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Archives for April 2015

How the Mothers of the Plaza Fought a Police State

April 29, 2015 By Pam

41-marchThey called it the “Dirty War.” After the military coup in 1976, people deemed to be “subversives” began to disappear. They disappeared if they raised their fists, raised their voices, raised their eyebrows. They disappeared if they sang freedom songs; joined a union; worked to alleviate poverty, hunger, illiteracy; were seen with the wrong people in the wrong place at the wrong time.

CHILDREN DISAPPEARED

There were heavy footsteps in the night, muffled screams, and then nothing — no body, no proof of torture, no world outrage. The families of the “disappeared” waited and endured, bewildered. With no confirmation of death there could be no funeral, no closure, no coming to terms, no mourning period, no healing.

During the Dirty War, as many as 30,000 left-wing people disappeared. Some were arrested, taken to torture centers, drugged, and loaded onto military planes from which they were hurled into the Río de la Plata. Pregnant women were taken into custody by the secret police and killed after they gave birth; their babies were given to childless military families to be raised with “conservative values.”

41-2-womenThe mothers sought information. They waited in barren corridors at the Ministry of the Interior in Buenos Aires, only to be told to go home.

One day, an official smirked as he dismissed Azucena Villaflor de Vicenti who sought information on her disappeared son Néstor. As she passed other mothers on her way out, she muttered, “It’s not here that we ought to be, it’s the Plaza de Mayo.” And that’s how it all began.

MOTHERS GATHERED

The next Saturday, April 30, 1977, Villaflor and thirteen other women left their homes to do the bravest thing they had ever done. At a time when all public demonstrations were forbidden, they stood together, witnesses to the disappearance of their children. Later, they looked back on that day, joking that, even in the heart of the most vicious dictatorship, no one cares if you demonstrate on a Saturday afternoon in a deserted square.

41-circleAfter that, the women decided to go to the Plaza on Thursday afternoons when it was crowded. Because it was illegal for more than three people to stand together in a public place, the women walked slowly around and around the Plaza. They had been “walking in circles” anyway, at government offices. Now, they would walk in circles on behalf of their children. Their numbers grew, and they became known as “the Mothers of the Plaza”.

Their public witness made them bold. On October 4, 1977, they paid for an ad in La Prensa with photos of 237 of their disappeared children and the names of the mothers under the headline: “WE DO NOT ASK FOR ANYTHING MORE THAN THE TRUTH.” Ten days later, several hundred women marched to Congress carrying a petition with 24,000 signatures. They demanded an investigation into the disappearances.

MOTHERS DISAPPEARED

41-NinosThe government reaction was severe. Many protesters were arrested. American and British journalists who tried to interview the Mothers were harassed or detained. Still, the women came. They were no longer looking for their individual sons or daughters: they were seeking each others’ children as well.

Azucena Villaflor, martyr

Azucena Villaflor, martyr

On December 10, a new ad ran in La Nacion. That same night, men armed with machine guns abducted Villaflor from her home. Her body washed up on a beach a few months later.

Fear gripped the Plaza as some of the Mothers were disappeared, never to be seen again. Now, few women dared come on Thursdays for fear of being taken. No doubt, the junta’s secret police felt smug as they purged Argentina of left-leaning “subversives.” It seemed that guns, torture, and terror could defeat even the Mothers of the Plaza.

41-comfortLittle did the military regime know that, in churches around Buenos Aires, the Mothers continued to gather. They entered dark sanctuaries, as women do in cities all over the world every day. Some lit candles, then found a place in the pews to pray.

What the authorities couldn’t see was that the women were passing notes to each other as their heads were bowed. In these “silent meetings,” decisions were made without a word spoken aloud.

MOTHERS REAPPEARED

41-women-&-postersIt must have been a great surprise to the military regime when, seemingly out of nowhere, the Madres de Plaza de Mayo stepped out of the darkened churches in May 1979, determined to formalize their organization. Within several years, their official membership numbered in the thousands.

41-sidewalk-artThe women returned to the Plaza. They wore flat shoes and white scarves embroidered with the names or initials of the relatives they were seeking.

White scarf graffiti began to appear on pavements and walls. The Mothers carried photos of their disappeared children.

Some days, after walking the circle, a few women would leave the square, take a megaphone down a side street and each tell her personal story. They learned that it was easier for people to identify with the agony of one parent lamenting the disappearance of one child than it was to grasp the notion of thousands who had disappeared.

