History of 2020

How 2020 Action began 30 years ago

 

It was November 1985. I was sitting in a St. Louis hotel room crying.

My tears came from the despair I felt for the future of our world with its 70,000 nuclear weapons. Throughout the day I had repeatedly watched a video that included images of many nuclear mushroom clouds. The video was on a ‘loop’ and played over and over again just across the aisle from where I sat at an information table.

I was attending the national conference of the largest peace organization in the country. I was there to garner support for opposition to the Ground Wave Emergency Network (GWEN)—a series of 300’ towers that the Air Force had announced it was going to construct in 57 towns and cities across the country. Amherst, Massachusetts, where I lived, was on their list.

It seemed odd that a farmer’s field in our rural mostly academic town would be the site of an Air Force tower. “What’s it for?” my friend Nancy Foster and I asked. A little research revealed that GWEN towers would be hardened to the electro-magnetic pulses generated by exploding nuclear weapons. With GWEN in place, our generals in their underground bunkers could continue to launch our nuclear weapons. According to the Congressional testimony of our Secretary of Defense, GWEN would allow the U.S. to “fight and prevail in a protracted nuclear war.”

What? “Fight and prevail in a protracted nuclear war”? What a crazy idea.

A small group of us organized. We worked closely with Bill Arkin, a researcher at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC. He provided us with facts and figures about GWEN that we then shared with our community. Amherst has a Town Meeting form of government and we put the issue of whether or not to allow a GWEN tower to be built in Amherst on the Town Meeting docket.

We did our homework, made and distributed flyers and information sheets, talked with our neighbors, and arranged for Bill Arkin to come and speak. The Air Force sent an Under-Secretary of Defense as their expert. We had decided to ask Town Meeting not to just oppose the construction of a GWEN tower in Amherst, but to oppose the entire GWEN program. If U.S. generals and policymakers thought that we could ‘fight and prevail in a protracted nuclear war,’ it might make them more likely to start one.

At the end of the night, 300+ Town Meeting members voted overwhelmingly to oppose the construction of a GWEN tower in Amherst or anywhere! We won, but it was a short-lived celebration as the Air Force immediately moved to build the tower elsewhere in our county.

So we organized at the county level. The hearing was held at the County Courthouse, a big imposing limestone building on the main street of Northampton. We expected this to be a somewhat harder sell as the five County Commissioners were businessmen, real estate brokers, etc. The Air Force sent a different Under-Secretary of Defense. Several Boston TV stations sent their trucks and crews to cover it live. We invited citizens to give presentations and express their opinions and the line went out the courtroom door, down the outside steps, and along the sidewalk. It took hours for everyone to be heard. In the end, the Commissioners voted to oppose the construction of a GWEN tower in Hampshire County. We were jubilant!

After this victory, Bill Arkin took us aside and said, “You are good at this. Why don’t you take what you have learned and help organize the 56 other communities across the country that are slated for GWEN towers?” I was interested but knew we would need some financial support for this larger undertaking. Bill suggested I write a letter asking for money to a couple in Connecticut whom I didn’t know. The idea that I could write a letter to perfect strangers and ask them for $3,000 seemed a bit far-fetched, but I followed his advice. Within three days of writing to them, a letter came back with a check for $3,000! My first fundraising success.

Nancy and I formed the GWEN Project and developed our nation-wide plans. Over the next three years, working together, we raised additional funds and helped people organize in most of the 56 other towns targeted to get the first round of towers. It was invigorating!

Along the way, we learned that the funding for the first 57 GWEN towers had already been approved by Congress. We also learned that the Air Force was planning to build several hundred more towers to make the network ‘more robust’ and that the funds for these towers still needed to be authorized and appropriated by Congress. We recognized that what we really needed to do to stop GWEN was to cut the funding for the next round of towers.

The last time I had been in Washington, D.C. was when I was in the 5^th grade. I had no idea how a bill got through Congress, much less how to influence anything that happened there. But Nancy and I accepted the challenge and set off on our bigger mission.

It was a steep learning curve. We started by visiting our Congressman, Silvio Conte, a Republican, in his D.C. office. He had lots of stuffed heads of dead animals on his walls. But he welcomed us and heard us out. He didn’t know much about GWEN and I think he appreciated all the information we shared. As Chair of the House Appropriations Committee, he could, and would, play a vital role regarding GWEN’s funding.

