Historic peace boat sails back to the Bay

For the next five years, dozens of volunteers from Veterans for Peace, Quakers and other groups restored Golden Rule in a boatyard. Some volunteers from the restoration project became part of the crew of the peace boat.

The voyage will include port visits throughout San Francisco Bay that will include guest sailing, public events and opportunities to engage in community discussions among veterans, peace activists, educators, youth and more.

Golden Rule’s project manager Michelle Marsonette said that as a part of the boat’s tour, they will take some members of the San Francisco-based “Comfort Women” Justice Coalition out sailing on Aug. 22 to create an opportunity for them to discuss confronting wartime brutalities.

“Groups like that, we like to take out, because then it gives them an opportunity to dramatically talk about what they have going on, not just to us,” Marsonette said.

Since the Golden Rule’s relaunch in 2015, Gerry Condon, president of the Golden Rule committee and a national board member of Veterans for Peace, has sailed with it to advocate for a nuclear-free world and raise awareness about nuclear threats and peace efforts.

For Condon, nuclear weapons and nuclear war can be considered a local issue in the Bay Area, or anywhere in the U.S.

“Nuclear weapons and nuclear war (are) usually not considered a local issue, right? But on the other hand, all the money that’s going to nuclear weapons this year, with about $100 billion alone to modernize nuclear weapons and almost a trillion-dollar Pentagon budget — it’s stealing from people’s health care, Social Security and housing. So, in that sense, it is a local issue,” he said.

Dominick Favuzzi, a member of a contingent for the Veterans for Peace Sonoma chapter and an Air Force veteran, emphasized the importance of environmental preservation and highlighted the pollution caused by fuel and ammunition as key issues authorities must address in Northern California. The Bay Area is home to many former military bases, including the Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo, The Presidio of San Francisco and Naval Air Station Alameda.

“We have the Travis Air Force base and other military bases in Northern California that have been abandoned, but are still quite dangerous cleanup sites,” said Favuzzi.

According to the anti-war grassroots organization World BEYOND War, military bases damage the environment in many ways, from the exhaust of U.S. vehicles and planes to toxic chemicals that can be released from the bases and enter local water sources.