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Women and on : , and a Transnational Women’s Movement, 1975-2006

A dissertation submitted to School of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

in the Department of of the College of Arts and Sciences

By Alyssa S. McClanahan March 2016 M.A., University of Cincinnati, 2012 B.A., University of Cincinnati, 2010

Committee Chair: David Stradling, Ph.D.

Abstract

“Women and Life on Earth” traces a powerful yet ultimately unsustainable women’s movement born in the late 1970s and early 1980s out of feminist, ecological and concerns. Focused primarily on American and British women, this dissertation begins with an influential conference in March of 1980 in Northampton, Massachusetts. There, hundreds of women gathered to claim "that ecological right"—the idea that their movement could unite all women behind values of , and ecology. In exploring women’s organizations and direct actions, especially transnational ones, this dissertation tracks how this women's movement weathered the 1980s, and interrogates the states of feminism, , protest strategy and in America and Britain in the late 20th century. It broadly argues that by appropriating ecology as a way to link a litany of women and numerous injustices rooted in violence, participants began to consolidate a movement that was uniquely for and by women. Yet, as genuinely inclusive as these women crafted their philosophy to be, their ideas did not map evenly onto the itself, and in many ways prescribed their own stymied future. While in women-only and campaigns proved to be individually impactful, participants realized that the unity they anticipated eluded them. Shared values could not bridge divergent experiences and identities of race, class, sexuality, motherhood, nationality and political organizing traditions.

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Copyright Notice

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Acknowledgements:

Over the past four years during my doctoral degree, I have received considerable assistance and guidance from several libraries and archives, namely the Swarthmore College

Peace Collection at Swarthmore College, the at , the

Arthur and Mary on the History of Women at and the

Women’s Library at the School of Economics. Their curators, archivists and librarians proved invaluable to my research and the development of my project.

The Swarthmore College Peace Collection is one of the largest repositories of organizational records from peace, pacifist and social organizations, and on my first doctoral research trip, I surveyed, explored and acquainted myself with the papers of many of the organizations in the women’s movement covered in this dissertation. I benefitted from the assistance, suggestions and enthusiasm of its curator, Wendy E. Chmielewski. At the Sophia

Smith Collection—where I gathered the bulk of my dissertation research—curator Amy Hague and archivist Kathleen Nutter proved immensely helpful in locating additional, useful collections and encouraging my project. I am also grateful for the generous travel-to-collections grant I received from the Women’s History Archives. The Schlesinger Library, a significant archive of women’s history, provided the material which informs my fifth chapter. I traveled to the

Schlesinger for my undergraduate thesis as well, and as a complete novice then, received kindness and guidance from Stacey Flatt, as I did more recently. I also had the opportunity to travel to the Women’s Library at the London School of Economics, and out of this research trip and the patient assistance of its staff, I had access to records of the Greenham Common

Women’s which allowed me to explore the British side of the women’s movement and take my dissertation in a new, transnational direction. iv

I cannot forget the University of Cincinnati, namely the Graduate School, for generously funding both my Master’s and my doctoral education through full tuition scholarships and graduate assistantships that allowed me to make graduate school my primary job. I relied on resources available through the university’s libraries almost daily, through my coursework, qualifying exams and dissertation research. Additionally, the university afforded me the opportunity to work as an adjunct instructor for my department, and I greatly benefitted from the ability to create and teach my own classes over the past four years. Finally, the University

Research Council awarded me a generous graduate student research fellowship that allowed me to make progress on my dissertation during the summer months.

I owe a special thank you to the Charles Phelps Taft Research Center, and specifically to its director Adrian Parr and its program director Sean Keating. An additional thank you is owed to Joy Dunn for answering so many of my . More than any other funding body, the Taft

Research Center kindly awarded me numerous enrichment awards, travel grants, a summer fellowship and, over this past year, a dissertation fellowship. This financial assistance, accompanied by their dedication to humanities research, publication and collaboration, has been crucial to my success as a student.

As someone who received her Bachelor’s, Master’s and now Doctorate from the

Department of History at the University of Cincinnati, I have, in many ways, grown up in this department and among its professors. I have always felt that my department prioritizes undergraduate and graduate research, and beyond encouraging its students to travel to archives and libraries, it generously assists us in locating the financial means to get there. Several department awards and fellowships funded my dissertation research, including the Werner E.

Von Rosenstiel Fund, the Roger Daniels Summer Fellowship and a much-appreciated no-service

v fellowship during my qualifying examinations. I am immensely grateful for this financial support.

Beyond this though, I have benefitted from the one-on-one encouragement, mentorship and friendship of numerous professors through years of course work and later “dissertating” and teaching. In this regard, I wish to call attention to a few that have especially impacted me. I want to say thank you for the guidance, kindness and support of current department head, Dr. Chris

Phillips, previous department head Dr. Willard Sunderland and my graduate director, Dr. Tracy

Teslow. Additionally, this dissertation grew out of a paper I wrote in a research seminar during the first year of my doctorate; Dr. Sigrun Haude directed this project, attentively reading and offering consistent, thoughtful feedback. I am grateful for the encouragement of Dr. Rob Gioielli as well; working as his editorial assistant for the Valley History journal, he offered pertinent, frequent advice then and now for my dissertation and overall academic career. Thank you to Dr. Brianna Leavitt-Alcántara for administering my Spanish language translation examination, and again, thank you to Dr. Sunderland for assisting me with the Russian language references and history in my dissertation, and for being one of the best undergraduate and graduate professors I have encountered. I am also indebted to the enthusiasm of now-retired Dr.

John Alexander. Notoriously tough, Dr. Alexander not only acquainted me to the pace and rigor of graduate school but served as an example of a professor consistently and eagerly engaged in both his research and his students. I appreciate the tutorship of the professors under which I served as their teaching assistant—thank you to Dr. Phillips, Dr. Jason Krupar, Dr. Mark Raider,

Dr. Charlie Lester and my advisor Dr. David Stradling. Notably, while I never was their student,

Dr. Erika Gasser, Dr. Isaac Campos and Dr. Vanessa Walker all volunteered their and advice on graduate school and teaching strategies, and genuinely took an interest in my academic

vi career. I cannot fail to mention the immeasurable assistance I—and all students and faculty— received from Hope Earls, our department’s past administrative secretary. Beyond that, she remains a great friend and someone that still takes an active interest in students’ and well- beings. I also wish to thank our current administrative secretary, Ashley Chrisman, for her patient and prompt help.

My dissertation committee, which includes Dr. David Stradling, Dr. Maura O’Connor,

Dr. Stephen Porter and Dr. Wendy Kline, are the professors I have been closest to over the course of my graduate—and in many ways, undergraduate—education. All of them have been, without fail, selflessly enthusiastic, caring, hardworking and supportive. As a freshman at UC, my very first history class was with Dr. Kline, and since that year—2007—she has mentored and encouraged me in academic and life lessons. With her as my undergraduate and Master’s advisor, I grew to love and care deeply about women’s history and feminism. I went to my first conference with Dr. Kline, presented my first paper under her, defended two theses under her tutorship, and for all of these reasons and more, I am immensely grateful for her kindness, enthusiasm for history and teaching and for how much of an interest she has always taken in my personal life. She is without a doubt missed in this department.

I have also known Dr. Stephen Porter since my undergraduate education, and like Dr.

Kline, he pushed me to care deeply about history as well, in his case, of and humanitarianism. I worked closely with him through my Bachelor’s and Master’s, taking all of his classes and doing multiple directed readings with him. He also offered useful advice and curriculum tips when I taught my first class, and continues to be a source of great ideas and guidance in the realm of teaching. I cannot thank him enough for his support over these years.

More recently, he gave me careful, pointed instruction on not only the development of my

vii dissertation but also on future job prospects and ways to market oneself. He has always met with me for as long as I needed, always following through with thoughtful advice, feedback and ideas.

As a Master’s and doctoral student, I took graduate seminars and a directed reading under

Dr. O’Connor, and later worked with her for my qualifying exams for the of Modern

Europe. One of the most enthusiastic and scholars I know, Dr. O’Connor is also one of the most caring, maternal professors I know, much like Dr. Kline. Dr. O’Connor cares deeply about her students and the department’s teaching. She advises with such a passion for life and history that her enthusiasm is contagious and noteworthy. She, like few others I have studied under, nurtured a curiosity in me for thinking creatively and deeply about the past. Beyond school, Dr. O’Connor has been an invaluable friend as well, for me and her other graduate students, and remains one of the most empathetic, attentive professors and people I know.

I want to especially thank and call attention to my advisor and committee chair, Dr.

David Stradling. Dr. Stradling, in a sense, “adopted” me as his PhD student, but without a doubt has treated me like I was always his advisee. I have taken classes with Dr. Stradling since undergrad, and thanks to his gifted teaching, I now deeply love and care about all things related to cities—which, as many know, has much to do with my future plans beyond this degree. From his considerate, patient guidance, I have learned over the years, through three degrees, countless lessons related to historical inquiry, research and interpretation as well as writing and presentation skills and better teaching practices. Through this dissertation process, he calmly and kindly offered me the most rational advice on research, writing and editing. Indicative of his advising, he read every chapter I sent him within a week and then met with me to explain what I could do to improve the work. I have never met a professor that takes such a kind, active interest

viii in all of his students professional and, importantly, personal lives, asking and caring deeply about all that is going on.

Besides its nurturing faculty, my department has afforded me the opportunity to meet wonderful peers. I have grown close to several over the past six years as a graduate student, and these friends have not only inspired me to be a thorough and thoughtful researcher, writer and teacher, but they have cared about my life beyond UC in meaningful and touching ways. In this regard, I owe a sincere thank you to Dr. Evan Hart, Kelly Smith, Dr. Nicole Lyons, Nate McGee,

Anne Steinert, Vanessa de los Reyes, Bela Kashyap and Dr. Brittany Cowgill. Though not from my department or school, my friend, Dr. Daniel Tonozzi, always provided me with valuable advice and empathy through the dissertation process.

Finally, I want to say the biggest thank you to my family—to my parents who have indefatigably supported, loved and encouraged me; to my older sister, who “dissertated” with me and remains my best friend, and to her husband; to my brother who has always cheered me on and boosted my spirits; and to John, who more than anyone else has kept me grounded through this process. Thank you all.

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Table of Contents:

Introduction: Women and Life on Earth 1

1 Women and Life on Earth: Feminism and Environmentalism, 1980 34

2 Women’s Pentagon Action, November 1980 & 1981 93

3 Motherhood & Politics in the 1980s: The Women’s Party for Survival,

Another for Peace and Women Against Madness 153

4 The Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, 1981-1985 217

5 The Seneca Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice, 1983-1986 291

6 Peace Has No Boundaries: The Soviet Women’s Peace Seminar,

Leningrad, September 1984 341

Epilogue 391

Bibliography 425

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Introduction: Women and Life on Earth

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Claiming “That Ecological Right”: The Women’s Movement of the Late 20th Century

“This beautiful planet of ours is terminally ill,” Dr. pronounced to a crowd of seven hundred at Harvard University’s Phi Beta Kappa oration in 1981.1 Such a foreboding declaration was not unusual for Caldicott. Constantly touring the U.S. on a circuit of speech-giving, this pediatrics researcher and globally-known activist was the face of anti-nuclear resistance for many in the 1980s as she gave countless lectures on what she considered “the greatest health hazard the world has ever known”—nuclear weapons and power.2 Usually she organized her talks and interviews around a well-rehearsed “worst case scenario,” the final medical epidemic after a thermo-nuclear , in which “[w]e are all hostages on a terminally ill planet which is infected by massive colonies of nuclear weapons, colonies that are rapidly metastasizing.”3 “Prognosis. Gloomy,” she diagnosed.4 The terminal event would be “[a] strategic nuclear war between the superpowers … complete within thirty to sixty minutes.”5 The

“[a]etiology” was, to Caldicott, most obviously “psychiatric.”6 Depicting the area around after a twenty-megaton bomb detonated, Caldicott described to her audience: “It carves out a crater about half a mile wide and three hundred feet deep. Everything in that volume is converted

1 Helen Caldicott, “This Beautiful Planet,” Helen Caldicott Papers, 1961-1987, Manuscript Group 223, Writing/Speeches, Box 15 of 33, Folder Phi Beta Kappa Address, Sophia Smith Collection (hereafter SSC), Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts; Helen Caldicott, “Commencement,” (Cambridge, Massachusetts) July/August 1981, Helen Caldicott Papers, 1961-1987, Manuscript Group 223, Writing/Speeches, Box 15 of 33, Folder Phi Beta Kappa Address, SSC. 2 Helen Caldicott, “Dr. Helen Caldicott- August 6, 1977, Faneuil Hall, Boston,” Helen Caldicott Papers, 1961-1987, Manuscript Group 223, Writing/Speeches, Box 15 of 33, Folder H.C. Statements, Arm Race General, SSC. 3 Helen Caldicott, “We are all hostages,” Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder H.C. Statements, Arm Race General, SSC. 4 Helen Caldicott, “This summary will be presented as a medical analysis,” Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder H.C. Statements, Arm Race General, SSC. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 1 to radioactive fallout. Every human being within a radius of six miles from ground zero will be vaporized, as will most buildings … Out to a radius of 20 miles most people will be dead or lethally injured,” and those “thirty-five to forty miles away who happen to glance at the blast would be instantly blinded, as the flash burned their retinas.”7

Far from being hyperbolic, Caldicott’s central idea—that “[w]e’ve developed something so incredibly dangerous that we can’t live with it”—struck a chord with millions of citizens across the world.8 A global disarmament movement arose by the late 1970s to combat the revival of the .9 But more specifically, epitomized in the fact that Caldicott was a , fear of a nuclear war and concern for the future of life on the planet aggrieved many women by the late 20th century who felt their trepidation was unique to their gender. As this dissertation traces, many American, British and European women began to gather together in the mid-1970s through a series of conferences organized to extrapolate connections between , nonviolence and feminism. Out of these meetings, participants contended that regardless of their national, class, political and racial differences, they shared the view that dangerous and deluded power relations jeopardized the future of the planet, and that as women they must take charge of eradicating these perils. Such an argument and agreement among

Western women was not new. Since the early 19th century, women had defined their peace activism and social reform by their difference from men, and they had positioned their work as an extension of their unique predilection toward conflict resolution and compassion for others.

7 Helen Caldicott, “The world is moving rapidly,” Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, H.C. Statements, Arm Race General, SSC. She used this well-worn scenario to break through her audience’s “psychic numbing.” She borrowed the term from psychiatrist Robert Lifton who used it to describe a state of denial, akin to Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s first stage of grief in her landmark book On Death and Dying (1969). See Helen Caldicott, A Desperate Passion: An Autobiography ( and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996), 172. 8 Helen Caldicott, “Dr. Helen Caldicott- August 6, 1977, Faneuil Hall, Boston,” Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder H.C. Statements, Arm Race General; Helen Caldicott, “Helen Caldicott speech September 27, 1980 at Hunter College,” Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder H.C. Statements, Arm Race General, SSC. 9 Office of the Historian, “Détente and , 1969–1979,” U.S. Department of State, accessed February 14, 2016, https://history.state.gov/milestones/1969-1976/détente. 2

What was new in the late 1970s and 1980s, though, as this dissertation reveals, was that many women in the Western world borrowed tenets from the second wave of feminism and a growing environmental consciousness to “ecologically” connect a variety of oppressions afflicting women and life on earth. Focused on this women’s movement, this dissertation presents a series of interrelated arguments about the of their ideas and protest.

This dissertation shows that in demanding that private nightmares of both the Cold War and more intimate experiences of violence should be a legitimate part of public discourse, many women—through the opportunities afforded by seminars, direct actions, organizations and peace camps—claimed “that ecological right” when they rooted nuclear war and technology, alongside , , , classism and environmental degradation, in systems of violence, domination and male-controlled power relations.10 In doing so, tens of thousands of women, at the height of the movement, dramatically expanded what constituted a women’s or feminist issue. In appropriating concepts of ecology to link various injustices to each other, they consequently linked different women to one another. It was an effort to move beyond the factionalism that had robbed earlier feminists of solidarity across race, class and sexuality.

Movement participants instead declared, in the words of one British woman, “A Woman in

Russia is the same as myself, the same emotions, leading the same sort of life.”11

As this dissertation asserts, their philosophy hinged on a reclamation of qualities deemed feminine, notably a proclivity toward conflict resolution, empathy and consensus-driven

10 “That ecological right” was part of the Unity Statement of the Women’s Pentagon Action (WPA), an organization and event within the movement, as discussed in Chapter 2. Women’s Pentagon Action, “Women Return to , Nov. 15-16, 1981,” Women’s Pentagon Action (hereafter WPA) Papers, CGDA Collective Box, Women’s International Resource Center (WIRE) through Women’s Assistance, Folder Women’s Pentagon Action, then Mid-Atlantic Organizing Group (Philadelphia), Swarthmore College Peace Collection (hereafter SCPC), Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, . 11 “The Greenham Factor,” Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, Box 3 of 26, Folder 10a Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp 1984, 1989, SSC; Barbara Harford and Sarah Hopkins, Greenham Common: Women at the Wire (London: The Women’s Press, Ltd., 1984), 43. 3 . While not immune to criticism, especially from other women and feminists, movement participants who embraced these traits celebrated their own democratic governance— in fact, charging that the rest of the world needed to learn such skills. It was an indisputably essentialist view of women and men. Yet, as Independent writer Fay Weldon commented in

2000, gender was a separating power in the 1980s and a major component of the women’s movement. She wrote, “It is hard for a new generation to comprehend just how alarming the

MAD [mutually-assured destruction] years were. Hard for today’s young women to comprehend how far apart in attitude men and women were: how easy it was to categorise all men as violent aggressors and all women as nurturers.”12 Indicative of the appeal of separatism, though not its concurrent alienating power, the vast majority of women in the movement chose to organize as women and by women, physically and ideologically excluding men.

These ideas, which ostensibly sought to be totally inclusive of all women, initially attracted a plurality of participants, not only from different nations, but within America and

Britain, from disparate racial, class and age backgrounds. In its early years, the movement numbered participants in the hundreds; by the early ‘80s, tens of thousands were involved in specific actions and associated with certain organizations. Conferences, seminars and workshops, first in Britain and Western Europe and later America, initiated the movement in the mid- to late

1970s, which lent it a certain scholarly feel as many of its earliest participants were feminist academics and seasoned activists. Still, it also attracted and trained many political novices, often young women, and housewives. Many involved, in America and Britain especially, eschewed traditional politics, expecting little from left-leaning Democrats and the Labour Party, in these respective countries. Evidenced by the growing gender gap in voting patterns, however,

12 Fay Weldon, “Goodbye and thank you, Greenham women. We owe you,” (London, England), January 2, 2000, Jayne and Juliet Papers (Ref Np. 7JAN), Box 1, Women’s Library (hereafter WL), London School of Economics, London, England. 4 some did become involved in conventional channels. Often older women and mothers advocated for a particular Congressional representative or member of Parliament in the hopes of securing more peaceful and equitable government policy. But in general, movement members viewed themselves as ‘above’ the state. Seeing their governments as far from representative and democratic, many concluded that their activism had to operate beyond elected officials and standard liberal methods.

From this assessment, direct actions such as the Women’s Pentagon Actions in

November of 1980 and 1981 materialized, and evidenced by this march and encirclement of the

Pentagon in Washington D.C., nonviolent was a major thread in the movement. Taking cues from the , the and environmental and anti- demonstrations, women “witnessed” against the Pentagon and other military facilities by blockading, invading and theatrically weaving webs of yarn, ribbon, flowers and other symbols of life around these perceived places of evil. Beyond conferences and planned actions, women erected and maintained peace camps outside military installations around

Britain, America and Western Europe, the first and most famous of which was Greenham

Common Women’s Peace Camp west of London, England.

In some places lasting well beyond the 1980s, these peace camps—representative of the larger movement—always remained in some way a focused demonstration against the Cold War and military priorities. Yet as Chapters Four and Five argue, they possessed a twofold purpose, both to publicize the insidiousness of military technology through continual encampment near it, and to provide women with an alternative community governed by women’s consensus decision- making, egalitarianism and back-to-the-land simplicity. This latter aspect deeply mattered to the vast majority of participants. Living at the camps and participating in their feminist experiment

5 became for many a personally transformative time in their lives for a variety of reasons, but on the whole, because it empowered them as women. The movement, which arose out of a reinvigorated arms race and a string of environmental disasters including Love Canal and Three Mile Island, acquainted many with feminism and political organizing and incentivized women to form powerful friendships and alliances. One woman, Ginette Leach, captured this significance in the winter of 1984 while staying at the Greenham Common Women’s Peace

Camp outside of London, England: “Could we live together in such harmony without the tension of cruise [missiles], without the mud and cold and physical discomfort? Its [sic] hard to separate these things. Is it the bad which makes it good?”13 That she implied women needed an excuse as extreme as nuclear weapons to come together signaled the movement’s sincere desire to unite many women within their experiment; that its lasting effect plateaued at the level of individual empowerment suggested its inability to craft and sustain a united front.

This dissertation argues that as the movement weathered the 1980s, its philosophy failed to bridge powerful differences of identity and experience. Lead organizer Ynestra King dejectedly pondered in 1984, “Can feminism be a movement of all women without invalidating the experience and concerns of some women?”14 At meetings, in organizations and in camping, interpersonal conflicts divorced women from one another. The decision to exclude men and adolescent boys alienated some. Straight women felt overwhelmed by the numbers and behavior of , the latter viewing the movement as the one place they could be themselves. Some members appreciated the consensus-driven nature of the movement, seeing it as their rebellion against typical power relations and . Others groaned from the tedium, and contended

13 Ginette Leach, “20th-22nd Jan 1984,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL. 14 Ynestra King, “A Story—Thinking about Seneca,” in Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice (hereafter WEFPJ), “Happy New Years!” 1984, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 7, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Newsletters + Mailings 1983-85, SSC. 6 only women with enough time and money could afford such long and meandering organizing.

Many valued the anarchic nature of the movement, especially its belief in unstructured, nonviolent civil disobedience. Yet these actions offended others. It was an unworkable attempt to simultaneously unite all women behind common values while also encouraging individual spontaneity and expression. In the movement’s varied sites and moments, minority women expressed feelings of tokenism, and planners, try as they might, could not attract and accommodate more low-income and women of color. Its international nature also revealed that there were insurmountable differences based on disparate national experiences. Finally, that women audaciously believed they could take on the military-industrial complex disclosed their ill-fated utopianism. The chapters that follow analyze this philosophically poignant yet unsustainable effort by women as they explore participants’ inheritance and reimagination of ideas of women’s liberation, ecology and nonviolence.

We know a great deal about worldwide anti-nuclear agitation in the late 20th century, and historians have acknowledged women’s involvement in these peace and environmental campaigns.15 We also know much about the Cold War. Its recent scholarship includes citizen diplomats, human rights activists and other non-officials like participants of the women’s

15 See Ruth Brandon, The Burning Question: The Anti-Nuclear Movement Since 1945 (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1988); , Peace: A History of Movements and Ideas (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Barbara Epstein, Political Protest and Cultural : Nonviolent in the 1970s and 1980s (Berkeley and : University of , 1993); Matthew Evangelista, Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999); Kyle Harvey, American Anti-Nuclear Activism: 1975-1990: The Challenge of Peace (2014); Jerome Price, The Antinuclear Movement (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1982); R. Rochon, Mobilizing for Peace: The Antinuclear Movements in Western Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988); Jennifer Smith, The Anti-Nuclear Movement (Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press, 2003); Pam Solo, From Protest to Policy: Beyond the Freeze to Common Security (Pensacola, FL: Ballinger Publishing Company, 1988); Lawrence S. Wittner, One World or None: A History of the World Movement Through 1953 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995); Lawrence S. Wittner, Resisting the Bomb: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1954- 1970 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997); Lawrence S. Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the Present (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003). 7 movement who influenced the conflict’s trajectory.16 Women’s history has interpreted developments up to and through the second wave of feminism, covering projects of women’s liberation and their successes and failures.17 But at the intersection of these fields and historical developments, we should consider the idea of a separate “feminist or women’s ” in the late ‘70s and ‘80s, as participants tagged it, that included a variety of women, upwards of tens of thousands, in fact. For one, this movement should receive scholarly attention. It is recent women’s history which is important to share. Beyond telling it for the sake of telling it, though, the story of this movement is an important narrative to add to our existing knowledge and interpretations of women’s history. It suggests a longer, temporal trajectory for second-wave feminism. It also shows that problematic ideas and attitudes associated with women’s liberation

16 See Archie Brown, The Gorbachev Factor (New York: , 1996); Archie Brown, Seven Years that Changed the World: Perestroika in Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History, Reprint (London: Penguin Books, 2006); Melvyn P. Leffler, For the Soul of Mankind: The , the , and the Cold War (New York: Hill and Wang, 2008); Robert Service, The End of the Cold War, 1985-1991 (New York: PublicAffairs, 2015); Jeremi Suri explains, “Explaining the End of the Cold War: A New Historical Consensus?” Journal of Cold War Studies 4, no. 4 (Fall 2002), 60-92, Odd Arne Westad, ed. Reviewing the Cold War: Approaches, Interpretations, Theory (London: Frank Cass, 2000); Richard H. Immerman and Petra Goedde, eds., The Oxford Handbook of the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); Sarah B. Snyder, Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War: A Transnational History of the Helsinki Network (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Daniel C. Thomas, The Helsinki Effect: International Norms, Human Rights, and the Demise of (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). 17 See and Linda Gordon, Dear Sisters: Dispatches From The Women's Liberation Movement (New York: Basic Books, 2000); Stephanie Coontz, A Strange Stirring: and American Women at the Dawn of the (New York: Basic Books, 2011); Susan J. Douglas, Where the Are: Growing Up with the Mass Media (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1994); Alice Echols, Daring to be Bad: in America, 1967-1975 (Minneapolis: University of Press, 1989); Sara M. Evans, Tidal Wave: How Women Changed America at Century’s End (New York: Free Press, 2003); Judith Ezekiel, Feminism in the Heartland. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2002); Laura Kaplan, The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Service (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Wendy Kline, Bodies of Knowledge: Sexuality, Reproduction, and Women's Health in the Second Wave (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010); Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo, Daughters of Aquarius: Women of the Sixties (Lawrence: University Press of , 2009); Jane J. Mansbridge, Why We Lost the ERA (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986); Elaine Tyler May, America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation (New York: Basic Books, 2010); Sandra Morgen, Into Our Own Hands: The Women’s Health Movement in the United States, 1969- 1990 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2002); Jennifer Nelson, Women of Color and the Movement (New York and London: Press, 2003); Ruth Rosen, The World Split Open: How the Women’s Movement Changed America (New York: Penguin Books, 2000); Benita Roth, Separate Roads to Feminism: Black, Chicana, and White Feminist Movements in America’s Second Wave (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 8 of the ‘60s and ‘70s lasted longer than previously thought and profoundly influence present-day feminism. Historiographical inclusion of women’s disarmament efforts contributes to Cold War scholarship by showing the permeability of the Iron Curtain and women as a vocal minority actively traversing it. Finally, the movement’s very existence, regardless of its achievements or its shortcomings, also works to disrupt the notion that nothing radically left occurred in the West in the late ‘70s and ‘80s. The women’s story thus aids other histories on these decades that also complicate the supposed veneer of apathy and conservatism.

The Origins of the Movement

At the nexus of peace, ecology and women’s political activism, the women’s movement emerged by the late 1970s in reaction to a reviving Cold War and new environmental hazards.

