1. How did you hear about the Raging Grannies Movement? How did you have the idea of creating a group (should I say "a gaggle"?) of Raging Grannies there in Detroit?
2. Why are you a Raging Grannie?
3. Tell me how you called your friends to the group, how many grannies are there now.
4. What are the objectives/priorities of your group?
5. What were your best moments with the grannies? And the funniest ones? And the most difficult, the most effective ones? I want details!
6. What are your projects for the future?
7. More about you: your life, what do you do, how old are you, what are your hobbies, your dreams.
8. When you were younger, were you concerned with peace questions, justice, human/social rights...?
9. I´ve known just a little about Emma Goldman (by the way, wonderful quote!!), but I´ve read that she was feminist and anarchist. Do you consider (think about) Raging Grannies as feminist and anarchist? What about you?
10. What are the questions that worry you most? You know: like peace, social rights, democracy, water, ecology, human rights... Why? Do you have hope, as they said in Porto Alegre, that "another world is possible"
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1. & 3. I first heard of the Raging Grannies in 1999 when I joined an online discussion board called "Passages." It was for women of age and experience--I was almost 57 at the time--and was facilitated by a woman whose "handle" was Raging Granny. She lived in Ottawa, Ontario and was a member of a Raging Grannies group that called themselves The Parliament Mob. Her name is Alma Norman and she is still RAGING with The Mob on the streets of Canada's capitol city. I was intrigued by what she told us of the Raging Grannies' activities because of my own political activism and love of singing, but had never heard of a Grannies group in either Detroit, Michigan or San Francisco, California, the two cities where I spent most of my time. After two years or so, "Passages" passed off the internet and I forgot about the Raging Grannies. That is, I forgot about them until I got to Washington, DC for the huge anti-war rally and march on October 26, 2002.

I was actually in DC to visit my mother who was ill. It had been my heartfelt desire to attend the October 26 mobilization against Bush's foolhardy plan to attack Iraq, but my life in Detroit had gotten so busy that I'd given up that idea and was resigned to staying home and going to the meetings I had on my calendar. Then Mom got ill and I cancelled out of everything in Detroit and drove the 580 miles to Washington, DC by myself. Fortunately, she rallied when I got there, so, after four days, I felt comfortable leaving her--she was well cared for in a nursing care facility--and taking the Metro (subway) into DC for the October 26 rally and march.

When I scooted off the subway train in my battery-operated scooter--I'm disabled--I met Cynthia, a woman from Colorado who was also going to the rally by herself. We made a nice connection and decided to stay together the whole day. We walked/scooted over to Constitution Avenue near the Vietnam Memorial where the rally was to start. Once there, we were amazed and delighted to see a circus atmosphere of people with signs and banners, giant puppets, Uncle Sam on stilts, George W. Bush as a puppet being manipulated by "oil interests & big business", vendors giving out all manner of political literature, young people drumming and dancing, university student delegations with banners, and a gaggle of Raging Grannies singing for the crowds!

Well, I ADORED them and their outrageous costumes and satirical songs and funny gestures! My new friend and I stayed and cheered and laughed and sang along until they stopped to take a break. I went up to a couple of the Grannies, introduced myself, asked where they were from and told them how much I loved what they were doing. It turned out they were from Rochester, New York, but one of the women said to me, "Where did you say you're from? When I answered, "Detroit", she said she lived there too. Then she asked me what turned out to be a life-changing question: "Do you want to start a Raging Grannies group together in Detroit?" Without a moment's hestitation, I said, "Sure!" And that's how it all began.

The day after I returned home, Kathy Russell called--I had given her my phone number--and asked if I was serious, did I really want to help her start a Raging Grannies group? I said I was totally serious. We decided to hold our first meeting here at my house in two weeks. Kathy was ecstatic because she'd had this dream of starting a Detroit area Raging Grannies group for a year and a half and had been going to every women's group she could think of to try to get folks interested…with little success. So here she goes to Washington, DC and meets a woman from Detroit who finally says, "Yes!"

Fortunately I know many women in the Detroit area from my years as a peace activist and also as a participant in women's singing groups, not official choruses but communities of women who love to sing. Most of them are politically aware and longtime activists. And Kathy had made a number of connections during her months of networking, so we had fifteen strong women show up at our first meeting on November 9, 2002. We named ourselves the Raging Grannies Without Borders (of Detroit and Windsor, Ontario), because we hoped to interest our sisters across the river (in Canada) in joining our gaggle. Thus far we have sung at two anti-war rallies/marches in Windsor, ONT but no Canadian women have yet joined our group. After three months we have forty women on our list with more wanting to join every time we sing at a rally or demonstration. Although many Raging Grannies gaggles have age limits, we do not. We figure any woman who wants to be a Granny is welcome. We plan to keep our membership open. Being located in Detroit, Michigan where the winters are very cold, we need all the Grannies we can get to go out on the freezing streets and sing for peace and justice!
 

