Photo by Brett C Vermilyea
The New York Granny Peace Brigade outside Rockefeller Center
Go, Granny, Go!
Little old ladies from New York City fight to end the war in Iraq.
By Trudy Whitman
Seventy-four-year-old Joan Wile traces her desire to make a difference back to her student days at the University of Chicago. It was then, she recalls, just as she was “on the brink of voting age,” that she became a volunteer in the 1952 presidential campaign of Adlai Stevenson, against Dwight D. Eisenhower. “I don’t remember exactly what I did for Stevenson,” says Ms. Wile. “I probably stood around a lot greeting people, but I felt very passionate about what I was doing.”
Wile, a composer and lyricist who makes her living as a jingle writer and singer, has devoted herself throughout the years to various campaigns. Some of them have been large and basic, such as nuclear disarmament, others were more unconventional: “I started a group to defend Eleanor Roosevelt when Barbara Bush made some very disparaging remarks about Eleanor two days before Bush’s husband was inaugurated.”
But nothing has ever occupied Ms. Wile more than her protest against America’s engagement in Iraq: “I have totally, totally involved myself in this full-time for the past two and a half years.”
Every Wednesday since January 14, 2004, Joan Wile has stood her ground on Fifth Avenue in front of Rockefeller Center. There she carries anti-war placards and hands out literature to passersby. The vigil began with Wile and one friend. Now, on an average Wednesday, there are about 40 demonstrators there. These are members of what has come to be called the Granny Peace Brigade, side by side with other peace activists from groups like Veterans for Peace.
The public reaction to the weekly demonstration is mostly favorable, Wile feels. Occasionally there is heckling, but most of the commentary “is very positive and encouraging.” There have been thumbs up from passing celebrities like actress Judi Dench and the late former Texas governor, Ann Richards.
“Once an Italian tourist came over and kissed every one of us on the cheek. I think we serve a purpose,” Wile says. “We can’t measure it, but I think we resonate here and there and maybe change a few minds. Even more important, I think, is our desire to dispel the notion around the rest of the world that we’re all war criminals and hawks.”
The Rockerfeller Center grannies felt as if they had to do something more dramatic to spread the word. Many of them are indeed grandmothers, and hang photos of their grandchildren around their necks to prove it. They decided to take a page from the playbook of the Raging Grannies – clusters of older proponents of peace all over the country who act up against the war by entertaining crowds with song at peace demonstrations and forums. The New Yorkers heard about an action in Tucson, Arizona, in which a number of senior women visited a recruitment center. There they insisted on enlisting in the armed forces. They were arrested; the case was summarily dismissed.
The New York Granny Peace Brigade, says Carol Husten, a seasoned peace activist from Brooklyn who once chaired Peace Action New York State, had no intention of having their case dismissed after they were arrested for creating a disturbance at the Times Square military recruiting center in October, 2005. Eighteen grannies, ranging in age from 59 to 91, descended on the center, where they tried to enlist in order, they declared, “to replace our grandchildren who have been deployed there far too long and are anxious to come home now while they are still alive and whole – young men and women who are “cannon fodder” sent to fight in a war justified by “a web of lies.”
The would-be enlistees refused a plea deal offered by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, insisting on their day in court – and in the international press.
Says Carol Husten: “We had become a movement.”
Their non-jury trial was scheduled to begin on April 20, 2006. They were represented by Earl Ward and Norman Siegel, the ubiquitous former director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. In the unenviable position of ruling in the case of the Granny Peace Brigade was Judge Neil E. Ross of Manhattan Criminal Court.
When the grannies learned that Judge Ross, a hard-boiled Giuiliani appointee, was to hear their case, they became concerned; they knew he had ruled on two similar protest cases, finding the defendants guilty. A conviction could have meant a $250 fine and a 15-day jail sentence. But the grannies insisted they were ready to pay the piper.
After several days of testimony, in which individual “brigade” members had their impassioned say from the witness stand, Judge Ross said there was evidence to support the grannies’ contention that they were not blocking the doorway to the recruitment center during their sit-in; anyone who so desired had free access. So he pronounced all 18 grannies not guilty and discharged them.
Two days later, on Saturday, April 29, the Granny Peace Brigade led a large, well-publicized march for peace through Manhattan. “We were going to participate no matter what,” notes Ms. Husten, “but United for Peace and Justice put us right up front, wheelchairs and all. Oh, did we get applause walking down Broadway.”
Early in May the grannies started to plan their most ambitious initiative yet, an Independence Day anti-war trek to Washington, D.C. On June 24 the protestors met at a kickoff rally in front of (where else?) the Times Square recruiting center. Undeterred by a relentless rain, the seniors were buoyed by pep talks from former City Council member Bill Perkins, U.S. Congressman Charles Rangel, U.S. Senatorial candidate Jonathan Tasini, and Oscar-nominated actress, Barbara Barrie. Supporters walked with the grannies over the Brooklyn Bridge to a rally in front of a recruiting center in Bedford-Stuyvesant. After one overnight vigil in Staten Island, the grannies boarded a Greyhound bus for points south.
In city after city – Newark, Princeton, Trenton, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Baltimore – like-minded dissenters met the grannies for an assortment of rallies and demonstrations. In Philadelphia, where heavy rains were replaced by searing heat, the New Yorkers functioned as a support group for 11 Philadelphia grannies who staged their own recruiting-center-arrest action.
In Washington on July 3, the New York grannies were met by Cindy Sheehan, the “Peace Mom” who, after the death of her son Casey in Iraq, has made it her mission in life to try to bring the troops home. Sheehan, along with other noted activists, escorted the grannies to the large rally at the Gandi statue organized by Code Pink: Women for Peace. The exhausting day included assemblages in Lafayette Park near the White House and a march past Vice President Dick Cheney’s residence.
At which point the tired grandmothers boarded the bus to return to the Big Apple.
One might guess that these “women of a certain age” would need weeks to recuperate, both physically and emotionally, from such a haul. Not so. Upon their return, five of them prepared for a trip to Germany, which was to coincide with President Bush’s mid-July meeting there with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the New Yorkers joining forces with groups of war protesters from around the world.
Indeed, there is no rest for the truly committed.
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Trudy Whitman is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn.