Informed by pre-existing and earlier women’s activism in modern environmentalism, peace and women’s rights, it crafted a gendered analysis against all manifestations of violence. Framed by the Cold War, the movement’s more limited focus on nuclear disarmament materialized out of decades of protest against nuclear technology, beginning with the atomic bomb. Some of the bomb’s earliest critics included the very physicists who discovered the nuclear chain reaction and aided in constructing the first nuclear weapons during World War II under the codenamed

“Manhattan Project.” Many of them concluded the bomb should not be used combatively, but nonetheless, after a test detonation in July 1945, on August 6th and 9th, 1945, atomic bombs leveled the cities of and Nagasaki under the orders of President Harry Truman.18 This early conflict between physicists and government and military officials showed an increasingly

18 Wittner, One World or None, 3-13, 18-35; Smith, The Anti-Nuclear Movement, 10-13, 31-32; Cortright, Peace: A History of Movements and Ideas, 126-193; Rochon, Mobilizing for Peace, 2. For more on the Manhattan Project, see Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986); James P. Delgado, Nuclear Dawn: The Atomic Bomb from the Manhattan Project to the Cold War (New York and Oxford, England: Osprey, 2009). 9 polarized debate over nuclear technology. Historian Lawrence Wittner explains, “To the official guardians of national security and to others who thought in traditional terms, it offered a splendid opportunity to bolster national military strength and to humble competing nations. To a growing number of others, and particularly to those farther from the levers of power, the Bomb represented a perilous lurch toward annihilation.”19 Beyond the quandary nuclear weapons presented for peacetime , they posed a particularly thorny issue in the immediate aftermath of World War II as a military and ideological conflict was increasingly apparent between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Inherent in escalating tensions during World War II, the

Cold War developed from the incompatible ambitions and , in democratic and in Marxism-Leninism, of the two emerging superpowers. Scholars have cited numerous reasons why this “war” started and lasted so long, but above all, the existence of the bomb made irrevocably worse. The Soviet Union had launched its own bomb project in 1943 when it was clear that , Great Britain and America had undertaken similar research. The ensuing arms race fostered misperception, defensiveness and competition.20

In reaction to the escalating Cold War, many others joined dissenting scientists in calling for international control and gradual elimination of nuclear weapons.21 While World War II

19 Wittner, One World or None, 35-36. 20 In exploring the beginning and prolongation of the Cold War, scholars have cited, for instance, the U.S. and U.S.S.R.’s differing views on the future of Germany and Eastern Europe as well as their divergent ideas of how peace and arms reductions could develop. Melvyn P. Leffler, For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War (New York: Hill and Wang, 2008); John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History, Reprint (London: Penguin Books, 2006); Raymond L. Garthodd, Detente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan, Revised Edition (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1994); Campbell Craig and Fredrik Logevall, America’s Cold War: The Politics of Insecurity, Reprint (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of , 2012); Campbell Craig and Sergey S. Radchenko, The Atomic Bomb and the Origins of the Cold War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008); Wittner, One World or None, 17-18. 21 Scientists formed the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) and the National Committee on Atomic Information (NCAI) by late 1945, and by 1946 scientists in Chicago had begun to publish the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The unprecedented scale of risks and hazards associated with nuclear technology sparked a sense of social responsibility among scientists, encouraging many to think about the role of science in public affairs. Furthermore, this critique of technology and interest in international control of atomic existed in the U.S. and U.S.S.R., and their respective blocs. By 1957, scientists began to meet annually at the international Pugwash Conference on 10 made pacifist dissent in the U.S. largely unpopular and unacceptable, conscientious objectors alongside members of international pacifist organizations like the War Resisters’ International

(WRI), the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) and the Women’s International

League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) joined politicized scientists to protest America’s new weapon and military policies.22 In particular, early protest targeted President Dwight D.

Eisenhower’s military augmentation under his mutually-assured destruction (MAD) program. In rather perverse logic, the basis of MAD was that a larger nuclear arsenal would prevent war since neither side would want to strike first. By 1952, the U.S. detonated its first hydrogen bomb, and the Soviet Union followed suit less than a year later. In this context, international opposition arose against nuclear testing and the dangers of radioactive fallout. Yet, in one of the first moments of diplomatic arms controls, the Soviets’ May 1955 Disarmament Plan to the United

Nations included a test ban, and by 1958, Soviet leader announced unilateral suspension of Soviet tests. That same year, a conference of scientific experts in Geneva proposed a verification system in which technicians would monitor suspicious explosions via a number of control stations. Diplomats responded to such prompts, and while the 1958 trilateral moratorium by the Soviets, British and Americans was betrayed by all three, efforts by scientists as well as concerted international opposition against nuclear tests eventually led to the 1963 Test Ban

Treaty. In addition to scientists, the anti-nuclear movement grew in the 1950s and early 1960s to include some large and powerful organizations, such as the National Committee for a Sane

Nuclear Policy (SANE) in the U.S., and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in

Science and dedicated to the eradication of nuclear weapons. Wittner, One World or None, 59-66; Smith, The Anti-Nuclear Movement, 13-15, 39-43, 52; Cortright, Peace, 129-132; Evangelista, Unarmed Forces, 25- 44. 22 Wittner, One World or None, 40-43, 59-66; Robert D. Holsworth, Let Your Life Speak: A Study of Politics, , and Antinuclear Weapons Activism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989); James Tracy, Direct Action: Radical from the Union Eight to the (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), Marian Mollin, Radical Pacifism in Modern America: Egalitarianism and Protest (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006); Smith, The Anti-Nuclear Movement, 24-30. 11

Britain.23

Widespread protest against nuclear technology subsided thereafter, with many peace activists in America, Britain and Western Europe distracted by the War, and the calm lasted through much of the 1970s during what the U.N. dubbed its “Disarmament Decade.”

The Cold War had finally reached a moment of détente with the signing of the Strategic

Limitation Treaty (SALT I) in 1972, which limited the deployment of intercontinental and sea- launched ballistic missiles and anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems, and with the 1974

Vladivostok Agreement which set additional nuclear limits. But as the uneasily concluded and as treaties such as SALT I materialized into weak controls of nuclear arsenals—

SALT I, for instance, did not control the replacement of old weapons by new ones, and the

Vladivostok Agreement mentioned no quota for nuclear warheads—many in the Western world began to realize that strategic and tactical nuclear weapons arsenals had actually increased throughout the 1970s. Both superpowers premiered more technologically advanced nuclear weapons. Beyond this, many also recognized that peace efforts in the late 1960s and early 1970s by both East and West Bloc world leaders were less than genuine. Diplomatic actions to increase communication across the Iron Curtain and work towards arms reductions served instead to distract citizens from domestic issues and dispel internal dissent in many of these countries.24 Détente, it seemed, was a . To achieve nuclear parity, America began to develop both cruise missiles—slow but highly accurate rockets that flew at altitudes low enough to evade radar and air defenses—along with an enhanced warhead, known as

“the neutron bomb.” Meanwhile, the Soviet Union started to deploy new models of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICMs) and a new submarine ballistic missile system. The

23 Smith, The Anti-Nuclear Movement, 15-16; Evangelista, Unarmed Forces, 45-89. 24 See Jeremi Suri, Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). 12 bigger the missiles, the better for the Soviets, as they sought to assuage their rival’s technological advantage. Further contributing to the perilous world situation, America and the

Soviets no longer held a monopoly on nuclear weapons. The British, French, Chinese, Israelis,

Indians and Pakistanis either possessed weapons or soon would.25

By the late 1970s, the designation “Disarmament Decade” seemed laughable. President

Gerald Ford shelved SALT II and refused to submit to the Senate for ratification the Peaceful

Nuclear Explosion Treaty of 1976 and the Threshold Test Ban Treaty. Even President Jimmy

Carter, his successor, who had been known for his support of nuclear disarmament, equivocated between domestic efforts to reduce arms and a more aggressive foreign policy. A

Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban went unsigned as both U.S. officials and the new Prime

Minister and her ministry of defense cited the 1979 Soviet invasion of

Afghanistan as a telling example of East Bloc aggression. Elected the same year in a

Conservative Party victory, Thatcher championed a Western nuclear buildup as she argued that

“a -free world … was neither attainable nor even desirable.”26 SALT II, which proposed impressive reductions in weapons, a comprehensive test ban and a halt to the production of nuclear warheads and launchers, failed to secure a two-thirds Senate vote. In the early months of 1981, treaty talks stalled indefinitely. Both the U.S. and Soviets had augmented their strategic nuclear arsenals, so that by 1981, as Carter left the White House, both superpowers possessed unprecedented numbers of strategic nuclear missiles including plans for the MX missile, a new highly accurate intercontinental ballistic missile that could carry ten nuclear warheads. Carter’s one term in office also signaled that hawkish forces in the

U.S. “secured their greatest victory with the successful conquest of power by

25 Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition, 1-20. 26 Quoted in Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition, 97. 13 and other champions of a nuclear buildup,” according to historian Lawrence Wittner.27

Contributing to this anxious time in the Cold War, on December 12th, 1979, NATO announced its plans for the installment of U.S. cruise and Pershing II missiles throughout Britain and Europe. The plan was for these missiles, each with the capacity to destroy fifteen towns the size of Hiroshima, to be placed at strategic locations in Great Britain, Italy, Holland, Belgium and Germany beginning in the fall of 1983.28 Reacting to this decision, peace and disarmament groups blossomed in northern Europe, Britain and America. The most significant outbreaks of anti-nuclear agitation began in Holland, Britain and the Nordic countries and spread from there.

Women proved to be one of the largest, most vocal sectors of protest in America, Britain and across Western Europe. As many expressed feeling “total horror and panic,” they mobilized. “I had a feeling that many women felt as I did, however,” one woman explained, “and finally put an advertisement in , asking women to contact me if they had had dreams about nuclear war. All through that summer in 1980, I received letter after letter from women talking about their own bad dreams.”29

Indeed, by the late 1970s, women in several Western nations called for disarmament.

Their interest in peace grew out of greater opportunities for citizen diplomacy in the Cold War, reviving peace activism and women’s liberation movements that empowered them to speak their minds. Such an investment in peace and that they worked in international circles was not new though. Since the late 19th century, women from far-flung countries—mostly from the industrializing West but not exclusively—had networked and created transnational organizations out of pre-existing female networks from , social reform, , peace and

27 Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition, 106, 97-105. 28 Ibid., 99-102; Alice Cook and Gwyn Kirk, eds., Greenham Women Everywhere: Dreams, Ideas and Actions from the Women’s Peace Movement (Boston: , 1983), 7-9; Jean Stead, “Greenham Common: 25 Years On,” September 2006, Jayne and Juliet Nelson Papers (Ref Np. 7JAN), Box 1, WL. 29 Cook and Kirk, Greenham Women Everywhere, 13. 14 suffragism.30 Many saw nonviolence as a women’s issue. Organizations like the Women’s

International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) articulated that women, tired of male patriarchal destruction of human lives, were the ones “charged with the future of childhood and with the care of the helpless and the unfortunate.”31 This largely white middle-class saw women’s distinctive morality and concern for the preservation of life as evidence that women were different from men and possessed an inherent, or learned, maternal ability to bring equity and justice to the world.32 Beyond pacifist and organizations, early Cold War activists, in groups like (WSP), also operated on this premise of difference.33 Demanding the cessation of nuclear atmospheric testing by protesting as concerned wives and mothers in their high heels and pearls, baby carriages in tow, WSP members rested on their gender difference to carve out a unique niche for their political peace work, effectively demonstrating that the rise of conservatism during the early Cold War did not stymie political

30 See Leila Rupp, Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’s Movement (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). See also Amy Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1993), 187- 232. Women traveling internationally to meet with other women over peace concerns—and to express some kind of international female solidarity—was not new. Swerdlow describes how members of the peace organization Women Strike for Peace in the early to mid-1960s traveled to Geneva, Hanoi, Rome, The Hague, , Copenhagen and beyond to discuss and protest nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War with women from these respective countries. See also Aili Mari Tripp, “The Evolution of Transnational : Consensus, Conflict, and New Dynamics,” in : Transnational Women’s Activism, Organizing and Human Rights, eds. Myra Marx Ferree and Aili Mari Tripp (New York and London: New York University Press, 2006), 51-75. Tripp identifies three waves of transnational feminist mobilization, from 1880-1930, from 1945-1975 and 1985 to the present, and she argues the most recent one grew out of feminist principles with the rise of the second wave of feminism. 31 Quoted in Harriet Hynam Alonso, Peace as a Women’s Issue: A History of the U.S. Movement for and Women’s Rights (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1993), 64, 5. 32 Linda Gordon, “The Peaceful Sex? On Feminism and the Peace Movement,” National Women’s Studies Association Journal 2, no. 4 (Autumn 1990): 627. 33 Rory Dicker, A History of U.S. Feminisms (Berkeley: Seal Press, 2008), 45-46; Andrea Estrepa, “Taking the White Gloves Off: Women Strike for Peace and ‘the Movement,’ 1967-73,” in Feminist Coalitions: Historical Perspectives on Second-Wave Feminism in the United States, ed. Stephanie Gilmore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 84-104; Susan Lynn, Progressive Women in Conservative : Racial Justice, Peace, and Feminism, 1945 to the 1960s (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992), 111-40; Amy C. Schneidhorst, Building a Just and Secure World: Popular Front Women’s Struggle for Peace and Justice in Chicago During the 1960s (New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2011), vii-x; Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace, ix- xii. 15 activity and that maternal-based arguments could affect national politics.34

By the late 1970s, as many women began to mobilize for disarmament, the second wave of feminism in America, Britain and Western Europe importantly lent a new theoretical sophistication to their political activism. Encompassed in the popularity of ’s

The Second Sex (1949) and ’s The Feminine Mystique (1963), a new groundswell of feminist activism arose in the 1960s. In America, inspired by the civil rights movement, some women, generally older, championed civil rights for women and worked through formal organizations like the National Organization for Women (NOW).35 Yet other feminists, generally younger and with experience in the civil rights and student movements of the 1960s, called themselves “women’s liberationists” and advocated for more far-reaching change.36 The second wave generated a variety of feminisms; their titles—radical, cultural, socialist and such—fail to capture the drama and often amorphous nature of the movement. The preponderance of ideas importantly signaled the movement’s “energy of internal conflict,” and help explain why some women had trouble working with one another.37 Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, powerful fault lines formed along differences of race, class, sexuality and ideology and hindered much cross- cultural organizing.38 By the mid- to late 1970s, many gravitated toward ideas of women’s unique, celebratory nature—dubbed as and by academics—in the

34 Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace, 49-96. During the Vietnam War, WSP and other mothers-based peace groups moved from anti-nuclear concerns to anti-war concerns, like draft resistance. Providing guidance for many in the anti-war movement, they operated as the “mothers” for the wave of student activism called the New Left. See Estrepa, “Taking the White Gloves Off,” 86-89, 96, 99-104; Lynn, Progressive Women, 11; Schneidhorst, Building a Just and Secure World, vii-x. See also Helen Laville, Cold War Women: The International Activities of American Women's Organizations (Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 2002). Laville looks at early Cold War female peace workers’ activities, albeit on an international scale, arguing that the 1950s should not be castigated as a period of inactivity and political apathy for U.S. women. Rather, women involved in promoting internationalism in this decade showcase their political and nationalist identities. 35 Echols, Daring to be Bad, 15; Evans, Tidal Wave, 24-25. 36 Evans, Tidal Wave, 21-22, 26-27; Kline, Bodies of Knowledge, 1; Lynn, Progressive Women in Conservative Times, 5. 37 Quoted in Evans, Tidal Wave, 38. 38 Evans, Tidal Wave, 38. See also Roth, Separate Roads to Feminism; Nelson, Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement. 16 hopes of sidestepping insurmountable differences between women and instead fostering women- only spaces and so-called feminine traits.39 The worldwide movement of women that rallied around disarmament and other life-or-death issues facing the planet into the 1980s inherited these ideas, and also felt that gender separatism and essentialization could be useful.

Despite factionalism, women’s liberation movements in Britain, America and Western

Europe led to unprecedented demands by women for equal rights in employment and education, available contraception and abortion and a wholesale cultural reassessment of gender roles and expectations about women. Feminists seized topics such as the family, marriage, sexuality, health care and other highly intimate matters to publicize and politicize the personal. In particular, many gravitated toward the then-unspoken topic of male-on-female violence.

Campaigns against , and domestic rallied many feminists to identify violence based within gender difference. Through the early 1970s, women liberationists tended to accentuate only personal experiences of men’s domestic and sexual abuse, not yet connecting these episodes of violence to the larger issue of global nuclear and state militarism. Still, their critique and publicity of intimate partner abuse allowed a new generation of feminists by the mid- to late 1970s to make those broader connections.40 Furthermore, as much as some women’s

39 Evans, Tidal Wave, 142-158. 40 For the British story, see Jill Liddington, The Road to Greenham Common: Feminism and Anti-Militarism in Britain since 1820 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1989, 1991), 198-203. Liddington argues that women’s liberation profoundly impacted women in Britain, as seen through numerous small women-only consciousness- raising groups and new demands for equal pay, work and educational opportunities and cultural change around women’s roles in the public and private. While she argues that many feminists targeted domestic violence, she explains that many women did not take up anti-militarism as a feminist issue until later, by the late 1970s, and during the 1970s, extant women’s peace groups like the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) suffered low membership. See Evans, Tidal Wave, 18-60, for an explanation of the women’s liberation movement in America and its focus on publicizing . See also Marlene LeGates, In Their Time: A in Western (London: Routledge, 2001), 327-367 and Geoff Eley, Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850-2000 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 366-383, for their chapters on feminism’s rebirth in Europe and Britain in the late 1960s which emerged out of the New Left (post-1968 for many young European women), established labor movements and older female networks of activism that existed through the mid-Cold War years. By the mid- to late 1970s, feminists had turned their attention to anti- violence campaigns and Eley explains that many linked male-on-female abuse with “structural violence” 17 liberationists attacked the notion of women’s distinctive morality and innate interest in conflict resolution, many others did not forget or forsake these ideas.41

By the mid-1970s, some women turned to the issue of geopolitical military policy to see yet another arena from which they were profoundly excluded. They reimagined that disarmament could constitute a feminist or “women’s issue.” Throughout the 1970s, arms controls, new human rights protocol and a heightened focus at the national and supranational level on the intersections between women and economic development led to unprecedented international attention on women, captured in events such as the 1975 U.N. World Conference on Women in

Mexico City. These trends made available new channels of citizen diplomacy and dialogue between women of different nations, and encouraged women to see themselves as important actors on an international stage.42 Beyond transforming anti-militarism into another struggle for inclusion within political, military and scientific communities, large numbers of women began to elsewhere—the arms race and environmental destruction (374). Furthermore, Eley asserts that “[i]nternationalism was essential” in women’s liberation; American feminism predated the revivals in Europe and Britain. He shows they were not only reading each other’s magazines and essays and observing each other’s actions, but several traveled between countries to participate in each other’s groups and demonstrations (376-377). 41 While by the mid-1970s many feminists gravitated towards “”—that women were different than men in important and special ways—many others remained disaffected by the assertion that women were more peaceful, empathetic and nurturing than men. See Estrepa, “Taking the White Gloves Off,” 102. Estrepa traces how some women’s liberationists refused to work with the women’s peace organization Women Strike for Peace (WSP) because of the “longtime association of women’s peace activism with the stereotypical image of women as nurturers” (102). 42 Much has been written about human rights ideas and protocol fostering citizen diplomacy, East-West exchanges and women’s rights by the second half of the Cold War. See Snyder, Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War; Thomas, The Helsinki Effect; Paul Rubinson, “‘For Our Soviet Colleagues’: Scientific Internationalism, Human Rights, and the Cold War,” in The Human Rights Revolution: An International History, eds. Akira Iriye, Petra Goedde, and William Hitchcock (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 245-264; Allida Black, “Are Women ‘Human’? The UN and the Struggle to Recognize Women’s Rights as Human Rights,” in The Human Rights Revolution, 133-155; Kelly J. Shannon, “The Right to : Women’s Rights as Human Rights and the International Movement to End Female Genital Mutilation,” in The Human Rights Revolution, 285-310; Jan Eckel and Samuel Moyn, eds., The Breakthrough: Human Rights in the 1970s (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014); Celia Donert, “Whose ? Gender, Ideology, and Human Rights at the 1975 World Congress of Women in East Berlin,” in The Breakthrough, 68-87; Myra Marx Ferree, “Globalization and Feminism: Opportunities and Obstacles for Activism in the Global Arena” in Global Feminism, 3-23; Margaret Snyder, “Unlikely Godmother: The UN and the Global Women’s Movement,” in Global Feminism, 24-50. Sarah Snyder, Thomas, Iriye et al. and Moyn identify the 1970s as an important decade for human rights protocol and transnational exchange. Others like Black, Shannon, Donert, Ferree and Margaret Snyder examine the massive increase in women’s activism and dialogue, often surrounding women’s rights and feminisms, across the Iron Curtain in the 1970s. 18 express in a series of conferences in the mid- to late 1970s that they possessed unique philosophical insights into the problems of war, violence and the looming Cold War.

Piecing It Together: Conferences of Feminism, Nonviolence and Ecology

Beginning in 1975, women in America, Britain and Western Europe took their extant on violence and began to consider its wider consequences. That summer, at the War Resisters’ International (WRI) triennial in Holland, around thirty British, European and American women met for their first ever women’s workshop. These were women like

Jones, a British woman in her mid-twenties who had grown up a Christian pacifist with parents who took her on Marches as a child.43 Remaining involved in Christian peace activism at university, thereafter she traveled to Copenhagen where the International

Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) collective was based—“where it all fell into place,” she recalled.44 Like Jones, other women throughout Britain and Western Europe arrived at the nexus of feminism and anti-militarism through similar means, often from a religious upbringing or previous activism in student politics, peace, environmentalism and feminism. At the IFOR collective, Jones met a Danish woman along with two Americans and one French woman, all of whom had “fallen for the women’s movement in a big way” and “had this vision of getting women in the peace movement together, as internationally as possible, and talking about feminism and the peace movement [which] seemed like a really exciting idea.”45

Convening their own workshop at the WRI triennial, those present felt that expanding

43 In Britain, from the late 1950s until the mid-1960s, the Against Nuclear War along with others like the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) marched to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston in early “ban the bomb” efforts. See Lawrence S. Wittner, Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), 59-60, 111. 44 Quoted in Liddington, The Road to Greenham Common, 205. 45 Ibid. 19 their feminist platform to include matters like peace was crucial, and that women needed to begin to organize on their own for these issues. One British participant recounted, “It was agreed generally that we needed a women-only event for women around the peace movement.”46 Such a statement reflected the widespread assessment by many women that the mixed-sex peace movement remained mired in sexism and “men’s political working traditions,” namely, more hierarchical organizations and less energy spent on the “doubts and fears of people.”47 After their workshop, a planning committee of women involved in WRI and

IFOR from five countries met throughout that winter. Mailing out over three hundred letters to survey if interested women existed, the committee received numerous responses. The result was another gathering. Around ninety women and ten children met in the July heat in a large farmhouse near Lyons, , to articulate the philosophical connections they felt between feminism and nonviolence.

Participants produced a document, “Women in the Nonviolent Movement,” that explicated their musing and tangled thinking: “If violence can be defined as the struggling for power over other people, we would like to ask whether the struggle for equal rights is striving for power and therefore violent? … (We would say that struggling for equal rights within the armed forces is bolstering up the patriarchal capitalist system and not revolutionary at all.) …

We would like to talk about these issues fully in the women’s movement.”48 Significantly, participants pegged violence—both personal and global—as a feminist issue and inherently the fault of men, and began the task of reappropriating maternalist values as feminist ones, a project that many women would undertake throughout the late 1970s and 1980s. Seizing the

46 Ibid. 47 Feminism and Nonviolence Study Group, Piecing It Together: Feminism and Nonviolence (Buckleigh, England: Feminism and Nonviolence Study Group, 1983), 44. 48 Quoted in Liddington, The Road to Greenham Common, 206. 20 idea of gender difference, they subversively imbued feminine nurturance and nonviolence with a positive, feminist value, and conversely, they universally blamed men with war and episodes of violence. Attendants at the Lyons gathering explained they wanted “to extend the positive value recognized by feminists of female nurturing to a world view, of nurturing the world.”49

This consideration of the many, related expressions of violence, and linking women to an antithetical, peaceful alternative, emerged out of disarmament and feminist conversations in the 1970s. But importantly, women also borrowed from the modern which proposed new, ecological ways of understanding the world. As much as the Feminine

Mystique served to awaken many women to the reasons for their unhappiness, ’s

Silent Spring (1962) served as a similar flashpoint for an environmental consciousness.50 While the origins of the modern environmentalism were varied, common to its many manifestations was the ecologically-informed idea that humans were as much part of the environment as all others species and systems. Ecology as a branch of had its origins in the late 19th century, but in the post-World War II era, its conceptual popularity spread. Postwar America and other Western industrial nations underwent a revolution in values as citizens began to critique endless abundance, consumption and unchecked technological innovation. People reassessed that there was no neat boundary between humans and nature, and this realization served as a powerful preventive for more heedless domination and exploitation of nature.51

49 Ibid. For additional explanations of this conference and the ones it generated, see Cynthia Cockburn, : Political and Gender Dynamics of Peace Movements (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 54-56; [Redacted], “Dear Sisters,” January 17, 1981, Women and Life on Earth Papers (hereafter WLOE Papers), Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 50 Published in 1962, biologist Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring served as a flashpoint for this burgeoning ecological consciousness as she exposed the hazards of synthetic chemicals and pesticides like DDT and showed these “elixirs of death” not as a panacea to aid American success but rather as carcinogenic weapons recklessly used to dominate nature. See Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1962); Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997). 51 The origins of the postwar modern environmental movement are many, but as Robert Gottlieb argues in Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2005), 21

As the modern environmental movement had a diversity of participants, one notable segment it engaged, especially in America, was women. Its ideas, as contained in Silent Spring, galvanized American women to care about environmental protection, albeit often through gendered eyes. Silent Spring, written in a factual yet emotive tone, appealed to women in its assertion of their greater intuition about nature. Even as it was dismissed as hysterical and hyperbolic, the book reached many women and challenged the way they viewed themselves and their relationships with the physical world. In the postwar era through the late 20th century, then, environmental toxins such as pesticides, radioactive fallout and later industrial waste spurred women to protest, often on behalf of their families’ health.52 Taken with the ideas of

postwar environmentalism should be understood as part of a long development and in response to urban and industrial changes since the late 19th century. As these changes pressured human and natural environments, people slowly started to value conservation, preservation and an ecological orientation. In The Greening of a Nation? Environmentalism in the United States since 1945 (Orlando and London: Harcourt Brace, 1998), Hal Rothman argues that conservation efforts of the early 20th century transitioned into preservation efforts in the postwar era through the Echo Dam Park battle and the Dinosaur National Monument, and slowly, preservation broadened into 1960s and 1970s environmentalism. Other historians specify that an ecological critique of suburban homebuilding and lifestyles played an important role in the emergence of environmentalism in the postwar era as suburbanites began to rethink their use of land and resources, and conserve them. See Chris Sellers, Crabgrass Crucible: Suburban Nature and the Rise of Environmentalism in Twentieth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012); Adam Rome, Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Other historians assert that a postwar environmental crisis was connected to the cotemporaneous urban crisis. See David Stradling and Richard Stradling, Where the River Burned: Cleveland, Carl Stokes, and the Collapse of Urban America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015). Some stress scientists’ role, “-scientists” as Michael Egan calls them, in mobilizing a postwar environmental movement. See Michael Egan, and the Science of Survival: The Remaking of American Environmentalism (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2009); Thomas Robertson, The Malthusian Moment: Global Population Growth and the Birth of American Environmentalism (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2012). New scholarship, such as Thomas Jundt’s Greening the Red, White, and Blue: The Bomb, Big Business, and Consumer Resistance in Postwar America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), argues that the modern environmental movement also has origins as early as World War II and the dropping of the atomic bombs in the form of consumer, anti-corporate capitalism resistance. Finally, others see postwar environmentalism also growing from 1960s social movements that stressed participatory democracy and citizen involvement in decision-making. See James Longhurst, Citizen (Medford, MA: Tufts University Press, 2010); Jeffrey Sanders, Seattle and the Roots of Urban Sustainability: Inventing Ecotopia (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010). In Make It a Peace: The Rise of Countercultural Environmentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), Frank Zelko argues that ’s nonviolent, direct action, countercultural environmentalism was also a critical part of the postwar environmental movement that historians have yet to examine. 52 See Nancy C. Unger, Beyond Nature's Housekeepers: American Women in Environmental History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). By the late 1970s, the environmental health disasters at the Three Mile Island and Love Canal, New York, reverberated in Americans’ minds and initiated what some called the modern environmental health movement in which women were a major force. See Lois Gibbs, Love Canal: The 22 ecology and burgeoning ecofeminist scholarship, the late-20th-century women’s movement inherited this gendered environmentalism and likewise positively revalued what many saw as women’s greater ability to care about the future of the planet.53

The autumn after the conference in Lyons, a Feminism and Nonviolence Study Group convened in England, organized by the women who had planned and attended the French meeting. Participants included feminists alongside women active in local peace groups and major ones like the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and the Campaign Against

