SANE, Sane/Freeze, and Peace Action

SANE, SANE/FREEZE, AND PEACE ACTION. A leader in the struggle for disarmament, SANE grew out of rising US concern about nuclear weapons during the 1950s. The atmospheric testing of the new hydrogen bomb was particularly disturbing, for it scattered vast clouds of deadly radioactive fallout around the world and pointed to the destruction of civilization through nuclear war. In June 1957, at the invitation of Norman Cousins (editor of The Saturday Review) and Clarence Pickett (secretary emeritus of the American Friends Service Committee), a group of twenty-seven prominent Americans met in New York City and launched an effort to focus opinion on the dangers of nuclear testing. At the gathering, Erich Fromm, an eminent psychoanalyst, remarked that “the normal drive for survival” had been put out of operation by Cold War propaganda. Therefore, he said, “we must . . . try to bring the voice of sanity to the people.” Accordingly, the group called itself the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, which became known as SANE.
SANE’s first newspaper ad, that November, touched off nationwide discussion and debate on the nuclear arms race. Although the signers hadn’t planned to form a new organization, chapters sprung up around the nation. By the summer of 1958, SANE had 25,000 members and was the largest peace organization in the United States.
SANE began with a moderate Left orientation. Socialists played key roles during its early years, including not only Fromm, but Norman Thomas and Homer Jack. Other SANE leaders were well-known liberals (such as Cousins, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Walter Reuther) or radical pacifists (such as A.J. Muste). SANE also established close relations with prominent activists in the civil rights movement, including Martin Luther King, Jr. (who signed SANE ads and became a national sponsor), Harry Belafonte (who also became a national sponsor), and A. Philip Randolph (a featured speaker at a massive SANE rally).
At the chapter level, particularly in New York City, a noticeable number of communists and ex-communists joined. SANE leadership, however, hoped to avoid Soviet partisanship and, also, to circumvent an investigation, initiated by U.S. Senator Thomas Dodd, of “Communist infiltration” in the organization. In 1960, the announcement by the national leadership that SANE did not welcome Communists, some member resigned, that the leadership had capitulated to “McCarthyism.”
Even so, SANE survived, recouped its membership losses and played a key role in securing the world’s first nuclear arms control agreements. In October 1958, responding to the wave of protest generated by SANE and other disarmament groups in the United States and abroad, the US, British, and Soviet governments agreed to halt nuclear testing and negotiate a test ban treaty. In early 1963, with the treaty still unconsummated, Cousins met with President Kennedy, who urged him to assure Premier Khrushchev of his sincerity in seeking a treaty. Shuttling back and forth between the two world leaders, Cousins set the stage for the new negotiations that produced the Partial Test Ban Treaty later that year.
SANE had greater difficulties over the following decade. In November 1965, SANE, an early critic of US military involvement in Vietnam, organized the largest antiwar demonstration up to that time. But its call for a negotiated settlement of the war was ignored by the Johnson administration and bypassed by an increasingly radical peace movement. In 1967, when Dr. Benjamin Spock, SANE’s co-chair, headed up the militant Spring Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam, the national board was uneasy about it. Nevertheless, SANE became the first nonpartisan group to oppose Lyndon Johnson’s reelection and, in 1968, dropped its emphasis on negotiations to begin championing US withdrawal from Vietnam.
In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, much of the US peace movement, including SANE, melted away. Under the leadership of Seymour Melman, a professor of industrial engineering, the organization again focused on the dangers of the nuclear arms race and campaigned against the B-1 bomber. Even so, by 1976 its membership had fallen sharply.
SANE revived in 1977 after the appointment of David Cortright, a leader of the GI antiwar movement, as its executive director. Other former activists against the Vietnam War, often with a New Left background, also took staff positions. Amid the deterioration of Soviet-American détente, SANE backed the SALT II Treaty and, in an alliance with the International Association of Machinists, economic conversion legislation. In 1979, it launched a major campaign to block development of the MX missile.
The advent of the Reagan administration, with its loose talk of nuclear war, accelerated SANE’s revival, including its growth to 150,000 members by 1985. Mobilizing large numbers of Democratic allies in Congress, SANE succeeded in cutting most of the MX missile program and, together with other peace groups, pressuring the Reagan administration to abandon the nuclear arms race, sign the INF Treaty, and end the Cold War.
In 1987, SANE merged with a like-minded but more loosely-structured organization, the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign, to form SANE/Freeze. Six year later, the name was changed to Peace Action.
Although the end of the Cold War led to dwindling membership and support, the new organization worked vigorously to halt nuclear weapons production, reduce military spending, block anti-missile programs, end funding for US-backed wars in Central America, and oppose US military action in the Persian Gulf. One of its biggest victories was the signing of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996.
During the early twenty-first century, the Afghanistan War, the Iraq war, and the revival of the nuclear arms race led to the resurgence of Peace Action, which remained the nation’s largest grassroots peace organization. Campaigning against a variety of military ventures, it worked closely in congress with the Progressive Caucus.
Throughout its history, SANE, SANE/Freeze, and Peace Action gravitated toward politicians in the peace-oriented leftwing of the Democratic Party. In presidential races, infrequent endorsements included Eugene McCarthy (1968), George McGovern (1972), and Bernie Sanders (2016). Although SANE/Freeze did not endorse Jesse Jackson in 1988, some of its top leaders worked in his campaign. SANE and its successors thereby continued their moderate Left political orientation.

Cortright, David. Peace Works: The Citizen’s Role in Ending the Cold War. Boulder: Westview Press, 1993.

DeBenedetti, Charles. An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1990.

Katz, Milton. Ban the Bomb: A History of Sane. New York: Greenwood Press, 1986.

Stassen, Glen Harold and Lawrence S. Wittner. Editors. Peace Action: Past, Present, and Future. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2007.

Wittner, Lawrence S. Resisting the Bomb: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1954 to 1970. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997.

-----. Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the Present. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003.

SANE, Inc. Records, 1957-1987. Descriptive Summary. Swarthmore College Peace Collection. https://www.swarthmore.edu/library/peace/DG051-099/dg058sane.htm/dg058saneintr.htm