A Movement Gathers Force

Throngs protest nuclear arms

There is something about emotionally charged political movements: until they mobilize enormous crowds of adherents in one place on one day, they do not feel quite bona fide. Last weekend in New York City, the diffuse U.S. antinuclear arms movement produced its first such mass spectacle when 150,000 protesters paraded past the nearly empty United Nations complex and then joined 350,000 more compatriots for a rally-cum-concert in Central Park. The Saturday demonstration, New York's largest ever, was well planned and peaceful, and timed to coincide with the U.N.'s five-week-long...