Arms Trade (CAAT), as well as others engaged in the Labour Party and trade unions. They hoped that the group would unite feminists new to ideas of nonviolence with older female pacifists unacquainted with ideas of women’s liberation. Yet organizers soon discovered that their biggest hurdle was the dearth of literature on feminist nonviolence. One key source of theoretical insight was Barbara Deming, an influential American feminist and pacifist writer, whom the study group read voraciously. Deming, born in 1917, had long been involved in anti-

Birth of the Environmental Health Movement (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2011); Elizabeth Blum, Love Canal Revisited: Race, Class, and Gender in Environmental Activism (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011). Furthermore, growing recognition of what toxic waste sites did to humans coincided with the realization that minority communities often lived closest to environmental degraded or compromised areas, thus triggering the beginning of the movement by the late 20th century. See, for example, Eileen McGurty, Transforming Environmentalism: Warren County, PCBs, and the Origins of Environmental Justice (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2007). 53 Ecofeminism was first coined in 1974 by Françoise d’Eaubonne and first expressed by U.S. feminists at the 1980 Women and Life on Earth conference as a nascent theoretical addition to . ’s Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (1978) and other texts signaled that many American women by the late 1970s embraced the idea that women were different than men and that that could be a source of strength. Gradually, theorists turned to nature to define this difference and create a revolutionary : they articulated the idea that women and nature were grounded in one another through life cycles and reproduction. Both women and nature, they theorized, were used and understood by patriarchal science, medicine and leaders as objects to study, dissect and ultimately conquer or control. Religion, and then science and medicine, theorized men as objective, rational, and normal. Conversely women, along with nature, were depicted as irrational, uncontrollable but also passive. Such symbolic association with nature meant women were at once devalued and vulnerable but also conceptualized as more empathetic and attuned to holistic, ecological ways of thinking and being. See Evans, Tidal Wave, 208; Catriona Sandilands, The Good-Natured Feminist: Ecofeminism and the Quest for Democracy (Minneapolis: Press, 1999), 3-11; Carol Merchant, Earthcare: Women and the Environment (London: Routledge, 1996), 139-149. 23 nuclear and anti-racism work, at times even jailed for her activism.54 Influenced by ideas of

Gandhian nonviolent revolution, Deming saw a commitment to nonviolent discipline— interfering with an antagonist’s operations without injuring him—effectively dramatizing whatever issue was at stake and giving the nonviolent actor more control. In the 1970s,

Deming, by then a middle-aged woman who had recently come out as a , advocated that feminist anger and hatred of patriarchy did not discount the ability to be nonviolent. She crafted a nonviolent feminist philosophy hinged on female difference and separatism as a way to navigate rage against men. Her ideas complimented and thus fit a broader shift among some women by the mid-1970s, away from the goal of achieving parity with men and toward the dream of creating a celebratory of the female body and common values among women.55

The study group met regularly as members continued to read Deming along with new

American radical feminist theory, including works from Mary Daly, and ecofeminist Susan Griffin, all of which helped to solidify the juxtaposition in women’s minds of the nurturing, spiritual and oppressed female against the violent, technological and oppressive male.56 In an effort to share their insights, study group participants contributed to the British feminist magazine Shrew and produced a short publication entitled Piecing It

54 For more on Barbara Deming, see Martin Duberman, A Saving Remnant: The Radical Lives of Barbara Deming and David McReynolds (New York and London: The New Press, 2011). 55 Liddington, The Road to Greenham Common, 207-209; see also Evans, Tidal Wave, 142-158. Ms. Magazine contributor Karen Durbin testified that Deming’s ideas allowed her and others to navigate pacifism, which rang of passivity and docility, and women’s liberation, which suggested a female rage that bordered on violent reaction. Thanks to Deming, women like Durbin found a way to distinguish between the kind of anger that demanded change of another and that which demanded defeat or destruction of another. “Pacifism is a personal, deeply emotional sort of politics,” Durbin wrote, that required imaginative sympathy which rendered one incapable of killing or denigrating another as the enemy. See Karen Durbin, “A Pacifist Faces Her Anger,” Ms. Magazine, November 1974, 36. 56 Sasha Roseneil, Disarming Patriarchy: Feminism and Political Action at Greenham (Buckingham, England and Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1995), 21-22. See also Liddington, The Road to Greenham Common. She argues that one of the ways the women’s liberation movement in the 1970s was transnational was that women read each other theoretical writing beyond sharing news of each other’s actions and traveling to meet other feminists. 24

Together: Feminism & Nonviolence (1983). In it, members asserted feminist nonviolence did not render them passive, placid or prone. Rather, the group explained women could be more powerful in choosing nonviolence, which was “about abolishing power as we know it and redefining it as something common to all … shared power.”57

These writings laid the ideological terrain of the women’s movement. In what would become a major philosophical thread, the study group saw its interest in disarmament and nonviolence “as only one strand in the broader movement for social change … [with] the , the socialist parties and groups, the ecology movement, organisations working against racism, the gay movement, and the Women’s Liberation Movement.”58 Using ecological concepts to connect a plethora of problems, members argued peace meant more than an absence of war and that violence appeared in a variety of forms: “[W]e are constantly having to struggle against being tortured and brutalised with male tools of control, whether drugs or electric shocks, pins or pricks, operating knives or flick knives or just plain dirty money. This is structural violence at its most profound.”59

Importantly, their attack on patriarchy and the status quo indicated that the burgeoning movement saw itself as an alternative to the social conservatism of these years. The 1970s and

1980s were, to many Americans, Brits and Western Europeans, an era of pullback and reaction to the activism, reform and revolution of the 1960s. During the 1970s into the 1980s, America and Britain, in particular, underwent fundamental changes in society, politics and the economy.

57 Feminism and Nonviolence Study Group, Piecing It Together, 27. The study group differentiated nonviolence promoted by famous men like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. with that practiced by feminists. Informed by American radical feminist Andrea Dworkin and others, members noted that male-defined nonviolent tactics often did not recognize sexism as a serious oppression next to racism and ; as Dworkin wrote, “Any commitment to nonviolence which is real, which is authentic, must begin in the recognition of the forms and degrees of violence perpetuated against women by the gender class men.” See Andrea Dworkin, Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on (New York: Perigee Books, 1976), 71. 58 Feminism and Nonviolence Study Group, Piecing It Together, 50. 59 Ibid., 43. 25

Doctrines of neoliberal capitalism led to deregulation and privatization, and a culture of and, simultaneously, the ascendance of “” thrived. Many grew cynical of government and began to believe—in what was a dramatic reversal in mindset from previous decades—in the deregulation of business and cuts to welfare provisions.

Feminism, gay liberation and civil rights became the scapegoats for any and all societal ills.60

Yet, as this dissertation shows, it would be wrong to assume that all Americans and British embraced the private sector and consumer capitalism as new cultural norms. Indeed, as much as these decades witnessed social and financial conservatism, many others demanded the fulfillment of 1960s social movements. The politics of the women’s movement, the broader disarmament movement, environmentalism, gay rights and other civil rights campaigns into the

1980s substantiate that, though “liberals had little to cheer about in the 1980s,” the New Right did not replace or silence all liberal and left activism.61

Indicative that many in the women’s movement would attach themselves to nonhierarchical forms of organization, the Feminism and Nonviolence study group pioneered this trend. Piecing It Together was a collaborative effort, for example, with one woman writing a section, followed by the whole group revising it before publication. Study group members advocated decentralized consensus-driven decision-making in both their organization and also local politics. Indeed, they prophesized that by dismantling nation-states into smaller geographical regions and eradicating , such would breed conflict-free

60 , Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1991), 42, 64-70, 75-111, 229-280, 335-362; Evans, Tidal Wave, 176-186, 188-89; Philip Jenkins, Decade of Nightmares: The End of the Sixties and the Making of the Eighties (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 261- 90; Doug Rossinow, The Reagan Era: A History of the 1980s (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015). 61 Rossinow, The Reagan Era, 4. Recent on the 1970s illustrates the decade’s schizophrenic nature a America became by the 1970s more inclusive and democratic but also more individualistic and privatized. See Beth Bailey and David Farber, eds., America in the Seventies (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004); Thomas Borstelmann, The 1970s: A New Global History from Civil Rights to Economic Inequality (Princeton.: Princeton University Press, 2012); Jenkins, Decade of Nightmares; Bruce J. Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (New York: The Free Press, 2001). 26 geopolitics. It was a utopian vision rooted in local community and ecology. In people’s needs, not profits, they envisioned “[t]he elimination of the present class system [which] would be brought about through this redistribution of resources, of work and of political power.”62 With this world, women conceived that “the qualities traditionally known as feminine—intuitive, caring and supportive—would be cultivated by all us, men and women,” and all women

“would all have the opportunity to acquire those qualities said to be masculine—competence, confidence and independence.”63 Such mutable gender traits discredited the “Women-as-

Natural-Peacemakers school of thought,” which the study group was quick to point out.

Everyone, not just mothers, should be responsible for the earth.

Group members advanced their critique of violence by focusing on its particular manifestations—namely, by the late 1970s, nuclear technology. Several from the Feminism and Nonviolence Study Group were present at the Seabrook power demonstration in New

Hampshire in 1977, their involvement indicative of the widespread interest among women in safe energy and disarmament.64 Ideas generated by study group participants struck a chord with other peace and feminist activists who were keen on diversifying their platforms to include connections between anti-militarism and women’s liberation. Several commented on the fact that women in America, Britain and West European read and watched similar material—Helen

Caldicott’s film Critical Mass, for instance—and celebrated certain martyrs such as anti- nuclear advocate Karen .

Yet this cohort remained small and fairly isolated until the tail end of the 1970s when more British and in particular Northern European feminists began to organize in mass with

62 Feminism and Nonviolence Study Group, Piecing It Together, 53. 63 Ibid. 64 Liddington, The Road to Greenham Common, 206-211; Feminism and Nonviolence Study Group, Piecing It Together. For more on feminists involved in protests near anti-nuclear sites, see also Epstein, Political Protest and Cultural Revolution. 27 ecofeminist and nonviolent ideas in mind. Influential in this development was the new organization Women for Peace. First in Scandinavia, chapters began to collect a million signatures demanding disarmament, and soon branches emerged in , Holland,

Switzerland and .65 With memberships in the thousands, their petition for nuclear disarmament boasted 500,000 signatures at the U.N.’s World Conference on the Decade for

Women in Copenhagen in the summer of 1980.66

While the momentum behind women’s organizing suggested a robust movement, it was not without its problems, as the larger narrative of this dissertation reveals. For one, these transnational gatherings illustrated that shared interest in disarmament did not guarantee women could circumvent their own differences.67 One member of the War

Resisters’ League (WRL) recalled “one of the problems with [the transnational women’s conferences] had been that people attending had been at widely differing levels of political development: some women working in peace groups did not consider themselves feminists, and some feminists were interested in nonviolence but didn’t know much about it.”68

65 Originally founded by Bodil Grae and a group of Danish women in February 1980, Kvinder for Fred was launched as a non-aligned protest against both the NATO decision to site missiles through Britain and Europe and the Soviet invasion of . The organization quickly spread to and neighboring countries through local women’s groups, even to women in East Berlin. See Lucy Komisar, “Peace Tactics from the Eastern Bloc,” Ms. Magazine, April 1984, 21. Women for Peace in East Berlin emerged out of a demonstration by three hundred East German women who wrote to East German chief Erich Honecker in 1982 protesting against a new law that required women to register for army service. Their request ignored, the following year, the same women demonstrated along with nurses who were to register by that fall. Dressed in black, they went to Alexanderplatz in East Berlin to mail individual letters refusing to serve. Only then did the government excuse nurses from that duty. The group maintained contact with Western peace groups like the West German , and for doing so, members were sometimes arrested. 66 Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition, 69, 83. See also Eva Quistorp, “Starting a Movement: Frauen fűr Frieden (Women for Peace, W. Germany),” in Keeping the Peace: A Women’s Peace Handbook, ed. Lynne Jones (London: The Women’s Press, 1983), 7-13; Frouke Smid, “Organising at the : Vrouwen voor Vrede (Women for Peace, the ),” in Keeping the Peace, 14-21. 67 As the woman in charge of her national chapter, Quistorp admitted Frauen fűr Frieden appealed to a wide variety of German women, yet predictably, this array of feminisms, ages, and sexualities spelled frequent disagreement among participants. Smid revealed that her national membership stemmed mostly from left-leaning, middle-aged feminists who had not yet managed to recruit many from the working class. See Quistorp, “Starting a Movement” in Keeping the Peace; Smid, “Organising at the Grassroots,” in Keeping the Peace. 68 [Redacted], “Dear Sisters,” January 17, 1981, WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 28

Embedded in these varying levels of political consciousness was the reality that as much as

American, British and Western European women may have had in common, these were different nations with disparate and power structures for women.

American women, for example, had access to more educational opportunities and political influence than their British and European counterparts which undoubtedly affected women’s abilities to organize. More so in Britain than America, class remained a powerful dividing line which, in terms of the movement, limited lower-class women’s involvement.

Additionally, racial differences hindered movement solidarity, not just in America but given the backdrop of decolonization occurring in the mid- to late 20th century, also in Britain and

Western Europe. Women of color from recently independent colonies were less likely to join a women’s movement that advocated separatism from men as many of these women lived in and accepted a traditional family structure that included a strong male head. Also significant was that women of color, in America, Britain and Western Europe, felt issues related to racial discrimination were paramount. Any organizing that involved focusing on other issues, such as disarmament and ecology, struck them as less important.

Still, these important national differences aside, the series of conferences organized in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s served to connect women from disparate countries. While some expressed frustration that few concrete solutions emerged from these gatherings, the fact that they were not “immediately productive” but rather personally transformative appealed to women. “[W]e shared our experiences and our feelings about the work we were doing,” the same WRL member recounted about the Women and Militarism meeting, “We spoke of the frustrations and challenges of our work, and as the afternoon sun faded, we tightened our circle

29 and snuggled together for warmth, glad to be together with women at least for a little while.”69

The separatism built into Women for Peace and the women’s movement at large was one universal point both leaders and members agreed upon as an asset to their activism. Many started with the intention of slowly improving the mixed-sex peace movement by introducing more women and ideas of feminism into existing organizations, yet for thousands, organizing with only women proved to be a major motivator in their disarmament work.70

In Britain, Leeds feminists were especially active in the conjoining of feminism and anti-militarism, forming the first chapter of Women Oppose the Nuclear Threat (WONT), which later spread to cities like Nottingham.71 More traditional women’s groups also arose in response to the resuscitation of the Cold War. Paralleling Helen Caldicott’s mothers-based

Women’s Party for Survival (WPFS), organizations like Babies Against the Bomb in England and Oxford Mothers for Disarmament formed. They signaled the important, although contested, role of maternal activism in the late-20th-century women’s movement.72

In March 1980, members of WONT Leeds and the Feminism and Nonviolence Study

Group assembled for a Women and the Military conference. From that, another two materialized, one to inform women of the hazards of nuclear power and the second, organized by the study group, was an international gathering in entitled “Women and

Militarism,” which attracted fifty-five women from England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, U.S.,

Austria, Belgium Costa Rica, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Switzerland and West Germany.

Not only did “some of the American women who attended then [go] back to the States much

69 Ibid. 70 Eva Quistorp, “Starting a Movement,” in Keeping the Peace, 7-13; Frouke Smid, “Organising at the Grassroots,” in Keeping the Peace, 14-21. 71 Nottingham Women Oppose the Military Threat, “Working as a Group: Nottingham Women Oppose the Nuclear Threat,” in Keeping the Peace, 22-29. 72 See Tamar Swade, “Babies Against the Bomb,” in Keeping the Peace, 64-67. 30 more conscious of what was in Europe,” as one British participant recollected, but also “vice versa,” another noted.73 A snapshot of 1980 revealed more conferences and organizations, their proliferation indicative of a forming movement that sought “[t]o increase the involvement of women in the struggle against all manifestations of violence” and “to show the connections between patriarchy, hierarchy and militarism and to expose their destructive effects on women.”74 Out of these critical developments, this dissertation begins.

Organization of the Dissertation

The following chapters are organized loosely chronologically and thematically. The opening chapter resumes the movement’s story as it reviews the Women and Life on Earth

(WLOE) conference held in Northampton, Massachusetts in March 1980. Nearly seven hundred women assembled at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst to better understand the connections between modern environmentalism, peace and feminism. Taken with the ideas of ecology, WLOE attendants appropriated this word, claimed it as feminist and initiated its use as a key political organizing tool for the women’s movement. Seeking to mute differences between each other, they attempted to instead accentuate their shared values of peace and ecology.

Chapter 2 directly follows the WLOE gathering as many of its participants planned and executed the Women’s Pentagon Action (WPA) marches for November 1980 and 1981. For both actions, around two thousand women descended upon the Pentagon in Washington D.C., marching from Arlington Cemetery to the five-sided building before encircling it. This chapter explores the important role of nonviolent civil disobedience within the movement, and further dissects the inherent instability of participants’ goals. It reveals conflicting opinions among

73 Liddington, The Road to Greenham Common, 217, 219-220; [Redacted], “Dear Sisters,” January 17, 1981, WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 74 “Call for an International Action Week,” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 31 women about the nature of their protest—anticipated to be both premeditated and democratic, and also spontaneous and anarchic.

Chapter 3, more than any other chapter, offers a historiographical intervention for late-

20th-century women’s history. Describing the efforts of several mothers-based organizations within the women’s movement in the early 1980s, namely Helen Caldicott’s Women’s Party for

Survival (WPFS), (AMP) and Women Against Military Madness

(WAMM), this chapter reveals that a cross section of women, including those who identified as radical feminists and those who saw themselves as homemakers, agreed the arms race was senseless and harmonized over their role in terminating it. This chapter, then, argues the maternalist strategy should not indict mothers in the movement as political neophytes but rather shows them as astute activists.

Chapters 4 and 5 further explore the untenable philosophy undergirding the women’s movement by examining the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp outside of London,

England, and the Seneca Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice in Upstate

New York, beginning in 1981 and 1983, respectively. Both of these chapters explain the camps’ dual functions, as both a protest against violence by continual civil disobedience outside of a military facility, and as a separatist, alternative community in which women could live their feminist principles of consensus and egalitarianism. While personally transformative for participants, interpersonal conflicts prevailed, and Greenham and Seneca slowly became spaces for only a small core of women and their minimalist lifestyle.

Chapter 6 recounts a final example in which movement participants discovered the weight of national differences between women. Taking into consideration two trips, in 1982 and

1984, by American, British and Scandinavian women to the Soviet Union, this chapter displays

32 the transnational networks women wove as they took advantage of heightened opportunities for citizen diplomacy in the 1980s. They insisted that peace had no boundaries, and as women, it was their duty to reorient world leaders to demilitarized priorities. Nevertheless, these East-West moments exposed noticeable national and ideological tensions that women uneasily navigated.

The epilogue concludes this dissertation, describing the end of the Cold War and the final demise of the movement through the lens of the last years of the Greenham and Seneca camps.

33

Chapter One:

Women and Life on Earth: Feminism and Environmentalism, 1980

***

“We live in a unique moment in history. Although an apocalypse mentality is probably as old as human consciousness, never has an intuitive sense of foreboding been so thoroughly corroborated by scientific and empirical evidence. Ominous indications that this is so abound in the media and in the daily experiences of most of our lives. Over the past several years increasing numbers of women have been communicating their distress to each other in a variety of ways. This year some sort of critical dynamic seems to have been reached.”1 --Women and Life on Earth Conference Proceedings

Introduction: Claiming Ecology for Feminism

“We here are part of a growing movement of women for life on earth,” said Ynestra King in her opening remarks at the Women and Life on Earth (WLOE) Conference. “We come from the , the anti-nuclear movement, the disarmament movement, the holistic health movement. We have come because life on earth and the earth itself is in terrible danger.

We feel a great urgency.”2 It was the first day of spring in 1980, and nearly seven hundred women had gathered at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. They were angry, afraid and mobilized. King continued, “We don’t have much time but we have to move against those

(mostly men) who’ve formed systems of patriarchal government and power which poison and pillage our farms, forests and rivers, have destroyed our cities and armed our children against the children of our sisters. They do this everyday as part of their ordinary work.”3 Preceded by a

1 Women and Life on Earth (hereafter WLOE), “Women and Life on Earth Conference Proceedings: A Proposal to the Environmental Protection Agency,” Women and Life on Earth Papers (hereafter WLOE Papers), Box 1, Folder Consignment Orders, Sophia Smith Collection (hereafter SSC) Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts. Note for this chapter: some names of WLOE participants have been redacted according to the Sophia Smith Collection’s restrictions on these records. 2 WLOE, “Dear Friend,” Summer 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 1, Folder WLOE Newsletter, SSC. 3 Ibid. 34

number of gatherings in the late ‘70s in which British, Western European and some American women theorized meaningful connections between nonviolence and feminism, the WLOE conference was the moment when the burgeoning women’s movement came to the U.S. It embodied many Americans women’s fears related to nuclear technology and the tenuous state of world affairs in 1980. American and Soviet leaders had recently reinvigorated the Cold War arms race; the toxic waste site at Love Canal had just been exposed; and it had only been one year since the partial at Three Mile Island reactor.

WLOE, advertised as “an ecofeminist conference for the 1980s,” met for three days of workshops and panels in March of 1980, during which women—mostly from New England and

New York State—sought to better understand the connections between the modern environmental movement, peace and feminism. Specifically, they asked how ecological issues affected women, and if and how feminist concerns overlapped with those of the environmental movement.4 While women’s involvement in either the environmental or peace movement was hardly novel, organizing a conference that drew explicit connections between environmental, feminist, peace and concerns was new.5 Indeed, the conference included sessions

4 WLOE, “Welcome to the Conference!” WLOE Papers, Box 1, Folder WLOE Conference Schedule Introductory Information; WLOE, “Tentative Program Schedule,” WLOE Papers, Box 1, Folder WLOE Conference Schedule Introductory Information, SSC. 5 Historians have established a long tradition of modern U.S. women’s peace activism, beginning in the early 19th century, born out of women’s involvement in and networks related to religion, abolitionism and temperance. Many women, in organizations such as the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, campaigned for peace and women’s rights as they saw nonviolence and antimilitarism as mutually-related women’s issues; many saw that only a world without war could provide a in which women’s equality could flourish. Furthermore, women peace activists until the 1970s operated on the premise that women’s maternal and nurturing abilities made them uniquely suited and tasked for peace work. They argued they were different than men in this regard. See Harriet Hynam Alonso, Peace as a Women’s Issue: A History of the U.S. Movement for World Peace and Women’s Rights (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1993); Andrea Estrepa, “Taking the White Gloves Off: Women Strike for Peace and ‘the Movement,’ 1967-73,” in Feminist Coalitions: Historical Perspectives on Second-Wave Feminism in the United States, ed. Stephanie Gilmore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 84-104; Linda Gordon, “The Peaceful Sex? On Feminism and the Peace Movement,” National Women’s Studies Association Journal 2, no. 4 (Autumn 1990): 624-634; Susan Lynn, Progressive Women in Conservative Times: Racial Justice, Peace, and Feminism, 1945 to the 1960s (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992); Leila J. Rupp, Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’s Movement (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997); Amy C. Schneidhorst, Building a Just and Secure World: Popular Front Women’s Struggle for Peace and Justice in Chicago 35

on topics ranging from nuclear weapons and radiation to toxic waste, occupational safety, alternative , holistic medicine, racism, lesbianism, rural women, Native American rights, violence against women and food .6

Such a constellation of causes signaled, for one, the convergence of several major political and social developments in 1980, namely an international disarmament movement, environmentalism and feminism. Efforts to inhibit the arms race between the Soviet Union and

America collapsed by the late 1970s. Worldwide anti-nuclear dissension subsequently arose, determined to curtail if not eradicate nuclear arsenals. Nuclear power plant disasters also sparked protests against nuclear energy. The postwar environmental movement that had begun in the U.S. in the mid-20th century continued to grow as Americans focused their attention on highly hazardous chemical and industrial waste sites. The women’s liberation movement— revolutionary in its early years and now a decade old—was not as robust as it once was, and

America saw a conservative backlash arise by the mid-1970s in response to many of the civil rights and women’s rights gains of the 1960s. For women buoyed by the previous decades’ liberal impulses that delivered to America a more equitable and inclusive society, 1980 was frightening. Women who flocked to the WLOE conference assembled out of fear that democratic gains would recede—or, what felt like a very real possibility, that nuclear war could ignite—if they did not act. The moment, they expressed, had tremendous potential.

During the 1960s (New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2011), Amy Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1993). For an overview of women in modern environmentalism, see Nancy Unger, Beyond Nature's Housekeepers: American Women in Environmental History (New York: Oxford University Press. 2012). Citing important yet understudied gendered divisions in how men and women historically understood and experienced their environments, Unger argues that outside of women’s environmental activism during Era, their modern activism has not been fully explored. For more on American women in modern environmentalism, see also Robert Gottlieb, Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement (Washington, D.C.; Island Press, 2003), 207-234; Carol Merchant, Earthcare: Women and the Environment (London: Routledge, 1996), 139-166. 6 WLOE, “Networks for Change in the ‘80s,” WLOE Papers, Box 1, Folder Networks for Change Proposal; WLOE, “Saturday Panels,” WLOE Papers, Box 1, Folder WLOE Conference Schedule Introductory Information, SSC. 36

Planners and participants also gathered out of a shared investment in principles of ecology, nonviolence and feminism, and the realization on the part of women like organizer

Ynestra King that these ideas and movements were more intimately related to one another than had been previously elucidated by scholars or activists. In paying attention to a variety of interrelated issues, as indicated by the numerous panels and sessions at WLOE, women drastically broadened what was important to feminism. Taken with the ideas of ecology, WLOE attendants appropriated this word and mindset, claimed it as feminist and initiated its use as a key political organizing tool for the women’s movement in the 1980s. As King explained to her audience during the opening statement on Friday evening, March 21st, “We’re here to say the word ECOLOGY and announce that for us as feminists it’s a political word. It’s a way of being, which understands that there are connections between all living things and that indeed women are the fact and flesh of connectedness.”7 Relying on inchoate ecofeminist theory, those at

WLOE began to imagine that at the root of multiple oppressions and issues was systemic violence often perpetuated by men. Only through eradicating the technologies, cultural practices and power relations anchored in violence could women and life on earth be liberated. It was an ecological way to understand women’s liberation.

Far from an insular event, WLOE represented the trepidation, determination and ecologically-informed feminism that many American women began to cultivate by the late-

1970s. After its three days of discussion and debate which attracted several hundred women,

WLOE as a resource organization received an avalanche of mail from interested women across

America. With hundreds of and dozens of organizations requesting conference proceedings and offering news of their own organizations, women eagerly responded to the formation of a movement that wove webs between disparate causes important to different

7 WLOE, “Dear Friend,” WLOE Papers, Box 1, Folder WLOE Newsletter, SSC. 37

women. WLOE was hardly alone in doing so. Rather it served as a flashpoint within a sea of similar gatherings in America, Britain and Europe, such as the Women and Solar Energy conference in October 1980, the Women and the Environment and the Women and Militarism meetings, both in April 1981, and the Global Feminist Disarmament roundtable in June 1982, that likewise explored linkages between women, militarism and the environment.

With their feminism augmented and sustained through environmental and peace perspectives, women involved in and inspired by WLOE sought to mute differences among themselves. They instead accentuated their difference to men—or at least a male-dominated culture that did not value empathy, compassion or nurturance. WLOE applauded what many women saw as their greater capacity for conflict resolution, and conference attendants reappraised that an emotional response was the only appropriate one in the Cold War. Still, as inventive and inclusive as this philosophy promised to be, the movement that claimed it struggled with its actual implementation. As tensions over race, class and sexuality at WLOE and other conferences revealed, minority women felt their invitation to these conferences was mere tokenism on the part of planners. White, middle-class organizers and participants could not understand that some oppressions, to lesbians and to low-income and women of color, counted more than others. Furthermore, in a telling moment for the women’s movement at large, as

WLOE transitioned from a conference to resource organization, its leaders created a remarkably ambitious, and highly unrealistic, catalog of changes they wished to enact, not the least of which was ending the Cold War. Such hopeful and demanding expectations characterized their future activism and portended the unsustainability inherent in their movement.

