Nation: Tom and Jane vs. Big Business

They begin a 52-city crusade

It was the biggest antinuclear rally in U.S. history. To the tunes of Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne and Pete Seeger, 200,000 blue-jeaned, banner-waving protesters thronged Manhattan's Battery Park last week, conjuring up visions of the antiwar days. Bella Abzug was there. So were Consumer Advocate Ralph Nader and Environmentalist Barry Commoner. And so, in another flashback to the '60s, were Actress Jane Fonda and her husband Activist Tom Hayden, this time talking of a nuclear Armageddon. Said Fonda to the cheering crowd: "We have to think of ourselves as Paul Reveres and Pauline Reveres, going through our country town by town, city by city, warning people about the dangers."

The rally, organized by Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE), was the largest so far of a series of antinuclear protests nationwide. At least 20 demonstrations are scheduled in the next few weeks, from picketing at a proposed nuclear waste-dumping site near Carlsbad, N. Mex., to a planned sit-in at the site of a nuclear power plant being built in Seabrook, N.H. But for Fonda, 41, and Hayden, 38, the New York City rally was the launching pad for another crusade: their drive to publicize Hayden's anti-Big Business Campaign for Economic Democracy.

Their target is what they call "unbridled corporate power" in America. According to Fonda and Hayden, multinational corporations neglect the public interest in their rush for profits. Their prime example is nuclear power, which they urge be phased out and replaced with Government-subsidized solar energy. Says Fonda, with a catchy show-biz zinger: "It is time to look at crime in the suites, not just in the streets." Protests Hayden: "While we may have democracy in the political arena, we certainly don't in the economic one, where a board of directors has dictatorial powers." Fonda and Hayden —dubbed the "Mork and Mindy" of the left in a column by Conservative George Will—call for participation by workers and consumers in the making of corporate policies. Just how this would be accomplished is unclear even to Hayden. Says he: "We have more of a vision than a blueprint."

During the next month, the pair will take their campaign to 52 cities. They will meet newspaper editors and appear on talk shows and at union rallies. The bills for the $150,000 trip will be covered by the $5,000 fee they charge for speeches before college audiences.