Meet Bush’s Latest Enemy in the War on Iraq: The Raging Grannies of Tucson, Arizona ’Peace grannies

Published on Saturday, April 29, 2006 by the Guardian/UK
Meet Bush’s Latest Enemy in the War on Iraq: The Raging Grannies of Tucson, Arizona
’Peace grannies’ part of growing anti-war network
Elderly women tried to enlist in place of young

by Oliver Burkeman and Emma Brockes in New York
 

Three years after the start of the Iraq war, one thing New York police do not lack is experience in dealing with protesters - so when they were called to a disturbance at the military recruitment centre in Times Square last October, it sounded like just another routine demonstration.

Instead, they found 18 elderly women, many in their 80s and one aged 90, blocking the entrance and demanding to enlist in place of young men.

They called themselves Grandmothers Against The War, and after they ignored polite requests to move on, police had no option but to arrest them, making sure the handcuffs weren’t too tight, and cart them off - complete with canes and walking frames - to the holding cells.

They were finally acquitted yesterday, after a trial that caught New Yorkers’ imagination, even as it seemed to agonise the prosecutors saddled with the job of arguing that the "peace grannies", as they became known, should be jailed.

At the height of the proceedings, Cindy Sheehan, the anti-war activist who became a celebrity for camping for months outside George Bush’s Texas ranch after her son was killed in Iraq, showed up to lend her support.

The women are part of a growing network of American anti-war groups made up of senior citizens, including the Raging Grannies of Tucson, Arizona, and Grandmothers for Peace International, who use the positive social stereotype attaching to grandmothers - and the reluctance of the authorities to come down too hard on them - to further their cause.

Banners held by sympathisers outside the Manhattan courtroom read "Arrest Bush, Free the Grannies" and "Can’t whip the insurgents? Whip Grannies!"

"I’m very happy," Joan Wiles, 74, who founded Grandmothers Against The War two years ago, said yesterday. "Our goal was to put the war on trial, and I think we did that. Mission accomplished."

Ms Wile, a former cabaret singer and songwriter who wrote the original music to Lynn Redgrave’s 1975 film The Happy Hooker, said she had protested only twice before in her life: once in the 1980s for nuclear disarmament, and then in 2000 in the Million Mom March, which demanded tighter gun control.

Their experience in detention, where they were kept two to a cell for several hours before being released, had been "very unpleasant", she said. But the arresting officers, who in some cases had to hoist the protesters delicately up from the ground in Times Square, had been "absolutely darling".

Their profile got a significant boost when the case was taken on by Norman Siegel, a veteran New York civil liberties lawyer. "I think the grannies really resonated with the public," he said.

"First, everybody has a grandmother. And second, these are very accomplished women who are incredibly passionate, intelligent, witty and charming. My strategy was to put every one of them on the stand so that the judge and the public could see who they were: people of conscience."

That strategy led to amusing scenes in the courtroom, in which it sometimes seemed as if the youthful judge and prosecutors were being cross-examined by the defendants.

One defendant, Judy Lear, was asked by district attorney Amy Miller if she really would have moved out of the way had someone wanted to enlist that day. "I’m a very polite person," she responded sternly. Ms Miller hastened to agree. "I’m sure you are," she said.

The peace grannies intend to march with Ms Sheehan in a demonstration in New York today, and plan a second demonstration in Washington on Mother’s Day, May 14 in the US.

Prosecutors insisted that the case was a simple public order matter that should not have been turned into a civil liberties issue. But Mr Siegel was blunt: "Once they decided they were going to put the grannies on trial," he told the Guardian, "I said: ’Look. Let’s put the war on trial.’"

It was a matter of some frustration for Ms Wile that the women had technically won their case, which was tried without a jury, not on arguments connected to the right to protest, but on whether or not they had been blocking the recruiting-centre door.

She refused to be drawn on what other factors might have swayed his decision. "The judge was charming and funny," Ms Wile said. "Whether he was influenced by the fact that we were grandmothers, I couldn’t say."

© Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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