Raging Grannies Busted Again

Posted by Maryan Pelland Sep 13, 2006

I stumbled over something that tickled me this week on the Web. The group, Raging Grannies, rings a bell way back in my head somewhere, so I must have come across them in the distant past. But if I did, I've forgotten about them.

Until I saw some great pics of grandmas in flowered hats being hustled out of a protest by police.

The group has chapters all over the world, they claim, and have existed since the late 1980's. Yoko Ono's name is bandied about as having had something to do with starting the organization, but I was unable to verify that.

From the Grannies' Web site, here's some history:

"1987: The Raging Grannies was started in Victoria, British Columbia by a group of peace activists who wanted to increase their effectiveness and impact. Prominent among their stated aims were these:

• to court the press
• to shock with their unladylike antics to get attention for their issues
• to be independent of any other organization
• to use street theater, humor, satire and props to get their message across

Prominent admirers have called them court jesters, yet they say of themselves that they do not aim to be entertainers. In their book, Out of Our Rockers and into Trouble,

they recount how they rowed their kayak out to a nuclear submarine to protest its presence in a Canadian port. With encouragement from Greenpeace, they soon branched out to environmental issues and from there to other issues. At the start of the first Gulf War, they (went) to a recruitment office to enlist."

The enlistment symbolized their philosophy that young people shouldn't die in wars, so old people should volunteer.

Later, other Raging Grannies chapters protested weapons in space and sang their protests outside the Stanford Stadium when Condoleezza Rice gave the commencement speech.

Now, you'll find them trying to move the public against the War in Iraq, or indeed, against war anywhere. They are against e-voting (electronic voting)until until such time as electronic voting is less likely to be tampered with, Granny Ruth Robertson tells me, and against a radioactive environment.

I'm reminded, as I surf for more info, that these grandmothers were put under super-serious-secret-surveillance by the current Administration. That ended pretty much when someone pointed out that authorities who can't tell the difference between terrorists and old ladies in flowered hats must have serious decision making problems.

It isn't hard to make a connection between these 50-something to 70-something years-old women and the bra-burning protestors of the 1960s and '70s. I'm not saying they're the same women - I have no way of knowing that, of course. But I applaud their sense of commitment.

Doesn't matter if you or I agree with what they stand for (and I'm on their side on a number of things). And they certainly aren't the only baby boomers with activist leanings. Still, getting up off one's duff, refusing to whine, and making our voices heard worked in the 60s and it can work today.

More:

Info on blogging for seniors with something on their minds.

Seniors protesting about drugs.

More protests.

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