Finally, their ideas and actions were not without their detractors. As much as the women’s movement inspired many to commit years of their lives to a feminism grounded in

38

ecology and nonviolence, a vocal minority of white, radical feminists took issue with what they viewed as the movement’s dilution of “true feminist” issues. These critics worried that women’s peace and environmental work siphoned activism from abortion access, rape awareness and other traditionally understood women’s topics. Others pondered the wisdom and efficacy of creating a movement that revalued emotions which were historically used to marginalize women and explain their inferior biology. The women’s movement, emerging out of WLOE and other conferences, uneasily navigated such criticism and its own internal weaknesses through the end of the Cold War, as this dissertation tells, but at this particular moment—in March of 1980—the movement had just begun.

“A Conference on Eco-feminism in the ‘80s”

On the 4th of July, 1979, Ynestra King and Celeste Wesson, two of the Women and Life on Earth (WLOE) planners, began to circulate a letter to friends and fellow activists asking if anyone thought a project related to women and ecology would catch on. With the recent Three

Mile Island and Love Canal disasters on their minds, they attached to the letter both a request for organizational assistance and their proposal for WLOE, then envisioned as a Mother’s Day speak-out and conference in May of 1980 that would bring together women in feminist and environmental work. Tapping into pre-existing networks of anti-nuclear activists, environmentalists, women’s organizations, academics and other women involved in occupational health and safety and holistic health, they received enough positive feedback that they moved forward. Planners, then totaling around a dozen, envisioned their conference to be an opportunity

“to learn how ecological issues affect women and how we have responded; to explore the relationship between feminist and ecological concerns; to create a sense of unity and ongoing

39

networks among women involved with these issues; to encourage strategies and actions through which all women can act as women to affect the future and quality of life on earth.”8 Relying on these extant networks of women involved in environmentalism and feminism, King and the others spread news of the Women and Life on Earth conference.9

Less than one year after the letter was circulated, around seven hundred women arrived at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst on Friday evening, March 21st, 1980. Waking early the following morning, women headed to the opening panel session and listened as seven women, queued in front of them, explained the “issues” facing women and life on earth. Acting as the moderator, WLOE organizer Grace Paley set the tone by voicing her own nightmares about , radiation poisoning, genetic mutation and severe environmental degradation.10

At almost sixty years of age, Paley was an experienced activist, having been involved in civil rights, Vietnam protests and women’s rights; known as well for her short stories, she taught writing at Sarah Lawrence College. Addressing the several hundred women staring at her, she gravely declared, “Even God in his worst moods never went beyond the 7th generation….”11

Within this panel session, Paley was joined by Lois Gibbs, organizer of the Love Canal

8 WLOE, “Welcome to the conference!” WLOE Papers, Box 1, Folders WLOE Conference Schedule Introductory Information; “Dear Friends,” July 4, 1979, WLOE Papers, Box 1, Folder Proceedings, SSC. 9 Not many participants elucidated how they heard of the conference, though a few explained that they had read about the conference in Ms. Magazine. Some sought out the conference after reading Susan Griffin’s Woman and Nature. See WLOE Papers, Box 2, Folders Resource Orders, Correspondence—Outside, Mailing List Add/Correct, Copied onto Cards—Non Participants, Box 5, Folder Correspondence, SSC. 10 Grace Paley (1922-2007) was the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants, noteworthy for her short stories and lifelong activism in feminism, civil rights and peace. See Margalit Fox, “Grace Paley, Writer and Activist, Dies,” New York Times, published August 23, 2007, accessed August 6, 2015, www.nytimes.com/2007/08/23/books/23cnd-paley.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0; Jonathan Dee, Barbara Jones and Larissa MacFarquhar, “Interviews: Grace Paley, The Art of Fiction No. 131,” The Paris Review (New York, New York), published Fall 1992, accessed August 10, 2015, www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2028/the-art-of-fiction- no-131-grace-paley; Ilya Kaminsky and Katherine Towler, “An Interview With Poet and Fiction Writer Grace Paley,” Poets & Writers, published March 17, 2008, accessed August 10, 2015, http://www.pw.org/content/interview_poet_and_fiction_writer_grace_paley; Jess Row, “Enormous Changes in Very Small Spaces: Grace Paley’s Greatness,” Slate Magazine, published September 7, 2007, accessed August 10, 2015, www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2007/09/enormous_changes_in_very_small_spaces.2.html. 11 WLOE, “Panel 1—Issues,” WLOE Papers, Box 1, Folder Panel issues Grace Paley, SSC. 40

Homeowners Association, Marion Lowe, a chemist from Boston University, Terri Goldberg from Boston , Milagros Padilla, a community labor coordinator, Dr.

Randall Forsberg, founder of the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies and Nancy Jack

Todd from the New Alchemy Institute. Their diverse backgrounds in feminism, environmental health, science, national politics, labor and the arts underlined the connections women sought to make between environmentalism, disarmament and feminism. Each speech or workshop, taken by itself, was not necessarily a new revelation or area of activism for women. Taken together, though, the speeches and subsequent workshops allowed WLOE participants to begin to construct a feminism heavily influenced by ecological and nonviolent philosophies. Emerging and cresting in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the women’s liberation movement initially publicized topics significant to women’s lives, notably marriage, sex, and domestic violence. By 1980, the subjects breached at the WLOE conference signaled a broader feminism underway, one that claimed nuclear radiation, toxic waste, defense spending, national conflict resolution and the environment as “women’s issues” and as equally important—and initially less divisive—as abortion access and sexual liberation.

Paley introduced these speakers and asked Lois Gibbs to initiate the panel by explaining her community’s fight in Love Canal. Gibbs began by stating succinctly and soberly that “Love

Canals” would continue to happen, leading to a world of “deformed, messed up people,” if individual citizens did not respond immediately.12 Beginning in the 1940s, the Hooker Chemical

Company dumped hundreds of barrels of chemical waste in the Love Canal neighborhood of

Niagara Falls, New York, and by 1978, residents of this working-class neighborhood began to report sinking foundations, basements filling with odd substances, children suffering from unexplained illnesses and rising rates of miscarriages and deformed infants. After New York’s

12Lois Gibbs, “Opening Speech,” WLOE Papers, Box 1, Folder Love Canal/’only people org, SSC. 41

health commissioner Robert Whalen declared “the existence of an emergency” at Love Canal, residents began to organize.13 Led by Gibbs, the Love Canal Homeowners’ Association (LCHA) waged a battle that coerced federal and state action to remove residents from the neighborhood, give them some financial restitution for the health and property losses, repair the canal and have air and soil sampling and water testing done throughout the area.14

Gibbs’ campaign was one of many in the larger, modern environmental movement which emerged out of a growing ecological consciousness among Americans. Ecology as a branch of biology had its origins in the late 19th century, but in the post-World War II era, its conceptual popularity spread. Postwar U.S. underwent a revolution in values as it began to critique endless abundance, consumption and unchecked technological innovation. While the origins of the modern environmental movement were varied, common to its many manifestations was the ecologically-informed idea that humans were as much part of the environment as all others species and systems.15 As a flashpoint for this change in mindset, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring

13 Elizabeth D. Blum, Love Canal Revisited: Race, Class, and Gender in Environmental Activism (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011), 26. 14 Blum, Love Canal Revisited, 29; Lois Gibbs, Love Canal: The Birth of the Environmental Health Movement (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2011), 59. 15 The origins of the postwar modern environmental movement are many, but as Robert Gottlieb argues in Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2005), postwar environmentalism should be understood as part of a long development and in response to urban and industrial changes since the late 19th century. As these changes pressured human and natural environments, people slowly started to value conservation, preservation, and an ecological orientation. In The Greening of a Nation? Environmentalism in the United States since 1945 (Orlando and London: Harcourt Brace, 1998), Hal Rothman argues that conservation efforts of the early 20th century transitioned into preservation efforts in the postwar era through the Echo Dam Park battle and the Dinosaur National Monument, and slowly, preservation broadened into 1960s and 1970s environmentalism. Other historians specify that an ecological critique of suburban homebuilding and lifestyles played an important role in the emergence of environmentalism in the postwar era as suburbanites began to rethink their use of land and resources, and conserve them. See Chris Sellers, Crabgrass Crucible: Suburban Nature and the Rise of Environmentalism in Twentieth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012); Adam Rome, Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Other historians assert that a postwar environmental crisis was connected to the cotemporaneous urban crisis. See David Stradling and Richard Stradling, Where the River Burned: Cleveland, Carl Stokes, and the Collapse of Urban America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015). Some stress scientists’ role, “politico-scientists” as Michael Egan calls them, in mobilizing a postwar environmental movement. See Michael Egan, Barry Commoner and the Science of Survival: The Remaking of American Environmentalism (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2009); Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for 42

(1962) exposed the carcinogenic effects of synthetic chemicals and pesticides like DDT.

Designed as an American crusade to make the world chemically sterile and insect free, these

“elixirs of death” actually did more harm than good. Even more, she portrayed mankind’s relationship with the world as a war on nature and gravely cautioned against this reckless domination and its accompanying hubris. In doing so, she, like many others, showed the interconnectedness and interdependence of .16 By the mid- to late 1970s, human health was further implicated in environmental activism. A near-meltdown at the Three Mile

Island nuclear reactor in Pennsylvania and the disaster in Love Canal, New York reverberated in

Americans’ minds in the late 1970s, and initiated what some called the modern environmental health movement.17

Gibbs addressed three aspects of her fight: “the impact of the Love Canal disaster on women’s lives, the extent of the problem everywhere, and the effects of toxic wastes on women.”18 She identified as a lower-middle-class housewife and mother like other women in her neighborhood, “with our biggest investments being our homes and our most precious asset our children.”19 Love Canal, she explained, disrupted her and other women’s ability to be at their

Nature (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997); Thomas Robertson, The Malthusian Moment: Global Population Growth and the Birth of American Environmentalism (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2012). Finally, others see postwar environmentalism also growing from 1960s social movements that stressed participatory democracy and citizen involvement in decision-making. See James Longhurst, Citizen Environmentalists (Medford, MA: Tufts University Press, 2010); Jeffrey Sanders, Seattle and the Roots of Urban Sustainability: Inventing Ecotopia (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010). In Make It a Green Peace (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), Frank Zelko argues that Greenpeace’s nonviolent, direct action, countercultural environmentalism was also a critical part of the postwar environmental movement that historians have yet to examine. 16 Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1962). 17 Gibbs, Love Canal; Blum, Love Canal Revisited. Both Gibbs and Blum suggest that the Love Canal disaster of the late 1970s was a pivotal, foundational moment in the modern environmental health movement. Gibbs stresses that chemical waste sites by this time proliferated and that communities have stepped up to fight these realities. Concerns over health, justice and human rights drove the environmental health movement. 18 Lois Gibbs, “Opening Speech,” WLOE Papers, Box 1, Folder Love Canal/’only people org, SSC. 19 Ibid. 43

“homes and gardens because both have become unsafe.”20 Real fears that their children would develop leukemia supplanted more mundane problems, propelling neighborhood women like herself into a public campaign to make their community safe for the things they held dearest. A noticeable consequence of this maternal mobilization was a sense of empowerment and confidence in public. Still, Gibbs admitted that “things have changed and our home life has changed because now mother is busy with Association activities, tired from picketing.”21 She admitted that divorce rates had risen in her town as many men were unhappy with disturbed family life. Nonetheless, she did not reject her own politicization and public role, even as it made for stormy seas at home. In a plea to her audience to interrogate their environment, assume its toxicity and get involved to change it, she concluded her talk, saying “[w]e have the lives of the next generation to think of.”22

That Gibbs viewed herself first and foremost as a mother mattered. That she also grew bolder as a person working for the LCHA was significant. This trend—that many mothers, housewives and political novices could be launched into activism on behalf of their families and be radicalized in the process—would become an important development in this women’s movement of the 1980s, as groups like Dr. Helen Caldicott’s Women’s Party for Survival

(WPFS) demonstrated. Gibbs posed environmental degradation and toxic waste as uniquely women’s—and mothers’—issues: “One of the most obvious effects we have found in Love

Canal women is in the reproductive system” in the “greater than normal occurrence of miscarriages, birth defects, stillborns and low birth weight babies” and “breast [and] uterine cancer.”23 She expressed many women’s sense of betrayal regarding the agreement that they as

20 Ibid. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. 44

mothers had made with society to sacrifice their own interests and careers to raise the next generation. To them, if industry and the government continued to jeopardize the next generations by endangering women’s reproductive capabilities, then mothers would continue to step up to save the world. Such a gendered appeal struck a chord with many American women and served as a major vein of thought in the women’s movement. While many mothers and housewives in late-20th-century America did not see themselves beneficiaries of women’s liberation, that women like Gibbs politicized intimate topics like reproductive health or familial welfare allowed them, in a sense, to practice feminism without claiming it as such.24

Other panelists expanded upon this theme, accentuating the risk of nuclear radiation and industrial waste on women and children. Marion Lowe, a chemist professor at Boston University and a member of the disbanded collective of feminist biologists, anthropologists and psychologists, Genes and Gender, explained the effects of “high energy radiation” on cells.25 Far from benign, cell damage, mutation or death occurred when radioactive isotopes collided into

24 Blum, Love Canal Revisited. She argues that many white, working-class saw their activism as a reaction against the women’s liberation movement (which was notoriously known for its derision of the family). Women like Gibbs wanted to revalue women’s roles as wives and mothers, and like other conservative women in the late 1970s and 1980s, they felt women’s liberation stigmatized them because of their motherhood and marriages. Yet Blum argues that Gibbs and others relied on the nascent language of women’s liberation to argue that, as equal political actors and tax-paying citizens, they deserved governmental action to secure their right to a healthy environment. They were, in a way, “doing feminism” without “being feminists.” See also Unger, Beyond Nature's Housekeepers, 187- 214. Unger argues that many women in the 1970s and 1980s environmental justice movement were heavily influenced by women’s liberation even if they did not agree with all its ideas. Women, politicized by feminism of their gender, sexuality and reproductive capabilities, as well as their race and class, were involved in demanding safer environments. She sees Lois Gibbs and Love Canal activists working in this tradition as well as Native American women, such as Members of Women of All Red Nations (WARN) who mobilized to fight against threats to land, water, health and forced sterilization. Finally, see Ruth Rosen, “The Day that They Buried Traditional Womanhood: Women and the Vietnam Experience,” in The Legacy: The Vietnam War in the American Imagination, ed. D. Michael Shafer (Boston: Beacon Press, 1990), 233-261. Rosen also argues that within women’s peace activism in the 1970s and 1980s, mothers-based organizing appealed to many traditional women and was effective in politicizing and radicalizing them. 25 See Margaret W. Rossiter, Women Scientists in America: Forging a New World Since 1972, Vol. 3 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), 201. Led by comparative psychologist and curator of behavior, Ethel Tobach, this feminist collective defended the work of and contested that of E.O. Wilson. Comprised of left-leaning biologists and social scientists in academia, it disbanded by the mid-1980s but had produced numerous symposiums and volumes on topics such as genetic determinism, male violence, rape, racism and sex differences. 45

human bodies. Especially for infants and children whose cells rapidly reproduced, cancers were a likely consequence to radioactive exposure. Likewise, as Lowe warned, anyone near nuclear power and weapons facilities also imperiled their future health by contact to constant, low- level radiation. She, like Gibbs, appealed to women’s indignation that they had little input in decisions made by the nuclear industry and the government. Also on the panel, Terri Goldberg, from the Boston chapter of Science for the People, emphasized these risks of genetic manipulation and asserted that any technologies and procedures related to genetic engineering like amniocentesis, in-vitro fertilization and sperm banks must have women at the forefront.26

Women should be concerned about genetic engineering because, to Goldberg, it implicated women’s reproductive rights and decisions related to motherhood.27

The Saturday morning panel session continued after Lowe and Goldberg with Milagros

Padilla, from New Directions in Occupational Health and Safety. Beyond considering the women who lived near toxic waste and low-level radiation, Padilla spotlighted the women working in industrial, chemical, nuclear and defense facilities: “I think that we need to start also thinking of those of us that work in some of those factories and plants that produce some of that toxic waste, and start considering what is the problems [sic] that we face as we deal with these chemicals that eventually end up in a dump.”28 Milagros called attention to the threats x-rays, lead and radiation posed for working women’s health, and in particular their reproductive capabilities. She, like the preceding panelists, transformed latent toxicity into a women’s—and feminist—issue.

She used the example of a dental hygienist, not someone usually considered to work in a

26 Science for the People, founded in 1969 in the midst of the anti-war movement, was a political organization that protested military and corporate control of scientific research agendas and encouraged those in the scientific community to consider racism, classism and sexism within the field, and social implications of scientific research. Lasting until 1989, members organized in universities and communities across America, promoted scientific exchange of information across national borders and published a magazine. See “Science for the People,” Science for the People, accessed January 30, 2016, http://science-for-the-people.org/. 27 WLOE, “Panel 1—Issues,” WLOE Papers, Box 1, Folder Panel issues Grace Paley, SSC. 28 Ibid. 46

hazardous environment, to explain, “I’m sure that all of us are very aware that occupational segregation continues to exist no how hard we fight to do away with it. And that many women work as x-ray technicians. Many women work as dental hygienists … I recently met a woman who is 8 months pregnant and she has been working with a dentist for the all [sic] during her . He never bothered to tell her that radiation might affect her baby.”29 Yet she refused to tolerate the idea that, to be safe, women should simply not work in these environments. She decried that some were denied access to certain workplaces—for example, lead factories routinely did not hire women, and Black women with sickle cell anemia reported similar treatment at various plants. “[I]t’s a form of paternalism that tells us we’re taking care of you, we don’t want you do [sic] go into these jobs that are dangerous for you. Well that’s a bunch of bullshit. They don’t want us to work there.”30 Only when “we move into the jobs that men have traditionally held,” Milagros asserted, did industry care about women’s health and use their reproductive capacity as an excuse to dismiss or disregard them.31 She prodded her audience to pay attention to women in male-dominated unions and to build alliances between many different types of working women. Like the other speakers, Milagros spoke with an impassioned, emotional urgency, indignant about women’s lack of involvement in key decisions regarding women’s work and well-being. Such expressiveness illustrated another key tenet of the burgeoning women’s movement. Women rejected that emotion was a liability in their activism.

They celebrated it instead, and insisted that an appropriate analysis of military policy or environmental abuse deserved passion, outrage and expression.32 As Paley interjected, “We feel

29 Ibid. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid. 47

about these issues I think with more passion than most men.”33

Dr. spoke next.34 As Gibbs, Lowe, Goldberg and Milagros expanded feminism to include concerns over industrial, chemical and nuclear hazards, Forsberg added disarmament as a feminist goal. She was a middle-aged woman who, after working as a typist at the International Peace Research Institute in the 1960s, went on to earn a doctorate in international studies from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.). An arms control expert, she founded the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies in Brookline, Boston, and became the face for the budding nuclear freeze movement. In her panel discussion, she began with the assertion “that women specifically should be working for disarmament” and “they should work for disarmament primarily, or very largely, through studying and learning about military policy and military forces.”35 Encouraging others in the room to pay attention to national military decisions, she insisted that “militarism” was the ultimate oppression against women: “In my mind there is no essential difference between supporting feminist goals … and being against militarism and in favor of disarmament, complete disarmament.”36 Forsberg saw both disarmament and feminism operating on the equality and dignity of all individuals and fostering a more participatory democracy. Yet regretfully to her, women had not yet grasped anti- militarism as a key part of women’s liberation.

Forsberg admitted that women had historically been excluded from military decisions, or that, “women don’t tend to find it intriguing and exciting and scintillating and fascinating to

33 Ibid. 34 Dr. Randall Forsberg (1943-2007) founded the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies, and then went on to launch the nuclear freeze movement, sparking national interest in a freeze after she wrote the "Call to Halt the ," a position paper that outlined the perils of . See Dennis Hevesi, “Randall Forsberg, 64, Nuclear Freeze Advocate, Dies,” New York Times, published October 26, 2007, accessed August 10, 2015, www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/us/26forsberg.html?_r=0; Elaine Woo, “Randall Forsberg, 64; founder of nuclear freeze movement in '80s,” LA Times, published November 1, 2007, accessed August 10, 2015, http://articles.latimes.com/2007/nov/01/local/me-forsberg1. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid. 48

think about those games, those very very large magnificent games of manipulation and exploitation.”37 She insisted it was time to change that. She did not disagree that the technical jargon used in military policy scared off women because of its inaccessibility. Nor did she discount that women often perceived anything related to the military as a male world in which women and their emotions had no role.38 But Forsberg was adamant. She urged women to bridge this gendered divide by knowing how to “talk the talk” and to ground their investment in disarmament in their very real fear of nuclear war. She wanted women informed and opinionated like herself. Once understood, the concept of nuclear deterrence through arms escalation seemed absurd to her, and she felt other women, with little to no scientific or military background, could likewise grasp and wield such knowledge to shift national and local policy-makers toward disarmament. Even more, she goaded women to distrust and interrogate top Pentagon and congressional decisions on military systems, policy and budgets. Taking cues from the environmental movement, Forsberg promoted a more active definition of citizenship premised on the right to be publically involved in policymaking and enforcement.39

Nancy Jack Todd, co-founder of the New Alchemy Institute, was the last panelist to take the floor. In describing her activism, she pinpointed for her audience the ecologically-informed feminism emerging out of WLOE.40 “I’ve been I guess in the movement for 15 years or more, and going from pacifism to ecology to feminism, and then putting them all together. And in the

37 Ibid. 38 See James Longhurst, Citizen Environmentalists (Medford, MA: Tufts University Press, 2010). He describes how environmental groups like the Group Against Smoke and Pollution (GASP) in Pittsburgh in the mid- to late 20th century relied on both expert technical knowledge, gendered male, and emotive, maternal rhetoric, gendered female. He explains but does not explore that by the 1970s this gendered divide in information-sharing, organizing and testimony may have begun to break down due to women’s liberation. 39 See again Longhurst, Citizen Environmentalists; Sanders, Seattle and the Roots of Urban Sustainability. Postwar environmentalism shared with civil rights, the New Left and women’s and gay liberation the demand that democracy be more accessible and participatory. 40 Co-founded by Nancy Jack Todd and her biologist husband John Todd, the New Alchemy Institute was a research center from 1971 to 1991 that explored renewable energy, agriculture, aquaculture, housing and landscapes. “About,” The Green Center, accessed January 30, 2016, http://newalchemists.net/about/. 49

late sixties, I began to work with a group which we called New Alchemy, which many of you know I guess. And I know that most of you know that it has to do with gardens and windmills and solar collectors and such things. But what it really is is an intellectual paradigm.” This

“intellectual paradigm” meant shifting military and industrial priorities to “earth, kindly, nurturing ways of sustaining human populations indefinitely,” “thinking of the earth as alive.”41

This integration of feminism and environmentalism was significant for the movement and grew from some of the latest feminist scholarship available. As Ynestra King elucidated in the afternoon panel session entitled “Feminism and Ecology: The Connections,” “Feminist theorists are asking questions which are directly related to the political concerns of this conference— about the origins of the domination of women and nature, about how these are related and distinct, about connections between patriarchal oppression and other structures of oppression, about the nature of violence in our society—be it militarism, wife beating or rape.” She pointed to burgeoning ecofeminist theory, to “a different way of thinking and knowing about the world,” which outlined connections between women’s domination and other forms of oppression, namely environmental destruction and the arms race. Asserting that women are “everything men wanted to forget or deny about themselves,” King echoed new scholarly developments in the late 1970s and early 1980s that suggested women as connectors, conservers and caretakers at the heart “of a more socially organic way of being in an increasingly inorganic society.”42

While “ecofeminism,” a term first coined in 1974 by French feminist Françoise d’Eaubonne, derived from philosophical debates beginning in the mid-1970s over women’s

41 Ibid. 42 Ynestra King, “Feminism and Ecology: Disloyal to Civilization,” WLOE Papers, Box 1, Folder Women and Life on Earth, SSC. 50

difference to men, its theoretical genealogy came from ideas that stressed women’s uniqueness.43

Mary Daly’s Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (1978) and other texts signaled that many women by the late 1970s embraced the idea that women were fundamentally different than men and that difference could be a source of strength. In these years, feminist scholars turned to nature to define this difference and create a revolutionary femininity. They began to articulate that women and nature were grounded in one another through life cycles and reproduction. Both women and nature, they theorized, had been used and understood by religion, science and medicine as objects to study, dissect and ultimately conquer. Within this , men were objective, rational and normal. Women, along with nature, defined in opposition to men, were thus deemed irrational, uncontrollable and still passive and submissive.

Such symbolic association with nature meant women were at once devalued and vulnerable but also conceptualized as more empathetic and attuned to holistic, ecological ways of thinking and being.44

Abetting this scholarly development was the publication of numerous books exploring ancient like Merlin Stone’s When God was a Woman (1976) that suggested women’s lives were better when men respected the environment. Writings by Rosemary Radford

Ruether, Carolyn Merchant, Brian Easlea, Dolores LaChapelle and explicated a pre-industrial past in which women were extolled and appreciated for their association with a

Mother Earth. With capitalist development, however, the authors argued that women’s status declined in the West. So too did respect for the planet. As Merchant argued in the Death of

Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (1980), material conditions that made

43 Sara Evans, Tidal Wave: How Women Changed America at Century’s End (New York: The Free Press, 2003), 208. 44 Catriona Sandilands, The Good-Natured Feminist: Ecofeminism and the Quest for Democracy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 3-11; Merchant, Earthcare, 139-149. 51

widespread environmental manipulation possible created the domination and exploitation that would come to characterize contemporary sexism and ecological degradation. In Woman and

Nature: The Roaring Inside Her (1978), Susan Griffin went a step further in making the connection between women and the environment by naturalizing women and writing as if nature was female. She argued that women possessed an embodied knowledge of nature. Feminist scholars, then, by 1980, constructed that nature could be the terrain of female consciousness and a key part of a unique female culture. To find such culture women only needed to understand that a matriarchal past had not vanished but needed to be recovered.45 These ideas appealed to women like Ynestra King and others at WLOE who began to theoretically weld together feminism and ecology and see a revaluation of nature as part of the liberation of women. King especially continued to theorize and publish in this field, going on to write “Feminism and the

Revolt of Nature” in 1981, for example. “As women,” she wrote then, “we are a naturalized culture in a culture defined against nature. If nature/culture antagonism is the primary contradiction of our time, it is also what weds feminism and ecology and makes women the historic subject.”46

Importantly, King posited that “we must be wary of doing what women have always done—cleaning up after men and making it o.k. when they go too far.”47 Insisting that the soldering of feminism and environmentalism should not translate to “[e]cology over feminism or feminism over ecology,” King recalled and warned against women’s struggles in the New Left of

45 Sandilands, The Good-Natured Feminist, 11-17; Merchant, Earthcare, 139-149. 46 Ynestra King, “Feminism and the Revolt of Nature,” Heresies 4, no. 1 (1981): 15. See Unger, Beyond Nature's Housekeepers. Unger argues from ecofeminist theory that gendered divisions mattered in how men and women have understood the environment. In her examination of women in environmentalism in the modern U.S., she explains how sex, sexuality and gender have affected environmental history and women’s responses to the environment and environmental issues as she writes, “There is no single ‘woman’s environmental experience’ in any place and time—and yet across historical periods, age, sexuality, marital and maternal status, race, ethnicity, economic class, and gender consistently played a role in women’s interactions with the environment” (9). 47 Ynestra King, “Feminism and Ecology: Disloyal to Civilization,” WLOE Papers, Box 1, Folder Women and Life on Earth, SSC. 52

the 1960s.48 Told by their fellow male activists that ending the war in Vietnam mattered more than women’s emancipation, many young women involved in civil rights and anti-war activism witnessed their own rights fall in importance. King sought to circumvent such a hierarchical weighing of social injustices: “As feminists we’ve known for a long time that our self-interest in feminism is also a self-interest in human emancipation and an end to domination in all its forms.”49

As young women in the late 1960s broke off from the New Left to form early women’s liberationist groups, many women in the 1980s including those at WLOE mimicked this trajectory of separatism. Part of their justification was sexism within the larger disarmament movement and the feeling expressed by countless women that, when organizing with men, women’s voices and interest in consensus-driven decision-making was lost.50 Beyond these reasons, women like King borrowed concepts of ecology and ecofeminism to conclude male- dominated power relations led to many manifestations of violence and injustice, notably the Cold

War, environmental devastation and abuse of women. By rooting the problem within a male culture, women united around their difference to men and chose to organize as women only.51

Importantly, such separatism did not agree with all women and would prove to be a sticking

48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. See also Amy Swerdlow, “March 22nd-Amy Swerdlow,” WLOE Papers, Box 1, Folder Women and Life on Earth, SSC. She articulates many eco-feminist principles as she advances feminism means the liberation of all peoples who live in harmony with the environment. 50 See, for example, Fran Moira, “anti-nuclear women & sexism,” , June 1980, 8; Tacie Dejanikus, “abortion and coalition politics: whose survival?” off our backs, April 1981, 2, 25. See also Rosen, “The Day that They Buried Traditional Womanhood” in The Legacy, 233-261. Rosen traces how many younger feminists in the late 1960s initially rejected the separatism and mothers-based activism used by older or more conservative women in anti-Vietnam protests. Yet she shows that over the 1970s, separatism and celebrating women’s difference gradually appealed to more feminists who complained of bureaucratic, sexist organizing in mixed-sex peace groups. 51 See Evans, Tidal Wave, 142-158, 208-211. She describes how cultural feminism and its tenets of separatism, (that women are different than men), and esthetic expression appealed to many American feminists— and society at large—by the 1970s; and that feminist peace activism and ecofeminism grew out of cultural feminism. She notes, “The emphasis of cultural feminists on female difference, in turn, was ironically congruent with the popular culture’s stress on gender polarization. Maternal values of peacemaking, nurture, and cooperation that informed ecofeminism, goddess , and peace activism echoed many of the same themes of the ‘women’s leadership’ workshops being offered to corporate leaders” (211). 53

point within the movement throughout the 1980s.

