Story on Jesse Cocks

Jessie Cocks

Steve Hoffman

The seed of a tree is planted in the earth, and the seed is watered, and the seed begins to grow.

The moment she was born, there was a seed planted in Jessie Cocks’ soul and that seed has been nurtured and nourished and, my, how it has grown. While her life has taken many twists along winding paths (with the occasional turn down a darkened alley) she has never encountered a roadblock or a detour. Her path is her path, it belongs to her. Every moment has built upon the next, all leading perfectly to the current moment, where she exists, quite comfortably, thank you.

“I have based my life on non-violence. It’s approaching things from a point of love instead of fear. For me, the truth of the matter is love. It’s unconditional love.” Jessie is a birthright Quaker, a direct descendent of Hicksites--who were Quietist, meaning that they believed in waiting for revelation from God more than finding it in the Bible or from rational thought. They traveled for peace. Founder Elias Hicks was a freethinker, an early abolitionist, a preacher who taught that the leading of the inner light was more authoritative than the text of the Bible.

From an early age, Jessie was tuned in to her heritage.

“I was clearly a Quaker. That resonated for me very early on,” she explains.

Jessie’s father was born in Westbury, Long Island, and his father was William Willets Cocks, who worked in agriculture before becoming a U.S. Congressman from New York.

William was a close friend of President Theodore Roosevelt.

So politics was in Jessie’s blood, too—but more on that later.

By the time Jessie came along, the family had settled in Chester County.

Some of Jessie’s rugged gentleness may originate with a childhood spent handling horses.

“I was born and raised to ride horses,” she explains. “I was riding horses before I was walking. I had a Pinto Pony named Bambi and she was really my nanny. I spent so much time with her. My friends and I would have picnics on that horse. It was like riding a table,” she chuckles.

Jessie suffered a fractured skull and several concussions, but that didn’t deter her from bonding with horses. From the age of about eleven, she was riding race horses. If she happened to get thrown off, her father would encourage her to “get back up there and show it who is boss.” She was also the de facto boss of the farm when she was still very young. She helped train some of the farm workers and assumed responsibilities that most children wouldn’t be able to handle.

She remembers, “It was a very cavalier upbringing.” She recalls that living on the farm was like “living in a fish bowl of race and class.” There was the boardinghouse, where the farm workers who weren’t good enough to work with the horses lived.

Then there was her home, with her Republican working-class parents and three other siblings. On the same social level were the young men who were being taught by her father to work the farm. Then, at the top, were the farm’s owners, who would stop by to watch in on horses.

Jessie bounced between the social classes. On one end of the spectrum, she gained a certain level of worldliness attending the cocktail parties that her parents hosted. On the other end, she rolled up her sleeves and worked side-by-side with farmhands--many of them black, all of them poor. This is where Jessie felt most comfortable.

A trip to a cousin’s ranch in Wyoming had a profound effect on her.

“I was home,” she says simply of being out west, with the breathtaking, wide open spaces. “The west is where it’s at for me.” It helped her tap into another part of her being also.

“I have had a lot of Native American friends and I’ve always felt like I was Native American,” she explains.

As Jessie looks back on it now, her upbringing made for a wonderful education. “The more I learn, the more aware I am that I had a juicy upbringing.” Jessie’s formal education began at the Upland Country Day School in Kennett Square, where she attended school from 1954 to 1960. Then it was on to the Westtown School, a Quaker school that provided more nourishment for her peaceful roots.

It was sometime during grade school when she became fascinated by the teachings of Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Alfred Schweitzer, theological scholar, musician, and doctor.

With the award money from his Nobel Prize, he opened a leprosarium at Lambaréné, his adopted home.

“He spoke to my essence,” she says. “I learned from him that it’s right to live a life of service.” Where Dr. Schweitzer left off, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Picked up.

“Dr. Martin Luther King changed my world,” says Jessie.

