[MCN] JRPC Celebrates Reuniting the Original Missoula Peace Sign

Thu Apr 22 16:45:39 EDT 2021

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Jeannette Rankin Peace Center Celebrates Reuniting the Original Missoula
Peace Sign

CONTACTS: Betsy Mulligan-Dague, peace at jrpc.org or 406-274-6171

Jim Parker (after May 2), westridge at montana.com or 406-396-0985

Bruce Miklus, bruce at rockinrudys.com or 542-0077

It’s been 20 years since the original Missoula Peace Sign overlooked the
Missoula valley...

On May 8, 2001, the original Missoula Peace Sign was dismantled and brought
down from the North Hills. This year, the Jeannette Rankin Peace Center
will be reassembling the 9 pieces of what was a telecommunications
reflector and giving life once again to the symbol of peace in Missoula.  A
year of celebrations will kick off this long-anticipated event on the 20th
anniversary of the removal of the peace sign.

CURRENT EVENTS SCHEDULED:

*Saturday, May 8, 2021, 12 noon: Hike to the Site of the Old Peace Sign*

Where: Waterworks Trailhead on Greenough Drive, Missoula, MT

*Covid-19 Precautions: Please wear a mask and practice social distancing.
Please stay home if you are sick. *

Join a hike in the North Hills to the site of the original Missoula Peace
Sign. This hike begins at the Waterworks Trailhead parking lot off
Greenough Drive. We will meet and ascend an easy trail to the pylons that
mark the site of the old telecommunications reflector tower that became the
Missoula Peace Sign. Learn the story of the Missoula Peace Sign, what
happened after it was taken down and what is next for this Missoula icon.
The hike is 2 miles out and back. Bring your mask and water and enjoy the
20th Anniversary of The Keepers of the Peace as we hike and celebrate the
eminent reassembly and restoration of the Missoula Peace Sign.

*Sunday, May 9th, 2021, 12 noon: A celebration of the planned restoration
of the Peace Sign *

Where: Jeannette Rankin Peace Center, 519 S Higgins Ave, Missoula, MT

*Covid-19 Precautions: Please wear a mask and practice social distancing.
Please stay home if you are sick. *

Also a celebration of Julia Ward Howe, who in 1870 worked to create a
Mother’s Peace Day, which officially became Mother’s Day in 1914. A reading
of Howe’s original Mother’s Peace Day Proclamation, combined with an open
house at the JRPC and a celebration of all with peaceful hearts will take
place at noon at the new home of the Missoula Peace Sign.

There are other celebrations planned throughout the year, as the sign is
built, and as Covid-19 restrictions begin to lift in the warmer weather.
Jeannette Rankin Peace Center would like to thank The Historical Museum at
Fort Missoula for a generous grant for the restoration.  Many other
individual donors are making this dream a reality. Donations are still
welcome on the JRPC website, and the Center is proud to be part of the
Missoula Community Foundation’s Missoula Gives Fundraiser May 6-7, 2021.

*Background:*

The Missoula Peace Sign is on the path to reunification. It will become
permanently installed at the Jeannette Rankin Peace Center, at last giving
substance to the legend and the long-held community vision that all nine
pieces will be reassembled. Once unified, the Missoula Peace Sign will
become a monument to resilience and a gathering place for people seeking a
reflective moment.

The Missoula Peace Sign has never been one thing; at its creation it was
two things in opposition. Structurally it was a telephone tower designed to
reflect microwave signals from the Bitterroot Valley to a receiver in
downtown Missoula. However, its looming white surface became the canvas for
the loose and persistent ambitions of an anonymous group of activists who
sometimes called themselves the Northside Liberation Front. What ensued was
a decade-long contest of transformation.

The peace sign activists, armed with buckets of paint, rollers and climbing
equipment, would hike the North Hills under the cover of darkness, scale
the fence and the tower and paint the iconic symbol of peace on the huge
white screen.

This act of guerrilla art would soon be followed by the dispatch of
maintenance trucks up the mountain to repaint the screen white. As night
follows day, the NSLF would again scale the tower and paint a huge rough
circle with the center bisected by a “Sparrow Track”. Undetected in the
act, this appeared to be a giant bit of conjuring in the light of the next
morning.

Though it isn't clear what ideology played a part in the minds of the
guerrilla artists; the Peace Sign is a modern symbol for nuclear
disarmament, to advocate for the end of war, and to raise consciousness for
global ecology as part of the Environmental Movements Flag.

In the Missoula community, the symbol was adopted with pride by some,
glared at with ire by others.  The Peace sign was well situated,
substantial and visible from everywhere in the East end of the valley.
Countless stories relate the experience of noticing the repainted white
screen only to happily note the reappearance of the Peace Sign on the
screen at a later time. At some point in the 1990s the telephone company
simply stopped sending trucks up the mountain to paint the screen white.
The Peace Sign received its final decoration when a 2000 brush fire
required a slurry bomber to drop a coat of pink fire retardant.

The final chapters of The Missoula Peace Sign would have been written in
the Spring of 2001 when the telephone company moved to take the tower apart
and junk it. In response, a community group sprung up, negotiated with the
company, and took possession of the 9 panels that make-up the 27x27 foot
screen. Dubbing themselves The Keepers of the Peace, they trucked the
individual pieces to various private locations in Missoula, and swore to
retain the panels in the community until the time that they could be
reassembled into one unit.

That time has now come. From a variety of sheds and backyard shrines and
one prominent location at Rockin Rudy’s World Headquarters, The Missoula
Peace Sign will take form as the pieces are reassembled at Jeannette Rankin
Peace Center. As a badge of peace to visitors, a symbol of pride in our
community, and as a testament to the patient and strong heart of Missoula,
the Missoula Peace Sign will stand tall and united after 20 years.

Betsy Mulligan-Dague, Executive Director

Jeannette Rankin Peace Center
...working to build a world that is nonviolent, socially just and
environmentally sustainable...
519 S. Higgins
Missoula, MT 59801
Phone: 406-543-3955
peace at jrpc.org
www.jrpc.org

We at Jeannette Rankin Peace Center acknowledge that we are here in
Missoula on lands stolen from Indigenous people by white European
invaders.  We honor the people of the Salish, Kootenai, Pend d’Oreille,
Blackfeet and Shoshone tribes, appreciate them for their legacy as
protectors of the land and environment and commit to carry their work
forward as stewards of environmental and racial justice.
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