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Joan Wile is a regular BuzzFlash reader and occasional writer for the Buzz.

She is also the founder of Grandmothers Against the War, which she began in 2003.

Joan has true grit. This is her story about how citizen action begans from the bottom up.

"Grandmothers Against the War, founded in November 2003, holds a peace vigil every Wednesday in front of Rockefeller Center from 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM. The highly publicized group has been demanding an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Grandmothers Against the War also participates regularly in other anti-war activities, including the arrest and jailing at the Times Square Recruiting Center when they tried to enlist; a trek from New York to Washington over a 10-day period; a trip to Berlin to speak and sing to peace groups, and performances of Joan’s original song material, their Granny Chorus line dance, a comedy monologue as Barbara Bush, and dramatic monologues by famed actress granny, Vinie Burrows."

Hey, you can't beat that, can you? Joan knows that we need to speak with actions, not just words.

In a review of the book, one Benjamin Shepard writes:

Grandmothers against the War is many things – a self deprecating memoir, a telling unwritten history, a confirmation of Margaret Mead’s adage that small groups such as the grannies really are the most likely ones to change the world, these things yet there is more to the volume. On a number of occasions I found myself breaking down as I read the stories of women who have lived for most of a bloody century, who chose to use some of their last years and breaths to speak out for the only thing still important to them: a peaceful future for their children and grandchildren. At the beginning of chapter three, “Seventeen Remarkable Women and Me” Wile quotes from “Tomorrow, When I’m Young Again” from the musical Seven Ages of Women. The lyrics speak to the spirit of regeneration which pulses through Wile’s movement memoir:

I may be over the hill
But I’ve got mountains left to climb
Take away your clocks, I still
Have lots of time, I’m in my prime
tomorrow when I’m young again
Tomorrow when spring has sprung again
Tomorrow when I begin again
Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, when I win again! (p. 18).

Here, the movement against the war is not only a struggle for life and love, but an effort to embrace life instead of descend into a long dark night.

(And Shephard also notes:)

Through Wile’s memoir, one can witness the stages of an organizing campaign, from formulation of a goal, communication of that goal via email, social networks, and media, continued mobilization, coalition building with veterans against the war and civil libertarians, and direct action. After years of standing for a weekly Vigil outside of Rockefeller Center the Grannies escalated their campaign. On October 17th, 2005, a group Some eighteen grannies, including Wile, went to the recruiting station in Times Square to volunteer fight so their grand children would not have to. When the group approached the recruiting station, no one answered the door. “[I]t looked as if nobody were inside at all,” Wile writes. “Just then I saw a young man’s head pop up from behind a desk and then quickly duck down again.” Seeing this, Marian Runyon, a 90-year-old member of the brigade started to bang on the door to the recruiting station with her cain, screaming, “’Open up, come on, lets get cracking..” Still nothing. “If we could so frighten our own tough soldiers that they cowered behind desks rather than face us, imagine what we could have done ...” Wile laments. So the grannies sat down on the onramp in front of the recruiting station in “peaceful non-violent protest.” Part of the theatre of the whole episode was the spectacle of the grannies heroic and occasionally funny attempts to put their bodies on the line. “This was quite difficult given our ages and the other various forms of arthritis and the other incapacitating muscular-skeletal infirmities of aging bodies” Wile explains. “I took about five minutes to accomplish the task.” And finally, the Grannies were arrested by the NYPD. “As we were being led away, one of the grannies overheard a bystander remarking, ‘The cops were the only ones with their original hips.” For many the moment was powerfully charged. “During the entire experience, I never for one moment considered I never for one moment considered the fact that I would be in jail for an indeterminate amount of time or perhaps eventually have to go to trial,” Wile ruminates. “The exhilaration of the moment overcame any such worries, and I, and the other grannies, instead felt glowing euphoria. We had done what we set out to do,” (p. 15-16).


BuzzFlash note:

We owe a lot to the Joan Wiles of the world and Grandmothers Against the War.

They are mad as Hell and aren't going to take it anymore.

Neither should we.

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