“Being a Quaker, his message of peace just resonates. It’s about having respect and love for everyone, even if you disagree with a position. That was my living. I was living my beliefs.” She helped rally fellow students as they participated in the Poor People’s Campaign and the March on Washington. It was a turbulent time.

The Vietnam War frightened her. “Oh, I was totally against it. It was a waste of time, money, and most importantly, lives. I don’t believe in war. Any war is a waste.” Jessie continued to train and ride thoroughbred horses until 1978, but she felt a calling to do more to help improve the world around her.

In 1977, Jessie was a co-founder and the director of the Women’s Resource Center for battered women and children, which is now the Domestic Violence Center.

“It started as a hotline. We had some closet space in a YMCA,” she recalls, “but we quickly became experts on battered women.” She remembers going out to educate people about domestic violence. She would speak in general terms about domestic violence and describe certain warning signs and behaviors.

People would come up afterward and say that Jessie had just Described their own lives.

It was an eye-opening experience for her. Even in bucolic Chester County, there was a serious domestic abuse problem, and not always in families that you think.

“It really cuts across all socio-economic lines. We saw a lot of examples of upper class, white people who were being abused. Leaders in communities are sometimes the worst abusers.

Everybody knows someone who’s being abused. There’s so much domestic abuse in our culture.” Why?

“A dysfunction you’re raised in will always be within you,” she says. “Alcohol and drugs play an important role. It’s passing dysfunction from one generation to the next.” Sadly, the children are the ones who are affected the most.

“Children are like sponges. They absorb all the energy in the room. They know Courtesy photo Jessie Cocks protests nuclear proliferation and nuclear arms testing in the 1980s.

Pictured here is the VW bus with a replica of a cruise missile on top. Jessie co-founded the Chester County Campaign for a Nuclear Weapons Freeze, and was the chairperson for Pennsylvania’s campaign as well. Just one cruise missile could have wiped out Chester County.

What’s going on and they feel a responsibility for it.” When those children grow up, they seek partners who are either submissive or abusive and the cycle of dysfunction continues to another generation.

“It’s hard to break the patterns. It takes lots of therapy—good therapy.

It’s important to survive, but it’s also true that that there’s more to life than being a survivor.” Jessie left the Women’s Resource Center in 1980. The United States was a fragile Super Power entering the new decade, with painful memories of the Iran Hostage Crisis still fresh. The United States and the Soviet Union became locked in a nuclear chess match that threatened all of mankind.

Living in United States in the Reagan-era was living in a dangerous place in a dangerous time, especially for those who value peace. There was a challenge to be met.

“I became a workaholic, working for change,” she recalls.

“That seemed to be noble to me at the time.” While Jessie is a pacifist who abhors war, she was a true warrior when it came to fighting for peace. Going back to the teachings of Martin Luther King, she embraced nonviolent action to help the underprivileged and protect the world from nuclear disaster.

An unlikely prisoner, Jessie found herself behind bars when she participated in “Blockade the Bombers” with the Quakers for Peace Affinity Group.

She explains, “Nonviolence is open and honest. If I’m going to protest, I’m going to say that I’m going to do it. You know that you’re going to get arrested if you trespass, and you have to be ready for that.” She co-founded the Chester County Campaign for a Nuclear Weapons Freeze and was later the chairperson for the entire Pennsylvania effort. Conferences, fundraising, public speaking, and lobbying for the cause became a part of her life.

Soon, she was cruising around in VW bus that had a lifesize cruise missile replica atop it. The reason? The real cruise missile could have wiped out all of Chester County and then some and President Reagan seemed determined to collect more of them than the Soviet Union.

“One of the greatest challenges for me is to say that I love Ronald Reagan. I may detest his policies as President, but I love him.”

She co-founded the American Peace Test, an international organization that promoted nonviolent resistance to stop nuclear testing.

Once again, she found herself journeying out west, but this time it wasn’t to the comfortable environment of her cousin’s farm. She established an American Peace Test office near the Nevada Test Site, which was the stage for more than 900 nuclear blasts, provided most of the iconic images from the nuclear era. It was established in 1951, in the embryonic days of the Cold War.