Prominent women’s historian Amy Swerdlow joined King in the afternoon panel. Further broadening the scope of feminism, Swerdlow included, alongside ecology, tenets and projects of nonviolence and peace activism.52 Covering new historical ground, she narrated major developments within women’s history in the U.S. since the colonial era. In doing so, she imparted to conference participants that their own interests in feminism, anti-militarism and anti- oppression fit within a long and rich lineage. Her lecture covered women’s slow disenfranchisement, from being economically valued in pre-industrial years to being placed firmly in the “domestic sphere” by the mid-19th century with little value outside of moral and reproductive capacity. Confined to the home, Swerdlow explained, women used their positioning to launch moral and social reform movements from their roles as moral mothers and caretakers.

This impressed Swerdlow, who made sure her audience understood the value of this maternal activism. Furthermore, she noted that the “separate spheres” ideology may have stuck women in a caregiving role, but it mobilized their sense of responsibility and led many to peace and environmental work. It was out of this heritage that WLOE materialized. Swerdlow communicated that many women still protested for peace primarily for the sake of their children, but unprecedentedly, many also conceptualized nuclear technology as an insidious threat to women’s health. She legitimated both maternal and personal impetuses, and mindful of the importance of mothers in the women’s movement, especially advised women not to discard mothers-based organizing: “If we give up the responsibility for saying ‘not our sons, not their

52 Amy Swerdlow (1923-2012) worked in publishing and was a member of the board of directors of the Feminist Press beginning in 1973. She was a delegate to the National Women’s Conference in 1977, and in the late 1970s, was director of the American Historical Association’s Institute for Women’s History in Secondary Schools. In 1981, she was appointed professor of women’s and American history at Sarah Lawrence College and became an increasingly prominent women’s historian. See Moira Reynolds, “Amy Swerdlow,” Jewish Women’s Archive, accessed January 30, 2016, http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/swerdlow-amy. 54

sons’ . . . who will say it?” 53

King and other planners had hoped their “conference on ecofeminism” would attract a variety of women, and as attendants filled out 3x5 notecards disclosing their personal contact information and political interests, diverse identities and activist backgrounds suggested that the gathering had lived up to its goal. Women listed “radical feminism, political art, food cooperatives, ecology, self-sufficient farming, anti-nuclear energy, anti-racism, women’s health care, holistic healing and massage, lesbianism, fighting violence against women, education, midwifery, anti-poverty work, women’s studies and history, mental health, socialism, U.S. militarism and foreign intervention, feminist counseling, anti-draft, working women, anarcha- feminism, and anti-pornography.”54 The groups they identified with likewise intimated that women from different organizations with disparate, sometimes combative, politics could agree on the importance of a conference like WLOE. Radical feminists from groups like Spinsters

Opposed to Nuclear Genocide sat next to women from more moderate peace groups like the

Syracuse Peace Council or Physicians for Social Responsibility. Workshops facilitators introduced themselves as pacifists, consumer rights’ advocates, solar energy gurus, feminist health center workers, artists, nutritionists, school board members, physicians, mothers and academics.55 On the surface, such a range of individuals might have spelled doom for any conference. But instead it worked.

In between panel sessions throughout Saturday and Sunday were numerous workshops led by “resource women.” As sundry as the participants, so were the workshop topics, again demonstrative of the broad-based feminism under construction. Women took their pick from

53 Amy Swerdlow, “Feminism and Ecology: What is the Connection?” WLOE Papers, Box 1, Folder Women and Life on Earth, SSC. 54 Conference notecards, WLOE Papers, Box 1, Accn. #05S-59, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 55 Ibid. 55

facilitated discussions about the Cold War arms race, ecology and nature, the energy crisis, workplace toxins, nutrition and diet, nuclear power, urban healthcare, agriculture, genetic engineering, governmental surveillance, the Third World, trade unions, fashion, motherhood, aging and lesbianism. Yet common to all of these conversations was that they acted as consciousness-raising sessions, prompting participants to reflect on their roles and experiences in each of these subjects. Most sessions explicitly asked women to consider how feminism fit with the topic at hand. The motherhood discussion, for instance, urged women to consider how a better understanding of feminism and ecology altered their perceptions of mothering, and Evelyn

Fox Keller led a workshop around what a feminist science could look like.

In the workshop, “Toward a Feminist Wholistic Health Movement,” for example, Bea

Bookchin, wife of , the radical ecologist and prominent author, helped to facilitate a discussion around the connections between a feminist mindset and holistic health.56

The entire session served to raise women’s awareness of their place in medicine and science historically and presently, and attempted to galvanize women into action for a “feminist healthcare plan.” It also contributed to their multi-fronted feminism by identifying yet another arena of male-based domination of women—the medical establishment’s treatment of female bodies. Echoing King and ecofeminist theory, Bookchin contrasted typical, male-driven power relations with women and nature, and argued women, who were attuned to life and birth, must take back control over their own health and environment. Like other workshops recovering women’s history, participants spent time disinterring the history of western medicine since the discovery of germ theory and understanding women’s gradual disenfranchisement within medicine’s professionalization. As one woman explained, physicians learned to

56 Federico Venturini, “Bookchin: Living legacy of an American revolutionary,” Roar Magazine, published February 28, 2015, accessed August 10, 2015, http://roarmag.org/2015/02/bookchin-interview-social-ecology/. 56

compartmentalize and target one part of the body to fix, and such a dissection of the body into discrete pieces discouraged a holistic understanding of a person’s wellness. Even more, the workshop agreed this medical regime of knowledge specifically pathologized women’s systems and parts.

Women present acknowledged that society applauded modern medicine, but they expressed their fears over both medical and nuclear technology. One woman analogized that as medicine dismembered the body into parts to understand it, nuclear scientists similarly split the atom to its smallest . In both mindsets, she concluded that people forgot what the body and the atom—and by extension, its nuclear manifestations—were capable of. She shared that she recently realized that her smoke detectors contained radioactive material. Her landlord refused to spend the extra money on safer ones. She explained, “The nuclear technology enters all of our lives, and it really does enter medicine . . . It seems to me that the whole mentality that has been splitting our bodies apart is the same exact mentality that has been splitting atoms and building nukes—that has been putting women’s bodies, and crotches, and breasts in the advertisements on the front pages of magazines—and has been tearing them apart in movies.”57

In the late 1960s and 1970s, a central demand of the women’s liberation movement—

“one of the most important arenas of feminist activism”—was the return of women’s health and bodies back into women’s control.58 Clearly an ongoing project, women at WLOE brainstormed additional moves of empowerment and ways to reclaim their bodies. Bookchin’s workshop felt more women-run self-help clinics were needed; physicians could even work with lay female practitioners like midwife . Another stressed that the U.S. desperately needed a

57 WLOE, “Women and Life on Earth—Tape A-3,” WLOE Papers, Box 1, Accn. #03S-17, Folder LOE— Proceedings—Healthcare, SSC. 58 Rosalyn Baxandall and Linda Gordon, Dear Sisters: Dispatches from the Women’s Liberation Movement (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 117. 57

national health insurance program. Most expressed they wanted to change the medical system but not by becoming the very medical professionals they sought to alter. “You become a mirror image of what you fight,” one woman explained, “There is a law, a about this, really.

In order to fight them, we become like them.”59 Expanding traditional understandings of

“women’s health,” they also focused on broader topics such as food production, pesticides and environmental health, and in doing so, they politicized a variety of issues as vital components of a feminist plan for holistic health.

Penning simple but impassioned lyrics, women at WLOE also created or shared songs, poems and chants that encapsulated many of their ideas. These art expressions allowed women to creatively explore their frustrations with the world and grim determination for a better future.60

Many poems like “We Are All One Planet” and “I Am On My Journey” illustrated their desire for a nonviolent world based on common human dignity and values of empathy, conflict resolution and compassion. Songs expressed their anger at male-controlled military and geopolitical power games. Women rhymed, “We don’t want your radiation / We don’t want your dirty air / We don’t want your poisons, Mister / We’d keep our planet clean and fair …. When you watch your kids a’playin’ / Think what will happen in a war…”61 Conference participants placed blame on the military, the nuclear industry and chemical and industrial manufacturers, and conflated all of these political and economic sectors under the umbrella of “misters” who degraded the environment, harmed children and left women impotent, only able to pray for

59 WLOE, “Women and Life on Earth—Tape A-3,” WLOE Papers, Box 1, Accn. #03S-17, Folder LOE— Proceedings—Healthcare, SSC. See Wendy Kline, Bodies of Knowledge: Sexuality, Reproduction, and Women’s Health in the Second Wave (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010). She traces second-wave feminists’ fraught relationship with health reforms; as they tried to alter medicine’s views and practices regarding women’s health, feminists felt they had to professionalize and become part of the medical establishment in order to enact change, and in doing so, compromised their feminism. 60 “Amherst Conference Focus: Preserving Life on Earth,” April 1980, The Natural Farmer, WLOE Papers, Box 2 Folder Press Clippings, SSC. 61 “Lister Mister,” WLOE Papers, Box 1, Folder LOE Songs and Poets, SSC. 58

change.

Displaying their broad-based feminism, they wrote about rape and battering, the dictatorial regimes in Chile, Guatemala, and Argentina, the Family Protection Act, George H. W.

Bush and the lack of self-determination for lesbians, Blacks, and Chicanos in the U.S. As one woman composed, “The FBI and the CIA / IBM and the KKK / Anti-woman and anti-gay /

Nazis run the USA,” her lyrics signaled that WLOE participants were redefining “patriarchy” to encompass a dizzying array of problems.62 Governmental surveillance, racism, corporate greed, homophobia and battering were understood as male-led institutions of violence against women and all peoples. In a telling example of the connections they sought to reveal, one woman penned:

“The brain bone’s connected to the money / bone, the money bone’s connected to the /

buy bone, the buy bone’s connected to / the advertising bone, Lord they got a / hold on

me / Then it’s the advertising bone connec- / ted to the corporate bone, the corpor- / ate

bone connected to the greed bone, / the greed bone connected to the power / bone, Lord

they got a hold on me / Now it’s the power bone connected to the / war bone, the war

bone connected to / the bomb bone, the bomb one connected / to the nuclear bone, and

mine / are radioactive sure to be.”63

While most saw nuclear weaponry and energy as one among many oppressions, some prioritized the arms race as more pressing than other “isms.” As one attendant’s words captured, “Now I’m not talking about my / particular cause / Racism, sexism, class they all / need to fall / If we want to live to struggle / another day / We got to wake up to this / common cause we face / If the

62 “Even More Songs,” WLOE Papers, Box 1, Folder LOE Songs and Poets, SSC. 63 Ibid. 59

bombs begin to fall all / over the world / Your particular oppression will / be lost in the swirl.”64

This issue of ranking needs or social justice battles would resurface among feminists in their environmental and disarmament work throughout the 1980s, prompting debates and disagreements among women about the feasibility of their activism. For as eye-opening and invigorating as their ideas were, women would continually struggle with how to adequately address all these problems.

Their writings also coopted and reappraised “seedy” parts of women’s history when, for example, they proudly claimed witches as part of their ancestry: “Maybe your great great great grandma was one!”65 Like Swerdlow’s history lesson and Bookchin’s workshop on medical history, disinterring and claiming women’s history was an important project begun by early women liberationists, and conference attendants carried on this tradition. “We are both a beginning and a continuation,” Ynestra King reflected after the conference, “We are a beginning for this decade but we continue the work of the many brave and visionary women who have gone before us. There was Ellen Swallow, the founder of ecological science. There was Rachel Carson who wrote Silent Spring twenty years ago sounding a warning about chemicals and pesticides which was not headed until many years later. There were the women of the Women Strike for

Peace and the ban the bomb of the fifties.”66

WLOE attendents especially reclaimed past female healers, midwives and matriarchs. In their eyes, these historical figures embodied values of ecological harmony and women’s attunement to nature. They also anthromorphized the earth as a mother or a female healer, and poetry and songs reasoned that women likewise possessed such curative powers. In contrast to

64 Ibid. 65 “We Are The Witches,” WLOE Papers, Box 1, Folder LOE Songs and Poets, SSC. 66 Ynestra King, “May Our Circle Be Unbroken: The Eco-Feminist Imperative,” WLOE Papers, Box 5, Folder WLOE Newsletter, SSC. 60

women’s instinctive interest in preserving and appreciating the environment, men, in these creative exercises, represented and propagated mindless technology destroying the earth. In

“Bull Frog Song,” a woman discovered different beautiful creatures in nature—a duck, a frog, a dog, a baby. One by one, either synthetic chemicals poisoned them or nuclear radiation killed them. The poem concluded with the death of her baby as “my milk’s been brittle since they dropped the bomb.”67

Throughout the entire weekend, beyond songs and poetry, art featured as a prominent tool to express this . On Friday evening, after the opening session, women attended an art exhibition prepared by around 150 artists on themes of survival, quality of life and the domination of women and nature. In the “sculptural environment” of the exhibit, a series of rooms with various art installations conveyed a sense of women’s rage. A knife, for instance, was slashed into a gallery wall below a series of handwritten notes about women’s personal experiences of disempowerment. Artists also conveyed women’s transcendence and unity above this rage. There was a charcoal drawing on another wall done by women who literally linked hands while drawing.68

The conference concluded with a closing circle outside. Women joined hands, singing and dancing around the solar collector, a product of one of the conference workshops.69 Such artistic expressiveness as an integral piece of their multi-fronted feminism would continue to feature prominently in this burgeoning movement. Their art, in some ways, essentialized both nature and women, yet this reliance on women and earth as healers did not imprison them at this

67 “Bull Frog Song,” WLOE Papers, Box 1, Folder LOE Songs and Poets, SSC. 68 Alice Dembner, “Meetings shape feminists, ecologists movement,” Daily Hampshire Gazette (Northampton, Massachusetts), WLOE Papers, Box 2, Folder Press Clippings; Laura Holland, “Feminism, Ecology and Art,” March 26, 1980, Valley Advocate (Pioneer Valley, Massachusetts), WLOE Papers, Box 2 Folder Press Clippings, SSC. 69 WLOE, “Hello Again,” April 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 2, Folder April Post Conference Report, SSC. 61

moment. It instead allowed them to envision a universal sisterhood in which all women shared the experience of being affected by male systems of violence. For as much as their philosophical imaginings connected a myriad of problems and thus permitted a myriad of women to be in network with each other, their conception that violence and militarism impacted and united all women also served as a powerful bonding tool.

“Dear Women, Please send me more information about your movement.”

The countless letters and postcards women sent to WLOE post-conference spoke to the staying power of the ideas and initiatives expressed at the gathering. Mail arrived from New

England as well as East Coast cities like New York City, Washington D.C. and Baltimore. Even though the vast majority of conference participants were New Englanders, women from as far away as Illinois, California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Indiana, and Pennsylvania requested conference proceedings or asked to be put on the mailing list. Some simply wrote to express their support. Most queried for more information on the connections between women and ecology. Some women enclosed newsletters from their own organizations. Sometimes they sent poetry or sought to exchange bibliographies on literature related to women’s connections with nature and nonviolence.70 While most who wrote in were already involved in nuclear disarmament or women’s activism, the perspectives of WLOE—that women’s liberation involved ecological harmony and peace—struck a chord. For example, one woman asked for more information about the organization and wrote, “As a feminist in strong favor of nuclear disarmament, I feel that as women we can bear the strength to tackle the most important issue ever to face the human race and the planet. Someday I hope to see my grandchildren exist

70 WLOE Papers, Box 2, Folders Resource Orders, Correspondence—Outside, Mailing List Add/Correct, Copied onto Cards—Non Participants; Box 5, Folder Correspondence, SSC. 62

without mutilation, genetic defects or the meager hope of a twenty-year life span.”71 Another simply stated, “The preservation of our environment and the role of women in bringing about world peace are major interests for me.”72 Mothers expressed concern for their children’s futures, and many students, teachers and professors expressed an interest to better grasp connections between women and the environment. Even a few men wrote in.

Numerous organizations sent their own leaflets and newsletters. of these indicated that interest existed among a range of women’s, environmental and peace groups. After the conference, it was customary for WLOE to receive a handbill for a Take Back the Night march arrived alongside a conference packet for the New England Environmental Conference.

The mail alluded to some kind of ideological connection that women were trying to make, that their disparate organizations should be in the know of one another and should exchange resources. Flyers came from feminist anti-nuclear groups such as the New Haven Feminist Union

Anti-Nuclear Task Force, Dykes Opposed to Nuclear Technology and Lesbians United in Non-

Nuclear Action (LUNA), as well as from environmentalists, alternative and safe energy groups, activists in organic food and food cooperatives, American Indian rights’ advocates and women’s rights organizations.73 Some sent literature; others communicated more intimate stories and sought direct assistance from WLOE. The group Dykes Opposed to Nuclear Technology, for instance, described to WLOE ongoing homophobia in the anti-nuclear weapons and energy movement, and in particular, how at a large anti-nuclear rally in Washington, D.C., in May 1979, gay and lesbian groups felt stigmatized. Some were even physically attacked along with

Hispanics and Black anti-nuclear activists. Made to feel like adjuncts of the anti-nuclear

71 “Dear Friends,” April 2, 1981, WLOE Papers, Box 2, Folder Resource Orders, SSC. 72 “Dear Ms. Hoffman,” March 18, 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 2, Folder Copied onto Cards—Non Participants, SSC. 73 “List of Organizations which have contacted us for networking and resources,” WLOE Papers, Box 2, Folder Networking Orgs, SSC. See Folder Networking Orgs for numerous flyers from other organizations sent to WLOE. 63

movement, they accentuated to WLOE that people needed to see the violence that supported the military-industrial complex also supported this kind of racist, homophobic violence.74

That WLOE began as a conference with the express aim of synthesizing numerous topics made it a target for all interested groups to mail in literature and stories. More importantly, though, the mail received by WLOE signaled that the organization had plugged into an emerging web of people devoted to seeing the world more equitable, healthy and peaceful. This impressive network of citizens-activists resembled the fervor of the 1960s and its sundry social movements.

Undoubtedly activism had changed since the 1960s, but there was an important moment in the late 1970s and early 1980s in which people, and women especially, mobilized in mass to make meaningful connections between a diversity of oppressions rooted in violence. WLOE served as a crucial junction as it enabled many—very different—women to unite behind a platform that rejected violence in all its forms.

One woman who had attended the conference, a New Yorker experienced in draft counseling, anti-war activism from the Vietnam years and nuclear disarmament work, expressed her happiness to WLOE for its initiative and role in the burgeoning women’s movement.

Explaining that she had been “searching for ways in which to work as a feminist, pacifist and ecologist,” she saw “deep philosophic connection between these three.”75 “I want to direct my energies in the future towards active work that both comes from and demonstrates these relationships.”76 She and five other women were even planning a teach-in on the relations between safe energy, conservation, the arms race and feminism. She explained that, to her, feminist, ecological and pacifist philosophies are all “life affirming, seeking to humanize and to

74 “Dykes Opposed to Nuclear Technology: A Statement,” WLOE Papers, Box 2, Folder Networking Orgs., SSC. 75 [Redacted], “Dear Friends,” Spring 1980, Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Women’s Pentagon Action, Box 26 of 26, Folder 1, SSC. 76 Ibid. 64

promote communication between peoples” as they “seek alternatives to violence and oppose oppression in all its forms.”77 This woman’s revelatory, coinciding interests in peace, feminism and the environment again intimated that women were contemplating these issues. That so many felt compelled to describe to WLOE and WPA organizers their personal testimonies denoted a budding movement in which channels of communications and knowledge-sharing were crystalizing. The writer further reported in her letter that the upcoming Women and Militarism conference in Scotland, which she planned to attend, appealed to her because “these are the central issues.”78

Curiosity in WLOE spread beyond the U.S., and that it piqued the interest of foreign women serves as a flashpoint for the already-existing channels of communication between women in America, Britain, Europe and even far-flung and . This kind of transatlantic information-sharing and organizing characterized earlier women’s peace activism.

Since , women from far-flung countries had networked and created transnational organizations, born out of established female networks from abolitionism, social reform, socialism, peace and suffragism.79 By the 1970s, new channels of citizen diplomacy afforded women additional opportunities for dialogue across borders. Thanks to a de-escalation of the

Cold War, the 1975 Helsinki Accords and U.N. World Conferences on Women beginning in

1975, ordinary citizens could increasingly participate in transnational exchanges despite the supposed Iron Curtain.80

77 Ibid. 78 Ibid. 79 See Leila Rupp, Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’s Movement (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). 80 See Sarah B. Snyder, Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War: A Transnational History of the Helsinki Network (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Daniel C. Thomas, The Helsinki Effect: International Norms, Human Rights, and the Demise of Communism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Paul Rubinson, “‘For Our Soviet Colleagues’: Scientific Internationalism, Human Rights, and the Cold War,” in The Human Rights Revolution: An International History, eds. Akira Iriye, Petra Goedde, and William Hitchcock (New 65

Women from Europe and Britain wrote into WLOE, desiring its proceedings, and many insisted that women must work together, beyond borders, to enact real change. Examples abound. A woman from London asked if anyone from WLOE would be interested and willing to arrange for a similar conference in England.81 WLOE organizer Christina Rawley eventually traveled to London to assist with preparations, and one British woman expressed her gratitude,

“The fact is, we are threatened by American imperialism and it won’t matter how together we are if we don’t have the support of you American women.”82 When one Finnish woman requested materials from WLOE, she explained that feminists in Finland saw ecological, feminist and anti- nuclear perspectives as interrelated.83 From Berlin, another woman explained the initiative taken by WLOE mirrored work among European women that had begun to plan actions against nuclear technology. As she was involved in producing an anti-nuclear handbook for other German women, the Berlin woman asked for literature suggestions. Demonstrating her commitment to the ideas of WLOE and its networking potential, she invited its organizers to Rotterdam during the Russell Tribunal in late 1980 which was conveying on the rights of indigenous peoples in

America. She also inquired if WLOE would like to send delegates to plan a women’s conference in Europe around issues of nuclear power and the ecological crisis.84

York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 245-264; Allida Black, “Are Women ‘Human’? The UN and the Struggle to Recognize Women’s Rights as Human Rights,” in The Human Rights Revolution, 133-155; Kelly J. Shannon, “The Right to Bodily Integrity: Women’s Rights as Human Rights and the International Movement to End Female Genital Mutilation,” in The Human Rights Revolution, 285-310; Jan Eckel and Samuel Moyn, eds., The Breakthrough: Human Rights in the 1970s (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014); Celia Donert, “Whose Utopia? Gender, Ideology, and Human Rights at the 1975 World Congress of Women in East Berlin,” in The Breakthrough, 68-87; Myra Marx Ferree, “Globalization and Feminism: Opportunities and Obstacles for Activism in the Global Arena” in Global Feminism, 3-23; Margaret Snyder, “Unlikely Godmother: The UN and the Global Women’s Movement,” in Global Feminism, 24-50. Sarah Snyder, Thomas, Iriye et al. and Moyn identify the 1970s as an important decade for human rights protocol and transnational exchange. Others like Black, Shannon, Donert, Ferree and Margaret Snyder examine the massive increase in women’s activism and dialogue, often surrounding women’s rights and feminisms, across the Iron Curtain in the 1970s. 81 “Dear [Redacted],” October 5, 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 2, Folder Internal Correspondence, SSC. 82 Christina Rawley, “Women and Life on Earth/London,” WLOE Papers, Box 5, Folder WLOE Newsletter, SSC. 83 “Dear Sisters,” WLOE Papers, Box 2, Folder Internal Correspondence, SSC. 84 “dear sisters in the anti- movement,” WLOE Papers, Box 2, Folder Internal Correspondence, SSC. 66

Another woman from Berlin, involved in the multi-national organization Women for

Peace, detailed to WLOE the efforts of West German women protesting NATO military policy.85

Enraged over the NATO decision to site 464 cruise and 108 Pershing II missiles at strategic locations in Great Britain, Italy, Holland, Belgium, and Germany, the German chapter of Women for Peace staged mass direct actions, like their demonstration in March 1981 at the Ramstein

Atomic Military Base, the largest US military installation in Europe, to express their profound discontent.86 For the approaching summer, the German women had devised a peace march that would commence in Copenhagen, , and finish in Paris, France. They requested

WLOE’s help in publicizing their organization across the U.S. because, they wrote, “you our sisters are our ‘allies’ over the . Send us photos, songs and love on how to survive.”87

Women from also contacted WLOE. Introducing themselves as part of their own national anti-nuclear movement, they explained they wanted to partner with Austrian feminists to produce a magazine joining issues of women’s liberation and nuclear technology.88 After they held their

Women’s Congress against the Military and Nuclear Power in Cologne in September 1979,

European women inquired if WLOE wanted to collaborate on an International Women’s Ecology

Action magazine that would show the ways in which women in their respective nations contributed to peace and ecological activism.89

WLOE initiated other, similar conferences, again reinforcing the importance of these gatherings for the late 20th century women’s movement. Women convened the Women and Solar

85 Women for Peace, or Kvinder for Fred, began in February 1980 by Danish women protesting both the NATO decision to site missiles through Britain and Europe and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Women for Peace quickly spread to Norway and neighboring countries. See Lawrence S. Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971-Present (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 69. 86 Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition, 99-102. 87 [Redacted], “Dear Friends,” April 1981, WLOE Papers, Box 5, Folder WLOE Newsletter, SSC. 88 “Dear Anna,” March 16, 1980. WLOE Papers, Box 2, Folder Women and Ecology International, SSC. 89 “Dear Sisters in the Ecological and anti-Military Movements,” October 2, 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 2, Folder Women and Ecology International, SSC. 67

Energy conference, held in Amherst, Massachusetts, from October 20th to the 21st, 1980, to discuss how they could reorient technology toward peaceful, non-nuclear uses and alternative energies. It attracted an uneasy amalgamation of working women employed in solar energy and feminists who did not typically attend the same conferences. Still, the gathering afforded them an opportunity to discuss the collaborative potential between environmentalism, feminism and labor advocacy. Many working women also came to the conclusion that, despite comprising one- quarter of workers in their industry, there was a need for more female engineers and female leadership in solar energy.90

One year after WLOE, “Women and the Environment,” the first West Coast “eco- feminist” conference, met at Sonoma State University on April 25th, 1981 with goals and a platform mirroring those of its East Coast precedent. It offered more than fifty workshops, covering topics such as nuclear power, feminism and nonviolence, lesbianism, ecological planning and preservation, alternative energy, abortion and population control, world hunger and even midwifery and . Speakers such as of the National Alliance against

Racist and Political Repression, author of Women in the China Galland, WLOE organizer Anna Gyorgy, Winona LaDuke, the founder of Women of all Red Nations and editor of magazine Peggy Taylor prodded participants to consider women’s “ecological perspective” of nurturance and concern for future generations, and how women could wield that in politics.91

In another similar incident, the (WRL) attracted over two hundred

90 [Redacted], “Women in Solar Energy,” November 24, 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 1, Accn. #05S-59, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 91 “Women and the Environment: The 1st West Coast Eco-Feminist Conference,” WLOE Papers, Box 5, Folder Women + the Environment Technology + Resources, SSC. 68

women to analyze women, militarism and the environment.92 Convening at Dingmans Ferry in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania in April 1981, the WRL conference melded the agendas of environmentalism, nonviolence and feminism, so that women “at first overwhelmed by the feminist discussions and strategizing … soon began to feel less invisible and more connected to the group, as [their] own ideas were valued in a small group workshop.”93 Lois Gibbs was one attendant. Exhibiting a growing ecological consciousness, she expressed at the gathering that she was surprised to find that "Love Canal relates" and that it was "the same men who bring us the

Love Canal also bring us Rely tampons and Three Mile Island.”94 Indeed, for these women “and surely for others, too,” as attendant Sue Hoffman assessed, “that weekend marked an important connection between their own political work [in peace and environmentalism] and a feminist view.”95 Alongside other well-known women like Boston socialist-feminist , Irish liberation theologist Mary Condren gave a compelling speech during which she argued the neutron bomb was the ultimate expression of male violence against women and the planet.

