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Archives for February 2015

Toilets: Why Women Can’t Wait!

February 27, 2015 By Pam

33-FEATUREWhether you call it the Ladies’ Room or the Loo, the Potty or the Powder Room, access to toilets is — worldwide — a woman’s issue.

In places with adequate, modern plumbing, it’s about demanding “potty parity.” What woman hasn’t known inconvenience and discomfort when waiting in crazy long lines at a public restroom, often with little kids in tow, trying to “hold it,” worrying over the first twinge of menstrual cramps or a crucial vote pending: women serving in the U.S. House of Representatives didn’t have a restroom of their own until 2011. Before that, they had to tinkle with the tourists in a room clear across Statuary Hall, far from the House Chamber.

In places without adequate sanitation, the lack of bathroom facilities can be a matter of life and death for women and children, and that’s no bathroom joke. An estimated 2.5 BILLION people (37% of the world’s population) have next to no place to do their business, which means squatting where they can and wading through puddles and all kinds of crap, in all kinds of weather, fending off snakes, bugs, and human predators.

“PEE-IN” PROTEST ON HARVARD YARD

Florynce Kennedy

Florynce Kennedy

Florynce “Flo” Kennedy (1916-2000), the radical feminist lawyer and Black Power activist who coined the motto “Don’t agonize, organize,” was known for her outrageous tactics in the fight against racism and sexism.

She understood the hardships faced by trailblazers with full bladders at Harvard University, where female students had to be excused from classes or exams to go in search of the rare toilet for women.

On June 7, 1973, Kennedy led women around Harvard Yard, chanting, “To pee or not to pee, that is the question.” Their numbers grew when they came to the steps of Lowell Hall, an old building with only one bathroom — for men.

Addressing the crowd, Kennedy explained that restricting bathrooms was a way to reinforce the superior-inferior relationship of different segments of a community, just as public bathrooms had been used to reinforced racial divisions for years in the South.

Several women stepped forward with glass jars and splashed bright yellow liquid on the steps. As the crowd cheered, Flo gave a raised fist gesture of protest and warned, “Unless Lowell Hall gets a room for women so that women taking exams don’t have to hold it in, run across the street, or waste time deciding whether to pee or not to pee, next year we will be back, doing the real thing!”

INDIA: “NO TOILET, NO BRIDE”

33-India-womenAround the world, women and girls head for streams, trees, fields, or bushes in the dim light of dawn and dusk, and, on top of all the inconvenience and unpleasantness that implies, risk sexual attack every time they have to pee. In India, an estimated 620 million people have one option: “open defecation” — answering the call of nature, quite literally, in nature. More people in India have cell phones than indoor toilets.

When Anita Narre got married in May, 2011, she walked out on her husband two days later, promising to come back when he built an indoor toilet for her. Her demand not only worked, but inspired a government sponsored “No Toilet, No Bride” campaign. Now, all across the country, there are signs and murals painted on the sides of buildings reading “NO TOILET, NO BRIDE.” Other murals show a woman squatting, looking anxiously over her shoulder at an approaching male, and dreaming of an indoor toilet.

33-India-RAPE-#2Rape happens everywhere, but last year (May, 2014) two teenaged cousins in rural northern India, desiring nothing more than to relieve themselves before going to bed, went out and never came back. They were gang-raped, then strung up in a mango tree where neighbors found their bodies the next morning. Rape is common, but hanging dead girls’ bodies from mango trees is not. This crime shocked the nation and sparked protests across India, raising awareness about sexual assault and the basic need for easy access to safe toilets and privacy for women and girls.

KENYA: “FLYING TOILET” PROTEST

33-Kenya-flying-toiletIn October, 2014, protesters marched to the Kenyan Ministry of Health offices from the impoverished “informal settlement” known as Mukuru on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya. They’d had enough of “flying toilets.”

“Flying toilets” are plastic bags full of urine and feces used by people without toilets. The bags are then hurled through the air. Sometimes, they bounce off tin roofs or walls, hit people, or collect along roadsides and train tracks, burst open and splatter excrement, which attracts flies or leaks into water systems. The cause of a train derailment on Kenyan tracks several years ago was determined to be an accumulation of “flying toilets.”

33-Kenya-toilet-protestThe Mukuru protesters, mostly women, waved signs and sang songs in the streets of Nairobi’s financial district, deliberately slowing traffic to protest the government’s slow action in providing sanitation facilities. Once at the Health Ministry office building, the women staged a sit-in. They wore headbands printed with the Swahili word for “togetherness.”

