Want to jump-start your next peace action? Invite your local Raging Grannies and draw a crowd! Here the NYC chapter joins the Granny Peace Brigade and Code Pink for a “STOP THE WAR, IMPEACH BUSH” Phone-A-Thon.
WE ARE A GAGGLE OF GRANNIESWords: Esther Farnsworth & the Vermont Raging Grannies, with Corinne Willinger of the NYC Metro Raging Grannies and the Granny Peace Brigade
Tune: “Side by Side”Oh, we are a gaggle of grannies
Urging you off of your fannies;
We’re telling you now
We’re ANGRY and how!
NO MORE WAR!
With all that government spending
To fight a war that’s unending
We’re going for broke,
This isn’t a joke
NO MORE WAR!
(refrain)
The Bush gang keeps on lying,
They want to ’stay the course,’
But boys and girls are dying,
And they show no remorse.
Sooo, we may be a gaggle of grannies,
But we’ve gotten off of our fannies,
We’ll only rejoice for
We sing in one voice for, NO MORE WAR!
We really mean it - NO MORE WAR!
And we mean busines
NO MORE WAR!
“Everyone loves a parade”…onlookers and people near-by were drawn like magnets by the music. Merchants, shoppers, and many folks along the way gave the peace sign, thumbs-up, and thanked us. At times we stopped and sang along with the Raging Grannies - our message on this day in the words of Julia Ward Howe: “Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of Justice!”
Photo - Bud
Under sunny skies, about two hundred people met at the Merchants Gate at Columbus Circle for this year’s Mother’s Day Peace stroll. Led by Charlie Keil’s mobile horn section with the Raging Grannies bringing up the rear, we stepped off for a festive walk up the West Side of Manhattan, through the Craft Fair outside the Natural History Museum. Along the route, we handed out 1,000 pink flyers about Mother’s Day for Peace with information on the Collateral Repair Project. We stopped several times to read Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day Peace Proclamation, and paused for two minutes of silence for the casualties of the Iraq War and Occupation, before heading across Central Park. We ended with a final reading of the proclamation on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum. We thank all the mothers, grandmothers, daughters, granddaughters, musicians, percussionists, partners, friends and spouses who joined us to make Mother’s Day a meaningful day for peace.
Who is this woman and why was this mug shot taken?
Joan spent her first two years of college at the Women’s College of the University of North Carolina in Greensboro. It was 1957 and it happened to be the first year that the state of North Carolina integrated its public universities, in response to federal law, of course. A group of seven Black women was selected by the NAACP to fill the slots at WCUNC (the Women’s College.) One of these women became a close friend and Joan became aware of the courage that these women needed to study at the University and live on campus. In all fairness, the young white women at WCUNC were not overtly hostile to these young women and often seemed to just not know how to relate. After transferring to the to the University of California in Berkeley, Joan decided to return to the South as a Freedom Rider, riding an integrated train and demanding integrated facilities. Was she scared? “I think I was too determined (read dumb??) and too young to be really scared. And by the time we got to Mississippi, I was just stunned (see mugshot).”
Although the freedom riders spent weeks in jail before bailing out, it was necessary for them to return to Jackson, Mississippi for a trial date later that year. The Greyhound Bus Company had difficulty finding a driver for the bus to transport the riders out of Mississippi. No one wanted to drive them out of Jackson - the Greyhound drivers were afraid of mob violence and with good reason. Many buses had been attacked and the riders beaten. There were snipers on the roads. One mob had set fire to a bus in Alabama and tried to burn to death the Freedom Riders inside.
Finally, Joan’s group found a driver and they set off in the middle of the night. As stones started to hit the bus Joan and her compatriots asked the driver not to stop - to just keep going. He thought that a good plan.
May 5, 2008 - What better way to cap off a sparkling Cinco de Mayo than to do it Granny-style, by celebrating Joan’s new book, GRANDMOTHERS AGAINST THE WAR: Getting Off Our Fannies & Standing Up For Peace, Citadel Press.
photo - Masahiro Hosoda
Shape up time was set for 7PM at the Barnes & Noble at 82nd and Broadway and by 6:45 there was a solid line of folks filing into the store. Raging Grannies, Granny Peace Brigadiers, Grandmothers Against the War, Veterans for Peace, life-long peaceniks and aspiring activist packed the second floor reading area to hear Joan read from her book and to celebrate her accomplishments. In short order, all the chairs were filled and it was a SRO event.
photo - Masahiro Hosoda
Long-time Granny Peace Brigade ally and best-selling author, Malachy McCourt opened the proceeding with a poem (Yeats, of course), spoke movingly about the peace movement and the need for citizen engagement, then led us all in a rousing version of “Will You Go Laddy Go”.