THEY PROVED THAT COURAGE IS CONTAGIOUS

41-graffitiThis is a story without an ending. The women endured tear gas, nightsticks, arrest, and torture, but something had changed. The Mothers were determined that they’d never again retreat into silence and shadows.

Their visible courage was contagious. Onlookers who had been too afraid to stop long enough to acknowledge these ordinary-extraordinary women, now stood still to applaud the Mothers as they circled the square.

The Mothers inspired women in other countries to stand up to repressive regimes, and they helped bring the day, in December 1983, when Argentina inaugurated a democratically elected government.

41-rainIn July 2005, the body of Azucena Villaflor was finally identified, along with the bodies of several other founding members of the Mothers of the Plaza. Forensic experts confirmed that they were victims of the junta’s “death flights” and had been flung from a military plane into the ocean or gulf. Villaflor’s remains were cremated. At the 25th Annual Resistance March of the Mothers, in December of 2005, her ashes were buried in the center of the Plaza de Mayo, to remain forever as a symbol of courage.

Now, the Mothers have become the “Grandmothers of the Plaza.” They support the work of finding their stolen grandchildren, using DNA to determine their existence and true identity. The story continues…

TO GO DEEPER

41-bookCircle of Love Over Death: Testimonies of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, edited by Matilde Mellibovsky, one of the founding Mothers. She collected the testimonies into a book, first published in Spanish in 1990, in English in 1996.


“U2 – Mothers of the Disappeared” (5:21 mins)


“Mothers of the Disappeared” / U2 cover by Evenstar (7:21 mins)


“Argentinean Mothers of the Plaza Commemorates 35 Years of Struggle” News Report overview (2:16 mins)


“Madres de la Plaza” slide show and song, by Bandido Urbano 83 (2:34 mins)

 

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Argentina’s Dirty War, Azucena Villaflor, Circle of Love Over Death, Madres de Plaza de Mayo, Matilde Mellibovsky, Mothers of the Disappeared, Mothers of the Plaza, Plaza de Mayo, white scarf graffiti

Women and Water

April 22, 2015 By Pam

40-Painted-FacesOn museum visits, we view chipped vases decorated with images of women bearing water jars. In Sunday school, we learn about the woman-at-the-well.

“Water-haulers” of the world. That’s what UNICEF calls women and girls. From ancient times to today, it has been the work of women to find water for their families, for drinking, gardening, cooking, and bathing.

And, around the world, women are in the streets, protesting the failure to build and maintain systems to provide and protect safe, clean, free water. In honor of Earth Day, here’s a sampling of women’s creative nonviolent actions for the planet’s most precious resource.

GAMBIA’S “MARATHON WALKER”

40-Marathon-Walker(April, 2015) Last week’s World Water Forum was basically non-news, but social media was flush with photos of Siabatoa Sanneh, the strong and imaginative 43-year-old from Gambia who used the Paris Marathon to generate publicity about the water crisis.

Photographed carrying 20 liters of water on her head and wearing a traditional dress instead of runner’s clothes, Sanneh stood out from the crowd of 56,000 others, got our attention, made us think about water. She told reporters that, like many other women in Africa, she and her two daughters walk the distance of a marathon every day to get drinking water.

SMASHED WATER JARS IN INDIA

40-Kenya-smashed-pots(April, 2015) Women from the town of Sopore stood in the middle of Chanakhana Road earlier this month and threw earthenware pots to the dry ground. The clay shattered and traffic stopped. What good are pots, when there’s no water to fill them?

The women, frustrated by an ongoing water shortage, placed most of the blame for the crisis on members of the legislative assembly (“toothless and useless”) and on the Public Health Engineering department for not fixing damaged pipes. The women told reporters that their families could no longer wait.

KENYAN WOMEN BRING BABIES TO THE BLOCKADE

40-Kenya-babies-blockade(February, 2015) Hundreds of women, some carrying babies, blocked traffic for seven hours to protest the water shortage in Loitokitok.

Babies cried and drivers fumed, but the women stood their ground, demanding to speak to a high-ranking government official. Ordinarily, the police would have used teargas, but they held back because of the babies.

The Deputy Governor told the press that he recognized there were problems, but promised that talks were underway to determine how to share water from Mt. Kilimanjaro.