SOUTH AFRICA: “POO WARS”

Cape Town: The media have dubbed protests here the “poo wars.” Frustrated by failed promises to provide better sanitation services and unfazed by the threat of arrest, protesters in recent years have dumped bags of human waste inside government offices and thrown raw sewage at legislators.

33-South-Africa-toilet-seatSoweto: In June, 2014, police used teargas and rubber bullets to disperse protesters in this Johannesburg neighborhood, when they blocked a major road in Soweto and pulled down their pants to show their scorn. They’d inherited the “bucket system” from the apartheid (white rule) era. Although apartheid was officially discontinued in 1994, the people of Soweto are still using buckets for toilets, and they’ve had enough.

Chatsworth: In the Crossmoor settlement outside of this Durban suburb, angry residents have blocked traffic by setting tires on fire. One protester was photographed with a toilet seat around her head. Their demands were basic: toilets and water.

CHINA: WOMEN’S TOILET TAKEOVER

33-China-Occupy-ToiletAfter being forced to “hold it” one time too many, Li Tingting, a university student, led a nonviolent action dubbed, “Occupy Men’s Toilets” in February, 2012, demanding more public toilets for women.

To protest the unfair ratio of male to female toilet stalls throughout Guangzhou, in south China, 20 women occupied a men’s restroom near a park. The women stayed only three minutes in each of a series of “occupations.” They apologized to the men and asked them, in solidarity, to hold their bladders for a few minutes.

A few days later, toilet access activists attempted to occupy men’s toilets in Beijing, near a bus terminal. They were reprimanded and detained by police, but the English-language edition of China Daily (a state paper) ran an article the next day with the headline: “TOILET OCCUPATION GROUP IS FLUSHED WITH SUCCESS,” congratulating the activists on highlighting a problem.

33-China-signOn November 19, 2014, “World Toilet Day” (yes, there really is a World Toilet Day, and, having researched this blog essay, I now understand why), Li and two dozen students and engineers petitioned the government, specifically calling for 2 women’s toilets for every 1 for men. They posted photos online of women holding signs that read “2:1.” When Beijing hosted the 2008 Olympics Games, they’d used a ratio of 4-to-1 for the tourists.

TO GO DEEPER

Articles:

“The Everyday Sexism of Women Waiting in Public Toilet Lines” by Soraya Chemaly, Time, January 5, 2015.

“Women in the House Get a Restroom” by Nancy McKeon, The Washington Post, July 28, 2011

“To Pee or Not to Pee, Sexism at Harvard” by Irene Davall, On the Issues Magazine, Summer, 1990.

“In India, Latrines Are Truly Life Savers” by Vivekananda Nemana and Ankita Rao, The New York Times, Nov. 13, 2014.

“Crossmoor Residents Blockade Road, Demand Water and Toilets” blog Shannon In South Africa.

“Nairobi’s Female Slum Dwellers March for Sanitation and Land Rights” by Mark Anderson, The Guardian, Oct. 29, 2014.

“Demanding Toilet Justice for the Women of China” by Jess Macy Yu, The New York Times, November 19, 2014.

“‘Occupy Toilet’ Movement Spreads” by Frank Lade, Weekly World News, Feb. 24, 2012

World Toilet Day website

Videos:


“India: No Toilet, No Bride” United Nations story, (2:30 mins.)


“India’s Toilet Revolution” — how lack of safe sanitation facilities impacts the women (6:11 mins.)

Photo Credit: Nairobi women’s sit-in protest lack of toilets. Photo by Karel Prinsloo

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Florynce Kennedy, flying toilets, Harvard pee-in, Li Tingting, No Toilet No Bride, Occupy men’s toilets, potty parity, World Toilet Day

Saudi Women On the Road to Liberation

February 20, 2015 By Pam

32-FEATURELast week, two Saudi Arabian women were finally let out of jail. The crime for which they’d been imprisoned? — driving-while-female.

FREEDOM TOOLS: CAR KEYS AND COMPUTER SKILLS 

On November 30, 2014, Loujain al-Hathloul, a 25-year-old Saudi women’s rights activist, made a 19-second video of herself behind the wheel in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where she had obtained a legal driver’s license. She was stopped when she attempted to drive across the border into Saudi Arabia.

