Energy and Ecology

The movement's stress on environmental issues did not suddenly appear fully formed in the mid-1970s. In the late 1960s, echoing the concerns of organizations such as Zero Population Growth, Creative Initiative had called on their members and the public to support population limitation. The women's ecology task force, established in the spring of 1969, issued a flyer entitled "Overpopulation Newsletter." It consisted of a series of short news items almost all of which supported liberalizing antiabortion laws. The newsletter ended by urging readers to write to their federal and state representatives to support "just abortion and voluntary sterilization laws, which would be open to all with fees to be determined by financial ability to pay."^[74] In July 1969 Build the Earth

put together an ecology exhibit composed of a series of sixteen freestanding display panels with very professional pictures and graphics. First erected at a Palo Alto shopping mall, it was later shown in museums and schools in the Bay Area. The display emphasized the contrast between the finite capacity of the earth to produce food and the apparently infinite capacity of people to reproduce; it predicted that unless something were done to reduce the birth rate, starvation would be the inevitable result.^[75] In 1970, when a special "committee of 90" men drafted a series of suggested position papers on issues of concern, the "politics" statement included an unqualified call for all forms of population control including "massive education, tax penalties for more than two children, free sterilization, intensified research on safe and convenient contraceptives, and unconditional abortion."^[76]

There was a hiatus in the public education programs during the early 1970s while the group focused on the theatrical productions. Then, in 1975, Creative Initiative returned to the ecology movement, shifting their emphasis from population control and recycling to energy. The energy issue involved them directly in political activities and led up to the crisis that preceded their reorganization into Beyond War.

Operating as Build the Earth, Creative Initiative created a special task force called "Project Survival" at the beginning of 1975. They were motivated, they said, by hearing British economist E. F. Schumacher speaking at Stanford University. Shumacher's book, Small Is Beautiful, further stimulated them to investigate the energy problem, and they chose the nuclear power issue as an appropriate focus for action.^[77] From February to March, Project Survival sponsored twelve community forums at which the issue of nuclear power was discussed. These meetings presented both sides of the issue, including people and films from the nuclear power industry, while an accompanying questionnaire tried to determine popular attitudes toward nuclear power.^[78] Creative Initiative was far from neutral on the subject, however, and the appearance of objectivity was quickly abandoned. Within months they were distributing flyers listing the long-term dangers of radioactive plutonium waste from reactors and predicting grave consequences for the future unless the production of nuclear energy were halted. They concluded one early list of antinuclear arguments with the statement: "Because of these facts we feel the issue of nuclear power is a moral one."^[79]

The more explicitly political side of the nuclear project went through the same rapid transformation from nominally objective to unabashedly partisan in just a few months. In March, the movement circulated a

petition calling on the government to create a special commission, "representative of all the people of California, to inquire into the question of nuclear power in our state." The rest of the document maintained the same even-handed tone, noting that nuclear power had both benefits and dangers, supporters and opponents, and that the decision should not be left to the power industry or to scientists. Since the issue was moral and ethical as well as technological and economic reasoned the petition, the decision had to be made by everybody based on all the facts.^[80]

By April, the movement had moved to outright antinuclear advocacy. One of the early announcements for an "educational presentation" was headlined, "WE ARE IRREVERSIBLY COMMITTED TO ONE MILLION DEATHS FROM NUCLEAR RADIATION." In the face of so palpable and immediate a danger, the flyer explained, "we must take immediate action. All other problems of human welfare take second place."^[81]

On May 9, five hundred women staged a demonstration in Los Angeles to draw attention to the petition campaign. In a newspaper interview several spokeswomen for the march admitted that although the petition only called for an investigation, they were opposed to nuclear power.^[82] Their point of view was obvious from the march itself. demonstrating at the Department of Water and Power, they carried signs saying "Plutonium Kills," "Energy Conservation not Nuclear Proliferation," "People Need the Truth About Nuclear Waste," "Children Need a Future, Not a Radioactive Lcgacy," and "God Gave Us a Finite Planet, Let Us Not Destroy It."^[83] Aside from the fact that all the demonstrators were women, with the vast majority middle-aged and white, there was one other aspect that set this march apart from the usual demonstration: they were all dressed in pantsuits that were the colors of the rainbow and each had a matching scarf tied through her hair. They explained that the rainbow was God's sign to Noah that he would not destroy the earth and their sign that they accepted the responsibility to also persuade people not to destroy the earth.^[84]

