Standing in a peace vigil holding a sign is a common form of nonviolent activism. The May-June 1967 edition of WRL News features a front page photo of the Times Square Weekly vigil to end the Vietnam War. Standing on April 29, 1967 are WRI Secretary Devi Prasad and Otto Nathan, a WRL Executive Committee member and a regular at that vigil which started in 1964 and was one of 150 vigils against the Vietnam War in 1967.
Vigiling as a tactic began well before 1964 and takes place in many settings. The cover story of the July-August 1959 issue of WRL News is about an ongoing vigil at the Fort Detrick germ warfare plant near Frederick, MD. The September-October 1957 issue of WRL News has a cover story about a Prayer and Conscience Vigil held on Hiroshima Day (August 6) at a Nevada bomb testing site. On August 7th, a group including WRL members Albert Bigelow and Prentiss Choate engaged in a civil disobedience action at the testing site.
That 1957 Peace and Conscience Vigil happened the year I was born. In my mid-40s in summer 2002, I attended a weekly peace vigil in Amherst, MA, holding a No War with Iraq sign. In late September 2002, the Greenfield, MA Weekly Peace Vigil began when my activist friend Susan Dorazio and I arrived at the Greenfield Common at the same time two other women, Ava and Tori, arrived at the Common. We each carried a sign saying no to war with Iraq, each pair of us independently decided to start a vigil in rural Franklin County’s county seat. Every Saturday since then, four to over a hundred people have stood on the Common with signs calling for peace. Since October 2023 and the beginning of the war in Israel and Palestine, our numbers have swelled with people carrying Ceasefire Now signs.
I am often asked “what difference does a vigil make?”
One response is that vigils start countless conversations among people driving and walking by. Rebecca Solnit has another response in her book Hope in the Dark. Solnit said, “I once read an anecdote by someone in Women Strike for Peace… The woman from WSP told of how foolish and futile she felt standing in the rain one morning protesting at the Kennedy White House. Years later she heard Dr. Benjamin Spock – who had become one of the most high-profile activists on the issue — say that the turning point for him was spotting a small group of women standing in the rain, protesting at the White House. If they were so passionately committed, he thought, he should give the issue more consideration himself.”
I think of that story when I’m standing on the Common in the rain beside just a few vigilers. 
Mary McClintock and Grace Edwards at Greenfield, MA Weekly Peace Vigil, December 9, 2023 (photo by Anna Gyorgy)
Benjamin Spock never walked by Greenfield’s vigil, but Colonel Ann Wright (Ret.) visited the Greenfield vigil on her way to a speaking engagement. Ann walked the line of vigilers, shook our hands, and thanked us. When she travels, she always seeks out and visits the local peace vigil. Ann said she wanted us to know that all across the U.S. in small towns and large cities there were people standing up for peace in ongoing vigils. Ann presented the 2006 WRL Peace Award to "Women Resisting War from Inside the Military," and spoke of its significance for these recipients as former military.
On November 3, 2023, I stood in a “Ceasefire Now” vigil in Sunderland, MA as streams of commuters left the University of Massachusetts. Aaron Falbel, a long-time war tax resister and fellow vigiler, said he was there because he had heard an interview on Democracy Now with someone in Gaza who said that people in Gaza know there are ceasefire vigils happening across the world, they know they are not forgotten.
Does your town or city have a regularly scheduled peace vigil? Or did it have a peace vigil during the Vietnam War or at another time? Please share your stories with WRL100history [at] warresisters.org.
- Mary McClintock