Hathloul with her UAE driver’s license

Hathloul with her UAE driver’s license

Guards confiscated Hathloul’s passport and forced her to remain in her car overnight on the UAE side of the border. She communicated with friends that she was cold, tired, and hungry. When television journalist Maysa al-Amoudi came to her aid, she, too, was detained. Eventually, both women were ordered to drive their cars through the checkpoint, into Saudi Arabia, and pull over. When they did, they were arrested and taken to the Bureau of Interrogation and Prosecution in the city of Hofuf.

The women were held for two months in separate detention facilities. Their case was turned over to a special tribunal on “terrorism,” which examined the women’s extensive use of social media. Hathloul had over 232,000 followers on Twitter, and her husband, Fahad Albutairi, a popular comedian, rallied support of his 1.6 million Twitter fans. His satirical music video, “No Woman, No Drive,” (see below), a take-off on Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry,” was a favorite rebuke to Muslim clerics, who maintain that driving would damage a woman’s ovaries.

The release of Hathloul and Amoudi came shortly after Prince Charles met with Saudi Arabia’s newly crowned King Salman. It is not yet clear what conditions were placed on their release or whether there are charges pending.

25 YEARS IN THE STRUGGLE

32-Poster-We-CanWomen in Saudi Arabia have a high rate of literacy, are afforded access to advanced education, use social media more than their sisters in the U.S., and are respected in their professional work as doctors, teachers, and businesswomen.

On the other hand, they continue to live under a system of male guardianship.

Considered a key ally by the U.S., Saudi Arabia consistently ranks at the bottom of the list of nations for women’s rights and is the only nation on earth to deny women the right to drive. There are no specific laws prohibiting women from driving, but a religious edict denies the issuing of licenses to women. Moreover, the monarchy bans public protest.

32-pink-poster1990: In Riyadh, on November 6, 1990, after seeing American women GI’s driving, almost 50 prominent Saudi women took to the wheel in defiance of the prohibition. Many were professors or businesswomen. They knew they would be stopped and reprimanded, but believed that their protest was an important step in raising public awareness. After their action, some were called whores. Others received death threats. Their passports were confiscated. Several lost their jobs or were denied promotions.

2005: Fifteen years later, they held a reunion and wore T-shirts stamped “NOV. 6, 1990.” The women were encouraged because Mohammad al-Zulfa, a retired history professor and member of the Shura Council, had proposed a study of the pros and cons of allowing women to drive. He’d told the press, “There’s nothing in our religion or society that bans women from driving. Women drove camels during the time of the Prophet and if he were around today his wives would be driving.”

32-road-sign2007: At a World Economic Forum press conference, Princess Lolwah Al-Faisal made headlines when she said women should be allowed to drive. This was the first time a member of the royal family had made such a statement.

Though her statement received hearty applause in Switzerland, it failed to persuade the many Saudi women back home who staunchly support the driving ban. They believe that driving is a symbol of Westernization, and would be a loss of status and privilege and a step toward women’s moral corruption.

Saudi driving activists counter those claims, pointing out the economic considerations: not all women can afford to hire drivers (it can cost up to a third of a woman’s salary), and waiting for a male relative to drive them is inconvenient. Further, the right to obtain a license and get behind the wheel is symbolic of the larger issues of women’s empowerment and equality, not only freedom of movement.

To complicate matters, driving restrictions do not apply to some Bedouin women. They live in remote areas where traffic police are scarce and have been driving for years. When Bedouin women encounter problems for driving, it is rarely a legal matter but one of sexual harassment.

32-June-17-poster2011: The “Saudi Women’s Driving Initiative” was announced for June 17, 2011. To generate support for that action, Manal Al-Sharif, in headscarf and black abaya, posted a videotape of herself driving on You-Tube and Facebook (see below). She had 600,000 views in just days.

She started a campaign called “Women2Drive.” Al-Sharif not only received death threats, but an unnamed source notified news outlets that she had died in a car crash. It wasn’t true.

32-Niquib-posterThe day of action raised the level of debate in Saudi Arabia and generated global support. Women in other countries videotaped themselves driving and posted their clips on the “Honk for Saudi Women” YouTube channel.

Shaima Jastaniah was one of the women arrested for an act of civil disobedience in 2011. She had learned to drive while studying in the United States and considered it a basic human right in modern times. She also believed that the prohibition had nothing to do with Islam and everything to do with patriarchal rule and control.

