Global events have Americans worrying about terrorist attacks.

But 20 years ago this week, Lawrence voters were worried about nuclear holocaust and  in a singular event in the city’s history  went to the polls and voted against the nuclear arms race.

Just weeks after hundreds of the city’s residents were extras, including many made up to appear horribly injured or dead, in the filming of the nuclear drama “The Day After,” 6,541 Lawrence voters said they wanted to end a U.S. nuclear weapons buildup; 2,298 voters opposed.

The referendum remains the only occasion in modern memory when residents used the ballot box to express local sensibility on a national issue.

“I think what people were more interested in was taking action instead of saying, ‘I’m afraid,'” then-Mayor Marci Francisco said last week. “They wanted to be part of sending a message. A responsible way to do that was to put it on the ballot and vote.”

It’s an act that might not be repeated in Lawrence. David Burress, a leader in the Douglas County chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said he doubted his organization would ever organize a local referendum, say, against the USA Patriot Act passed last year by Congress. The act expanded law enforcement’s surveillance and investigative powers in the wake of Sept. 11, raising some concerns about individual rights and freedoms.

“It’s hard to get people to vote,” Burress said. “You have to get a lot of petitions on an issue just to get it on the ballot, and then you have to convince people to get out and vote. And the question is, is it effective?”

Real impact

Some of those who took part in the 1982 freeze campaign said it helped bring about the reduction of nuclear weapons at the end of the Cold War a few years later.

Clark H. Coan, who was on the steering committee for the referendum, noted several states and major cities had similar referendums at the same time as Lawrence.

“I think that put a lot of pressure on the Reagan administration,” Coan said. “And I think that’s why, in Reykjavik with Gorbachev, he almost got a nuclear disarmament treaty.”

And, Coan said, that may be why Reagan signed the INF Treaty in 1987, reducing nuclear arms in the United States and Soviet Union.

Voters had two sets of fears to choose from in 1982. Freeze supporters feared the devastation that would be wrought by a nuclear war; opponents said a freeze would make the United States vulnerable to the Soviets.

Jeff Johnson, then president of the Kansas University Conservative Forum, led a boycott of the referendum and suggested the KGB was behind national efforts to stop the nuclear buildup. His organization printed 200 posters that declared: “The Soviet Union needs you  support a nuclear freeze.”

“The Soviet Union is using people who are very good-willed, and good-intentioned but naive,” Johnson said at the time. “The Soviets are useful in exploiting people and they’re doing it now.”

Disagreements

But Larry Kipp disagreed. As a member of the Palmyra Township Trustees, he sponsored a nuclear freeze referendum the same year. The trustees approved the resolution.

“I was becoming aware of this whole thing about nuclear winter, of mutually assured destruction,” Kipp recalled. “It seemed we needed to find a better way.”

Johnson no longer lives in Lawrence and couldn’t be found for comment. Same for Randy Makin, who filed suit against the Lawrence City Commission for sponsoring the referendum, saying it had no authority to have an election on an issue that wasn’t under city authority.

Dean Burkhead, the Lawrence attorney who represented Makin in the suit, said last week he remembered little about the suit. But his position from that time is unchanged.

“I still think the city didn’t have the authority,” he said.

A judge disagreed with Johnson and allowed the vote to continue. But it happened under unusual circumstances.

As in this election year, Kansans were voting in both local congressional races and the statewide governor’s race. To keep the referendum from affecting those races, the city arranged to have separate ballots and balloting stations at the same buildings where the general election was taking place. At Schwegler School, for instance, referendum poll workers sat 40 feet down the hall from where county election volunteers were doing their job.

Low turnout

Some blamed the split balloting stations for lower turnout in the referendum. Only about half of the 16,833 Lawrence voters who went to the polls Nov. 2, 1982, also participated in the referendum; there were then 31,606 registered voters in the city.

Many of those who did vote had the filming of “The Day After” fresh on their minds.

“Those favoring a freeze could not have asked for better campaign material than the sets created by the TV special effects crew members,” the Journal-World reported that fall.

“The sight of burned-out cars and buses strewn along Massachusetts Street, wrecked stores on West Ninth Street, the tent city along the Kaw banks and many other sets  all helped to bring home the devastation and suffering likely to be caused by war.”

Coan agreed the movie helped the campaign.

“It was so realistic, some of the scenes, that it horrified some of the people and activated them to work on the freeze,” he said.

After 20 years, Kipp said, it’s hard for many people to remember the fears created by the prospect of a nuclear war.

“I lived back in the ’50s  I hid in the chair and went into the hall and did all the things we were supposed to do for bomb alerts,” Kipp said. “I had fears.

“The United States and Russia have proven to be responsible, but at that time we didn’t know. It was a worrisome time.”