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University of Southern California
Tuesday, December 8, 1981
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By Marc Igler
Staff Writer
Claiming that political leaders will have to respond to the pressure of public opinion, California Gov. Edmund G. Brown addressed a noontime rally Monday, urging students to unite behind the movement to eliminate nuclear weapons from the United States’ and the Soviet Union’s military arsenals.
“This is the number-one issue of our time, and it is a strategic moment in the history of the world,” Brown told a cheering crowd of over 2.00G on the Student Activities Center patio.
As the keynote speaker for the “Reverse the Arms Race” rally, Brown said that the president now has the chance to become famous for being the individual most responsible for “redirecting the misguided emphasis on nuclear arms.”
“Reagan can do it, and the Senate will ratify it. This is the moment in
world history in which we can eliminate the possibility of nuclear holocaust. But if we take the wrong track, It will plunge this country into a situation of much deeper fear and anxiety,” Brown said.
Brown’s visit to the university, his second since becoming governor in 1976, coincided with the efforts of the Californians for a Bilateral Nuclear Weapons Freeze Initiative. The statewide campaign hopes to collect 350,000 signatures to qualify the initiative for the November 1982 ballot.
Clearly favoring the initiative, Brown said, “We have to wake up the people of California to the dilemma of engaging in nuclear weapons build-up. Every one of us can now lend to the seriousness of the negotiations in Geneva.”
Spokesmen for the USC Alliance for Survival and the university’s Four Minutes to Midnight Committee said the two organizations managed to collect
over 400 signatures at the rally.
The initiative, should it eventually pass in the California Legislature, would require the governor of California to write a communication to the president, urging that the U.S. and Soviet governments halt the testing, production and further deployment of all nuclear weapons, missiles and delivery systems.
"Californians now have the opportunity to relay that note of optimism to the leaders in Washington,” Brown told the largely supportive crowd. “The time has come to raise the level of consciousness away from the supposed nuclear reality.”
Brown, traveling with a noticeably tight veil of security guards, said that the expense of maintaining nuclear parity with the Soviet Union has slowly eroded the Unites States’ economic and industrial strength.
“Our dependency on foreign manu-
facturing has been a result of these massive allocations for nuclear weaponry. But moreover, it’s terrible to think that the world’s long march for civilization and progress could conceivably be snuffed out within hours,” said Brown, who is an undeclared candidate for U.S. Senator of California.
Brown left moments later for a 1:30 p.m. speaking engagement in Santa Monica. He departed clenching his fist and saying, “Let’s make this initiative happen.”
Harold Willens, a senior adviser for the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Defense Information and campaign coordinator for the initiative organization, spoke first at the rally after two university performers played a rendition of Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind.”
“The growing danger of nuclear war is the biggest problem facing the world.
(Continued on page 15)
Student knifed while fighting off assailants
By Wendell Mobley
Staff Writer
A university student who helped found a fund in memory of a murdered foreign student was stabbed Friday night during an attempted robbery. Joel-Tomas Citron, 19, suffered knife wounds in both shoulders after attempting to fight off two assailants. Citron is a Swedish student.
"I think the fact that I fought back saved my life,” Citron said.
The victim said two men approached him Friday night when he had left his apartment on West 30th Street to go to his car. They demanded his money, but he told them he had none. The two assailants began pushing him, the victim said. “I remained very calm,” he added.
"We know all you guys have money,” Citron quoted one of the assailants. He said one of the assailants brandished a knife and sliced his jacket. “I got real uneasy then,” he recalled.
Then one of the assailants told him to “cool it” and stabbed him twice in the right shoulder. "Then I swung around and kicked the other guy in the groin ... I think that saved my life ... I couldn’t tell if he had a gun,” Citron said. The knife-wielding assailant stabbed Citron in the left shoulder while the student kicked his partner. The Swedish student said he immediately ran to his apartment where he called a friend — Georg Raeder.
Raeder said he found the situation ironic — that one of the
(Continued on page 5)
VICTIM OF IRONY — Joel-Tomas Citron, left, a founder of the Pettersen fund to stop violent crimes, was stabbed Friday during an attempted robbery. Petter Bech Pettersen, a Norwegian student died after being shot in a robbery attempt this semester.
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Staff photo by Rob Potter