Several months after her arrest for driving, she was sentenced to be lashed for her crime. Her lawyers filed a petition for pardon. Jastaniah’s case became an international cause célèbre when The Atlantic published an article about her plight. She was pardoned and spared the whip, but she was also taken in for fingerprinting by the Jeddah Police Department and warned that next time she would be flogged.

32-Amnesty-Poster2013:  On October 26, 2013, approximately 60 women took to the wheel in Riyadh, Jeddah, and al-Ahsa, armed with licenses from other countries. Supportive friends video-documented their acts of civil disobedience.

Several women reported thumbs-up encouragement from male drivers, but others were stopped by the police and told to wait in their cars for male relatives to drive them home. Over 16,600 signatures in an online petition were compiled in a well-organized social media campaign for a lifting of the ban in Saudi Arabia, where Twitter has millions of users.

THE QUEEN’S SURREPTITIOUS SOLIDARITY

Queen Elizabeth II behind the wheel

Queen Elizabeth II behind the wheel

After the death of King Abdullah in January, 2015, a story surfaced about the time he’d visited Queen Elizabeth II back in 1998. The then-Crown Prince was treated to a tour of Balmoral, the Queen’s estate in Scotland.

He took his royal seat in the Land Rover, but was shocked when the Queen herself got behind the wheel. Showing off some quick moves she’d learned during World War II as a truck driver for the Women’s Auxiliary Territorial Service of the British Army, the Queen reportedly chatted with the terrified Crown Prince as she raced around the estate.

TO GO DEEPER 

32-cartoonArticles: 

“Saudi Women’s Rights Campaigners ‘Freed from Prison’” on blog; Saudi Women Driving, February 12, 2015 (This is a whole blog devoted to the Saudi women’s driving campaign, with links to many articles.)

“Saudi Women Free After 73 Days in Jail”  by Robert Mackey, The New York Times, Feb. 12, 2015

“Saudi Arabia Women Test Driving Bans” by Jason Burke, The Huffington Post, June 17, 2011

Videos:


“Manal al-Sharif Defies the Saudi Arabian Driving Ban for Women” (1:21 minutes)


“Woman Drives, Major Side Effect: EMPOWERMENT (ovaries fine) Honk4SaudiWomen campaign” (2:35 minutes)


Satirical video, “No Woman, No Drive” by Fahad Albutairi, a popular comedian married to Loujain al-Hathloul

 

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Fahad Albutairi, Honk for Saudi Women, Loujain al-Hathloul, Manal Al-Sharif, Maysa al-Amoudi, Saudi Arabian driving ban, Saudi women drivers, Saudi Women’s Driving Initiative, Shaima Jastaniah, Women2Drive

Saint Valentine and the Death Penalty

February 13, 2015 By Pam

31-St-Valentine-axeBeheadings are in the news. So is romance. They converge on Valentine’s Day, named for a priest who was beheaded in Rome on February 14, 270.

According to one story (there are several), Emperor Claudius II did not want lovesick soldiers distracted from their duties. Empire first! He issued an edit banning marriage for his conscripts.

Valentine defied the ban, heard hushed vows, laid his holy hands on sweethearts’ heads, performed secret wedding ceremonies, and proclaimed love natural and good.

Discovered, the rebel priest was arrested and sent to prison. He continued to be a thorn in the Emperor’s side by alleviating the suffering of other inmates and healing his jailor’s daughter. Enough was enough. The Emperor ordered Valentine beaten and beheaded.

Eventually, the Roman Empire adapted Christianity and became the Holy Roman Empire. In 496, February 14th was officially declared Saint Valentine’s Day, assimilating the raucous Lupercalia (“Wolf Festival”) celebrated that day … but that’s another story.

THEN AND NOW (IN A NUTSHELL)

31-England-beheadingWe recoil from images of recent beheadings and immolations by ISIL. But President Obama, in his February 5th address at the National Prayer Breakfast, reminded us that, like today’s Muslims, Christians, too, have seen their faith perverted when atrocities were committed in their name.

He was right. Humans everywhere have used inventive and gruesome ways to kill each other — from then to now, in the Old World and New, under the guise of Church, State, or other.

In medieval France, a laborer was paid 48 frances for boiling a “heretic” in oil; in England, boiling the condemned was worth a shilling. In Shakespeare’s day, the severed heads of traitors were displayed at the entrance to London Bridge.

