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Liberian Women and Political Resistance of War: Family Influences and Collective Organizing

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Liberian Women and Political Resistance of War: Family Influences and Collective Organizing Liberian Women and Political Resistance of War: Family Influences and Collective Organizing A Dissertation SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Lekpoh Dwanyen IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Advisor: Elizabeth Wieling, PhD, LMFT June 2020 © 2020 Lekpoh Dwanyen i Acknowledgements I am incredibly grateful to Nohn Rebecca Kidau, Una Kumba Thompson, Bernadette Hawa Bropleh, and Sundaiway E.N. Amegashie, for sharing their stories with me, and for granting me permission to share their stories through this work. My sincerest gratitude is also extended to my advisor, Dr. Elizabeth (Liz) Wieling, for her unwavering support, mentorship, trust, and friendship over the last several years. I have learned a tremendous amount from Liz and can confidently say that I am a better researcher and clinician, and better able to ground my work in my passion for social justice, because of our conversations and collaborations. I am also grateful to my committee members, Dr. Catherine Solheim, Dr. Bill Doherty, and Dr. Zenzele Isoke, for their encouragement and guidance throughout this process. I am inspired by each of them and I am thankful for the wisdom they have shared with me, from which I will continue to learn. I cannot give thanks without acknowledging my family. I would like to especially acknowledge my parents, Roselind, John, Kerper, and Angela; my grandmothers, Sarah and Comfort; my siblings, Koryeah, David, and Angela; and my partner, Keith, for their love and sincere enthusiasm during my educational journey. They have each uniquely inspired the person that I am today and for that, I am sincerely grateful. For giving the warmest hugs, initiating random video chats, and inviting me to playtime, my niece and nephews have uplifted me in their own ways. Auntie Lekie loves you, Naomi, Dominic, Xavier, Brennen, and Asher. Lastly, thank you to the women in my village who I have shared a sisterly and communal relationship with over the years, who have encouraged me to steadfastly achieve my goals while centering my authentic self. ii Abstract Fatigued and enraged by 14 years of political conflict rife with violence targeting women and children, Liberian women formed a transnational network of peace activists that ended civil war in their home in 2003. Numerous grassroots organizations, market women, legal aid workers, and women’s rights advocates developed spaces to address multilevel consequences from the war, both leading to and after the peace movement. This ethnographic case study documents the narratives of three activists who engaged in grassroots or formal political spaces that ensured and contributed to peacebuilding in Liberia. I also consulted a key informant who remained in Liberia throughout the conflict and observed the evolution of women’s collective efforts towards sociopolitical change during and after the war. Adding to the literature on movements led by women of African descent in response to political conflict, findings from this study attend to the role of family in activists’ stories of war and resistance. The study reveals that key relationships, multigenerational principles embraced, war-related impacts on their broader family systems, formal and informal supports, as well as family-level social and economic circumstances were salient in their reports. This dissertation also details the development processes, collective identities, and strategies employed in the mass action that coalesced for peace in 2003, while disentangling the mass movement into three distinctive spaces and sites of resistance. Results from this study increase specificity and attention to Liberian women’s collective labor while radically committing to peace at the nation-state level by resisting the social order imposed by war, division, and Liberia’s gendered political arenas. The study has implications on continued attention to the role of families iii in social change, as well as strategies to resist political structures that perpetuate conflict and violence against women and children in similar contexts around the world. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgements..……………………………………………………………………….i Abstract…..………………………………………………………………………………..ii Chapter 1: Introduction..…………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter 2: Literature Review……………………………………………………………...5 Chapter 3: Study Methodology…………………………….…………………………….24 Chapter 4: Activists’ Family Life, Conflict, and Resistance…………………………….54 Chapter 5: Women-led Collective Action Spaces……………………………………….79 Chapter 6: Sociopolitical Context and Women’s Collective Resistance……………….128 Chapter 7: Discussion…………………………………………………………………..150 References………………………………………………………………………………169 Appendix A: Complete Domain Analysis Table……………………………………….178 Appendix B: Participant Consent to Use Names…………………………………...