Jailed several more times for peaceful protest, Cocks found a way to fight for justice while remaining at peace with those who opposed her.

“It’s about finding a place where you can connect with someone, a respectful, compassionate place so that you can resolve the issue. It’s so important to approach things with a positive attitude. You have to approach change in your life or in your community with an open heart and a positive attitude. That’s key.” In many ways, the Nevada Test Site served as an intersection of Jessie’s life. The nonviolent protests at the test site were straight out of the Martin Luther King playbook. Here, Jessie met and worked along with Civil Rights legend Cesar Chavez, who championed the cause of the farm workers that she had worked alongside as a child. And the peace movement allowed her to develop the skills necessary to run a grass-roots campaign, akin to a political campaign.

She organized and led thousands of people in nonviolent resistance over the years.

She explains the importance of trying to bring change to the world.

“I feel like, if I helped just one battered woman, then that was enough. I get so much out of doing that service. It makes the Universe happy, or God, or Buddha, or whatever you believe. Mother Earth certainly responds to that.” Between 1987 and 1989, Jessie worked as a Las Vegas Catholic Worker volunteer. Once again, she found herself behind bars when she was jailed because she and three others blockaded a city bulldozer that was going to destroy the makeshift “homes” of destitute citizens in a tent city.

She was a member of Carl Sagan’s “think tank” on building mass movement for social change.

Jessie attended and led numerous workshops on nonviolence.

She made an appearance on “The Phil Donahue Show” to discuss the topic in 1988. She served as an advisor for a scene in the movie “Nichtbreaker” about protests at the gate of the Nevada Test Site, meeting stars Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez.

Eventually, Jessie and that replica of the cruise missile ended up in Washington D.C. for further protests against nuclear testing. Proving her skills as a communicator, she served as a liaison between the protesters and the Washington D.C. police and the Secret Service.

By 1990, the world was moving faster than ever and the changes were coming quickly. The Reagan-era was over. In the aftermath of Glasnost, the Soviet Union was set to crumble. The computer age arrived.

After spending the better part of a decade fighting for her causes, Jessie found herself turning inward.

She became involved with healing, hypnotherapy, and SpiritBody and Reiki. She immersed herself in learning. She studied the science of intuition and participated in Sisterhood of the shields with Amy Lee, an Iroquois medicine woman, and tried Living Dance.

In 2000, George W. Bush became President. For people like Jessie, the world was turning more dangerous again.

“It’s a terrifying statement that an election could be stolen that way, that we let something so undemocratic happen.

He’s the most dangerous President we’ve had. He has undermined the country’s reputation as a caring, compassionate country, and he’s done more damage than we even know yet. If Al Gore had been President, global warming would have been addressed immediately. We wouldn’t be in the predicament that we’re in in Iraq. We’d have better healthcare for children.” She decided to enter politics at the local level, becoming a Democratic leader in Kennett Square. She led the “Coalition of Good Government” candidates as they campaigned for four seats on the Kennett Borough Council, and worked to help other County Democrats get elected.

When times get hard, she believes, that’s when people need to stand up and stand together. “It’s a call for people to make a change, for them to make a difference in their family, community, or the world. You don’t have to be a world leader to make a difference.” When she looks back at her career of activism, she takes some pride in knowing that her activism was really just her leading her life the way that she was supposed to lead it.

“If nothing else, if I didn’t change policy or stop the arms race, at least I made a change in the people who know me.

If you believe in something, you can go do it. You can make it happen.” It starts with a seed. A seed is planted. A tree grows.

Putting it on the Line, from the John E Mack Institute

Putting it on the Line

by Cathy Cevoli

Test site arrests reach new high

John Mack, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Harvard psychiatrist, was the first member of his family to hear of the Nevada Test Site demonstration. After consulting with his wife, Sally, the couple called their three sons – Ken, Dan and Tony, all in their 20s – and following discussions that lasted “every night for two weeks,” decided to head west from Massachusetts together. “We thought it was important to take a stand as a family,” explained Sally, a social worker. They also knew their joint appearance would make good media copy.