Protestants executed in the Netherlands during the Reformation

Protestants executed in the Netherlands during the Reformation

Public killings, legal and extralegal, are crowd-pleasers. From hanging young pickpockets in Merrie Olde England to public stonings of “blasphemers” in 21st century Pakistan and “adulterers” in Nigeria, from hanging Quakers in Boston Commons to lynching black men in the American South — crowds gathered to jeer and cheer.

Times change. Venezuela was the first nation to end capital punishment. Most other Central and South American countries followed suit in the 1800s. It took Europe longer, but, since 1994, the Council of Europe has made abolition of the death penalty a condition of membership. South Africa abolished the death penalty in 1995 under Nelson Mandela’s leadership.

Renounced as costly, barbaric, error-prone, and obsolete by most modern nations, the U.S. remains the lone Western democracy in the lineup of the top five nations to condone government-sponsored executions, taking its place beside China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Iraq.

100 IDEAS FOR ANTI-DEATH PENALTY ACTIVISTS

In chapter 5 of my book Death Defying: Dismantling the Execution Machinery in 21st Century U.S.A. (see below), I compiled over 100 examples of nonviolent action used in the fight against capital punishment, including: boycotts, fasting, mock executions, motorcades, petitions, picketing, pilgrimages, singing, sit-ins, speak-outs, street theater, vigils…. and lots more. Our creative ideas and actions can inspire further actions.

In the U.S., where executions have gone from public to hidden, high-tech, sterile, bureaucratic affairs, activists worry that executions are out of sight and out of mind. Here are four actions that were intended to challenge the capital punishment business-as-usual routine.

31-Gethsemane-banner> Banner Project: In the early 20th century, the NAACP led an anti-lynching campaign. Each time news was received that a person had been lynched, they hung a banner outside the NAACP’s NYC office that read, A MAN WAS LYNCHED YESTERDAY. Decades later, when Rev. Dr. Constance M. Baugh read about this, she was inspired to institute a similar practice at Brooklyn’s Church of Gethsemane (Presbyterian Church USA) to keep the community mindful of capital punishment and, on appropriate days, hung a banner from a 2nd-story window: ONE MORE PERSON WAS EXECUTED TODAY.

> For Whom the Bell Tolls: Sister Dorothy Briggs (1923-2006) began a national ecumenical campaign urging places of worship to toll their bells for two minutes on the evening of an execution anywhere in the U.S.

31-Not-in-my-name> Not In My Name: On evenings when an execution was scheduled somewhere in the nation, members of the pacifist-anarchist Living Theatre gathered at Times Square to perform Not In My Name, a street theater play about ending the death penalty’s cycle of violence and revenge. Judith Malina cofounded The Living Theatre with Julian Beck (1925-1985). She and members of the troupe performed the 15-minute protest play at the publication party for my anti-death penalty book in 2003! (In Luba Lukova’s brilliant poster, one person is shown breaking the cycle — an image of hope.)

> International Death Penalty Abolition Day — March 1st is a time to remember the victims of violent crime, their survivors, and those killed by state sanctioned violence and their survivors. Many activists use March 1st as a day for action and education about alternatives to the death penalty. It marks the anniversary of the day in 1847 when Michigan became the first English-speaking territory in the world to officially abolish capital punishment.

With Judith Malina at my book party!

With Judith Malina at my book party!

TO GO DEEPER

“U.S. Death Penalty Facts” Amnesty International USA

31-Death-Defying-coverDeath Defying: Dismantling the Execution Machinery in 21st Century U.S.A. by Pam McAllister, Bloomsbury Academic/ Continuum International Publishing Group, NY, 2003

“Pam McAllister’s Capital Punishment Quiz” — Multiple choice consciousness raiser. Answers provided.

“This Day in History: St. Valentine Beheaded” History Channel

The Church of Gethsemane (created by and for incarcerated persons, ex-prisoners, their families, and people who feel called into partnership with the poor and imprisoned) “Walk With Me” is a short documentary about the unique Church of Gethsemane.


AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL video about recent facts and figures (3:30 minutes)

 

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Amnesty International, capital punishment, Constance Baugh, Death Defying, death penalty, Dorothy Briggs, Judith Malina, Living Theatre, Luba Lukova, Saint Valentine

Black Women Led Sit-Ins in the 1940s

February 6, 2015 By Pam

On February 1, 1960, four black men sat at the Woolworth store’s segregated lunch counter in Greensboro, NC; they were refused service. White hecklers noticed. So did the press. The time was right. That bold action became a landmark event in the Civil Rights movement, sparking other sit-ins across the South. But the seeds for the sit-in campaign had been planted in the 1940s. Here are the stories of three black women who led the way.