…..180 1 Chapter 1: Introduction 2 Introduction The first and second Liberian civil wars lasted from December 1989 until April 2003 and claimed approximately 250,000 lives (Abramowitz, 2010). In the small nation of approximately three million people at the time, a population smaller than the size of present-day Los Angeles, widespread murder, rape, dismemberment, child soldiering, and other atrocities swept the country. Liberia rapidly became known as a “failed state” (Abramowitz) as tensions ran rampant with extensively delayed support from the international community. Women in Liberia were subjected to gender-based violence and severe inhumanities during the war (Liebling-Kalifani, 2011), which preceded the uprising of hundreds who employed collective strengths, knowledge, resources, and fortitude to dismantle the violent political structure that had operated in Liberia. This coalition, eventually named The Women of Liberian Mass Action for Peace applied pressure on political leaders to attend the 2003 peace conference in Accra, then expanded the collective to the Ghana in order to strategically amplify resistance and ensure that warring parties and political leaders signed a final peace accord. After signage, they leveraged momentum by leading disarmament strategies, often acting as mediators between rebel factions (Fuest, 2009), and women’s groups continue to address persisting issues such as rape and other forms of gender-based violence (GBV; Medie, 2013). The mass action for peace coalition is just one example of a collective action group developed by Liberian women to respond to atrocities and consequences of the war. In fact, the larger coalition that ultimately ended the conflict grew out of existing collectives such as the Liberian Women’s Initiative (LWI) and the Liberian Indigenous 3 Women’s Group (M. Washington, personal communication, October 4 2018). A number of women’s organizations emerged during the conflict for a range of purposes, including to increase women’s representation in political press, offer skills training, support trauma healing, and to advance reconstruction efforts; that number has increased since 2003 (Fuest, 2009). As leaders and members of these organizations, women collaborated across ethnic and religious line, defying the very tensions that fueled and sustained the war for 14 years. As demonstrated by the growth of women’s coalitions at the time, and the accumulation of tactics that led to larger results, success did not lie in one event, but rather within strategic processes of collaboration and resistance. This study is motivated by their collective achievement of revolution in Liberia in 2003, narrow representation of their labor, and the dearth of studies raising their personal experiences, knowledges, and lived realities at the time. The current study investigated and documented the narratives of three peace activists and advocates who engaged in efforts in grassroots and formal political spaces that protested, marched, rallied, staked strikes, and organized in numerous other ways that successfully ended the political conflict in 2003. This study is intended to resist historical tendencies that dismiss the efforts and accounts of women who remarkably lead or contribute to social and political change, as observed in official accounts of many other movements in Africa and around the world (Disney & Gbowee, 2009). Background and Historical Context of Liberia The Republic of Liberia derives its name from the Latin root “free” (Liber) and the Celtic suffix “country” (ia), which combine and translate to mean “land of the free.” The history of Liberia is embedded in its name and directly references the country’s 4 reputation in the historical period surrounding its establishment as a nation-state in 1847. Less than three decades prior, the relationship between Liberia and the United States (U.S.) was cemented in Liberia’s social, political, and economic foundations. Liberia was the first nation where formerly enslaved persons returned to Africa in the 1820’s (Dunn-Marcos, Kollehlon, Ngovo, & Russ, 2005; Stratis Health, 2012). The movement to repatriate freed slaves was initiated by the American Colonization Society (ACS), antislavery activists, Black nationalists, Southern slave plantation owners, and former U.S. President James Monroe (Dunn-Marcos et al.; Stratis Health). Comprising three percent of the Liberian population at the time, those who were formerly enslaved became known as Americo-Liberians. Americo-Liberian leaders ruled the Liberian government and economy from its establishment in 1847 until military leader President Samuel K. Doe overthrew the government in 1980 and rallied a campaign promoting indigenous
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