RIO WOMEN INVADE OLYMPIC MEETING PLACE

40-Rio-Golf-smaller(February, 2015) Several women broke through security and invaded the hotel where organizers were planning the 2016 Summer Olympic Games, objecting primarily to the new golf course and luxury apartments being erected in the city.

The women didn’t make it past the lobby, but managed to garner media attention to the concerns of groups like “Occupy Golf” and “Golf for Whom?” outraged that, to build the golf course, developers took part of a once-protected nature reserve, home to several endangered species of butterflies and frogs, bulldozed the land, and uprooted several hundred trees.

Southern Brazil is experiencing its worst drought in 80 years. From São Paulo to Rio de Janeiro people are suffering water rationing and rolling power cuts that limit access to light and the Internet. One district of Rio has been without tap water since December. Yet, while residents are making heroic efforts not to waste a drop, sprinklers are spritzing the new golf course to keep that grass lush and green.

TURKISH WOMEN SAY “NO WATER, NO SEX”

15-Absurdistan(August, 2001) Women in rural Sirt endured months of inadequate water supply, forcing them to wait in long lines at a fountain. Fed up, they declared, “No water, no sex” and called for a Bedroom Boycott. The men soon petitioned the local governor for assistance and got the 27-year-old water system repaired. This successful action inspired two films. (Movie still: “Absurdistan” — see YouTube clip below.) 

NIGERIAN WOMEN SHOCK SHELL

40-Nigeria-nude-protest(January, 2014) Although Nigeria is one of the world’s major oil producers, the Niger Delta, where the oil is found, remains poor and undeveloped. Women in Bayelsa State blamed Shell. The oil company had not kept its promises to provide clean drinking water for the local population, replace a faulty generator, and renovate a school.

Hundreds of women marched through Peremabiri with bare breasts and blocked the entrances to the oil platform with red cloth. They carried signs that read “SHELL: WE NEED WATER, LIGHT, SCHOOL FOR OUR CHILDREN.”

TO GO DEEPER

Water For Africa website: http://www.waterforafrica.org.uk  This non-profit organization builds boreholes, sustainable water sources, greatly shortening the distances that women must walk each day to find water.

“When Restive Sopore Town Broke Pots in Protest” Kashmir Life, April 8, 2015.

“Loitoktok Women Take Babies to Protest Against Water Shortage” by Kurgat Marinday, The Star, February 26, 2015

“Half-nude Women Protest Against Shell in Bayelsa”  Ecowas Tribune, January 8, 2014

“Drought-hit Rio Braces for Carnival Water Shortages” by Adriana Brasileiro, Reuters, Feb. 12, 2015


Women and Water, excellent video overview by Water For People (3:09 mins)


The 2001 Turkish sex strike inspired two modern films. The 2008 award-winning German-French comedy Absurdistan, directed by Veit Helmer and filmed in Azerbaijan, tells about two young lovers in a remote Soviet village, caught up in a sex strike for repair of a water pipeline. Absurdistan (2 min trailer)

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Absurdistan, Golf for Whom, Marathon Walker, Occupy Golf, sex strike, Siabatoa Sanneh, Water for Africa, women and water

Lady Godiva: Tax Protester

April 15, 2015 By Pam

39-Godiva-John-CollierLady Godiva was creative and compassionate. You gotta give her that. She may not, however, have been real. Or, she may have been real but her ride wasn’t. In any case, the legend lingers.

THE STORY

It’s said that Godiva, an Anglo Saxon noblewoman in 11th century England, was distressed that her husband Leofric had become greedy and heartless. His excessive taxes were a hardship on the long-suffering common folk. What’s more, Leofric did not really need the money. He was one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the land.

Lady Godiva begged her husband to lighten up. He thought her concern amusing and joked that, if she would ride naked through the middle of Coventry, he would indeed lower the taxes. He never thought she’d do it.

Faster than you can say “no peeking,” Godiva got on a white horse in her birthday suit, with no cover but her long hair, and rode down the main street. Out of respect and appreciation for her efforts on their behalf, the townspeople preserved her modesty by going into their homes and closing the shutters.

39-Movie-PosterOnly one man gave in to curiosity. “Peeping Tom” was struck blind for taking advantage of Godiva’s courage, compassion and vulnerability.