RUTH POWELL’S ONE-WOMAN CAMPAIGN

30-whites-onlyWhen Ruth Powell arrived in D.C. in 1941, she was warned not to expect to eat in the downtown area. Raised in a Boston suburb, she had no experience with the Jim Crow South. The warning barely registered. The young student was excited about attending Howard University in the nation’s capital.

She assumed the warning only applied to restaurants, so when her sandwich order was ignored at a lunch counter in a drugstore where she’d been able to purchase other items, she blurted out, “But why?!” Humiliated, she ran back to her dorm in tears and didn’t venture off campus again for days.

Her anger simmered until the U.S. entered WWII. Sixty-five Howard men dramatically marched off campus together to enlist. That’s when Ruth began her one-woman “sittings.” She wanted her country to be worthy of their sacrifice.

Hers was a prolonged, one-woman campaign. Powell would enter luncheonettes in downtown D.C. and wait to be served … and wait and wait and wait. Sometimes, she’d stare, expressionless, at one waiter. If management approached to explain their “whites-only” policy, Powell would simply ask, “But, why?” in a low, calm voice. Her goal, she confided to friends, was not to be served, (although, that would have been nice). Rather, she hoped to inspire an “awakening process.”

30-hot-cocoaOne January day in 1943, Ruth and two other coeds ordered hot chocolates at a store on Pennsylvania Avenue. At first, they were refused service. When the three women didn’t move, the police were called. To the women’s surprise, the cops ordered the waitress to bring the hot drinks. The catch came at the end: instead of being charged ten cents each, the drinks were billed at 25 cents. Ruth and her friends protested the overcharge and left the correct amount on the counter. That’s when they were arrested, taken to jail in a police wagon, and held under suspicion of being “subversive agents.”

Although the charges were dropped, the arrest sparked a reaction throughout the university, especially in the law classes. Soon, everyone knew about Ruth Powell’s long, lonely crusade and the hot chocolate incident.

PAULI MURRAY AND THE HOWARD STUDENT SIT-INS

30-Pauli-MURRAYGood news! One activist can inspire another. Ruth Powell inspired her fellow Howard U. classmate Pauli Murray (1910-1985). A diminutive, cross-dressing, woman-loving, radical black activist ahead of her time, Murray not only imagined the power of a sit-in campaign long before it caught on in the 1960s, but she coined the term “Jane Crow” to describe the varieties of oppression faced by black women, was arrested in the 1940s for not moving to the back of the bus, won the deep respect and friendship of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, was a co-founder, with Bayard Rustin, of CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) and NOW (National Organization for Women), became a lawyer, and, eventually, the first black woman Episcopal priest. In 2012, 27 years after her death, she was named an Episcopal saint.

In 1943, inspired by her classmate’s “sittings,” she began to hold nightly bull sessions in Sojourner Truth Hall, the freshmen women’s dorm, where a decision was made to protest the Little Palace Cafeteria. Segregation at this small, “whites-only” cafe was especially galling because it was in the heart of the black section of town.

For weeks, the women met to plan every detail of the nonviolent action. They raised funds, led campus pep rallies, organized poster-making sessions, held a forum on civil rights, and ran training sessions on Gandhian nonviolent tactics.

On Friday, April 17, a rainy Saturday, twelve women and seven men led by Pauli Murray walked to the cafeteria in groups of four. Three from each group entered, while one remained outside as an “observer.” When the students were denied service, they found places at the tables, opened their textbooks, and quietly began to study. Outside, their friends marched in a picket line, carrying signs, “OUR BROTHERS ARE FIGHTING FOR YOU! WHY CAN’T WE EAT HERE?” and “THERE’S NO SEGREGATION LAW IN D.C. WHAT’S YOUR STORY, LITTLE PALACE?”

The cafeteria closed early that day. When it opened again on Monday, the picket line was ready. Within 48-hours, management agreed to serve black customers! Success!

30-Open-24:7The following spring, however, the students met with disappointment after initial success at integrating Thompson’s cafeteria, part of a national chain located in downtown D.C., open 24 hours a day.

