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You are here: Home / Archives for Nobel Peace Prize

From Seven Seedlings, a Canopy of Hope

September 11, 2014 By Pam

12-Women-plantingSomething was very wrong, and Wangari Maathai knew it. She saw that women in Kenya had to walk farther each day for water and wood and realized that the cause was a policy of rapid deforestation which had left big swaths of the nation bare and dusty. The authorities didn’t seem to care.

Educated in the U.S., Africa, and Europe, Wangari was the first woman in East Africa to earn a doctorate. Fortunately, her advanced degrees did not separate her from the community, but deepened her roots.

12-Wangari-blue-tree

On World Environment Day, 1977, Dr. Maathai planted seven seedlings in honor of seven female environmentalists of Africa and, with that, launched the Green Belt Movement. This was her answer, her prayer, her way of reclaiming the power to heal the earth. She told her sisters that, “like a seedling, with sun, good soil, and abundant rain, the roots of our future will bury themselves in the ground and a canopy of hope will reach into the sky.” (from Unbowed)

Authorities went from not caring to caring a lot. At first they laughed when they saw women in village after village planting trees. The women lacked proper training, they said.

In an interview with Marianne Schnall at Feminist.com, Wangari remembered:

I started with ordinary women from the countryside expressing their very basic needs for water, for food, for firewood, and for income, and then realizing that what the women were describing was an environment — they were coming from an environment that was failing to sustain them.

The authorities stopped laughing when Dr. Maathai got women thinking about how much better it would be for their families if they helped promote sustainable agriculture, food-security, and environmentally appropriate crops benefiting the many in place of export commodities profiting the few.


The Highs and Lows of a Celebrity-Activist

12-Wangari-Obama

Because of her clear vision, deep insight, and vibrant, hands-on leadership style, Wangari was in great demand. She spoke about women’s empowerment and environmental issues around the world, worked for democracy and against government corruption, went on a hunger strike for the release of political prisoners, was elected to Parliament, gained international fame, won many awards, and got men involved in the Green Belt cause, including then-Senator Barack Obama. In 2004, she became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Through all the years of her remarkable success, she was harassed, lied about, scorned, and threatened. Accused of being “too strong-minded for a woman,” her husband divorced her. Unable to support her children, she saw them leave to live with their father. She was beaten unconscious by the police, tear-gassed, jailed, bullied, and publicly mocked. There was international outrage when Wangari and several other environmentalists were attacked and injured while trying to plant a tree on public land that had been privatized and cleared for a golf course.

12-treeWhen Wangari Maaathai died of cancer in September, 2011 at age 71, the whole world mourned. The executive director of the United Nations’ environmental program remembered her as a force of nature and compared her to the acacia trees, “strong in character and able to survive sometimes the harshest of conditions.”

By the time she died, 900,000 women had helped plant 45 million trees which provided a lush canopy of green over their heads, a canopy of hope. And it all began with Wangari’s seven little seedlings.

 

To Go Deeper

Articles:

12-Wangari-kid-book“Wangari Maathai’s Canopy of Hope: remembering a warrior woman for the planet and role model for us all” by Jennifer Browdy at Transition Times, Sept. 26, 2011

“Conversation with Wangari Maathai” by Marianne Schnall at Feminist.com 12/9/08

“The Legacy of Wangari Maathai: Women as Green Agents of Change” by Wanjira Maathai and Jamie Bechtel, Huffington Post, 10/16/12

 

Books:

12-Mama-MitiWangari’s Trees of Peace: A True Story from Africa by Jeanette Winter, 2008 (children’s book)

Seeds of Change: Planting a Path to Peace by Jen Cullerton Johnson, 2010 (children’s book)

Mama Miti: Wangari Maathai and the Trees of Kenya by Donna Jo Napoli, 2012 (children’s book with amazing African print illustrations)

Unbowed: A Memoir by Wangari Maathai, 2008 (Dr. Maathai recounts the brutal repression by the Kenyan government and how she started the Green Belt Movement)

Replenishing the Earth: Spiritual Values for Healing Ourselves and the World, 2010  — Maathai draws inspiration from the teachings of the world’s religious traditions, including “tikkun olam” (the Jewish mandate to repair the world”).

Video:


“Wangari Maathai ‘The Tree Lady’ by Will Levitt” — Excellent overview of Maathai’s life, success, challenges, the power of the nonviolent grassroots Green Belt Movement and the empowerment of women. (10 mins)


“The Hummingbird and the Forest Fire” — Wangari Maathai narrates this animated story about doing the best we can, no mater how small, for the environment, from Dirt! The Movie. (2 mins)


“Wangari Maathai Tribute Film” — World leaders, including Al Gore and Bill Clinton, honor the courage of Dr. Maathai. (7 mins)

Photo credit:

Wangari Maathai, photo by Micheline Pelletier

Image of Serengeti tree by Nell for Mahlatini (https://www.mahlatini.com/honeymoons/)

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Green Belt Movement, Kenya, Nobel Peace Prize, Seeds of Change, The Hummingbird and the Forest Fire, Unbowed, Wangari Maathai, Wangari’s Trees of Peace

It All Began at the Fish Market …

August 20, 2014 By Pam

9-GboweeQUOTEThis is not a fairytale. One woman came from a world of talking mice and sleeping beauties, the other from 14 years in the hell of a civil war, with the devil himself on the loose. When Abigail Disney, (Walt’s grandniece) visited Liberia, she was shocked to learn about Leymah Gbowee and the thousands of women who had successfully and nonviolently brought an end a long civil war three years earlier. She hadn’t heard anything about it.