Petition drives were staged in more than half a dozen cities around the state. In Fresno and San Francisco they were accompanied by marches using the same signs and colored costumes as were used in Los Angeles. The highly disciplined demonstration in San Francisco so unnerved one Pacific Gas and Electric counterdemonstrator that he commented, "It's like watching the Hitler youth corps."^[85] He was subsequently reprimanded for his remark and apologized to Creative Initiative. But these

regional marches were just warmups for the grand finale demonstration in Sacramento. The women had managed to collect 345,000 signatures on their "call for information" petitions, and they went to the state capital to present them to the governor in typical Creative Initiative style. Drawing on their years of experience producing "Bless Man" and "Thirteen Is a Mystical Number," they pulled out all the stops.

More than four thousand enthusiastic and costumed demonstrators went to Sacramento on May 21, 1975. Led by four hundred women forming the inevitable pastel rainbow, they marched from a local park to the Capitol Mall. There the "rainbow women" formed a backdrop to an invocation by American Indians (in costume) and four costumed women representing the four races of the earth. An Indian representative called upon the crowd to "hear a prophecy of my people." "The Great Spirit will return," he predicted, going on to assure the audience that the 'War of Light" would vanquish the "Sons of Darkness." Unprompted, he then proceeded to outline the fundamental tenets of Creative Initiative philosophy. He told the people to "go to the mountain-top of consciousness and learn to be 'Warriors of the Rainbow.' " He told them to fight with truth and not with violence. He foretold the emergence of understanding, kindness, and the end of destruction, and finally he called upon them to help bring about a "new order of the ages."^[86]

Each of the four costumed women then stepped forward and, after a statement of reconciliation and concern was read for her, released a dove. The black woman forgave the whites. The woman representing the "red" and "brown" races called for the protection of "Mother Earth." The Asian woman denounced war with particular reference to the war in Vietnam. While the white woman denounced war and waste, saying, "We do not want an industrial-military complex running our nation. . . . We do not want more affluence, more electric gadgets, bigger automobiles, more energy. We want simplicity and conservation." It went on in this vein for two and a half hours. A hundred and one men in white pants with gold sashes and rainbow-colored shirts carried beautifully designed banners bearing symbols of life. After speeches and the presentation of the petitions to the chairman of the California Energy Commission, additional men with flags joined those with the banners and, in turn, became part of an ever-growing tableau that included women with baskets of fruit, grain, and flowers, and a huge globe. The afternoon's activities ended with the singing of "America, the Beautiful" and a Creative Initiative anthem, "Mankind, Arise."

Press reaction to the Sacramento demonstration was generally quite favorable. A commentator from a local school wondered about the demonstrators singing "America, the Beautiful" after they had spoken of uniting nations, races, and religions, but she was otherwise greatly impressed.^[87] A bemused reporter from the Sacramento Union couldn't make up his mind whether the pageant was closer to the model of Busby Berkley or Joseph Goebbels but concluded that neither could have done a better job.^[88] The Union reporter's reaction was a rather typical one for outsiders when first confronted with Creative Initiative. On the one hand the group seemed to stand for everything that was good—peace, brotherhood, and a clean environment—but on the other hand there was something disquieting about a movement that could convince mature adults to dress up in elaborate uniforms and costumes and march in highly structured formations to further those same ideals.

Other antinuclear-power forces had already qualified an initiative, "Proposition 15," for the June 15 ballot. If passed, Proposition 15 would have placed nuclear power plants in the state under tighter controls for safety and disposal of nuclear waste, and it would have eliminated the limit on liability for nuclear power plants.^[89] Because initiatives were considered "political" and the various legal entities that made up Creative Initiatives in 1975 (Sequoia Seminar, Build the Earth, and the National Initiative Foundation) were all tax-exempt, they could not legally partake in any partisan political activity. That problem was resolved in July 1975 when Creative Initiative created a new organization, "Project Survival," through which people could work in support of the "nuclear safeguards initiative!" as its supporters called it, without endangering the tax status of the preexisiting entities.