Leofric honored the agreement, impressed by his wife’s devotion to the people. And Lady Godiva continues to be good to Coventry. Tourists gather beneath the Lady Godiva clock to see her take her ride and watch Peeping Tom struck blind, every hour on the hour.

TO GO DEEPER

39-ChocolateLady Godiva: A Literary History of the Legend by Daniel Donoghue (Wiley-Blackwell, 2002) This scholarly book examines the evolution of the medieval myth.

Godiva Chocolates links their name to the legend and sponsors a program celebrating “inspirational women around the world.”

Videos:


“Ride a Cock Horse to Banbury Cross” — the Godiva connection to the nursery rhyme. Worthwhile for the historic details, with attempts at humor, some of which are actually amusing, albeit from a male POV. (11:08 mins.)


“Discover Godiva Gallery” at Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry, England (2:22 mins.)

Credits:

Feature: Detail from illustration of Lady Godiva by Granger

Painting of Lady Godiva and red-draped horse by John Collier

 

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Coventry, Godiva Chocolates, Godiva Gallery, Lady Godiva, nursery rhyme, Peeping Tom, Ride a Cock Horse, tax protest

Lucy Stone: Independent and Rational

April 8, 2015 By Pam

38-Lucy-Stone-PortraitLucy Stone (1818-1893) was at odds with patriarchy from the start. As a child with an eye for the practical, she vowed to learn Hebrew and Greek so she could determine if the Bible passages which seemed to grant men power over women had been properly translated.

BOLD WOMAN = A “LUCY STONER”

While studying at Oberlin College in Ohio, the first school to admit both women and blacks, she needed to work to pay her tuition. Outraged that she earned less than half of what male student-workers were paid, she demanded and won equal pay.

After graduating from Oberlin in 1847, she became a lecturer for the American Anti-Slavery Society led by William Lloyd Garrison. She baffled audiences by making connections between racism and sexism, speaking for women’s rights as well as for the abolition of slavery.

38-Lucy-Stone-BloomersAfter dress reform advocate Libby Miller introduced Turkish style pantaloons (later dubbed “Bloomers”), Stone began wearing the outfit and, in an even more daring move, cut her hair short. She seemed fearless in the face of public scorn and endured ridicule on the lecture circuit, but eventually found the cause too distracting.

In 1855, when she married Henry Browne Blackwell, the couple read aloud a protest statement during the wedding ceremony. They declared a wife to be an “independent, rational being” and challenged laws that “confer upon the husband an injurious and unnatural superiority.” To further emphasize women’s independence, Stone retained her own name. This shocked many people and confused others. It also inspired some women to become “Lucy Stoners” and keep their birth names after marriage.

TAX RESISTANCE INSPIRED BY THOREAU

In 1858, shortly after the couple moved to Orange, New Jersey, Stone generated nationwide publicity, highlighting the injustice of government taxation of women who, denied the vote, were without representation.

38-Lucy-Stone-PhotoInspired by Henry David Thoreau who had spent a night in jail twelve years earlier for refusing to pay taxes in opposition to the US war with Mexico, Stone and Blackwell returned their bill for property taxes, unpaid. They sent along an explanation — that taxation without representation was a violation of American principles.

Stone wasn’t arrested, but the government seized some of her belongings and sold them at an auction. Still, she and Blackwell used the occasion to give several pro-suffrage, anti-taxation speeches and circulated petitions asking the New Jersey legislature to grant women the right to vote. Their actions inspired a number of women to withhold their taxes.

Stone remained active throughout her life for the cause of women’s rights. In 1870 she founded Woman’s Journal with her husband and contributed to the paper until her death in 1893.

TO GO DEEPER

38-Lucy-stone-STAMPLucy Stone: An Unapologetic Life by Sally G. McMiller, Oxford University Press, 2015

Lucy Stone: Speaking Out for Equality by Andrea Moore Kerr, Rutgers University Press, 1992

Friends and Sisters: Letters Between Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown Blackwell, 1846-93 (Women in American History) edited by Carol Lasser and Marlene Deahl Merrill, University of Illinois Press, 1987

 

Credit

Feature Photo: Lucy Stone, Boston Women’s Memorial (2003) by sculptor Meredith Bergmann (http://www.meredithbergmann.com)

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: American Anti-Slavery Society, bloomers, Henry David Thoreau, Libby Miller, Lucy Stone, Lucy Stoners, Meredith Bergmann, Sally G. McMiller, William Lloyd Garrison, Woman’s Journal

Hubertine Auclert’s “TAX STRIKE” ~ Paris, 1880

April 1, 2015 By Pam

37-Auclear-bannerThe world didn’t make sense to 32-year-old Hubertine Auclert (1848-1914). On the one hand, she was considered a French citizen, expected to obey the laws of her country and pay property taxes. As a woman, however, she was denied the right to vote. She began plotting a way to unhinge the unfair system.