But it was the boys who first decided to get arrested. Introducing themselves to their affinity group on the eve of the June 2 civil disobedience (CD) action at the test site, both parents paused and said they were there “for support” only.

Mack admitted that one reason for his indecision was professional. Author of one of the first surveys of children’s fears of nuclear war, Mack is academic director of Cambridge Hospital’s Nuclear Psychology Program. “There is a danger of getting identified as too much of an advocate, one of those people who gets arrested,” Mack said. “It could make me seem subjective or isolate me from people I work with.”

Sally Mack faced a different struggle. “I realize that my fear of thinking about the nuclear threat is behind my fear of civil disobedience, “ she explained. For Sally, doing CD would mean admitting once and for all that nuclear war was really possible, a psychological seep that seemed more frightening than getting arrested.

FIRST-TIME OFFENDERS

Held from May 31 to June 2, the action was the first national event organized by the American Peace Test (APT) since its formation in January. Saturday’s event, a demonstration held at the test site, was co-sponsored by the national Freeze Campaign (APT’s founders were formerly Freeze Campaign organizers). Staffers of the fledgling group hope to spark a nationwide CD campaign, one that will attract new participants from “mainstream” peace groups. Economist Lester Thurow, who donated $2000 to APT last year to help it get started, has written a direct-mail appeal calling on others to help him raise $50,000 for the group.

Almost everyone at the action seemed to have both political and personal reasons for coming. Many activists mentioned the imperative of the Soviet testing moratorium, and the conviction that CD needed to start playing as large a role in the test ban fight as it did in the civil rights movement. “We need to be more militant,” said teacher and Freeze volunteer Russell Storll, who spent two-and-a-half days on a bus en route to Nevada. ‘‘I’m so damn tired of feeling I’m not doing enough. “ Like Storll, many in the largely middle class crowd, which ranged greatly in age and included several parents with grown children, had never been involved in CD before.

“I’m sick of yelling at the TV,” said television writer and producer Annie Druyan. “I’ve been studying this issue for five years, and I haven’t done enough to stop what I think is evil.” Druyan was arrested for the first rime, with her husband Carl Sagan, who did not get arrested, accompanying her as a support person. (The couple spent their wedding anniversary on the site.)

Another first-time offender was Harvard psychiatrist Lester Grinspoon, a leading writer on nuclear psychology. Since getting arrested to stop the arms race hasn’t acquired the legitimacy that it has for issues like apartheid, many newcomers were taking a giant step. “My colleagues will probably say I’m acting out again,” Grinspoon said, half-joking.

“People in the past have viewed CD as a radical step that only the fringe of any movement takes,” said APT national coordinator Jessie Cocks. “But more people are realizing that we can’t achieve our goals without it. Lots of people came here who’d been afraid of getting arrested, or who said ‘I never thought it would have to come to this.’”

These first-timers joined such CD veterans as Daniel Ellsberg, Harvard psychiatrist Margaret Brenman-Gibson – who had encouraged her colleagues Mack and Grinspoon to join the action – and 77-year-old Lawrence Scott, one of 11 people arrested at the first test site action in 1957.

Since the demonstration site is 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, not the least of APT’s accomplishments was attracting so many to a remote location in the middle of the desert. Over 700 people from 35 states (and six countries) attended Saturday’s demonstration, and 149 were arrested on Monday, setting a test site CD record.

Saturday’s crowd gathered on Camp Desert Rock, the place where soldiers involved in above-ground rests were once rained on with radiation, and heard speeches by Ellsberg, Sagan, and Freeze Executive Director Jane Gruenebaum, among others. Oregon Representative Jim Weaver seemed to impress the crowd with his almost religious condemnation of nuclear tests – as well as for facing the 100° weather in a suit.