A skeleton crew remained in the established groups to run some seminars and tend to the correspondence, but virtually all regular activities ceased as members of Creative Initiative directed their considerable energy and single-minded purpose to supporting the antinuclear initiative. Not everybody was pleased with the move. One member, who was employed by the nuclear power industry, worried that the suspension of all youth activities would deprive his children of support for the values he had been instilling in them. He pointed out, with considerable logic given Creative Initiative principles, that supporting a coercive law was not in the spirit of the movement. He argued that people would change their energy consumption behavior only when they had changed their thinking and that attempts to force such change from without were doomed, like Prohibition, to failure. Yet, as a true member of the com-

munity, he concluded that he would have to go along with whatever the group decided to do and promised, "I will give what I see and act with totality in whatever direction we proceed."^[90]

The decision to give up almost all of the regular recruiting and educational work in order to devote all resources to the nuclear power issue foreshadowed the move made seven years later to abandon the New Religion and become Beyond War. Because the initiative drive was limited by its very nature and would be over, one way or the other, after the election in June, the decision to work for Proposition 15 was not as drastic as the decision to reorganize as Beyond War. Nevertheless, the group's willingness to digress dramatically from its previous course and to undertake a task that was actually contradictory to one of its underlying principles was indicative of a flexibility that sometimes seemed to set the movement at odds with itself.

Opponents of Proposition 15 occasionally tried to paint the entire project as part of a sinister conspiracy devised by Creative Initiative itself (it began using that name during this period). Whether it was a conspiracy, as some contended, or merely an expression of the fervor of a group of "true believers," as some newspaper articles implied, it was obvious to most outsiders that Creative Initiative's activity on behalf of the state proposition went well beyond that usually expected from supporters of a political issue.^[91] Although members of Creative Initiative founded and dominated Project Survival, the movement had a life of its own with more than ten thousand affiliated people who had no connection with Creative Initiative either before or after the campaign, and, according to participants, no attempt was made to use the antinuclear power drive to recruit members for Creative Initiative.^[92]

Although there were no paid workers on Project Survival, of the more than five thousand people who participated, some men, as well as the usually large contingent of women, worked full-time for the initiative.^[93] The greatest personal sacrifice, as well as the most spectacular statement of personal commitment, came from three engineers who worked for General Electric Nuclear Systems in San Jose. Each had independently come to the decision to leave his employment in the nuclear power industry, but because they knew one another both from work and their involvement in Creative Initiative, they decided to act in unison. In a highly publicized news conference in February 1976 they all resigned, citing their concern about the dangers of nuclear power and their inability to work any longer in good conscience for a company that was contributing to a situation they believed endangered all

humankind.^[94] In the wake of these resignations, some other engineers who were members of Creative Initiative but did not support Proposition 15 reported that they were told they would have to leave the movement unless they could get behind the campaign. Although that "shape up or ship out" ultimatum was eventually rescinded, here, as in so much of the sect's activity, conformity was expected as a sign of commitmcnt.^[95]

Project Survival disbanded after the proposition's defeat, and Creative Initiative resumed its full schedule of preproposition activities. The conclusion of this experiment with political activism did not, however, mark an end to the group's concern with ecology. The environmental movement was still running strong in California, and Creative Initiative seemed willing to ride that wave as far as it would go. A flyer from some time after 1976 placed the ecology issue in perspective from Creative Initiative's viewpoint. A page and a half of the handout listed the usual problems of water pollution, air pollution, and the limited supply of natural resources. Then it went further, however, lumping together with these environmental dangers such other problems as the stockpiling of nuclear weapons, divorce, suicide, alcoholism, drug addiction, television violence, pornography, child abuse, and venereal disease. They were all part, said the flyer, of "the whole deterioration of our human environment."^[96] By not separating ecology from other social problems, Creative Initiative was able to regard its continued activity in that area as both an educational tool and as an expression of its personal commitment to living lives in harmony with people and nature.

