Center for Citizen Initiatives

The Center for Citizen Initiatives is the brainchild of an American citizen, Sharon Tennison, who in the early 1980s determined in a period of desperation to try to reduce tensions between the two superpowers. Tennison and a growing group of business and professional Americans made the decision to try their hands at diplomacy and began putting together their first trip to the "land of the enemy."

The Cold War was at a peak - the KAL 007 airliner had just been downed by Soviet Interceptor Jets killing all passengers aboard, and the US and the USSR had 50,000 nuclear weapons on launch pads aimed at each other. Scientists predicted if 10% of the weapons were detonated, nuclear fallout would shortly leave planet Earth lifeless.

At that time few Americans had ever seen a Soviet citizen, nor had Soviets met any real Americans - and there was no precedent or pattern how it might happen. Upon arriving in Moscow, Leningrad and Tbilisi, CCI travelers spread to Soviet sidewalks, market places, schools and to rare apartments at the invitation of the Soviets who risked chancing encounters with the KGB. CUUI's first trip changed the lives of the travelers - each came back to America committed to be public educators. Following the first trip, CUUI started a travel program, which took over a thousand Americans to the USSR as citizen diplomats. Each traveler agreed to do six months of public education upon returning to their home cities. This work began to spread the citizen diplomacy concept and the education of ordinary American citizens regarding the risks at stake. See citizen diplomacy

Unbeknownst to CCI's small collection of concerned citizens, a new movement was about to be born. Groups of Americans in Washington state, upstate New York, Tucson, Arizona, Chicago, Florida and other places around the United States, were meeting in homes, universities and churches to determine how they could take the nuclear nightmare into their own hands.

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