Food Not Bombs planned a series of three protest marches from Cambridge City Hall to Draper Weapons Research Lab of MIT in the summer and fall of 1981. We designed these marches to highlight how the international politics of nuclear war directly affected local politics, specifically, that the diversion of resources from human needs reduced services for the people of Cambridge. It was not a coincidence that our house was halfway between City Hail and Draper Lab. The first march was on Hiroshima Day, August 6. Food Not Bombs provided food and organized a speak-out in the triangle of public land at the entrance to Draper Lab in the middle of the street. To dramatize what would happen if a 1-megaton nuclear weapon hit Draper Lab, we burned a copy of the Boston telephone book, pointing out that all the people in it could be vaporized in less time than it took for the book to burn. 

The next march was on October 10 and was called Music and March to End the Arms Race. Again, we marched from City Hall to Draper Lab, but this time General Duffy, the president of Draper Lab, met with us in advance. Other groups protesting at Draper Lab had been arrested for stepping off the sidewalk onto Draper Lab's property, and we were requesting permission to gather and serve food right in the courtyard on that property. We assured him we would be nonviolent and had a nice talk with him about peace and nuclear weapons. He assured us that he wanted peace as well, and that nuclear weapons were necessary for peace in our modern world. As we were in apparent agreement on the need for peace, General Duffy agreed to let us protest against nuclear weapons on Draper property, and so we did, with all the employees looking out their windows at us and our banners, posters, and food table. 

Before the next march, which was called the Walk For Peace, we tabled in Brattle Square in the snow to educate Christmas shoppers about the dangers of nuclear weapons being developed right here in our town. At that time, in 1981, many people were not yet aware of the danger or that it was going on right in our backyard. We were very familiar to all the city councillors by this time, and we were able to have this walk co-sponsored by Cambridge City Council. On December 20, 1981, it was only 4 degrees outside, but we marched from Cambridge 
Commons and past City Hall to Draper Lab anyway. To our amazement, 75 people showed up to march. We made a huge white dove out of bed sheets and sticks that took several people to carry, and this Peace Dove lead the way. 

Our walk around Fresh Pond on the day of the free concert was invigorating, as usual, and we were able to review our plans for the concert. From there, we drove to Bread and Circus, an organic food store, where we loaded boxes of produce and buckets of tofu set aside for us. It never ceased to amaze us how much food we were able to recover. We had a network of several neighborhood grocery stores that we would visit, and while we made our rounds this morning, we got to talking about how this collection network had grown and how that allowed us to feed large numbers of people for very little money. This got us thinking about the first very large event we fed.

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