2. I am a Raging Granny because I want to change the world!  Now that may sound grandiose, but it's true. I firmly believe that each individual has the capacity--no, more like the responsibity--to do everything in her/his power to leave this world in better shape than it was when they got here. For each of us, that will mean something different, but working together, every aspect of life on this fragile, wondrous planet will have benefitted from our having been here. I have no belief in the hereafter; I am only interested in the NOW. What can I do this moment to be a presence of peace and justice and freedom and healling to all with whom I share breath and energy? I am a Raging Granny because I need to RAGE out loud within a community of other feisty women about what needs to be changed in today's world. And for me, the perfect vehicle to do this is song, humor and truth-telling words. When you're a Granny, you can get away with just about anything. You can sing words that you wouldn't dare say, or if you did, people would turn off or be offended. But when you're dressed up in silly hats, colorful aprons and old-lady shawls, you catch them before they know they're caught! There you are, a bunch of old ladies, dressed in funny clothes, singing tunes that everyone knows, but with a twist. The lyrics you're singing to these familiar tunes--tunes that make people smile and want to sing along--are hard-hitting, satirical comments on current events and injustices. Our message gets inside people's heads before they know what hit them. It is a most effective way to change minds and attitudes.

I am also a Raging Granny because it gives me the opportunity to write songs about issues that are driving me crazy. In the United States these days, living under a President who seems in turns insane, misguided, ignorant or just plain power-hungry, it is pretty darn tough to stay awake and aware and not want to go outside and scream, "Stop! Wake up! Don't let Bush/Rumsfeld/Ashcroft/Cheney get away with this destruction of our nation and the world!" It's hard not to want to give up sometimes, things are so bad. But as a Granny I can see what's going on, get enraged and then turn that rage into something creative, like the lyrics to a new song. For instance, the day I read that President Bush was threatening Iraq and every other country on his ever-expanding "list" with preemptive nuclear attacks, I almost lost it altogether. But instead of losing it, I sat down at my computer and wrote this song:

WHAT ARE THEY THINKING?
(Tune: On Top of Old Smokey)

O what are they thinking, the men who make war
It's all about power and wanting more oil.
They sit in the White House, the Pentagon too
And dream up new ways to annihilate you.

Bush says if you gas us we'll nuke you to bits
So don't you dare use any germs or anthrax.
We've got all these warheads, been stockpiled for years
Just waiting for leaders to trade on our fears.

They'll melt down the countries that try to fight back
But sooner or later they'll throw in the sack.
Because if one country starts nuclear war
...( momentary silence, count 6, then spoken)...
                                         There won't BE any more!

I don't know what I'd do these days if I weren't a Raging Granny.
 
4. I'm uncomfortable speaking for our group as we've only been together for three and a half months. We're still forming our identity and purpose as a community. But if I had to put into words our common reason for being Raging Grannies I'd say it is very simple. We love this earth, we love freedom and we love our grandchildren and all the children who will share this planet after we are gone. We want them to be able to live in a world where all persons are respected, where the earth is protected not abused, where freedom and democracy are not just words spouted from the mouths of politicians wanting to be elected but a reality that everyone can know and live, where no one lives in fear and violence is unknown. We want our grandchildren and their children to live as human beings deserve to live, on a planet that is their home and that they treat with the reverence it deserves. This why we RAGE and will continue RAGING until we die.

5. In three and a half months, our Raging Grannies gaggle has sung publicly at seventeen different events! Most of these were organized by other groups, whether anti-war or community activists, but a handful were our own Raging Grannies actions, or what we call RAGES.

Certainly the most exciting event, for me anyway, was singing in Washington, DC, as part of the massive January 18, 2003 mobilization of persons against the war on Iraq that was organized by International A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now To Stop War and End Racism). Seven members of our Raging Grannies Without Borders group travelled the 580 miles to Washington, DC to join thirteen members of the Rochester, New York Raging Grannies. Once we met on that bitter cold day in our nation's capitol, we walked and sang to the crowds and crowds of people from all over the country who were there to say NO TO WAR. Everytime we stopped to sing--or even sang as we marched--we'd be surrounded by laughing, cheering women, men and children, many of them pointing video or still cameras in our faces. As you can imagine, the children were particularly taken with these old women dressed in funny hats singing tunes that they already knew. For me, the most gratifying response was from young activists of high school and university age. All they'd have to do was see our banner with "Raging Grannies" emblazened across it, and see us in our outrageous costumes and they'd start cheering! It was as if seeing women of our generation--their own grandmother's generation--taking such a public, satirical position against war gave these young activists all the approval and appreciation they were perhaps not receiving from their families at home. By our very presence, we validated their passionate belief that war is wrong and that protesting publicly is not only necessary but to be commended.