It still took a lot of grassroots work, as well as time in D.C., to get the majority of the members of his committee on our side. We contacted hundreds, if not thousands of citizens around the country, provided them with concise, easy to understand information, and encouraged them to contact their Congressional Representatives. After several more years of focused work, we won a big victory. The Air Force’s request for multi-millions of dollars to build hundreds of additional GWEN towers was denied by Congress. Without the funding, the entire GWEN program died.

During those years of work, I saw clearly how citizens, when provided with clear, accurate, timely, and trustworthy information, could turn their concern, caring and outrage into direct influence on a specific policy.

This is the power of citizens that was built into our representative form of government.

Those tears of despair in that St. Louis hotel room were balanced by my first-hand experience of the power of ordinary citizens. The mixture stirred my creativity.

Putting GWEN in a larger context, I asked myself, “What are the obstacles that keep citizens from taking action on the issues they care about? I came up with five reasons that encourage inaction:

1. The issues are overwhelming and frightening!
2. The Congressional process is complicated. People don’t know who to contact, when and how to contact them, and what to say.
3. People know that to be effective you need to act in numbers. One letter will not usually make a difference. And you need to be persistent.
4. Everyone needs feedback on the results of their actions.
5. People are busy. They have families, jobs, careers, vacations, etc. They don’t have time to research and learn about our big national and international political issues—even if they know they are important.

Next, I thought about how to remove each obstacle. I came up with the idea that people could subscribe to receive a simple monthly postcard, much like they subscribe to receive a monthly magazine. Each card would focus on one important and timely peace and security issue. The cards would have brief background information about the issue—300 words max, and a suggested action to take including which policymaker to contact along with their contact info, and a suggested message. A small group of local people would do the research each month, decide on the issues and actions, and produce the cards.

In January, I presented the idea to a group of local friends with whom I had been volunteering on the Nuclear Freeze Campaign. At first they were hesitant—this was something new and different—and so we agreed to put off the decision about our 1986 plans for a month. During that month, I thought more and more about my idea and at our next meeting presented it again to the group. This time I had conviction about it, and said, “I really want to do this and I want you all to do it with me!” My enthusiasm was enough to get them all to agree.

“What should we call it?” someone asked. I suggested, “10/10 Action: Ten minutes a month for meaningful action, & $10 a year—the cost for the service.” Someone said, “Ten minutes isn’t enough time to even find a pen and paper, much less write a letter. How about 20/20, or, 20/20 Vision: Twenty minutes a month, $20 a year, and a Vision of a better world?” That was it!

The seven of us each did our research and met to decide the first issue and action. In March 1986, we mailed out our first 20/20 Vision postcard along with a letter that described our service and invited people to subscribe. The production was done with a typewriter, paste, and a trip to the local copy shop. Within two months we had 300 subscribers in our Congressional District!

Within six months, spurred on by success and an enthusiastic donor, 20/20 became a national project. Over the years it grew to have over 70 local 20/20 Core Groups that each provided the 20/20 service to citizens in their Congressional District. The main office moved from Amherst to Washington, DC. A few years into the project, we decided to add environmental issues to our mission as we realized that everything we loved was at risk from both quick nuclear annihilation and slower environmental degradation.

Five years later, the principles at the heart of 20/20 led me and other colleagues to create EarthAction, an international organization that we launched in 1992 at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. EarthAction has grown to be a global network of over 2,500 environment, peace, and human rights groups, and thousands of policymakers, journalists, and citizens in more than 165 countries. It has carried out over 100 global campaigns and has achieved a long list of campaign successes.

Six years ago, 20/20 became the U.S. focused project of EarthAction. We used this occasion to change its name from “20/20 Vision” to “2020 Action.” We liked the idea of moving from ‘Vision’ to ‘Action’. Seven members of original local 2020 Core Groups volunteered to serve on the 2020 Action National Core Group. Each of them has been part of 2020 for most of its 30 years. Every month we do our research and meet to decide the issue and action for the following month. We take turns writing and editing the text. To each postcard we added a photo that celebrates the beauty and wonder of the natural world.

I am pretty sure our 2020 postcards are the smallest ongoing publication in the world. Small, persistent, and effective.

I have deep gratitude and appreciation for all the supporters, subscribers, staff, members, and volunteers that have been part of 2020 over these past 30 years. We have been, and continue to be, a significant part of a movement that is engaging people in compassionate and effective action for peace and the planet.

Your generous support for 2020 Action will keep us going and growing.

