Grace Cole
My name is Grace Cole and I'm with-
Angie Frabasilio
Angie Frabasilio. I grew up during the time of the Cold War. When I was 19, I walked across the country on a peace walk. That was a year long walk for global nuclear disarmament, which shaped my life in profound ways. I was in college. I heard about The Great Peace March, and I thought that that question: why we have nuclear weapons, why we are stockpiling — I thought that question was more intriguing than going to college.
Grace Cole
My pause in college was COVID-19 happened, but I was doing an internship in Utah State Capitol, and I worked with a representative whose views I was not aligned with for most issues. And I think that it was interesting for me to wonder if I'm now like a part of this, because I'm helping this representative.
And my main takeaway was like, I have so much time to figure out how I'm going to run for office. I thought that I had this path where I could just become a politician, and then you do things that matter. But that is no longer.
And I feel like maybe I'm just becoming more jaded. Every time you talk about the Peace March, I'm like, "That's what I should have been doing."
Angie Frabasilio
We were talking a little bit earlier about the idea of hope and despair and wanting to see change. And then the idea of working within the Capitol is different than just going out and standing on the street corner with a sign, but in either case, you're doing something so that hope is more activated.
The Peace March was a little bit different in that it was sort of like a force, and you're with eight hundred, a thousand other people, and you're camping and going along the way.
It's like people come from communities to come see you, they come feed you, they come talk to you.
And there was a kind of a baseline respect, you know, "you believe that, I believe this, and we can talk,"
Grace Cole
Right.
Angie Frabasilio
I just wish people were comfortable talking to each other.
Now it seems to me like there's so much division that even the talk is hard, even the talk is hard amongst families, that even that part is just really difficult.
Grace Cole
That's why I just like the idea of walking. I think it feels like inviting. There's a sense of like inclusion, like you can join, you can walk with. Or is just walking the act of peace, maybe, if nothing else, you hopefully have peace within yourself and with the people that you're sharing the experience with.
Angie Frabasilio
And it's an adventure, plus the thousand people that I was hanging out with daily, that whole thing just created like a whole family for me.
So it was — one of the things on the Peace March, was we had a post office. So it was a bus, and it was our post office, and we had two people that had been post people before. So they were the post masters. You could write "Great Peace March: general delivery" on your envelope, and it would get to us.
Grace Cole
I think that you and my mom, at my age, were doing things that would now lead you to be concerned for your own children. And it's —"actually, I have a phone."
Angie Frabasilio
I know it's like, that's the thing. Like, if your daughter were to say, "Hey, I'm gonna go walk across the country, and by the way, I'm not gonna be able to communicate with you unless you send me a letter? Or..."
Grace Cole
You would be afraid, wouldn't you?
Angie Frabasilio
Yeah, yeah.
Grace Cole
You are always the one — when people are like, they have something that is a problem, and you have 12 ideas of how to get around this problem. Growing up, that was just a really cool example to have.
Angie Frabasilio
Right, I think that's kind of a common thought that stops a lot of people, "Is what I'm doing going to make a difference?" I think if you don't let that stop you, it always will make a difference. You feel more hopeful.