For 14 years, the women of Liberia had held their families together the best they could, while men waged war with rape, terror, and automatic weapons. Over 200,000 died in the war; thousands more wished they had. In the capital city of Monrovia, women, children, and the elderly, forced to flee from their homes, barely managed to survive in camps for the “internally displaced.”

The Women Step Up and Sit Down!

9-LiberianWomenOne day, Leymah Gbowee, a social worker who counseled ex-child soldiers, decided enough was enough. Women had to take on both the warlords and the corrupt regime of President Charles Taylor and demand peace. She turned to the women in her church, asked them to dress all in white, bring a friend, and meet her at the fish market to pray. A call was issued over the radio, and the women showed up. They sat where President Taylor could see them from his office window.

When Assatu Bah Kenneth, a police officer, heard what the Christian women were doing, she mobilized her Muslim sisters, and they, too, went to the fish market.

Through an umbrella organization called Women in Peacebuilding Network (WIPNET), women’s groups had worked tirelessly for a negotiated peace. Now, they came by the hundreds for a sit-in at the fish market. They held up banners, sang, and prayed for peace — Christians and Muslims together. (Photo from Pray the Devil Back to Hell.)

When the violence around them escalated, the women didn’t get discouraged. Instead, they erected an in-your-face billboard which read, “THE WOMEN OF LIBERIA SAY PEACE IS OUR GOAL, PEACE IS WHAT MATTERS, PEACE IS WHAT WE NEED.”

9-Women-WAR-PeaceThey wrote a position statement and marched through the streets of Monrovia to present it to the president and demand a meeting. The women had their first victory on April 23, 2003, when Taylor finally met with a women’s peace contingent, while other women sat outside the office, holding hands and praying. He agreed to attend peace talks in Ghana if the women could find the warlords and get them to come.

The women sought out the rebel warlords at the hotel where they were meeting in Sierra Leone. They lined the streets and held a sit-in, blocking the hotel doors, demanding to be heard. The warlords realized the women meant business and finally agreed to attend peace talks in Ghana.

Not willing to take anything for granted, the women raised money to travel to Ghana. They were ingenious and relentless in their nonviolent campaign for peace, using a variety of tactics — sit-ins, blockades, a sex strike, singing, prayer, marches and demonstrations, candlelight vigils, a threatened nude action. The women were tired of war. They’d had enough.

Even after a peace agreement was announced and Taylor resigned and went into exile, the women stayed involved. They registered voters, set up polling stations, and helped do the work of rebuilding a nation. On November 23, 2005, the people of Liberia elected Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first female head of state in Africa.

A New Kind of Disney Film


When Abigail Disney visited Liberia, she was astonished to hear this remarkable story. Why didn’t the world know about what the women of Liberia had done? She decided to make their victory visible with the tools fate had given her. In an interview with Amy Goodman on “Democracy Now,” Disney recounted a discussion she had with her filmmakers:

We had a conversation as we were making that film about how hard it was to find footage of the women, and it was so striking how absent they were from any discussion of war in general, not just in the news but in the literature and popular culture, and so we decided it was time to make women visible in the landscape of war …

The result was the award-winning 2008 documentary, Pray the Devil Back to Hell. In 2011, Leymah Gbowee and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf shared the Nobel Peace Prize. Abigail Disney went on to make a five-part PBS documentary film series, “Women, War, and Peace,” about courageous women in various “hotspots” around the world. She also founded Peace Is Loud, an organization that inspires action through media focus on women peace-builders.

I love collecting, retelling, and celebrating stories like this one. After a summer of so much suffering and sad news (including the tragic Ebola outbreak in Liberia, while they were still trying to rebuild the broken medical infrastructure after so many years at war), it’s crucial that women’s voices are heard and creativity recognized in doing the hard work of waging peace.

To Go Deeper:

Articles

9-BookCOVER“Liberian Women Act to End Civil War, 2003” on Global Nonviolent Action Database

 Books

Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War by Leymah Gbowee with Carol Mithers

This Child Will Be Great: Memoir of a Remarkable Life by Africa’s First Woman President by Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

9-artArt

 Olaf Hajek Illustrations for film Pray the Devil Back to Hell 

YouTube


Watch this amazing 3 minute clip from Pray the Devil Back to Hell and you’ll want to see more!

For more information and to book the film.

Credits

Photo of Gbowee and Disney by Gabrielle Revere

 

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Abigail Disney, Charles Taylor, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee, Liberia, Nobel Peace Prize, peace, Pray the Devil Back to Hell, WIPNET, Women in Peacebuilding Network

Pam McAllister

In 1982, I edited the anthology Reweaving the Web of Life: Feminism and Nonviolence and then wrote two books about women’s use of resistance and action: You Can't Kill the Spirit and This River of Courage.

I've spent a lifetime compiling stories of courageous, creative actions, categorizing them (a la Gene Sharp), writing books and articles, speaking at university forums, church retreats, feminist conferences. I’ve also joined in the action -- antiwar protests in the '70s, Take Back the Night marches in the '80s, prison reform rallies in the '90s, and Occupy Wall Street actions in recent years.

I am currently researching more examples of nonviolent action for peace and justice around the world for two new books -- one for/about children and another about women (whose actions are still so often left out or overlooked).

Here I am with Barbara Deming, my mentor and friend, in Sugarloaf Key in the early ‘80s. The photo has faded, but the memories and love have not.

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