Condren and others agreed that the world could not be rid of militaristic violence “until all women are free from domination and vice versa.”96

In June 1982, the U.S. chapter of the pacifist organization, the Women’s International

League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), and the Quaker social justice and peace group,

American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), assembled a Global Feminist Disarmament meeting at Barnard College, New York, in which over three hundred women attended. Women from WLOE as well as members of the Black Independent , the New York

92 “Feminism and Militarism: A Conference for Women,” WLOE Papers, Box 5, Folder Anti War Military/ Peace Groups, SSC. 93 Sue Hoffman, “It wasn’t just another conference,” WLOE Papers, Box 5, Folder WLOE Newsletter, SSC. 94 Ibid. Rely tampons, produced by Procter & Gamble, were linked to toxic shock syndrome (TSS) in the early 1980s and recalled from the market. See Sharra L. Vostral, “Rely and Toxic Shock Syndrome: A Technological Health Crisis,” Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine 84/4 (Dec. 2011): 447–459. 95 Sue Hoffman, “It wasn’t just another conference,” WLOE Papers, Box 5, Folder WLOE Newsletter, SSC. 96 Ibid. 69

Feminist Women’s Peace Alliance, Sisters Organizing Together Opposing Radioactive Menace

(STORM) and attendents from eleven different countries converged to share and expand their knowledge of the Cold War arms race and its connections to violence and sexism at home. In the words of one participant, Barbara Zanotti, “Each participant recognized what was abundantly clear: Patriarchy is a state of war. Violence is the inevitable outcome. Feminism is the politics of global right relation [sic].”97

Echoing conversations had at WLOE and the Women and Militarism Conference, attendants saw themselves as part of a “vibrant legacy of Womanpeace” and conceived of feminism not as “a laundry list of women’s concerns,” but rather “a political perspective on life” that identified “the mutually reinforcing relationship of militarism and sexism.”98 In her keynote speech, anti-war, civil rights and lesbian feminist activist offered feminism as the solution to “the patriarchal dynamic of militarism, of domination of people and of destruction of the earth’s resources.”99 Mimicking the ecologically-informed feminism promoted at WLOE,

Bunch set forth the dream of a global feminism that rooted out all forms of oppression.100

97 Barbara Zanotti, “Memories that Endure,” Philadelphia Women’s Encampment Papers, Box 3 of 4, Actions and Women’s Peace Encampments, Folder Feminist Disarmament meeting, June 11, 1982, Swarthmore College Peace Collection (hereafter SCPC), Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Zanotti had been a part of the First UN Special Session on Disarmament in 1978, and she applauded the recent progress feminists had made in pushing both male-led disarmament organizations to consider their sexism and more traditional women’s peace groups to link peace initiatives to feminist perspectives. 98 Ibid.; Philadelphia Women’s Encampment, “Report of Charlotte Bunch’s Speech and the Meeting,” Philadelphia Women’s Encampment Papers, Box 3 of 4, Actions and Women’s Peace Encampments, Folder Feminist Disarmament meeting, June 11, 1982, SCPC. 99 Ibid. An important civil rights and antiwar activist and especially known for her feminism, Charlotte Bunch was, at this point, an ex-member of the lesbian-feminist group, the Furies. Founded in 1971 in Washington, D.C., the Furies were one of the most influential lesbian separatist groups in the U.S. Like the Radicalesbians, the Furies asserted that lesbians were the of the women’s movement as they rejected heterosexual women and men. They chose to separate from other feminist groups and establish lesbian-only because, in the early 1970s, the dominant radical feminists failed to confront their own homophobia. Women like Bunch cast their lesbianism as “a political choice” and the ultimate expression of what it meant to be liberated. Bunch left the Furies in 1973. See Evans, Tidal Wave, 99-104; Ruth Rosen, The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America (New York: Penguin Books, 2000), 164-175. 100 Making transnational connections was very important to conference participants. In the Global Networking workshop, for example, women recommended more inter-country dialogue, conference calls and resources to make this happen. See Philadelphia Women’s Encampment, “Global Networking” in “The Afternoon Small Groups,” 70

The conference was structured around break-out sessions such as “Becoming Aware of the Connections Between Sexism and Militarism” and “Bringing a Peace Perspective to the

Women’s Movement.” Women in groups of twenty to thirty assembled, and the diverse paths and perspectives that led them to the women’s movement illustrated its wide appeal and its even wider theoretical connections. Some women had been active in feminism or anti-war activism for years; others had been recently stirred to action after reading Barbara Deming’s Prison Notes

(1966) or ’s Women, War, and Revolution (1972).101 One woman told of her involvement with WLOE. Another explained her work with battered women and anti-nuclear agitation, both activities centering on “bring[ing] the peace home.”102 A mother, whose son was killed in Vietnam, described her history of anti-war activism and her recent push to convince the

National Freeze Committee to include more women. Many others, already involved in peace organizations, pushed their leaderships to consider broader connections, weaving together, for instance, the feminization of poverty and the bloated military budget. The conference illuminated that the varied manifestations that violence took clearly piqued women’s interests, and led to revelations that, for instance, the purchase of Trident-carrying submarines was being discussed at the same time as national health subsidies for were being threatened.

WLOE also encouraged the emergence of a variety of new organizations to form across

America. Women for a Nuclear Free Future, for instance, cited WLOE as its origin after women from Portland attended the conference and immediately returned to Maine to work on promoting a referendum against the Maine Yankee Atomic Power Plant in Wiscasset, Maine.

Philadelphia Women’s Encampment Papers, Box Actions and Women’s Peace Encampments, Folder Feminist Disarmament meeting, June 11, 1982, SCPC. 101 Philadelphia Women’s Encampment, “Becoming Aware of the Connections between Sexism and Militarism” in “The Afternoon Small Groups,” Philadelphia Women’s Encampment Papers, Box Actions and Women’s Peace Encampments, Folder Feminist Disarmament meeting, June 11, 1982, SCPC. 102 Philadelphia Women’s Encampment, “The Morning Small Groups,” Philadelphia Women’s Encampment Papers, Box Actions and Women’s Peace Encampments, Folder Feminist Disarmament meeting, June 11, 1982, SCPC. 71

“As women, we were (and still are) particularly concerned about the effects of all levels of radiation on the unborn and reproductive organs,” they explained.103 Interested in public education foremost, members ran a newspaper advertisement as their first public service announcement that explicated the perils of nuclear technology. Women researched and wrote individual sections, and after soliciting donations to pay for the ad, over $4000 poured in from almost eight hundred women statewide.104 In another instance, Women Against Nuclear

Development (WAND), based in Vermont, emerged after twenty women from Norwich,

Vermont, traveled to the WLOE conference. Energized, they returned home and held over twenty workshops on women and nuclear development, utilizing skills and much-needed resources procured through their involvement with WLOE. One WAND member explained, “For me, Women and Life on Earth has been a spark. The area I live in is primarily rural. Isolation from people and the richness of urban politics and varied ethnic groups tends to narrow my feminist perspective. It is vital for me and the women I work with that we have access to, and a flow of, resources and ideas to and from women in this area.”105 As much as WLOE incentivized organizational beginnings, it also inspired numerous episodes of nonviolent civil disobedience which would become an increasingly important component of the women’s movement. After participation in WLOE, women from Vermont, for example, partook in a direct action at the

Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, weaving string, wool and ribbons to blockade the plant entrance. The Northeast Alliance of Against Nuclear Power and Weapons also initiated an action in the aftermath of WLOE as they too theatrically encircled the military contractor,

103 [Redacted], “Women and Life on Earth/Maine Women for a Nuclear Free Future,” November 24, 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 1, Accn. #05S-59, Folder Unprocessed., SSC. 104 Ibid. 105 [Redacted], “Dear Friends,” January 20, 1981, WLOE Papers, Box 2 of 7, Accn. #03S-17, Folder Letters of Support, SSC. 72

United Technologies, in Hartford, Connecticut in protest.106

“If your baby is in a burning building and the whole neighborhood is burning down, you don’t think about nuclear dangers.”

As positive as feedback was, the WLOE conference and its ideas did not satisfy all women. Immediately after its conclusion, its organizers met to evaluate their successes and shortcomings, and in newsletters sent out to their mailing lists, they solicited as much feedback from participants’ as possible. Several, less controversial issues emerged in evaluations. Staff women expressed their frustration with overwork and disorganization. By the conference’s end, some participants wanted more concrete plans for future actions.107 The Sunday panel provided several suggestions for prospective actions such as lobbying elected representatives, public education campaigns, consumer of certain products connected to the military-industrial- nuclear complex and nonviolent direct actions.108 But, guided by principles of decentralized, consensus decision-making, the conference had produced theory and opportunities of strategizing and networking as opposed to some kind of promised follow-up action in which they could participate.

Many women agreed the biggest drawback was how few low-income and women of color attended. This did not surprise conference organizers. In their earliest planning sessions, they feared the gathering would turn out to be another meet-up for only white, middle-class women, and they were very wary that, in inviting minority women who might not come out of sheer interest, such a gesture would be tokenism on their part. WLOE leaders wanted to include

106 WLOE, “Hello Again,” April 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 2, Folder April Post Conference Report, SSC. 107 WLOE, “Minutes from Women and Life on Earth Planning Committee Meeting,” March 24, 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 1, Folder Originals of leaflets for 1st Conference/important letters Planning Committee, SSC. 108 WLOE, “Hello Again,” April 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 2, Folder April Post Conference Report, SSC. 73

rural women, but they sensed such women might feel uneasy being around an otherwise largely academic crowd normally attracted to conferences. They also worried about Amherst itself as the setting for the event, thinking that it might not entice many rural or low-income women.109 Still, planners made sure to include a diversity of women and allotted time and for a dialogue about race and racism. They even invited two women from the Mohawk Nation at Akwesasne to facilitate a workshop on Native American rights and environmental issues they faced.

Yet the Mohawk women were unable to attend due to a crisis at home, and conference planners acknowledged that despite sincere attempts, such as advertising WLOE at local

Hispanic organizations and centers, their event was not as inclusive as imagined. The Sunday afternoon “Taking Action” panel illuminated this lack of pluralism. It included an open-mike session which was dominated by many Black women’s concerns initially raised in the militarism and racism workshop. Panelist Mary Nelson brought with her the report from that workshop, and the “one woman after another,” as organizers Ynestra King and Grace Paley recollected after the conference, “addressed the fact of racism as a sickness of our society from which those present were not immune.”110 There was shouting and tears, and one Black woman vented that she had been called “nigger” by six white women.111

In some participants’ minds, the needs of minority women took precedence over ecological concerns. One low-income, white woman expressed that her foremost worry was to put food on the table, not to build a solar greenhouse.112 But others commented that the poorest and most disenfranchised were often the first to experience environmental injustice. These populations tended to live near toxic waste sites, or in the case of Native Americans, worked in

109 “Outreach,” WLOE Papers, Box 1, Folder LE Conf.—Outreach, SSC. 110 WLOE, “Hello Again,” April 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 2, Folder April Post Conference Report, SSC. 111 Phyllis Austin, “The Eco-Feminists: Moving on to planetary survival issues,” Maine Times (Topsham, Maine), April 4, 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 2, Folder Press Clippings, SSC. 112 Ibid. 74

uranium mines and suffered from radiation poisoning. Still, as one woman noted, nuclear dangers were less pressing when “your baby is in a burning building and the whole neighborhood is burning down.”113 Women of color viewed environmental and occupational health and safety as secondary to immediate racial and sexist discrimination. White women at the open-mike session took it upon themselves to declare that as privileged women in the U.S., it was their duty to expose the connections between capitalism, racism and environmental destruction, yet such a pronouncement did little to assuage racial tensions. This issue of diversity also surfaced at the War Resisters League (WRL) conference on feminism and militarism. Only one woman of color presented a speech or facilitated a workshop. Frustrated by an all-white audience, Claudette Furlonge, an organizer with the People’s Anti-War Mobilization and a staff member at the Center for Constitutional Rights, made it clear to fellow conference-goers that feminism, nonviolence and liberation held a dramatically different meaning for women of color.

She asked them to consider women “in Zimbabwe, Detroit, Puerto Rico, Viet Nam” and “what is feminism for women of color?”114 Often, it meant “violent national liberation struggles” and dealing with “violence directed against Native Americans, blacks and Puerto Rican” in

America..115 This kind of violence, in many white women’s minds, seemed justified. Still, they struggled to balance supporting liberation movements and their own nonviolent philosophy.

Unresolved, the question of whether or not nonviolence was a white privilege perturbed them.

Furthermore, at this conference and others, Black women complained that their fellow activists routinely pegged them into the spot of “explaining racism,” and in doing so, suggested that their presence was mere tokenism.116

113 WLOE, “Hello Again,” April 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 2, Folder April Post Conference Report, SSC. 114 Sue Hoffman, “It wasn’t just another conference,” WLOE Papers, Box 5, Folder WLOE Newsletter, SSC. 115 Brenda Marston, “feminists against militarism,” off our backs, November 1981, 18. 116 Marston, “feminists against militarism,” 19. 75

The closing ceremony of the Global Feminist Disarmament conference further served as a harbinger that inclusivity escaped the women’s movement. At the end of the conference, several lesbian women stood up to make a statement of visibility. Offended by the assumption of heterosexuality within their movement, these women exposed instances of homophobia during the conference. Even in the workshop that specifically covered the issue of lesbians’ place within peace activism, participating women explained they felt labeled and ostracized. “How dare it be assumed I’m straight,” stated one woman.117 Another explained that she could not talk about her lover but had to refer to her as “her friend.”118

At the heart of concerns over inclusivity was the acknowledgment by women in 1980 that women’s liberation in the U.S. since the late 1960s had struggled with genuine pluralism. Many early women’s liberationists sought to unite all women under the “primary contradiction” of gender.119 In this theory, gender hierarchies were considered most oppressive to women. Black and Chicana feminists, however, rejected this privileging of gender over race or class as structural inequalities underpinned their lives in profound ways. Feminists of color instead chose to construct groups, distinct from white women’s liberationists, that emphasized racial, ethnic and class differences rather than gender commonalities. Both white and Black women came to feminism by the late ‘60s after experiencing discrimination in the civil rights, Black Power and anti-war movements. Serving as secretaries for activist men, they later were impelled to consider their own rights as women. Yet, regardless of this similarity, they still organized separately from

117 Philadelphia Women’s Encampment, “Lesbians and the Peace Movement” in “The Afternoon Small Groups,” Philadelphia Women’s Encampment Papers, Box 3 of 4, Actions and Women’s Peace Encampments Box, Folder Feminist Disarmament meeting, June 11, 1982, SCPC. 118 Ibid. See also Brenda Marston, “feminists against militarism,” off our backs, November 1981, 18-19. Marston explains that at Against Militarism conference in Delton, Michigan in September 1981, homophobia was a major problem, to the point that lesbians formed their own caucus to express their dissatisfaction and feeling of exclusion. 119 Alice Echols, Daring to be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-1975 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 284; Rory Dicker, A History of U.S. Feminisms (Berkeley: Seal Press, 2008), 74-101. 76

one another. Black women rejected the subservient roles Black men cast them into as oppressive and stereotypical of white, middle-class America. But they did not view white women as racially aware and sensitive. Similarly, Chicana women came to feminism through their own civil rights movement. In the Chicano movement, Chicanas advocated for what they saw as a long tradition of social activism among Mexican women, and they argued that only an egalitarian and politicized Chicano family with an empowered woman at its helm could challenge white domination effectively. Chicanas and Black feminists thus distanced themselves from white variants of feminism, and white women’s liberationists thoroughly struggled to understand these dueling identities and oppressions.120

Since the 1960s, lesbian feminists also “experienced a painful silencing within their own communities,” as historian Sara Evans writes.121 Galvanized by both the women’s movement and gay rights, surfaced in both white and minority women’s liberation. Groups like the Radicalesbians in New York and the Furies out of Washington, D.C., led by Rita Mae

Brown and Charlotte Bunch, championed the new theoretical conviction that feminism and lesbianism were inseparable, and that women’s liberation depended on complete autonomy from men. Yet homophobia caused numerous feminists groups to splinter, leading to the so-called

“gay-straight split” within the early years of the women’s liberation movement. Not until the mid-1970s, when feminism had matured and institutionalized, were lesbian identities more acceptable. In the proliferation of conferences, national organizations, music festivals, health clinics, book stores, women-run businesses and college curriculum established mid-decade, lesbians constructed “public spaces in which their sexual preferences was acknowledged and

120 See Benita Roth, Separate Roads to Feminism: Black, Chicana, and White Feminist Movements in America’s Second Wave (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Evans, Tidal Wave, 115-121; Evan Hart, “Building a More Inclusive Women's Health Movement: Byllye Avery and the Development of the National Black Women's Health Project, 1981-1990” (PhD Dissertation, University of Cincinnati, 2012). 121 Evans, Tidal Wave, 118. 77

celebrated rather than hidden and suppressed.”122

Indeed, in an effort to move beyond racial, class and sexuality differences and celebrate womanhood through or despite its diversity, some women pioneered women-only spaces and institutions, and devised separation from men as the route to women’s liberation. Celebrating female bonding and female biology—insisting as lesbian feminist poet Adrienne Rich did that women should “view [female] physicality as a resource, rather than a destiny”—this feminism maligned male values and sought to include women of all classes, races, sexualities and nations.123 Yet even this theoretical thread of feminism failed to be multiculturally sensitive.

Tellingly, in Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (1978), feminist Mary Daly sought to show that where all women embodied the essence of life, patriarchal culture threatened to kill it. In her effort to insist that women’s difference from men could be a source of strength, she was criticized by Black feminist who asked, “Why are her goddess-images only white, western-European, judeo-christian?”124 By 1980, then, driven by the very real fear that as a new generation of feminists they would yet again be “strictly white,” women involved in

WLOE and other conferences explicitly tried to engage with minority women.125 Yet as the conference revealed, the latter viewed this as mere tokenism and remained offended by assumptions of heterosexuality.

“If everything is feminist … then nothing is feminist.”

Beyond the problem of inclusivity, the women’s movement contended with a vocal minority of American women who adamantly disliked its grounding in nonviolence and

122 Evans, Tidal Wave, 149; see also 99-104, 121-123, 128-158; Echols, Daring to be Bad, 254-69. 123 Quoted in Kline, Bodies of Knowledge, 3; Evans, Tidal Wave, 142-58; Echols, Daring to be Bad, 243-45. 124 Sandilands, The Good-Natured Feminist, 9-10. 125 Doreen, “Nukes/Racism,” off our backs, June 1980, 22. See also Fran Moira, “Combatting Racism,” off our backs, June 1980, 4; Mary Fridley, “and self-criticized,” off our backs, October 1978, 21. 78

environmentalism. These critics, who primarily identified as radical feminists, worried that by explicating connections between many manifestations of violence, the movement diluted “true women’s issues” and further hampered their feminist agenda. In a telling article in the feminist publication, off our backs (oob), members of the Radical Feminist Organizing Committee

(ROFC) communicated as much when they repudiated that “obliteration was a feminist issue”:

“[i[f everything is feminist, as the women’s peace movement and other elements in the women’s movement would have us believe, then nothing is feminist.”126 Such disparagement of one type of feminism over another was not a new development. Since the 1960s, factions within women’s liberation disagreed over whose feminism was truest. By the 1980s, that some women intransigently refused to consider more than one type of feminism legitimate illustrated the unresolved nature of ideological dogmatism among some women in late-20th century America.

Most often, feminist detractors of WLOE and the larger women’s movement commented that “nuclear power was not a feminist issue,” as , Barbara Leon and Catherine

Charuk stated in their 1979 editorial in oob.127 They lamented women’s lib was “close to dead,” so lumping concerns over nuclear technology with “real feminist issues” diminished the latter.128

Hanisch and like-minded others felt that militarism and environmental degradation did not uniquely impact women. The best thing for peace and environmentalism, they advanced, was for women to work within those often male-led campaigns and confront their sexism. Rejecting the separatism of the women’s movement, Hanisch, Leon and Charuk warned, “It is a dangerous step backward for women to propagate this male supremacist propaganda—and for what? A

126 Terry Mehlman, Debbie Swanner, Midge Quandt, Loraine Sorrel and Tricia Lootens, “OBLIERATION AS A FEMINIST ISSUE: a position paper by the Radical Feminist Organizing Committee,” off our backs, March 1984, 17. 127 Carol Hanisch, Barbara Leon and Catherine Charuk, “earth has no gender,” off our backs, July 1979, 26. Hanisch was a member of the radical feminist group, the New York , formed in 1967, and later helped to reform the radical feminist group, the , in 1973. See Baxandall and Gordon, Dear Sisters, 184-87; Echols, Daring to be Bad, 73-74, 154, 282. 128 Carol Hanisch, Barbara Leon, and Catherine Charuk, “earth has no gender,” off our backs, July 1979, 26. 79

‘special place’ in the anti-nuclear movement? A contingent (auxiliary) of women? How far we have slid backward!”129 Historically, women-only campaigns were the main avenue through which women organized and justified any kind of public role or activism. While many women in

WLOE viewed separatism as empowering—and appropriate—Hanisch read it as further evidence of women’s marginalization within peace and environmentalism.

Other women also disliked such separatism because, to them, it affirmed the reductive assumption of men as warlike “sexist pigs” and women as inherently pacific.130 Seeing such a construction as biological determinism, skeptics also disliked that within peace activism, feminists had to share a bed with “religious groups, especially the .”131 One woman stated this kind of alliance transformed disarmament activism into a morality issue and legitimated the viewpoints of groups like Pro-Lifers for Survival who wanted to “ban bombs, not babies.”132 Beyond disliking these unsettling bedfellows, radical feminists reproved of other feminists who sought to attract “‘ordinary’ apolitical women” to the movement by talking “of motherhood and saving the world.”133 One woman claimed that the women’s movement assumed

“recruits can learn about feminism later”: “But what good does reaching a lot of people do if what reaches them is dreck? Being ‘reached’ by so-called radical and/or feminist material and activities without the politics to go with the labels is worse than having nothing there at all but outright reaction, because the women’s peace movement, Ms., or whatever acts as a buffer between women and feminism.”134

WLOE participants and other members of the women’s movement did not see their work

129 Ibid. 130 Brooke, “addendum to ‘obliteration as a feminist issue,’” off our backs, July 1984, 15; Terry Mehlman, Debbie Swanner, Midge Quandt, Loraine Sorrel and Tricia Lootens, “OBLIERATION AS A FEMINIST ISSUE: a position paper by the Radical Feminist Organizing Committee,” off our backs, March 1984, 16-17, 25. 131 Brooke, “addendum to ‘obliteration as a feminist issue,’” off our backs, July 1984, 15. 132 Ibid. 133 Ibid. 134 Ibid. 80

“as a buffer between women and feminism,” and many were quick to point out that they did pay attention to “true feminist” matters like reproductive rights and rape awareness in addition to nonviolence and environmentalism. The Philadelphia Women’s Encampment, an offshoot of

WLOE networks, for instance, expressed that women’s health rights were crucial to fight for; as one woman wrote, “I am sick and tired of fighting for [reproductive] rights we already have.”135

Women Rising in Resistance (WRR) likewise reacted to “the backlash and burnout which [were] causing women to lose gains made in the 1960s and 1970s,” as the organization rallied against the Hyde Amendment which forbid federal funding of abortions.136 In addition to abortion access, many involved in the women’s movement publicized and fought domestic and sexual abuse as such behaviors represented additional manifestations of violence. They coordinated

“Take Back the Night” demonstrations and publicized the pervasiveness of rape, domestic abuse of women and children and pornography because, as stated by the Puget Sound Women’s Peace

Camp, “…this violence is increasing. It is comparable to an undeclared war against women.”137

But women active in organizations like WLOE also paid attention to issues like nuclear technology which they construed as “most devastating to women” and “a feminist issue” because, they reasoned, women bore the ultimate responsibility in a health crisis.138 Discursively linking nuclear energy to women’s reproductive rights, groups like the Feminist Anti-Nuclear

Task Force (FANTF) mimicked Lois Gibbs and other participants at WLOE when it

135 Philadelphia Women’s Peace Camp, “Sister to Dear Sisters,” Philadelphia Women’s Peace Camp Papers, Box Historical and Organizational Files, Folder Correspondence, SCPC. 136 Women Rising in Resistance, “Women! Take in ’86,” 1986, Women Rising in Resistance Papers, Box Women for a Non-Nuclear Future through Women’s International Coalition to Stop Making , CDGA Collective Box, Folder Women Rising in Resistance, SCPC. 137 Puget Sound Women’s Peace Camp, “Stop the ” flier, Puget Sound Women’s Peace Camp Papers, Box Feminist Anti-Nuclear Task through Five Continent Peace Initiative, CDGA Collective Box, Folder Puget Sound Women’s Peace Camp, SCPC. In the late 1970s and 1980s, women created “Take Back the Night” marches to publicize violence against women. See Rosen, The World Split Open, 184-185. 138 Carolyn Projansky, J. Sidney Oliver, Gerri Traina and Sara Grusky, “Nuclear Power is a Feminist Issue,” off our backs, May 1979, 5. 81

communicated that women should have control “over their reproductive capabilities.”139 Making nuclear radiation a “woman’s issue,” FANTF members interpreted women’s health rights to include the right to bear and raise a healthy child. These women argued that both nuclear safety and the right to abortion centered on choice: “to choose not to have children or to choose to have children who are healthy.”140

Yet the problem Hanisch and others had with the movement was not that its members advocated for abortion access or protested rape but that they appropriated the term rape to also describe the effects of nuclear testing on earth. Women connected to organizations like WLOE declared environmental devastation “a wimmin’s issue” because it was yet again another indicator of the male-dominated violent culture they sought to change.141 Such an application of that word horrified others who saw it as the co-option of feminist language for non-feminist purposes and yet another example of women’s activism in other campaigns, notably peace or environmentalism, backseating a feminist revolution.142 To be fair, such concerns fit within the political context of the 1980s. As the economy slowed and shifted uneasily to a service one through the 1970s, Americans dealt with inflation, rising unemployment and the end of the postwar industrial boom that had launched so many Americans into the middle class.

Redistributive social movements like women’s liberation “found many supporters becoming cautious or even hostile,” and grassroots conservatism that coalesced in the mid-1970s appealed to traditional family values and demonized women’s liberation.143 The hostility of radical feminists toward women involved in organizations like WLOE occurred as women’s lib receded

139 Ibid. 140 Margie Crow, “women & the anti-nuke movement,” off our backs, May 1979, 5. 141 Raven, “uranium rape,” off our backs, October 1979, 30. 142 Terry Mehlman, Debbie Swanner, Midge Quandt, Loraine Sorrel, and Tricia Lootens, “OBLIERATION AS A FEMINIST ISSUE: a position paper by the Radical Feminist Organizing Committee,” off our backs, March 1984, 17. 143 Evans, 111. 82

to the margins of public awareness.144 Still, the debates launched by Hanisch revealed that some

American women, active in women’s liberation, feared and disliked competing definitions of feminism outside a white, radical feminist interpretation. Such an uncompromising position indicated ideological intransigence and race and class biases among some women in America.

