May 25, 1986On this day, at least 5 million Americans, from New York’s Battery Park to the Queen Mary’s dock in Long Beach, Calif., held hands in a show of solidarity against hunger and homelessness. The human chain, which stretched 4,125 miles through 16 states — “with some major gaps allowed for safety and others due to a lack of hands” — took months of planning, Richard Harrington wrote in the next day’s Washington Post, not all of it well-organized. Nonetheless, the turnout in places was “thick and good-natured,” and from the perspective of 2018, an incredible if somewhat hokey display of unity in the face of a crisis.
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