The biggest demonstration on earth (until the global anti-Iraq war march of Feb 15 2003) took place in New York on June 12, 1982, when one million people gathered in support of the second UN Special Session on Disarmament and to protest nuclear weapons.

Labor unions joined peace groups, other organizations and concerned individuals from across the country in the largest demonstration ever held in the nation’s largest city, in protest against the Reagan administration’s nuclear weapons buildup.

Two days later, on June 14, there were 1,665 arrests at War Resisters League-organized civil disobedience actions at the U.N. missions of the five then-declared nuclear weapons powers: the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, France and China.