In the years between the failure of the nuclear power safety drive and the emergence of Beyond War, the community engaged in three highly visible public campaigns centered on the ecology issue. In 1977 Creative Initiative formed an organization called the "Palo Alto Youth Conservation Corps." Unlike the national service project, the Youth Conservation Corps had no national plans. Essentially it was a three-week summer program for fifteen- and sixteen-year-old children of Creative Initiative members. Dressed in green polo shirts and riding their bicycles, the twenty-six members of the corps canvassed Palo Alto trying to get citizens "to do one thing more" to conserve water and energy.^[97]

In 1979 and 1980 Creative Initiative launched its penultimate campaign in the ecology field. Like the earlier efforts, this one was aimed at conserving energy, but unlike the three-week teenage program in the summer of 1977, it involved the whole community and was a full-bore

effort. It began in May 1979, contined through the summer and fall, and was revived briefly during the following summer. Called "Energyfast," the project was an attempt to get people in the Bay Area to cut back on their consumption of energy. Carrying signs that said "Children are the endangered species," "Cooperate now for survival," and "Save energy," a thousand rainbow-suited women introduced the project by marching through downtown San Francisco to a rally in Union Square. There, Creative Initiative spokeswoman Phyllis Kidd reminded the lunchtime crowd that they were the same people who had demonstrated five years earlier against nuclear energy and had been laughed at on the street and defeated at the polls. She said that many people had asked where they had been for five years, and the answer was "we have been studying and investigating. What we see strikes horror in our hearts for the future." Their role, said Kidd, was what it had always been: "to act and to educate the people who have not heard, so they can join with us."^[98]

Energyfast used two devices to induce people to participate in the program. The first employed the shock strategy that grew out of Creative Initiative's apocalyptic vision. One flyer began, "People are outraged by the lack of cooperation . . . for survival of life on this planet." Then in bold letters it proclaimed, "Children are the endangered species!" It listed the dangers of nuclear war, waste of energy and natural resources, and poisons in the air, water, and food. It concluded with the terse warnings, "We only have one planet. Our resources are going fast. Life is in danger. Cooperate now for survival."^[99] The second, more moderate approach emphasized the need for people to take voluntary action and listed the kinds of changes in transportation and home life that could lead to energy savings. Another flyer that advocated this more positive approach ended with the familiar call for geometric growth. "If each person got one more person each week to Energyfast," it explained, in fewer than six months the population of California would be recruited, and in just seven months the entire population of the United States would be participating.^[100]

Energyfast for 1979 reached its conclusion with a full-scale Creative Initiative celebration in Palo Alto's city hall plaza. "International Energy Conservation Day," as they called it, featured half a dozen speakers joined by representatives from fifteen countries and more than sixty other dignitaries who lent their support to the program. There was also the usual Creative Initiative rainbow theme, this time augmented by the

Palo Alto High School marching band, several other bands, and "giant costumed animals." The parade was followed by an ecology fair at a local park.^[101]

Despite a presidential citation awarded at White House ceremonies, Creative Initiative was turned down for a state grant to expand the project. The Energyfast idea was revived briefly the following summer; nevertheless, when the public was invited to visit the homes of six Creative Initiative members to see how they had used various conservation measures, including solar heat, to cut down on their use of energy.^[102] The failure to expand Energyfast did not discourage the group's environmental efforts; they turned instead to a final effort in the ecology field that once more drew them to the edge of politics.

In July of 1980 a report entitled "Global 2000," prepared at the request of President Jimmy Carter by thirteen different government agencies, was released to the public. Although Creative Initiative believed that the report's gloomy prognostications about population, resources, and the environment were not pessimistic enough, its generally negative outlook did support Creative Initiative's own dire predictions, and the movement immediately included the document in its ecological program.^[103] Since the release of "Global 2000" occurred during the 1980 presidential race, Creative Initiative "decided to create a small action task force of about 30 full-time volunteers whose singular task [would] be to impel the candidates to respond to the crucial issues raised by Global 2000."^[104]

Dubbing themselves "Global 2000: The Challenge to Change," the special task force began their new endeavor by opening a storefront headquarters on University Avenue, Palo Alto's main street. Posters of presidential candidates Carter, Reagan, and independent John Anderson were pasted on the windows under a banner that asked, "When will the candidates discuss the real issues?"^[105] Creative Initiative's Global 2000 project folded with the election but did survive briefly in the form of a "Global 2000 Course" in the winter of 1980–1981.^[106]