On April 22, 1944, a gray Saturday afternoon, the cherry trees were in bloom, and the city was thick with tourists and soldiers on leave. Howard students slipped into Thompson’s cafeteria, two or three at a time, after months of planning and civil disobedience training. Everyone who joined the action signed a pledge to remain true to Gandhian nonviolence. Again, when refused service, they sat quietly studying. Outside, a picket line formed in solidarity with the sit-in. One young man held a sign: “WE DIE TOGETHER. WHY CAN’T WE EAT TOGETHER?”

Usually a bustling place at dinnertime, Thompson’s became quiet. Customers didn’t want to cross the picket line or wade through the loud, hostile crowd just to eat dinner, so they took their business down the street. Finally, panicking over lost profits, the manager received an order from the chain’s national headquarters to serve the students. Success?

Murray later wrote, “It is difficult to describe the exhilaration of that brief moment of victory.” How heartbreaking it was, then, when the press ignored this successful nonviolent action, and Howard University administrators ordered the students to refrain from further protests. Thompson’s soon returned to whites-only service.

EDNA GRIFFIN, THE ROSA PARKS OF IOWA

30-Edna-GriffinLike Powell, Edna Griffin (1909-2000) was a New Englander. After graduating from Fisk University in Tennessee, she moved to Iowa in 1947 with her husband, a med student.

One hot July afternoon in 1948, with her 1-year-old daughter in tow, she and two friends went to Katz Drug Store in downtown Des Moines for ice cream sodas. Moments later, they were told that the store “did not serve coloreds.” Griffin and her friends asked to speak to the manager. Maurice Katz informed them that the store “was not equipped to serve colored people.” Griffin was stunned.

She and her friends took Katz to court, filing both criminal charges and a civil suit. As it turned out, Iowa had passed a Civil Rights Act in 1884, making it a crime to discriminate in public accommodations. Katz was found guilty. Eventually, Griffin was awarded $1 in damages.

While waiting for the trial, she organized Saturday afternoon sit-ins and picket lines at the drug store. These actions generated significant press coverage and helped raise consciousness about racism. She also secured signatures throughout Iowa on a petition to the governor, asking him to uphold Iowa’s Civil Rights law.

Griffin remained an activist all her life. She served as co-chair of Shirley Chisholm’s 1972 run for the presidency, and, at age 75, sat in the middle of a Nebraska highway with Quaker friends to protest nuclear arms.

Here’s the best part: In 1998, the building that housed Katz Drug Store was renamed the Edna Griffin Building, and, in 2004, a pedestrian bridge in downtown Des Moines was named in her honor. By then, Griffin was known as the “Rosa Parks of Iowa.”

TO GO DEEPER

30-Picture-BookBooks:

Song In a Weary Throat: An American Pilgrimage by Pauli Murray (Harper & Row, 1987) Beautifully written memoir, full of activist details.

Freedom on the Menu: The Greensboro Sit-Ins by Carole Boston Weatherford, illustrations by Jerome Lagarrigue (Dial, 2004) Picture book discussion of segregation from a little girl’s POV

Articles:

“Pauli Murray: Queer Saint Who Stood for Racial and Gender Equality” July 1, 2013, on Jesus In Love blog

“Saint Pauli Murray” by Carr Harkrader, Huffington Post, 8/20/12

Video:


“Face Up: Telling Stories of Community Life” — About Brett Cook and the Pauli Murray Project murals, a very cool community project in Durham, NC (9:33 mins.)


“NC NOW ~ Pauli Murray Project” Interview with Barbara Lau and Lynden Harris (9:20 minutes)

Art credits:

Feature: “Pauli Murray Roots & Soul” mural in Durham, NC, part of the Pauli Murray Project, led by artist Brett Cook http://paulimurrayproject.org/pauli-murray/faceup-mural-project/

See also the Brett Cook website at http://www.brett-cook.com/www.brett-cook.com/Brett_Cook.html

 

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Brett Cook, Edna Griffin, Episcopal saint, Freedom on the Menu, Greensboro Sit-Ins, Pauli Murray, Pauli Murray Project, Ruth Powell, sit-ins, Song In a Weary Throat

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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Your Comments: I’m new at blogging. After I've had some time to learn how to do this, I will have a way for you to leave comments and be in dialogue with me. My Author's Guild website is at: http://pammcallisterauthor.com. Also, see my Facebook Author Page Global Nonviolence: Stories of Creative Action and My Amazon "Author Page".

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