 

Lois Barber, November 2015

 

2020 Action  •  PO Box 63, Amherst, MA 01004  •  413 427-8827  •  [email protected]

 

2020Action.org

20/20 Vision was the brainchild of Lois Barber, an art teacher, mom, and peace-group volunteer, living in Amherst, MA.  In 1983, Lois and her colleague Nancy Foster organized the Amherst community against the Pentagon’s plan to build a communication system int 

ended to allow the United States to “fight and prevail in a protracted nuclear war.” After winning the battle in their community, they took the campaign to the county level and won there too. Then, to stop the construction of the Ground Wave Emergency Network, GWEN, towers anywhere in the country, they realized they had to go national.  But how?    

William Arkin, then at the Institute for Policy Studies, encouraged Lois and Nancy to take their show on the road and suggested they raise some money to support their efforts.  The first check they received was for $500, and that, along with other small contributions set them on their way to organizing in other states where GWEN towers were planned. Three years of intense work resulted in the US Congress cutting $80 million of funding for GWEN from the Defense Department budget. It was a huge grassroots success.

Inspired by this progress, Lois wanted to apply what she had learned to other disarmament issues. The obstacles were huge.  It was 1985, Ronald Reagan was in office, the Cold War was raging, and from Lois’ perspective the peace community was not effectively drawing new people into the movement.  She decided a new approach was needed.    

That December, during a sleepless night, she articulated the question that led to 20/20 Vision.  “What,” she asked herself, “are the obstacles that keep ordinary people from taking action on the issues they care about?”    

She identified five key obstacles.    

1.     The issues are terrifying and people are overwhelmed with information. 

2.     People don’t understand how a bill gets through Congress and how the government works, so they don’t know when and how to influence what it does. 

3.     To be effective people know they need to act together, not alone, and that their actions have to be ongoing, not a one shot deal. 

4.     People need to learn the results of their actions—they need feedback. 

5.     People are busy. They need something meaningful they can do that will fit into their busy lives

Lois set out to design an organizing system to remove these obstacles.  Such a system would identify critical timely issues, and key policymakers.  It would limit information to what could fit on a post card.  It would organize people to take action together, every month--like paying your bills.  It would report back to tell them the impact of their actions. It had to be fast—20 minutes, tops.  And it had to be a service people valued and would pay for—$20 a year.    

20/20 Vision was born: 20 minutes a month—$20 a year—and a Vision of a better world. The first 20/20 Vision post card was sent in March1986 and called for a nuclear weapons test ban (see right). Jeremy Sherman joined forces with Lois as Co-director that summer. The organization grew and had many successes. Seventy local 20/20 Core Groups were started, each one led by a small group who researched, produced, and mailed monthly 20/20 action postcards to their subscribers in their congressional district.  The Washington, DC office was opened in 1989.

Over the years, tens of thousands of people subscribed to 20/20. They received their monthly action postcards, and, more importantly, they did the recommended 20 minute actions. A great deal of legislation and policies were changed. It was heartening to see that this basic element of our democracy, citizens communicating with their elected representatives, still worked!

In 1992 Lois left the staff of 20/20 Vision to help start EarthAction, a global network of organizations that is based on many of 20/20’s principles. She is currently the Executive Director of EarthAction that is now a global network of over 2,600 organizations from 165 countries that have worked together on over 80 global campaigns. For 23 years she continued to serve as President of 20/20’s Board of Directors.

In the summer of 2009, economic challenges here in the US proved too great and 20/20 Vision ‘closed its doors.’ EarthAction, aware that helping citizens communicate with their elected representatives about peace and environmental issues is still vitally important, offered to continue the work of 20/20 Vision. 20/20 Vision’s Board of Directors agreed and voted to turn 20/20 over to EarthAction.

In its new incarnation, as a project of EarthAction, 20/20 has changed from ‘Vision’ to ‘Action’. Its new name is: 2020 Action: 20 minutes a month—$20 a year—Action for a better world.

Some things will stay the same: the membership fee is actually going back to its 1986 price of $20 a year; 2020 members will receive one postcard every month, each focused on one critical and timely peace or environment issue, and each postcard will include all the information needed to send a letter, email, fax, or phone call to a policymaker facing a decision about that issue.

And some things will change, like the newly designed monthly postcards. Lois decided that the new postcards should be beautiful, something everyone would look forward to receiving each month. She says, “The new 2020 Action postcards will each feature a photo that celebrates the beauty and wonder of the natural world that we are working to preserve.”

The new 2020 Action was launched in April 2010.