But I'd have to say my favorite events have been our own Granny-generated RAGES. One was held in front of JC Penney's, a well known store that is part of a nationwide chain here in the US. This particular store was in a huge Detroit area mall and our RAGE took place on the Sunday afternoon before Christmas, one of the biggest shopping days here in the States. We were out in front of this store in bone-chilling weather to sing and hand out leaflets to shoppers encouraging them NOT to buy war toys for their children or grandchildren. We felt the need to do this because of an advertisement online that showed a selection of horrible war toys for young children. The "toy" that most distressed us was called the Forward Command Post and consisted of a bombed out plastic house with a triumphant American soldier positioned on the roof holding his bazooka rifle. It was advertised for children ages 3 and up! Thankfully, there was enough public outcry about this item that it was soon removed from stock. Anyway, this RAGE was against the law beause we were on private property. We Grannies knew this and had a spokesperson already prepared to deal with the mall security guards we knew would ask us to leave, and later the police if that became necessary. We did not intend to be arrested, but rather to hold our position for as long as possible. We were fortunate in that the security guards did not approach us until we had already been there RAGING for 45 minutes and had sung and given out approximately 150 leaflets to shoppers. After a respectful discussion of why we were there, we chose to go home because we'd served our purpose of raising consciousness and besides we were very cold.

Another interesting RAGE was held on February 15 after we Grannies had sung and marched at the Detroit-area International Day of Protest rally and march. Fortunately, the organizers had scheduled an indoor rally to be held after the march in Cobo Hall, Detoit's downtown convention center. I say "fortunately" because it was again a frigid day in our fair city. After singing to great applause and laughter at the rally upstairs, seven of us Grannies went downstairs onto the Cobo Hall concourse where the annual Detroit Boat Show was being held. Believe me, this was an entirely different cross section of our country's citizens from those who were meeting upstairs to stop the war on Iraq; this was true Middle America, the so-called "man of the street." We Grannies stood beside the window in a busy location where people were walking to and from the Boat Show. We proceeded to sing every one of our 20 anti-war songs. Well. The response was VERY different from what we'd heard upstairs! Down here among the "American people", our lyrics did not prove particularly popular. Families would walk by and when they could hear the words to our songs and not just the tunes, the women would often smile and hang back, the children would grin and want to stop, and the men's mouths would clamp so tight that it looked like a zipper instead of a mouth and they would just keep on walking. Not everyone, mind, but a good number. This didn't disturb me in the least, it only served to help me see how important it is to do our Raging Grannies work of public education rather than always preaching to the converted. I considered it among our most effective actions.

There are a number of situations in which we Grannies have offered our songs and face-to-face presence of solidarity with persons who are experiencing oppression: 1) at  two Michigan Welfare Riights Organization-sponsored protests in front of the Detroit City Water Board in response to their having shut off the water to 40,000 homes in our city for non-payment of bills, and this during the coldest winter in recent times; 2) at the Blue Triangle Network-sponsored protest demonstrations in front of the INS (Immigration & Naturalization Services) building here in Detroit on the occasion of two deadlines for the unjust INS Registration of men from predominantly Muslim countries. In both cases, we were able to be there not only in protest against the system, but in support of  the individuals being oppressed. That personal touch means a lot to us Grannies.

6. Just more of the same. Wherever we Raging Grannies are needed, we will go.

7. & 8. In terms of who I am, I am a 60 year-old married woman who is artist, writer, singer, activist. My awakening to activism came with great power during the Persian Gulf War in 1991. See the Word Art web pages on my web site. My commitment to activism has grown so strong that it is my defining purpose in life. Much of this takes the form of communicating through my web site and daily online journal. The story of why my commitment to peace is so strong can be read about in "Assent/Dissent", a reflection with photographs that a friend asked me to write for her web site.

9. & 10. Although most of our Raging Grannies would probably identify themslves as feminists, we have no such identity as a group. We are not allied with any political or activist group such as Greens or anarchists. We are women concerned about our earth, its air, water and land, about people of all kinds, unjust structures, economic inequality, global corporate control, racism, sexism, classism, militarism…all the isms. We just want a better world and we believe that change is possible if each of us does our part to help make it happen.