear, 'o '. Are you afraid of a nuclear war? Kate Garwood "I'm afraid that if we don't change our policies and if we don 7 become more aware of all the pbssible harms and dangers and the stupidity of the ftuctyar arjns race we could he dead by the time I'm 30, or even before, then. I want my children to live, and I want, my grand children to grow up in a place that's peaceful, where there's no threat of the destruction of their well being and bodies. . Alex Wilson , ; "I'm not so scared for myself but for other people that I know, and stuff I 'm scared to get older and have a family, knowing that they could die from it. " Josh Hargesheimer "It's a thought that makes me ... the way the situation is in the world right now makes me not want to have kids. Sometimes it makes me not want to be alive. "