Norman Siegel, the legendary civil rights attorney and lead defense attorney for the 18 Granny Brigadiers arrested on Oct. 17, 2005, read selected sections from the trial transcript — some of it funny, much of it moving, and it helped us all remember the day the Granny Peace Brigade was born. New York City Councilwoman Gale Brewer - a fierce opponent of the Iraq war and someone who is never afraid to use her bully pulpit to address injustice - was on hand, making a lot of us wonder if this woman ever sleeps!
Rumor had it that Joan was a nervous wreck before the event, but when the lights came up, our Joan stepped up and gave us all a splendid evening — she read from the book, reminisced about the last three years, urged us all, in the words of Granny Marie Runyon, ‘To keep on keeping on!”. To quote New York’s own Jimmy Breslin, “Read this book!” As the evening drew to a close, Joan introduced her family, including her two children and three of her wonderful grandkids and then sang - acapella - her signature anthem, “GRANNIES, LET’S UNITE!”. By the second verse, everyone in the room was singing along.
photo - Masahiro Hosoda
A long line formed for Joan to autograph books while a small group of grannies (who shall remain nameless) disbursed around the store to hand out some Granny Peace Brigade literature packets until one of the young clerks informed them this was not allowed. Even though these aging hooligans were standing just a few feet from their lawyer, the Grannies very graciously left the store — and continued distributing our literature on the street until they ran out.
Thanks Joan. For getting us going and reminding us that we’ve only just begun — and like that woman in the audience asked, “When are you going to be on Oprah?”
On Saturday, March 26, we share a table with Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) at the bustling Brooklyn Peace Fair. Fran, Phyllis, Bob, Joan P, Bev and Caroline are up in the balcony at the GPB table along with the WILPFers, Jen and Bibienne. Barbara H is below with CodePink.
Peace groups and peaceful people are everywhere in the Schwartz Gym of Long Island U. It’s a really unique gym, with madly rococco walls and balcony betraying its past as a huge movie theater. People move among the many tables, networking and learning.
At a certain point the program begins, and the Raging Grannies including Corinne, Mercy, Lillian P and Betty start a set which is full of smarts and passion. Corinne’s song is dedicated to and about Sean Bell, and very poignant.
We are encouraged to find so many peace and social justice organizations together here in Brooklyn and we quickly sign ourselves up to present a workshop next year.
A member of the Black Veterans for Social Justice tells us that he knows about the GPB and is so glad to see us here. We’re just as glad to see him as we engage in conversation about AFRICOM. All in all, the Brooklyn Peace Fair is a very good experience. We’re exposed to many and our work is made more visible to others. Hopefully, the work for peace has been expanded. We’ll be here next year. Will you join us?
- Phyllis Cunningham & Caroline Chinlund, photos by Caroline Chinlund
Most people think that Mother’s Day was a holiday invented by Hallmark to sell more cards. But, in fact, Mother’s Day for Peace was instituted in 1870 by Julia Ward Howe as a response to the carnage of the Civil War. She called on women to come together to commemorate their dead and find “the means whereby the great human family can live in peace…” This Mother’s Day, take a lively stroll with CODEPINK WOMEN FOR PEACE and the GRANNY PEACE BRIGADE, lead by a marching band. Bring your mothers, lovers, partners, friends, children, and grandparents. Share the original meaning of Mother’s Day by handing out leaflets bearing Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day Proclamation to the mothers and others that we pass along the way. We will make several stops to read the proclamation. We will definitely join the Raging Grannies and Their Daughters as they break into song along the route.
Meet: at Columbus Circle (59th St. & Broadway) by the statue
When: Sunday, May 11, at 11 a.m. (we will step off 11:15) Stroll for as long as you wish.
Route: up Broadway to 66th Street, right to Columbus Avenue, up Columbus, through the flea/farmer’s market at 77th Street, to the Columbus Avenue Mother’s Day Art Fair around the American Museum of Natural History. We will read the proclamation on the steps of the museum, and then go through the park. We’ll finish at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Bring: banners, signs of peace, noisemakers (not whistles) if you wish.
Attire: pink and/or festive
We will supply leaflets and a small strolling band.
