[Vision2020] Hope Lies in Grannies' Protest

[Tom Hansen]

>From today's (May 5, 2006) Spokesman Review -

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Hope lies in grannies' protest 
Ellen Goodman 
May 5, 2006

I went to the grannies for a booster shot of optimism. It's been that kind
of a week. We just passed the third anniversary of the flight-jacket photo
op and its mission unaccomplished. The plunge in the president's approval
ratings, down to 33 percent, hasn't translated into a howl of protest but a
low-level depression. And the Official Bush Countdown Clock is barely a tick
below a thousand days.

But in Manhattan, 18 women of granny age, full of wit and wisdom, have just
won a court case and sent their protest story around the world. I'll take my
optimism where I can.
 
Last fall, these women descended by foot, cane and walker onto an armed
forces recruitment center in Times Square. Inspired by groups such as the
Tucson Raging Grannies, they demanded - "we insist/ we enlist" - that the
Army take them rather than their grandchildren.

When the soldiers locked them out, 91-year-old Lillian Runyon banged on the
door, singing: "If I had a hammer ." The women of the Granny Peace Brigade
then staged a sit-down until the police, rather more gently than is their
wont, took them to jail in handcuffs.

Their cry against the war's dishonorable conduct came up against the
government's claim of their disorderly conduct. But on April 27, a mere
whippersnapper of a judge - 46 years old - declared them not guilty.
Whereupon Joan Wile, lyricist and grandmother of five, promptly then told
the courthouse crowd, "Listen to your granny, she knows best."

Now four of those grannies were sitting around the conference table in their
lawyer's office still wearing buttons and the glow of notoriety. Wile was
even brushing up the lyrics of her call-to-elder-arms: "Grandmas get offa
your tush/ We've got to go after Bush."

Something about the granniness of the event - though some were younger than
the average senator - made the coverage read more like a lifestyle story
than a gathering political storm. But then again, these protesters have a
lightness of spirit that brings a message home: "Just forget your retirement
pursuits/ And get out your old marching boots."

Joan, 74, and Molly Klopot, 87, and Carol Husten, 74, and Vinie Burrows
Harrison, "don't ask," are not amateurs in the action department. Molly's
first protest as a child was for Sacco and Vanzetti. Vinie remembers the
Depression era civil rights protest in Harlem: "Don't shop where you can't
work."

They didn't know one another before they got together over a shared anti-war
sentiment. Now they finish one another's sentences. 

Why are they protesting while their children and grandchildren aren't?
"They're busy, we're retired," says Joan. Molly adds, "We helped the world
get in the shape it's in. We have some responsibility here." And all shake
heads in agreement with Vinie and Carol on the notion that they have reached
a wonderful stage of life called: nothing left to lose.

You can argue that these women have an unsophisticated political solution to
the war: get out. But first read that same unsophisticated view in the
journal Foreign Policy by retired Lt. Gen. William Odom under the title:
"Cut and Run? You Bet."

You can argue too that protest is futile against an administration that has
left the reality-based community. But first consider what the granny
movement, with its loose connections across 38 groups, offers those of us
who turn from disapproval and confusion to passivity.

With her button reading "love the troops/hate the war," Carol says simply,
"If you're not hopeful, you're helpless." As Norman Siegel, their longtime
civil rights lawyer, says with respect, they represent a generation that
still believes they can make change.

We are now in the run-up to Mother's Day, a holiday that evolved from Julia
Ward Howe's anti-war crusade to Hallmark Cards' bed-in-breakfast day. The
grannies are cooking up something that won't fit on a bed tray.

Before I leave, Joan rifles through the folder on her lap, stops for a
moment to hand me another set of lyrics, "Grandmas let's unite/ While we are
still upright." But then she pauses to quote something from a man who never
got beyond 38, Martin Luther King Jr.: "Our lives begin to end the day we
become silent about things that matter."

She looks around the table at grannies against the war who are shaking their
heads and adds: "I think that's our theme." A booster shot of optimism?
Mission accomplished.

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.