Women’s liberation of the 1960s, born out of grandiose expectations of the New Left, was prone to a “totalizing” effect in which some women, namely white, radical feminists, let the movement take over almost every aspect of their lives. Wishing to see the movement imprint on society so thoroughly that it “becomes the entire society,” as Sara Evans explains, these feminists battled for ownership of women’s liberation. This resulted in notorious splits—the politico- feminist one, for instance—that often boiled down to differences in activist tactics and lifestyle choices.145 Yet, to some radical feminists in the late 1960s and early 1970s, most famously on the East Coast, how to organize women’s lib was hardly a banal decision. Their feminist philosophy equated to nothing less than a personal search for authenticity. As movement and lifestyle merged, politics became their identity which they viciously defended. Imbuing their ideology with such personal meaning, these early women’s liberationists easily slid into dogmatism. In their minds, there was only room for one feminism and one truth, and it was theirs.146

Years later, by the 1980s, such an intractable attitude clearly continued to characterize some radical feminists, as epitomized in the derisive words of RFOC members. Jill Raymond, a

British woman involved in the women’s movement in England, noted and cautioned against with this tendency among American feminists: “And please, don’t get disintegrated by comparatively

144 Ibid., 111-114, 188-89. 145 Ibid., 104. 146 Ibid., 98-127. 83

minor personal differences—if you are all feminists, then you are all equal but different.”147

Beyond displays of dogmatism, radical feminists revealed their own race and class biases when casting women with attachment to other movements—environmentalism, peace or anti-racism, for instance—as “traitors to feminism.”148 In doing so, they failed to consider that some women, especially minority women, organized differently, often alongside men of the same background or in conjunction with civil rights or workers’ rights.149 Insular thinking and doctrinaire attachment to ideas among some feminists, from the 1960s throughout the late 20th century, flew in the face of movements such as environmentalism in which one did not necessarily have to adhere to certain ideas—or even debate them—in order to be considered an .

This difference could explain why so many women in America flocked to the burgeoning women’s movement formed out of conferences like WLOE in which environmentalism and nonviolence, alongside feminism, invited a variety of mindsets and activist traditions.

By the 1980s, though, some women did openly harangue the mindset that there was one correct formula of feminism. “As a woman I had chosen to work with women on the issues of

US militarism, (and other ‘isms’), and women’s oppression, and third world struggles, not b/c these issues are ultimately women’s or feminists’ concerns but because I am especially concerned about the women (and children) in my life, (those seen and unseen),” wrote one

Latina lesbian feminist involved in WLOE.150 “I do not like your should and shouldn’ts,” she continued, “I’ve got a question? Who got together and agreed on the ‘basic tenets of women’s liberation’ you spoke of? Are they supposed to be common knowledge?”151 Another movement

147 Jill Raymond, “american holiday,” off our backs, February 1982, 30. 148 Evans, Tidal Wave, 107. 149 Ibid., 115-119, 158-168. See also Roth, Separate Roads to Feminism. 150 Pauline Guillermo, “no idle threat,” off our backs, June 1984, 31. Emphasis in original. 151 Ibid. 84

woman, Star lavender bluejay, “resented being told [her] beliefs by anyone.”152 She maintained that, as a feminist and an anti-nuclear activist, she was not putting peace before women’s rights, and she did not believe that women possessed a unique predication toward ending the Cold War.

Rather, she contended, other women scripted her activism in this way, and in doing so, assumed

“differences that are not between us.”153 "Why either or?” she asked.154

The women’s movement also fielded criticism from women who opposed the revaluation and legitimization of nonviolence, cooperation, empathy and nurturance as tools to wield “for women and life on earth.” These emotions and social skills, historically assigned to women as evidence of their mental and biological inferiority, suggested to some a self-defeating biological determinism. Members of the RFOC, for example, feared that the women’s movement reified that women were destined only to be mothers and caregivers for the world, which they construed as “a ruse by men who are trying to lead women back to the womb.”155 Others also complained that the “view that women are saviours of the earth” not only presumed women universally subscribed to a caregiving role but it also implied that “a woman who is not nurturant [is] unwomanly.”156 The women’s movement did deal in essentialist thinking, and critics early on condemned its navigation of gender assumptions. Radical feminists had long been involved in the project of politicizing family dynamics, linking women’s oppression to the nuclear family.

To them any validation and applause of motherhood and caregiving was off-putting and backsliding. This disagreement over topics related to essentialism, biology and especially motherhood was an older one. Since the 1960s, such women—mostly young, white and

152 star lavender bluejay, “being there,” off our backs, May 1984, 25. 153 Ibid. 154 Ibid. 155 Terry Mehlman, Debbie Swanner, Midge Quandt, Loraine Sorrel and Tricia Lootens, “OBLIERATION AS A FEMINIST ISSUE: a position paper by the Radical Feminist Organizing Committee,” off our backs, March 1984, 16. 156 Tacie Dejanikus and Stella Dawson, “Women’s Pentagon Action,” off our backs, January 1981, 4. 85

unmarried—“built real barriers to the very women [married women and mothers] they hoped to reach.”157 In a particularly telling example of some women’s hostility to motherhood and marriage, the Feminists, founded by Ti-Grace Atkinson and active in the late 1960s and early

1970s, decided that no more than one third of its voting membership could be formally or informally married to a man.158 These positions seared the movement with the lasting, deleterious impression that wives and mothers were not welcome and could not be feminists.

Such repute lasted into the 1980s as some feminists continued to discount women interested in both liberation and children.

Many movement women felt conversely that so-called feminine traits like nurturance, nonviolence and egalitarianism were powerful skills they can use to supplant traditional “power over” relations. Puget Sound Women’s Peace Camp members explained that, “feminism implies a total world view rather than simply positions on traditional women’s (biological/reproductive) issues.”159 Here, movement women turned the tables and accused their detractors of being biologically reductive by only paying attention to women’s “biological/reproductive” issues.

Many others reappraised and claimed emotions as a crucial political mindset and tactic in their activism. One woman expressed that nuclear power was “one of the deadliest manifestations of the male values that run our country and our world,” and she encouraged other feminists not to reject the concept of female compassion out of hand.160 Rather, she offered, women should emphasize it as an important component of their assertiveness: “[n]urturance is nothing to be ashamed of—if men were more nurturing and less power-hungry, the world wouldn’t be in such

157 Evans, Tidal Wave, 54. 158 Ibid., 54-56. 159 Puget Sound Women’s Peace Camp, “OBLIERATION AS A FEMINIST ISSUE: THE WOMEN’S PEACE CAMP: FEMINIST REVOLUTIONARY FORCE FOR CHANGE,” off our backs, May 1984, 24. 160 Gloria Dumler, “nukes a feminist issue,” off our backs, October 1979, 30. 86

a bad mess, and feminists would have less to struggle against.”161Another woman recommended

“the creation of social organizations which foster nurturant qualities towards people, other creatures, and the environment, is a ‘must’ for a feminist future.”162 Furthermore, she maintained that men historically defined and subjugated women on the basis of their biology. As long as women persisted in debating the pitfalls and merits of their childbearing capabilities, she argued men still controlled the terms of the arguments and women remained trapped. She pressed further: as long as women viciously continued to attack each other over whether or not they should claim certain features deemed “feminine,” feminism would continue to exclude

“caregiving” women, namely mothers.163

Commentaries for and against this “caregiving” again harken back to an entrenched attachment to ideas among some feminists. One woman rebuked that women involved in WLOE and like-minded organizations privileged peace and environmentalism, saying instead “…we must stand up and put women’s issues first and that neither caring nor understanding will force men to give up their power over us.”164 Another dismissed it, commenting, “[h]ow can we deny that [militarism] is not a women’s issue, or that because it does not affect ‘only women’ it can be dismissed as not an important or real issue for Feminists?”165 She poignantly noted that a trumped all other issues. Another woman, “poor and white,” agreed, “This is the world created by the Boys and their Toys—and it is a world that threatens all women, rich or poor, black or white.”166 More defended the combination of peace, feminism and environmentalism,

161 Ibid. 162 Rena Grasso Patterson, “more than five sides to the pentagon,” off our backs, international women’s issue, March 1981, 24. 163 Ibid. 164 Marg Richardson, “dear oob,” off our backs, international women’s issue, March 1981, 24. 165 Lois Nakhleh, “dear oob,” off our backs, international women’s issue, March 1981, 25. 166 Barbara Mor, “dear women,” off our backs, international women’s issue, March 1981, 25. 87

retorting, “Feminist anti-militarism is not an easy coalition but it is important.”167 Polarizing perspectives around “feminist anti-militarism” demonstrated the ongoing problem of ideological intransigence within feminism, a trend that the women’s movement of the 1980s would continue to contend with throughout its tenure.

Conclusion

The Women and Life on Earth (WLOE) conference and other corresponding events were undoubtedly exciting. It was at these gatherings that hundreds of concerned women wove connections between a variety of pressing issues. These conferences produced a great deal of energy for the growing movement so that, peripherally, several thousand were involved across

America, Britain and Western Europe by the early ‘80s. Informed by new ecofeminist scholarship, participants proposed an ecological way to understand violence rooted in militarism, patriarchy and environmental destruction. Their movement merged the agendas of nonviolence, feminism and environmentalism and provided an important avenue for feminist activism to endure well over a decade after the women’s liberation movement had begun. Ideas exemplified at meetings like WLOE traveled, appealed to many women and offered women a way to organize through their profound differences. By constructing a philosophy insistent on systemically eradicating violence, women created a feminism that acknowledged this diversity, and implored each woman—with her individual identity—to fight her oppressions.

Still, revealed at the WLOE conference, the nascent women’s movement struggled with genuine inclusivity and pluralism. As the open-mike session demonstrated, minority women felt neither included nor respected. Invitations by white women read as tokenism in the eyes of

167 Loie Hayes, “Dear OOB, esp. Stella and Tacie,” off our backs, international women’s issue, March 1981, 25. See also Mev Miller, Laura Radosh, Daisy Goodman and Mary Fischer, “make connections—don’t break them,” off our backs, June 1984, 30; Gloria Dumler, “nukes a feminist issue,” off our backs, October 1979, 30. 88

women of color. These racial boundaries not only damaged conference cohesiveness but chronically plagued the future of the movement at large as it remained less diverse than imagined or intended. As the conference participants conceived that all women could unite behind a platform of “anti-militarism,” they sincerely attempted to include all women and their particular needs. WLOE organizers and attendees argued that women universally experienced systems of violence, whether it was rape, nuclear radiation, racism or homophobia, and that this experiential commonality would lend itself to a global sisterhood. This unfortunately resembled the problematic “universal sisterhood” women had tried to build in the preceding years based on the shared experience of being a woman. As historian Wendy Kline explained, “[f]eminism’s attempt to create a universal body of knowledge out of a plurality of individual bodies has not been entirely successful.”168 By the late 1970s and 1980s, WLOE gave this project of universal sisterhood another shot, and as the decade panned out, women would come to find that, yet again, relying on the shared values of nonviolence, conflict resolution and empathy would fail to unite all women.

Furthermore, as movement participants would come to find in the following years, how to actually conquer their extensive array of oppressions rooted in violence and offset power relations eluded them. Such hopeful aspiration—and futility—manifested after the WLOE conference ended and its planners mapped out a sweepingly optimistic and ultimately too ambitious roadmap for the organization and the women’s movement at large. Post-conference, organizers decided to transition their ideas and networks into a resource organization comprised of a coalition of women’s groups. Established as a non-profit tax-exempt educational foundation with the financial assistance of the Muse Foundation, Foundation for Public Concern and private donations, WLOE began to expand its mailing list, disseminate conference proceedings, plan

168 Kline, Bodies of Knowledge, 160. 89

additional gatherings and serve as a conduit for women interested in its ideas. Governed by an advisory council made up of women involved in autonomous, self-funded work groups, the organization operated in a decentralized fashion.169 A delegated interim committee met after the conference to craft a coalition statement of unity and solidify the new organization’s structure.170

At its first meeting, in late August of 1980, the committee convened at the New Alchemy

Institute in Falmouth, Massachusetts. Members began with the simple task of brainstorming goals for their organization. They ended up with a mountain of objectives. While they acknowledged that “[they] let their brains storm wildly,” the resulting ideas exemplified how their feminism was at once popular and powerful, but also quixotic in its aspirations and muddled in its actual applicability.171 Goals included “develop eco-feminist theory, educate, do outreach where not happening, organize women in urban & rural centers, bring peace, link ecology groups with feminist groups … fight heterosexism and homophobia, define and encourage connections between women & nature, prove we’re not bourgeois & white … encourage the use of menstrual sponges … develop international connections to women’s groups and fight imperialism .…”172 They wanted to smash the industrial system, develop the mass consciousness that nothing should be produced which was carcinogenic or otherwise poisonous, create a New Witch Institute, redefine sexuality, eroticism and nurturance and abolish nationalism. Such energy carried over into their brainstorming session for their unity statement.

In addition to peace and environmental activism, the statement identified an impressive list of changes women would help to enact, including the abolishment of concepts of ownership and

169 WLOE, “Networks for Change in the ‘80s,” WLOE Papers, Box 1, Folder Networks for Change Proposal; WLOE, “Dear Friend,” Summer 1980, Box 1, Folder WLOE Newsletter, SSC. 170 WLOE, “Dear Friend,” Summer 1980, Box 1, Folder WLOE Newsletter; “Hello Women,” September 11, 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 2, Folder Internal Correspondence, SSC 171 “Dear Women,” August 27, 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 2, Folder Internal Correspondence, SSC. 172 Ibid. 90

private property, prisons and mental hospitals and even archaic language which they planned to replace with newer words to explain “old isms.”173 The committee perpetuated the ideas of the conference as it prompted women to see all forms of violence as rooted in military and capitalist priorities, and it structured WLOE as a fight against this multi-faceted militarism. WLOE was not alone in this totalizing utopianism. In the Feminist Direct Action workshop at the Global

Feminist Disarmament conference in 1982, women also wildly brainstormed tactics to halt the

Cold War. On the table were considerations of physically stopping—somehow—a shipment of arms to El Salvador, refusing to work on the 6th of every month in memory of the bombing of

Hiroshima and even a global birthing strike.174 Nothing, it seemed, was beyond the scope of possibility.

The catalog of goals and ideas generated by WLOE leaders and other like-minded women showcased their utopianism but it also revealed the feminist decision-making process used by many women in the late 1970s and 1980s. Such process gave all women the opportunity to speak, and any ideas to be carried forward had to be consensus-driven. Every woman had to agree with a decision before the group acted on it. This necessitated a lot of discussion, debate— and patience. At the interim meeting, the myriad of ideas generated had to have a “C” marked next to them, indicating consensus, in order to be included in the final unity statement. The merits of feminist process were obvious. All women felt included, respected and equal, and many did not mind the long, meandering meetings. One woman described the committee meeting not as draining but as “great because we got a sense of each other’s politics.”175 The downsides were equally obvious. Planning sessions were long, exhausting and frustrating, for the

173 Ibid. 174 Philadelphia Women’s Encampment, “Global Networking” in “The Afternoon Small Groups,” Philadelphia Women’s Encampment Papers, Box Actions and Women’s Peace Encampments, Folder Feminist Disarmament meeting, June 11, 1982, SCPC. 175 “Dear Women,” August 27, 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 2, Folder Internal Correspondence, SSC. 91

process often thwarted efficient decision-making and fast results. The perks and drawbacks of this kind of organizing and the larger issue of utopianism within the movement would become more acute throughout the 1980s.

An idea for a major future project emerged at the March conference. Elaborated on in post-conference deliberations, the vision was to stage some kind of women’s action at the

Pentagon for fall of that year. Inspired by previous marches on Washington, they wanted their

“feminist aesthetic” to stand out. Women brainstormed. It needed to be theatrical and include nonviolent civil disobedience. One woman suggested using baby carriages to block entrance to

Pentagon.176 This proposal was popular. Initially advertised in WLOE’s first newsletter, the action slowly came together. Throughout the summer and early fall of 1980, women from various Northeastern women’s and peace groups met to plan it. At this point, while women involved in WLOE were also heavily involved in the demonstration’s planning, WLOE as an organization bowed out of the upcoming demonstration, serving more as a resource group and permitting a distinct new organization, the Women’s Pentagon Action, to materialize.177

176 WLOE, “Dear Friend,” Summer 1980, Box 1, Folder WLOE Newsletter, SSC. 177 Ynestra King, “W.L.O.E./W.P.A.: What’s The Difference?” Box 1, Folder Unprocessed; Dear Women,” August 27, 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 2, Folder Internal Correspondence, SSC. 92

Chapter Two:

The Women’s Pentagon Action, November 1980 & 1981

***

On November 17, 1980, two thousand women descended on the Pentagon. Carrying oversized black, red, yellow and white puppets to signify death, rage, empowerment and defiance, the Women’s Pentagon Action (WPA) blocked entry to the Pentagon for several hours as participants chanted, “Take the Toys from the Boys!” and “If nuclear power is so safe, fill the

Pentagon with nuclear waste!” Asked why they were demonstrating, women stressed to —and Pentagon worker—the immense range and diversity of causes they urgently represented. Their action simultaneously stood for “sisters in new nations and old colonies” as well as awareness of at work, the need to end the draft for men, the horrors of imperialism and women dying from illegal abortions, female victims of U.S. intervention in El

Salvador and Chile, exploitative pornography, all women raped and murdered, Salem witches and “endless more.”1

For their closing ceremonies, protesters dropped stones into a circle to leave behind something of themselves and of all women. These stones signified for one woman her painful childbirth, for another her financial dependence on men. Another left a stone of resentment toward the accusation that feminists had no sense of humor. That morning the women walked through Arlington Cemetery, and then moved to the parade field near the Pentagon where they planted cardboard and paper tombstones for victims of militarism and sexism. Etched on the

1 Jill Raymond, “Brace yourself,” Philadelphia Women’s Encampment Papers, Box 2 of 4, Action, Folder Women’s Pentagon Action, 1981-1982, Swarthmore College Peace Collection, (hereafter SCPC), Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Note for this chapter: many names of Women’s Pentagon Action (WPA) participants have been redacted according to the Sophia Smith Collection’s restrictions on these records. 93

erected graves, using thick black markers and paint, women wrote lines about Vietnamese women and children alongside “Black Women Raped and Killed,” “Love Canal Victims,”

“,” “Future Victims of Three Mile Island,” “Radiation Victims,” and “The

Unknown Woman.”2

The following year, women again descended on the Pentagon.3 By 1981 this women’s network had over fifty of its local groups represented at the action. Their “Unity Statement” for both years communicated their unequivocal fear that the world was at an apocalyptic moment.4

Yet beyond accentuating the heightened likelihood of nuclear war, WPA—the direct organizational descendent of the Women and Life on Earth (WLOE) conference—linked concerns over the Cold War with a litany of others. Like its parent organization, WPA appropriated concepts of ecology to join militarism to a host of other violent, unjust oppressions.

A key network within the women’s movement of the 1980s, WPA relied on the resources of

WLOE, mobilized women by annual dramatic action at the doors of the Pentagon and in doing so helped to sustain movement numbers. In their off time, affiliate chapters organized local events and educational opportunities to put questions of violence and social injustice on

Americans’ minds. Through WPA, the amorphous, coalition-driven women’s movement continued to politicize the interrelations between a host of issues as manifestations of a profoundly unequal, violent world. Claiming “that ecological right,” WPA ambitiously sought to include and unite all women by paying attention to every injustice that confronted them. Aware that its movement participants differed in background and philosophy, WPA embraced these

2 Women’s Pentagon Action (hereafter WPA), “Dear Friends,” October 1981, Women’s Pentagon Action (hereafter WPA) Papers, CGDA Collective Box Women’s International Resource Center (WIRE) through Women’s Tax Resistance Assistance, Folder Women’s Pentagon Action, then Mid-Atlantic Organizing Group (Philadelphia), SCPC; Kathryn Kirk, WPA photographs, 1980, WPA Papers, Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Box 25 of 26, Sophia Smith Collection (hereafter SSC), Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts. 3 WPA, “WPA Press ,” November 18, 1981, WPA papers, SCPC. 4 WPA, “Unity Statement of the Women’s Pentagon Action,” WPA papers, SCPC. 94

substantial differences as members believed that “[w]e are all daughters and sisters.”5

Still, resembling the tensions that simmered at the WLOE conference, WPA illustrated that as much as the women’s movement sought to be inclusive and purposefully pluralistic, racial and class differences prevented true unity. Indeed, as one older feminist noted of WPA, many of her “younger sisters” seemed to be “reinventing the wheel of feminism, grappling issues and and stereotypes that [she had] heard a decade or more before.”6 As ambitious as WLOE was, WPA likewise replicated grandiose expectations of waging a cultural revolution and radicalizing the American consciousness. Members relied on feminist process and consensus- driven decision-making in their decentralized networks which afforded women democratic participation in the development of their movement, yet also frustrated effective strategy and timely organization.

A new dilemma also plagued the women’s movement. The blockading of the Pentagon by women and their subsequent arrests proved to be a major impasse among participants. WPA inherited and relied on a tradition of nonviolent direct action—tactics such as “civil disobedience, sit-ins, boycotts, building or land takeovers and other dramatic confrontations”—

5 “Women Return to the Pentagon Nov. 15,16-1981,” WLOE Papers, Box 6 of 7, Folder WPA Mis., SSC; WPA, “Unity Statement of the Women’s Pentagon Action,” WPA papers, SCPC. Several scholars have included the Women’s Pentagon Action in their histories of late 20th-century women’s, environmental and direct action protest. See Carolyn Merchant, Earthcare: Women and the Environment (London: Routledge, 1996), 152: Merchant isolates WPA as an example of women synthesizing feminism and environmentalism (and in particular anti-nuclear activism) by the 1980s. See also Harriet Hyman Alonso, Peace as a Women’s Issue: A History of the U.S. Movement for World Peace and Women’s Rights (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1993), 242-249: Alonso sees WPA as part of the new wave of feminist peace activism in the 1980s in which women involved in women’s liberation began to consider peace, or nonviolence, and ecology as important, feminist issues. WPA exemplified how women did not make legislative lobbying their focus but rather chose to work outside the political mainstream. Alonso also argues that in this new wave of feminist peace activism, organizations like WPA signified how younger, radical feminists and often lesbians formed a stronger presence in the peace movement, and that they also insisted on organizing separately (from men) and using creative theatrical tactics. She traces how late 20th-century organizations like WPA were a part of a long lineage of female peace activism, beginning in the early 19th century in abolitionism, that connected feminism and peace. See also Barbara Epstein, Political Protest and Cultural Revolution: Nonviolent Direct Action in the 1970s and 1980s (Berkeley and Los Angeles: , 1993), 157-163: Epstein argues that WPA is an example of radical feminism in the nonviolent direct action movement of the late 1970s and 1980s. 6 “Women Return to the Pentagon Nov. 15,16-1981,” WLOE Papers, Box 6 of 7, Folder WPA Mis., SSC. 95

and as empowering and affecting as these rituals were for some, they were equally alienating, embarrassing and elitist to others.7 Gridlock over the use of nonviolent direct action signaled the futility built into the very nature of the WPA protest. Planned to be premeditated and spontaneous, democratic and anarchic, the Pentagon street protest and civil disobedience encouraged each woman to do and say what she individually believed while also necessitating that all women feel included and unoffended. Competing opinions over what was necessary and what was offensive meant that inevitably women uncomfortable with blockading and risking arrest lost out, and this portended future debates within the women’s movement about the efficacy and purpose of their style of protest.

Finally, twenty years after the 1960s—“that troubled decade”—the women’s march on the Pentagon prompted both participants and observers to comment on its resemblance to anti-

Vietnam protests and counterculture.8 In media and in WPA meetings, people uneasily confronted the memory of that decade, suggesting that by the 1980s, Americans still did not know what to make of its chaos, surfeit of protest movements and legacy.

Claiming “that ecological right”

After the Women and Life on Earth (WLOE) conference concluded in March 1980, several of its planners and participants met with women’s environmental, feminist and peace groups from the Northeast throughout that summer and fall to devise a direct action targeting the

Pentagon in Washington D.C. They conceived that the building not only represented military and political authority but that it constituted the epicenter of “the warrior mentality which sanctions

7 T. V. Reed, The Art of Protest: Culture and Activism from the Civil Rights Movement to the Streets of Seattle (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), xix. 8 Karen A. Hagberg, “The Meaning of the Action: Internal Political Growth,” New Women’s Times (Rochester, New York), January 1981, WLOE Papers, Box 2 of 3 Original Artwork and clippings, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 96

violence against women and the rape of the earth for resources used in destruction.”9 Women from New York State were prominent organizers, drawing on their activist backgrounds in disarmament, peace and anti-nuclear energy, and they began to circulate form letters which summoned any woman to assist in planning with a simple “we’d like you to join us.”10

Maintaining the format of the WLOE conference, coordinators of the emerging Pentagon action likewise envisioned their protest to include only women. Perpetuating the messages and momentum of the WLOE conference, organizers identified themselves as “women and feminists” fighting for life on earth.11 “Our lives are in danger,” their letter explained, “Our cities are devastated. Our hospitals are closed. Plants are closing. Black and Latino youth are without work. Meanwhile the Pentagon consumes $500 million a day to build an arsenal of weapons which endanger us more each day. We recognize the connection between the violence of the

Pentagon and the violence in women’s daily lives.”12

After the summer gatherings, thirty women convened in Hartford, Connecticut, on

September 6th. While much of the event had been planned already, especially by New York women, this regional meeting aimed to verify that the impending demonstration appealed to many. Attendants shared their feverish excitement as all had been busy promoting and fundraising for the event in their local communities.13 Others were hesitant though, questioning the expediency and efficacy of planning an action on the Pentagon in so few months. Key planners of the WLOE conference, however, reminded women that marching on the Pentagon

9 WLOE and Common Womon, Inc., “Dear Women!” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder WPA Originals, SSC. 10 [Redacted], “Dear Friends,” August 25, 1980, Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Women’s Pentagon Action, Box 36 of 36, Folder 1, SSC. 11 WLOE and Common Womon, Inc., “Dear Women!” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder WPA Originals, SSC. 12 WPA, “Women’s Pentagon Action,” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder WPA Originals, SSC. 13 “Report from Women’s Pentagon Action Meeting in Hartford on September 6,” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 97

was urgent.14 “This summer alone we’re faced with registration for the draft and presidential

Directive 59 (regarding U.S. nuclear strategy),” one explained. “And if [newspaper columnist]

Jack Anderson is correct, this women’s action could easily follow right on the heels of Carter’s next invasion of .”15 Still, some queried if the action was too vague, and women affirmed that they needed to be careful in their use of language. The event had to be explanatory to a general audience, the rhetoric accessible.

The hope was that WPA would cohesively represent a broad constituency of women.

Planners wanted participants to see themselves as “a new force apart from the traditional peace movement . . . [as they were] motivated by the recognition that finally, war and peace, violence at home and abroad are distinctly women’s issues.”16 Appropriating concepts of ecology, they wanted their protest to reflect the idea of the interconnectedness of all oppressions and the powerful links between all forms of life on earth. To underscore these connections, WPA coordinators constructed a “Unity Statement” that, over the course of twenty-five paragraphs, beautifully and ambitiously listed and synthesized their numerous reasons for gathering at the

Pentagon. Initially drafted by one woman, the Unity Statement was then sculpted by other contributors. Their collaborative statement, most of which began with “We want…,” implied a sisterhood that united all women even as writers took pains to detail the varied oppressions and injustices that mattered to different women. The document insisted that WPA included

“feminists from many backgrounds, with many concerns.”17

It began, “We are gathering at the Pentagon on November 16 because we fear for our

14 “Report from Women’s Pentagon Action Meeting in Hartford on September 6,” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 15 [Redacted], “Dear Friends,” August 27, 1980, Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Women’s Pentagon Action, Box 36 of 36, Folder 1, SSC. 16 [Redacted], “The Women’s Pentagon Action,” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 17 Philadelphia WPA, “Women Return to the Pentagon, Nov. 15-16, 1981,” WPA Papers, CGDA Collective Box Women’s International Resource Center (WIRE) through Women’s Tax Resistance Assistance, Folder Women’s Pentagon Action, then Mid-Atlantic Organizing Group (Philadelphia), SCPC. 98

lives. We fear for the life of this planet, our Earth, and the life of our children who are our human future.”18 A litany of demands, the statement envisioned a feminist future of peace, equality, ecological awareness and human unity. In its ambitious mandates, it highlighted how women sought to build a coalition movement that would wed urban, rural, old, young, married, single and lesbian women. All would descend on the Pentagon, motivated by their disillusionment with those in power.