Mothers Day 2007 - Photo: Sarie Teichman
We hope you will join our MOTHER’S DAY PEACE parade. If it rains, the parade is cancelled, but we WILL proceed under cloudy skies.
Just back from the Cheney demo. It was OK - The Fossella group stayed behind the barriers and across the street from 740 Park Ave.
CodePink and Granny Peace Brigade would have none of that - went to the Park Ave. meridian to catch traffic going both ways. After a discussion of our rights, the police froze the zone - for all pedestrians - and we went to a corner of 71st St. Noticing pedestrians walking across, we went into plan B and decided to slowly walk across Park Ave, briefly remaining on the center median. Back and forth. This annoyed the police. When requested to go to the permitted area, we decided to go to 72nd St.
Stood on the meridian until the secret service informed us that we were loitering and had to keep moving. We realized that slowly walking back and forth across Park Ave was pretty effective. Caught many more pedestrians and lots of cross traffic. We were about 6 women and lots of pink.
On March 30th, 2008 the Granny Peace Brigade held the second in its series of Teach-Ins offering a careful look at the ever expanding empire of foreign military bases that the Pentagon maintains in 130 countries. Entitled Say “No” to AFRICOM the event was held in observance of the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. AFRICOM, the Pentagon’s plan for a regional U.S. military command of Africa, represents a violation of Dr. King’s dream of peace, economic justice and racial harmony.
Four distinguished presenters participated in the forum held at the All Souls Unitarian Church and it was moderated by Granny Peace Brigade member Vinie Burrows, award-winning actor, writer and story-telling “griot.”
Photo - Eliza Griffiths
In African tradition she offered a libation to honor Dr. King and then introduced the first speaker, Horace G. Campbell, professor of African American Studies, International Affairs and Political Science at Syracuse University.
Photo - Eliza Griffiths
Integrating a power-point presentation, Dr. Campbell provided the context in which to develop his arguments against AFRICOM, untangling knots and contradictions in US Africa policy, beginning with 1994 when President Clinton called Rwandan genocide “normal tribal violence” (he later apologized). Discussing genocide, Campbell cited the U.S.’s continuing diplomatic relations with Sudan despite Darfur. He sees the real “terrorism” in Africa as economic and colonial domination perpetrated by European nations for centuries and, more recently, by China and the U.S. That there is widespread resistance on the part of African nations to AFRICOM is “good news” despite the U.S. administration spin that the motivation for this new command is “aid.”
The second speaker was Emira Woods, co-director of Foreign Policy at the Institute for Policy Studies, in Washington, D.C.
Photo - Eliza Griffiths
Ms. Woods provided the background to AFRICOM, a creation of Donald Rumsfeld and established the day before his “resignation” in December 2006. AFRICOM stipulates that an African country seeking to engage in any way with the U.S. must do so exclusively through AFRICOM. The only country that would not be under the AFRICOM command would be Egypt, recipient of one billion dollars of U.S. foreign aid, second only to Israel.
A major motivation behind AFRICOM arises from US addiction to oil - 24% of U.S. oil imports currently come from Africa, compared with 12% in 2003. Besides oil, the African continent is a source for countless strategic resources including uranium and coltan (Colombo-tantalite ore used in cell phones). Other motives are a foreign policy determined to challenge China and to fight the “war on terrorism.” Identifying problems with the press, Ms. Woods reported that President Bush’s recent seven day trip to Africa included four days in Tanzania where there were large daily protests against AFRICOM that were reported as Muslims rallying against Bush and not as Tanzanians rallying against AFRICOM. Ms. Woods ended her presentation with a call to remembrance of Dr. King asking us to declare eternal hostility to poverty, racism and militarism.
Frida Berrigan, senior program associate of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation, NYC, described the foreign “aid” currently given to African countries and exposed the insidious nature of the administration’s rhetoric.
Photo - Eliza Griffiths
She underscored the Pentagon’s use of language and coded words that mask the true intent of AFRICOM. President Bush in his March trip to Africa spoke of AFRICOM as a “mission of mercy.” Ms. Berrigan named the various sites in Africa with a military presence – army, navy and air – in “contingency installations”, and provided examples of the military’s euphemisms such as “kinetic engagement” referring to killing. She cautioned the audience to beware of U.S. Administration’s and media’s language when referring to militarization.
Sonia Sanchez, poet, educator, author of sixteen books and member of the Philadelphia Granny Peace Brigade brought her poet’s voice of warning, pain and longing for peace.