“I DO NOT VOTE, I DO NOT PAY”

On election day, February 1880, Auclert and several other taxpaying women of Paris walked past a line of startled men and presented themselves for voter registration, demanding rights as well as responsibilities. They were turned away.

Using the publicity she’d generated from the attempt to vote, Auclert called for a women’s tax strike. She wrote:

Since I have no right to control the use of my money, I no longer wish to give it. I do not wish to be an accomplice, by my acquiescence, in the vast exploitation that the masculine autocracy believes is its right to exercise in regard to women. I have no rights, therefore I have no obligations. I do not vote, I do not pay.

She was joined by 20 other women, eight widows and the rest, presumably, single women. When the authorities demanded payment, all but three of the women ended their participation in the strike. The remaining women continued to appeal the decision. But, when law enforcement officers attempted to seize their furniture, Auclert and the others gave in. They had done the best they could to call attention to the injustice.

“A REBEL … ALMOST SINCE BIRTH”

37-Auclert-deskAuclert was an energetic organizer, activist, and writer. She’d been drawn to Paris, eager to fight for women’s suffrage. She had no parents or spouse. She wrote,

My life had been of little importance, everything was calm and perfectly simply: no accidents, no adventures, the existence of a recluse. But then I became a crusader, not by choice but from duty. Since no one else would undertake that which I want to attempt, I overcame my excessive shyness and went to war like a medieval knight.

It didn’t take long for her to leave liberal feminists behind and set out on a more radical route. In 1876, at age 28, she helped found an organization called Rights of Women, later changed to Women’s Suffrage Society. The motto was “No duties without rights; no rights without duties.”

“I have been a rebel against female oppression almost since birth,” she wrote. She claimed her fighting spirit was inspired by the “brutality of man toward woman which terrified my childhood, prepared me at an early age to demand independence, and consideration for my sex.”

WRITER-ACTIVIST

37-citoyenneIn 1881, Auclert co-founded a newspaper, La Citoyenne [Female Citizen], with Antonin Levrier.  She also organized petition drives, demonstrations, and boycotts. She traveled to England to meet with Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and British suffragists. In 1885, although it was not legal, she ran for elected office, a symbolic gesture she repeated in 1910.

In 1888, Auclert married her publishing partner, Levrier, and moved to Algeria. There, she was outraged by the imposition of French customs on the Islamic population and published her observations in Arab Women in Algeria. After her husband died in 1892, Auclert returned to Paris, shocked to learn that La Citoyenne had folded.

37-Le_Petit_JournalIn 1908, she was arrested for symbolically smashing a ballot box during municipal elections in Paris, which she denounced as “unisexual suffrage.”

Throughout her activist life, Auclert used the written word to persuade and educate. In her essay “Le Vote des Femmes,” she wrote: “Just as many modern inventions can function only by combining certain elements, suffrage needs all the female and male energy of our nation to become an evolutionary instrument capable of transforming the social condition.” A pacifist, it was her contention that women would use the vote to end war.

Bitter and witty, especially when articulating the economic injustice of women’s oppression, Auclert wrote, “If people were paid to bring children into the world, I truly believe that men would find a way to monopolize the job.”

TO GO DEEPER

37-Book-CoverHubertine Auclert: The French Suffragette by Steven C. Hause. Yale University Press, 1987.

Pariahs Stand Up! The Founding of the Liberal Feminist Movement in France, 1858-1889 by Patrick Kay Bidelman. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982.

French Feminism in the 19th Century by Claire Goldberg Moses. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1984.

Encyclopedia of Women Social Reformers, Volume 1 by Helen Rappaport. ABC-CLIO, 2001.

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Arab Women in Algeria, French Feminism in the 19th Century, Hubertine Auclert, La Citoyenne, Pariahs Stand Up, Rights of Women, tax strike, The French Suffragette, Women’s Suffrage Society

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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