After the rally, while a third of the group stayed to camp just outside the sire, the rest faced the culture shock of returning to hotels in the capital of psychic numbing. But Mae Gautier of New York City was delighted to find that the paper crane she had given her hotel clerk after her first arrest was still pinned co the hotel’s bulletin board a year later.

CROSSING THE LINE

For much of Sunday, during an all-day strategy session in preparation for civil disobedience, debate centered on what form the action should take. Most activists wanted to cross the DOE’s arbitrary white line and surrender peacefully to the authorities, but others favored options that would make the demonstration more difficult for the police and/or allow people to venture further onto the site. After several hours of overtime discussion, consensus was finally reached on the first, more cooperative action.

Despite – or because of – this ordeal, a growing sense of unity and purpose was palpable on Monday morning. After a long early-morning drive, the group of about 300 activists (both those intending to do CD and their “support people”) gathered along Highway 95 at 6:00a.m. to “vigil” arriving test site workers.

For many activists, the real meaning of the location of this action had been hard to grasp. While everyone knew what goes on at the site, it nonetheless looked eerily benign. “The beauty of the desert gives you a sense of serenity,” said Helga Moore, a New York activist, “but then there’s the horror and the hell underneath.” Less than two months earlier a faulty test in an underground tunnel had vented radiation, causing millions of dollars in damage and contaminating three workers. The recognition of hidden menace seemed to hit home as the activists – many clearly emotional – approached the white line.

Holding hands, small groups of protesters crossed the painted line and were led away, sometimes amid the cheers of friends, to waiting busses to be “processed.” (Nye County Court Judge William Sullivan, popular among activists for his temperate demeanor, has stiffened his sentences in the last two years, due to – APT suspects – federal pressure and his own frustration at dealing with escalating arrests.) First-time offenders faced six days in jail or a $150 fine.

RIPPLE EFFECTS

Since APT organizers view the event as only the beginning of a long-term campaign, they are reluctant to gauge its effectiveness. Locally, the events received good media coverage, due perhaps to growing antinuclear sentiment in Nevada, where stories of waste-dump selection have helped create what APT feels is a growing dislike of the DOE. But with the exception of USA Today, the Chicago Tribune and a small blurb hidden in the Boston Globe, the national media ignored the event. Still, it’s difficult to ignore the number of people who came to Nevada because of someone else’s example. “This has an effect on people’s lives,” said Ed McClain of Corvallis, Oregon, who was warmly welcomed back by workers he’d met doing community service for his last arrest.

Cocks believes that nonviolent CD needs to be more integrated, along with lobbying and other tactics, into movement strategy. Already, the ongoing actions at the test site have raised the visibility of the test ban issue as a critical time in congressional deliberations, according to one key Capitol Hill aide. And, Cocks added, “each of these people will go back to their communities and organize with that much more passion. I have incredible faith in the experience. It can’t not work.”

In the end, it “worked” for John and Sally Mack, who finally decided on Sunday night to get arrested on Monday. “I’m not sure I’m doing the right thing,” Mack admitted an hour before he crossed the line. “I may regret it. But there just don’t seem to be any considerations more important.” Besides, he added, “it just seems the height of parental irresponsibility to watch my sons get arrested and wave at them from the other side of the line.” The Macks were arrested – and later faced Judge Suillivan – en famille.

One week later, John Mack described the process as liberating. “I feel like I’ve crossed an important line within myself,” Mack reported. Since returning from Nevada he has written an article on CD and read a lot of Thoreau. “We have a barrier about breaking the law which seems formidable,” said Mack. “But when times become desperate, it’s essential that people say ‘no’. I wouldn’t just recommend this to my colleagues,” he added. “I’d tell them it’s absolutely critical to take every opportunity to do this.”

© 1986 Cathy Cevoli
Nuclear Times, July/Aug 1986 pp.36-37

Related:

Original Press Release

 Date of original publication (may be approx.) July 1, 1986 • Subject Area: Political Worldviews