Photo - Eliza Griffiths
Her words united the content presented by the three previous speakers. She spoke of the need to engage with young people in an intergenerational collaboration and to do “pushups for peace” as a way of life. Sanchez called out names of people, alive and deceased interspersed with hxosa clicks, who committed their lives to peace and justice. She reminded us that Dr. King said that a riot is “the language of the unheard”, and our task is “to learn how to make the unheard heard, without blowing themselves and the world up.”
A brief question-answer period ensued resulting in some specific actions for participants at the Teach-In re the U.S. Administration. Dr. Campbell said that in relation to the Congo, there should be an apology for the murder of Patrice Lumumba. Lobbying Congressional representatives, the Black Congressional Caucus, and Donald Payne (Dem. NJ) chair of the House subcommittee on Africa were among the suggestions for action. The website: www.resistafricom.org/ was cited for information on Congressional resolutions. - Nydia Leaf, Phyllis Cunningham, Caroline Chinlund
FROM THE GRANNY PEACE BRIGADE, CODEPINK, AND RAGING GRANNIES
Coats are off, the day is warm, people are sailing by in Union Square. Ten of us today, from Granny Peace Brigade, Code Pink, Raging Grannies and their Daughters and a new recruit, Carla from Chelsea United for Peace and Justice.
We’re all seizing the occasion of “Iraq Call-In Day” to get people to step up and make a call to Congress, right here and now. Agenda: Saying NO to Bush’s request for $102 billion more for Iraq. Co-sponsoring Lynn Woolsey’s HR 5507 and safely bring the troops home.
In their fine hats, Mercy, Lillian and Corinne are singing Raging Grannies songs. In between numbers, they call their representatives. We get a nice photo of them with Emma, whose outfit is also irresistible.
Film crews catch us, young men are asking for Granny Peace Brigade buttons. The voters are with us, it’s just the government that needs to know. Phyllis gets a call from Hillary Clinton thanking her for all the calls and letters and saying she’s finally realizing the war was a mistake…but it’s Barbara, joking. Oh, well, soon…
Charlotte greets people exiting the subway: “Tell your Congressman where you want your tax dollars to go!” She meets a guy who takes the flier and then tells her, “I’m a single parent..it just isn’t working right now.” He’s come from a labor meeting.
One of Caroline’s callers is Richard. He looks like he’s dressed for a job interview. He calls Rangel, identifies himself as a resident of a shelter in the district. His message about how he wants his tax dollars spent is loud and clear.
Phyllis talks with a woman who is a documented resident living in Queens. She says, “I pay taxes. Can’t I call?” Phyllis asks another woman, “Are you from New York?” She turns out to be from Sweden, visiting. Reaching for the leaflet, she replies : “NO, but I can read!”
A couple is picking up the flier at the table near Eva-Lee. The woman looks down at the flier. Eva-Lee thinks she’s reading, so she asks the husband, “Are you ready to call?” He says, “She’s making the call right now” and he is right. She is punching it in at lightning speed. He knows his wife.
Lots of thumbs up, many people taking Charlotte, Owen, Anne, and Phyllis’ literature with phone number of the Capitol switchboard. We hand out all the fliers we bring today! So we are assuming that those intentions are percolating all over town. Springtime! Seeds will sprout. Actual on the spot calls, 25 or so today.
What is the opposite of violence?
Weeks before taking action the Granny Peace Brigade met to discuss how to mark the first day of the 6th year of the occupation of Iraq. Someone mentioned the possibility of knitting stump socks for the returning amputee vets. We knew a women who did exactly that at the weekly Grandmothers Against the War vigil in Rockefeller Center. Do I remember correctly that as soon as the suggestion was spoken aloud it swept around our meeting room like a wave? What made this action capture our imaginations and then touch the hearts of so many strangers young and old?
Did the stereotype of sweet little old ladies amuse or was there more; perhaps the “feminist ethics of care” as James David wrote on the Groundswell Blog.
Grannies vs. generals; slow, manual creation vs. fast, technological destruction — this is not just non-violence, but perhaps an opposite of violence.
For some of us knitting stump socks created a visceral feeling of connection with the injured. What got me started was the horror of the injuries that might require stump socks and rage at my government for dragging so many people into misery and death. The idea of being constructive wasn’t foremost in my consciousness at the time but it was lurking down in the shadows and I thank James David for shining a light.
On a practical note, knitting being very, very, very repetitive illustrated our doggedness, our determination to continue to work for peace. We will not go away.