Their statement positioned their demands as rational and appropriate, in contrast to men’s priorities, yet there was an emotional tone and urgency to their prose. Writers asserted that women were the nurturers of life who cared that “day care, children’s lunches, battered women’s shelters” remained funded while the Pentagon’s “colonels and generals” recklessly spent ’s resources on the development and production of the MX missile.19 Cities, public education, hospitals and inner-city underemployment suffered as military objectives siphoned funds to nuclear weaponry. WPA harangued conservative Republican politicians who supported right-wing, anti-choice legislation like the Human Life Amendment and the Family Protection

Act. Unity Statement contributors also critiqued scientists whose profession had been corroded by ties to the military: “over 40% work in government and corporate laboratories that refine methods for destroying and deforming life.”20 What WPA wanted was simple: decent food, housing, and communities with clean water and air for themselves and its “sisters in new nations and old colonies.”

Other exigencies in the statement included access to male-dominated professions.

Women wanted access to jobs in fields like engineering, plumbing and physics, as well as work environments free from sexual harassment and equal pay for comparable work. It demanded

18 “Women Return to the Pentagon Nov. 15,16-1981,” WLOE Papers, Box 6 of 7, Folder WPA Mis., SSC. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid. 99

women’s caregiving for the young and the old should be revalued and respected, and that health care for women had to improve. Beyond advocating for reproductive rights, the statement also invited readers to consider physically disabled women and their health care options.

Furthermore, streets must be safer. “We want the night returned,” the statement asserted. It made clear that WPA would not tolerate homophobia or racism as “imperial arrogance of white male power” kept women from understanding and uniting with “our sisters in Asia, Africa, South

America and in our own country.”21

Indeed, the Unity Statement envisioned a world absent of all power relations. One sentence read, “There can be no peace while one race dominates another, one people, one nation, one sex despises another.” Particularly attuned to women’s struggles across race and class, WPA crafted the document to demonstrate on behalf of white women that a sincere effort would be put forth to understand the “intersection of oppressions” that minority women endured. The document went on to advocate for nuclear disarmament and an end to the draft, arguing neither men nor women should be inducted into selective service. It entitled the earth’s resources back to the people that tilled the land. In all of these mandates, WPA claimed and used “that ecological right” in the webs it drew between multiple oppressions and in its vision of a more holistic way of life. “We understand all is connectedness,” writers explained, “The earth nourishes us as we with our bodies will eventually feed it. Through us, our mothers connected the human past to the human future.” The statement concluded, “… We will not allow these violent games to continue.

If we are here in our stubborn thousands today, we will certainly return in the hundreds of thousands in the months and years to come.”22

Revealing their belief that women dwelled on social justice while military priorities

21 Ibid. 22 Ibid. 100

preoccupied men, WPA organizers’ essentialism went beyond their Unity Statement. In a cartoon sketched by various members and entitled “The Big Daddies in Washington Are Saying,” women depicted “big daddies” keeping women “barefoot and pregnant … quiet, ignorant, and praying.” The artists portrayed dark women being sterilized and abused by a white male physician. “Giving daddy a gun,” as the quotation bubble read, would allow him the chance to rape and kill. Gay men and lesbians were pushed back into a closet in the rendering, while the cartoon’s antagonists played games with the world. It communicated that men, kicking the earth around like a soccer ball, would find another world to toy with when they blew up earth.23 The drawing, like the Unity Statement, revealed a polarized, essentialized perception of men playing with the world and dispossessing women of the ability to change their behavior. Such a view would greatly trouble some WPA members.

At the Hartford meeting, most attendees were amenable to the Unity Statement. With suggestions etched in the margins, New York City women took the comments and agreed to rework some of the wording. After they had finished, they recirculated their declaration for more feedback.24 Thereafter, over the next month, approximately fifty women dissected, revised and crafted this statement to reflect the variety of their experiences and concerns. It was accepted in

October and disseminated as part of the publicity for the action on the Pentagon.25 And indeed, it galvanized many to join WPA. “It was like a light bulb flashing on,” one woman described her experience of reading the Unity Statement.26

In the planning stages of their event, WPA organizers envisioned the march on the

23 WPA, “The Big Daddies in Washington Are Saying” cartoon, WPA Papers, CGDA Collective Box Women’s International Resource Center (WIRE) through Women’s Tax Resistance Assistance, Folder Women’s Pentagon Action, then Mid-Atlantic Organizing Group (Philadelphia), SCPC. 24 “Report from Women’s Pentagon Action Meeting in Hartford on September 6,” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 25 “Logistics for the Women’s Pentagon Action,” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder WPA Originals, SSC. 26 Tacie Dejanikus and Stella Dawson, “Women’s Pentagon Action,” off our backs, January 1981, 3. 101

Pentagon would include a dramatic visual to communicate women’s repudiation of the military.

They conceived of the idea to encircle the military headquarters on a Monday, at the end of a day-long march in which women would enact different stages of mourning. Grief, anger, empowerment and ultimately defiance would be lived and visually accessible to the observer.

Organizers hoped to attract at least twelve hundred women for this embrace of the Pentagon.

Women from western Massachusetts were tasked with preparing for Sunday which was to be a day of workshops focusing on a variety of interrelated topics. WPA coordinators sought to include as many women as possible during this planning stage, and periodically invited women up to evening meetings in Northampton, Massachusetts, often at the Chrysalis Theater. Any and all women were welcome to attend and offer organizing, outreach, fundraising and logistical support.27

WPA anticipated the Sunday morning workshops to be informational. Resource women would guide discussions through their area of expertise and allow others, with little knowledge of that particular topic, to become more familiar with it. Planners suggested that, by the afternoon, women would gather in groups with similar skill sets and interests, with the intent that these workshops would be useful for strategizing and networking. It was a day full of morning consciousness-raising and afternoon scheming. While WPA leaders worked to gather resource women, they also specified that any woman could lead a workshop. They merely had to write to the “gathering committee” ahead of time or attend one of the already scheduled workshops on

Sunday and pitch their idea to that session’s coordinator. Organizers used—women’s relationships to militarism, racism, violence, work, lesbianism, health care, poverty and ecology—to design specific workshops. They also set aside a five-hour time slot for continual

27 WLOE and Common Womon, Inc., “Dear Women!” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder WPA Originals; WLOE, “Dear,” October 23, 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder WPA Originals, SSC. 102

nonviolence training. Women who had not yet been trained and planned to commit civil disobedience at the Pentagon were required to attend. Finally, in addition to workshops, an open- mike or speak-out session would be ongoing throughout the afternoon. Women had three minutes each; an organization had nine.28

WPA circulated flyers, letters and leaflets calling for “A Women’s Pentagon Action,” or

La Acción De Mujeres Al Pentágono, as the organization translated some publicity into Spanish.

Planners advertised the upcoming protest in women’s centers and feminist publications.29

Inviting women to travel to Washington, D.C. for Sunday, November 16th, 1980, women prepared for their two-day event, noting it was an “unprecedented” coalition-style effort uniting women’s feminist, environmental, peace and social justice groups.30 It was everyone’s prerogative to make their own way to the capitol. While some fundraising was coordinated,

WPA purposefully established itself as decentralized, with staff offices in New York City,

Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Amherst, Massachusetts and with many regional chapters. Much of the detailed planning was delegated to local and regional committees. At this level, women solicited donations, held benefits, planned raffles and local dance parties and held their own civil disobedience training.31

The civil disobedience was to occur through affinity groups, and each group was encouraged to supply a few “support persons”—people that would not risk arrest but instead

28 “Women’s Pentagon Action Gathering,” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder WPA Originals; WLOE, “Dear,” October 23, 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder WPA Originals, SSC. 29 Karen A. Hagberg, “The Meaning of the Action: Internal Political Growth,” New Women’s Times, January 1981, WLOE Papers, Box 2 of 3 Original Artwork and clippings, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 30 WLOE and Common Womon, Inc., “Dear Women!” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder WPA Originals, SSC. 31 WPA, “Announcing a Fundraising Raffle,” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder WPA Originals; “Local Dance Party,” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder WPA Originals; “Only One Northampton,” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder WPA Originals; “Logistics for the Women’s Pentagon Action,” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder WPA Originals; WLOE, “Dear,” October 23, 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder WPA Originals; “Women’s Pentagon Action hears author Grace Paley,” Daily Hampshire Gazette (Northampton, Massachusetts), November 3, 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 103

would stay in D.C. afterwards to help any arrested women.32 Housing was made available free of charge for the march on the Pentagon, and children were not only welcomed but encouraged to attend. There were planned children’s activities at the gathering, but it was ultimately up to affinity groups to be responsible for their members’ children. Men, on the other hand, were told that “[o]ur action is meant to sound the alarm to the women of the world.”33 WPA recognized that “many men agree with our Unity Statement and are working actively for the same kind of world,” but members also believed that men “should understand the reasons for an all-women’s action.”34 They asked men to financially support WPA and stay at home working towards peace in their local communities.

“The first all-woman protest at the Pentagon in 12 years…”

After all the planning, November finally arrived. On Sunday morning, women came from all over. One woman, who had heard of the WPA event through a women’s center, chartered a bus from Oberlin, Ohio, with her college friends.35 Three busloads along with cars and vans of women from western Massachusetts traveled down to D.C. Around two thousand women came from Vermont, Delaware, Wisconsin, Oregon, New Jersey, Maryland, Washington State, Ohio,

New Hampshire, Maine, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York State and , all gathering at the Marie Reed Learning Center, a community learning center in the largely Spanish-speaking

Adams-Morgan district of D.C.36 One participant described the scene, “Womyn. Many, many womyn, over 2,000 womyn of varying ages, political convictions, sexual preference, class and cultural backgrounds. Some of the womyn were in wheelchairs. Some could not hear sound.

32 “Logistics for the Women’s Pentagon Action,” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder WPA Originals, SSC. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 35 “dear sisters,” WLOE Papers, Box 6 of 7, Folder WPA Evaluations, SSC. 36 [Redacted], “The Women’s Pentagon Action,” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 104

Some believe strongly in magic, others would not trust even astrology. Some womyn were pregnant; some had children by their sides; some had children at home; some would never be mothers.” All of them, she explained, gathered for one purpose: “to protest masculinism and violence against womyn. To make a change in the world. To heal the earth. To tear up the killer weed at it’s [sic] root … the Pentagon.”37 They came from Northeast women’s peace, anti-racism and ecological organizations; younger “second-generation protesters” mingled with “women who were veterans of many marches.”38 The protest drew many from the WLOE conference.

New women came too. Many were already interested or involved in an plethora of anti- oppression, quality-of-life issues, like feminism, nuclear disarmament, ecology, gay rights, animal liberation and anti-racism.39 One reporter canvassed the scope of WPA: “Women who came to the Pentagon Action were from the peace, environmental and feminist movements. The majority were lesbians, and at least a third were under 25. The list of supporting groups shows the political diversity.”40

WPA organizers greeted the women. One, a black health educator and chair of the

Washington D.C. Sisterhood Party, gave a brief history of gentrification and racial tensions in the city. Using the Marie Reed Learning Center as an example, she explained that black community members had struggled to piece together enough money to build the structure only to see their efforts sidelined by the possibility of a freeway going right through that area. While they succeeded in halting the construction of the freeway, the neighborhood still underwent gentrification and presently few apartments rented at rates accessible to lower-income

37 [Redacted], “How Over 2,000 Womyn Came to Surround the Pentagon One Day In November,” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 38 “The Talk of the Town,” The New Yorker (New York, New York), December 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 2 of 7, Folder New Yorker Article, SSC. 39 “Evaluation Sheets,” WLOE Papers, Box 6 of 7, Folder WPA Evaluations., SSC. 40 Tacie Dejanikus and Stella Dawson, “Women’s Pentagon Action,” off our backs, January 1981, 2. 105

residents.41 Yulanda Ward was also a topic mentioned in welcoming remarks. She was a twenty- two-year-old community activist, member of the Rape Crisis Center Board of Directors, and co- chairperson of the City Wide Housing Coalition in D.C. who was recently murdered in what many saw as a politically motivated act.42

WPA planners read aloud telegrams received from supportive women’s groups, some as far away as England and Australia, who could not attend. They reminded the crowd of women in front of them, “We are in continuous process to keep this planet moving along and life moving on it.”43 The Canadian Conference on Religion and World Peace wrote, “We support with all our hearts and minds the Pentagon Action of our American sisters. We express with you our outrage over wasted resources and blighted lives caused by the ever growing arsenals of weaponry and militarization in the United States.”44 The Scottish Campaign to Resist Nuclear Menace, or

SCRAM Edinburgh, and the British women’s group Women Oppose the Nuclear Threat

(WONT) also sent encouraging words: “Women all over the world have to realise their strength and shout with one voice against the men who wish to destroy us, either by their warmongering or by economic and sexual oppression. Scotland is one of the most densely ‘nuclearised’ countries… We appeal to women in America to fight your government’s military policies towards the peoples of other countries.”45 Telegrams arrived from British, Canadian and

41 [Redacted], “How Over 2,000 Womyn Came to Surround the Pentagon One Day In November,” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 42 [Redacted], “The Women’s Pentagon Action,” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed; D.C. Rape Crisis Center, “Press Release for Immediate Release,” November 7, 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 43 [Redacted], “How Over 2,000 Womyn Came to Surround the Pentagon One Day In November,” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed; “Dear Sisters,” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 44 A Canadian Conference on Religion and World Peace, “We support,” November 11, 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 45 Scottish Campaign to Resist the Atomic Menace and Women Oppose the Nuclear Threat, “Dear sisters,” November 6, 1980, WLOE Papers. Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 106

European supporters, such as Women and Life on Earth in London, Voice of Women in Canada and the Stockholm chapter of Women for Peace.46

At eleven o'clock that morning, women began to break up into small groups to attend the workshops throughout the morning at the Marie Reed Learning Center.47 These informational morning sessions, designed to increase women’s awareness of the breadth of their burgeoning movement, acquainted them with a variety of topics. Participants could choose from subjects as varied as feminism, ecology, international organizing for peace, sexual harassment in the workplace, motherhood, pornography, nuclear radiation, lesbianism and racism. Academics, feminist health reformers, policy writers, therapists, writers, Native American rights advocates, reproductive rights activists, musicians and pacifists guided this fury of morning workshops. The scope of the conferencing signaled the variety of women WPA sought to include, and how many women could find something they believed in within its umbrella-like philosophy. Sunday also served as a consciousness-raising opportunity for women new to politics, and reinforced other women’s determination to improve their quality of life.48

Breaking for lunch, they reconvened at one o'clock for “strategic” workshops.49 These sessions were organized around the same theme areas, but all participants acted as “resource women,” sharing their experience within that field or topic. For instance, in the meeting on sexual orientation women broke into five small groups and brainstormed tactics for unity among women, regardless of sexuality, and ways to address homophobia. Those who convened for the topic “women and violence” dissected their feelings around anger. Women, they concluded,

46 Women and Life on Earth, London, “Dear Sisters;” Voice of Women, Canada, “Voice of Women,” November 12, 1980; Women for Peace, Stockholm, Sweden, “Sisters,” November 13, 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 47 “Dear Sisters,” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 48 “Workshop Program,” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 49 “Dear Sisters,” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 107

experienced rage as much as men but could not express it. They asked each other how they could better support, express and accept their gamut of emotions. The “women and poverty” class involved a larger philosophical debate about how women could and should change the world.

Weighing reform over revolution, women pondered if it was worthwhile pursuing small-scale reforms to mitigate international poverty and hunger, or whether it was wisest to direct all resources and energy to profoundly disrupting present power relations perpetuating inequality.

Keenly aware that poverty affected some women more than others, women grasped that the issue intersected with welfare rights and racism. They concurred that national resources needed reallocation to more align with more just priorities. Some smiled at the conversation taking place in front of them. To them, it was a sign that the women’s movement was becoming a movement for all women, not just white, middle-class ones. They agreed WPA was a slight, albeit solid, step in the right direction. One described, “[w]e’re pointing a finger where it needs to be pointed, that we’re educating others, and letting the government know at least 1,500 women know what’s going on.”50

Those in the “motherhood” workshop elevated parenthood and conceived of it as a full- time job. It was not parents’ fault that child-raising could be an isolating experience; all people should appreciate parental love and know that the WPA also marched for children’s futures.

Disabled women went to the “women and health” session only to disengage themselves of that conversation for one distinctly about disabilities. “[W]e shouldn’t be in the health group, because we don’t have health problems,” one woman summarized. Reflecting on societal constructions of normativity, several reproached WPA organizers for their failure to welcome physically- handicapped women. One vented, “There are a lot of people who would be here in wheelchairs,

50 WPA, “Forum Summaries,” November 16, 1980, WPA Papers, CGDA Collective Box Women’s International Resource Center (WIRE) through Women’s Tax Resistance Assistance, Folder Women’s Pentagon Action, then Mid-Atlantic Organizing Group (Philadelphia), SCPC. 108

if it was accessible and if we knew about that beforehand. There was one woman signing, for deaf interpretation, this whole time, and I think that’s really horrendous.”51 They also inculpated able-bodied women for failing to see that disabled women deserved as much attention as black women or lesbian women. One charged, “A lot of colleges are now offering courses on

Women’s Studies and Black Studies. I want to see some ‘Disabled Studies.’”52

The topic of mental illness hit a similar nerve. Feeling stigmatized, women suffering or interested in mental illness tasked WPA to interrogate both their attitudes toward and language employed to describe so-called “mad” women. Such negative epithets were injurious, and workshop participants cautioned against phrases like “nuclear numbness” and “nuclear madness.” Deconstruct and be wary of language, they advised. Chemical dependency, alcoholism, genetic engineering and alternative, New Age healthcare were also topics raised in the various offshoots of the “women and health” strategic session.53

Upon conclusion, each workshop produced a list of resolutions and shared them with all conference attendants in the late afternoon. Speaking into a microphone, a representative from each elucidated findings within four-minute segments. Most of these summaries ended with an ovation from the women listening. Above all, women concurred that their most promising future lay in further collaboration through grassroots, collective decentralizing organizing. Still, though women noted that the “male military machine” united them all in its violence, it could not be ignored that, looking around the room, participants were mostly white, younger and able- bodied.54

51 Ibid. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid. 54 Lynne Broslawski, “‘We’re Gathering Because Life on the Precipice is Intolerable,’” New Women’s Times, January 1981, WLOE Papers, Box 2 of 3 Original Artwork and clippings, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 109

Women spent Sunday evening in vigil, gathering in front of the Marie Reed Learning

Center and marching on Eighteenth Street.55 “We stood, we sang, we shouted, we were silent,” recounted one participant, and then exhausted from the day, women dispersed and ate dinner at a soup kitchen at the Calvary United Methodist Church. They slept in nearby churches, community centers and at supporters’ homes, meeting with affinity groups beforehand, taking care of children and prepping for the next day’s march. Waking as rose in brilliant colors, women loaded again onto buses to travel to Arlington Cemetery. Rumor spread upon arriving that some kind of nuclear accident had occurred near Bethesda, Maryland, which women then attributed to the odd hues of green and pink that painted the sky. “So we’re standing in radioactive ,” one woman commented. While officials reported no actual emergency, that some participants interpreted a beautiful sunrise as evidence of nuclear radiation was telling, in that it suggested the utter gravity and deep-felt fear women attached to their protest.

After all the buses had delivered them and the cemetery opened by 8am, they began to march. Many walked with women they already knew, and some like the women from

Northampton all wore strips of orange cloth to be able to track each. Trekking past rows of white gravestones, the women were led by a patrol car and a motorcycle policeman. White and black face paint adorned some women’s faces while others wore masks or dressed in mourning. Out of respect for the dead, they made no noise nor hoisted any banners until they had left Arlington, at which women began to beat drums and all women were encouraged to drape black cloth on themselves to show mourning. Press and bystanders then witnessed four giant puppets, red, black, yellow and white, lifted in the air. The women marched past the Pentagon heliport and the

55 “The Talk of the Town,” The New Yorker, December 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 2 of 7, Folder New Yorker Article, SSC. 110

first entrance of the Pentagon to the parade field. Secretaries noticed them from inside the

Pentagon and some even waved.56

Circling the parade field, women mourned. They fell to their knees, wailed and beat their breasts in symbolic grief over violence directed at women, their bodies and the earth. They planted cardboard and paper gravestones in the field, commemorating women like Karen

Silkwood, Yulanda Ward, Ros Luxembourg and Anne Frank along with victims of chemical waste or illegal abortions, Native Americans and Salem witches.57 They then moved on to the stage of rage. Their red puppet danced in the air, and they shifted closer to the five-sided building. Chanting and shouting, “Take the toys from the boys!” and “No, no, no!” women blew whistles and beat pots and pans.58 Banners and signs read “We’ll never ‘rely’ on Reagan,” “Who

Killed Karen Silkwood?” and “Feed the People—Not the Pentagon.”59 The yellow puppet then led women in the stage of empowerment. They tied scarves together, held hands and encircled the Pentagon. Women in lavender arms bands motioned others to move this or that way, making the circle work. Marchers noticed women workers in the windows of the Pentagon. They shouted to them to join them, and one woman inside held up a sign. Pressed it to the window for WPA to read, it said, “Go to the White House.”60

Women held this position for a while. Workers and policemen at various points tried to take hold of the scarves to either enter or leave the building, or to disrupt the circle. Cars had to be let in and out of the parking lot by the Pentagon, and “peacekeepers”—women with pink

56 [Redacted], “How Over 2,000 Womyn Came to Surround the Pentagon One Day In November,” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed; “Logistics for Monday,” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 57 “The Talk of the Town,” The New Yorker, December 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 2 of 7, Folder New Yorker Article, SSC. 58 [Redacted], “How Over 2,000 Womyn Came to Surround the Pentagon One Day In November,” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 59 Sandra C. Boodman, “1,300 Women Stage ’60s-Style Protest at Pentagon,” Washington Post (Washington, D.C.), WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 60 [Redacted], “How Over 2,000 Womyn Came to Surround the Pentagon One Day In November,” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 111

armbands marked with peace signs—helped keep the traffic flowing. WPA members read aloud the Unity Statement, allowing observers and the media to hear what their organization stood for.61 Press interviewed some of the protesters to better understand what these women were up to. WLOE organizer Ynestra King stressed to reporters that Reagan’s recent election prompted many women to join WPA “…because women were particularly wary about his saber-rattling during the campaign. You hear a lot about the Moral Majority but there’s an active resistance movement in this country. We’re going to see a lot more demonstrations like this in the next four years.”62 Once word traveled that the circle was complete, women progressed to the last stage of their ritual: defiance. At this point, those prepared and willing to perform civil disobedience— around two hundred women—stepped forward. Following certain puppets that guided the affinity groups to their designated door, they sat down in front of the doorways, blocking anyone coming or going. Some women took brightly colored yarn and wove it in between entrance railings. As police snipped these weaves in half with scissors and arrested the women, a new wave of women appeared, blocked entry and began to spin new webs of yarn.63

Reactions from Pentagon workers and police were varied. The vast majority of attending police were African American men, and several of those Vietnam veterans. In general, they treated the women gently and sympathetically. “How come," one woman asked them, "black men are defending white men against white women?"64 Smiling quietly in reply, one of the

61 “The Talk of the Town,” The New Yorker, December 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 2 of 7, Folder New Yorker Article, SSC. 62 Sandra C. Boodman, “1,300 Women Stage ’60s-Style Protest at Pentagon,” Washington Post, WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. For more on ‘Reaganism,’ see Doug Rossinow, The Reagan Era: A History of the 1980s (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015). The unease of liberal Americans makes sense given that Reagan’s two biggest goals were tax cuts for the wealthy and “[b]eefing up” America’s military (31). 63 [Redacted], “How Over 2,000 Womyn Came to Surround the Pentagon One Day In November,” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed; “Logistics for Monday,” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed; [Redacted], “The Women’s Pentagon Action,” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 64 Tacie Dejanikus and Stella Dawson, “Women’s Pentagon Action,” off our backs, January 1981, 2. 112

police officers noted the irony yet remarked, “If I didn’t have this job, I’d be on welfare.”65

Another asked if WPA could explain the science of nuclear energy to him. Yet one African

American policeman turned angrily to a Black woman and asked, "What are you doing here with these white women?”66 Men coming and going from the Pentagon either tried to ignore the women or brutishly cut through their bodies and webs. One man turned to women and said, “I make 25 bombs a day and one of them is for you.”67 Many said they had “no comment” when

WPA participants asked them what they thought of the Pentagon and its operations.68 A female army officer pushed through the women to get into the building, shouting back, “This is your last chance to have fun before Reagan gets in!”69 Demonstrators targeted female workers, trying to convince them to join the protest. They shouted to one woman trying to enter the building through their bodies, “You’re a woman, don’t go in there, you’re making death!”70

Passively resisting arrest, in total around one hundred fifty women were taken in to the

U.S. Magistrate’s Court in Alexandria, Virginia, for arraignments for blocking entrance to the

Pentagon. Women donning brown armbands marked with an S, the “support women,” followed those who were arrested to ensure that WPA knew what had happened to each woman.71 Those who pled not guilty and had bail money were subsequently released. WPA encouraged women not to pay bail as the organization saw it as unjust. Others, who pled guilty and made passionate speeches in the courtroom, were held overnight on unheated buses, shackled in leg and waist

65 Ibid. 66 Ibid. 67 [Redacted], “How Over 2,000 Womyn Came to Surround the Pentagon One Day In November,” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 68 “The Talk of the Town,” The New Yorker, December 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 2 of 7, Folder New Yorker Article, SSC. 69 [Redacted], “How Over 2,000 Womyn Came to Surround the Pentagon One Day In November,” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 70 Sandra C. Boodman, “1,300 Women Stage ’60s-Style Protest at Pentagon,” Washington Post, WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 71 “The Talk of the Town,” The New Yorker, December 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 2 of 7, Folder New Yorker Article, SSC. 113

irons and handcuffs and taken to the Aldersen Federal Penitentiary. Many considered this especially harsh sentencing and treatment for passive , but judges were intent on punishing women who had been arrested for civil disobedience prior to the WPA action. While these thirty-four women served sentences of ten to thirty days, depending on whether or not it was their first offense, another thirty-four women remained in Arlington and

Alexandria jails in bail solidarity. Another eighty or so women awaited trial in the December and

January.72

The women that opted out of civil disobedience returned to their constructed tombstones at the end of the day, encircling and decorating them with flowers for the closing ceremony.

Singing and chanting, they performed “earth, air, and water movements.” Earth movements involved kneeling to “the mother”—the earth—and acknowledging her power. Others created a circle of salt around the gravesite into which they dropped stones signifying “whatever you wish to leave behind.” “Air movements” such as holding hands and meditating on one’s breathing were joined with “water movements” that involved standing with feet firmly planted and envisioning water coming from the ground. The rituals also included planting seeds, lighting a candle—“to share your light with others”—passing around bread to feed all the surrounding women and, finally, a benediction that was a Black Appalachian funeral chant.73

Impasses of Race and Nonviolent Civil Disobedience

Once the high of their street protest ended, women returned to “the usually rather

72 “Women’s Pentagon Action Update,” Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed; “Logistics for Monday,” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed; [Redacted], “The Women’s Pentagon Action,” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed; Matthew Brelis and Henry J. Reske, “Pentagon Protesters Arrested,” Washington Star (Washington, D.C.), November 18, 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed; “Women Protesters Sent to W.Va. Jail,” Washington Post, November 19, 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed; Marcia Blomberg, “Women demonstrators denied rights: lawyer,” Springfield Morning Union (Springfield, Massachusetts), November 22, 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 73 “General Information,” WLOE Papers, Box 6 of 7, Folder Women Pentagon Action, SSC. 114

undramatic, mundane” task of assessing their work and planning the future.74 In late November,

WPA women met in New York City to set up two interim committees, including a defense committee designed to assist the women who had been arrested. Organizers also wanted feedback on their event. Some in Western Massachusetts and New York City immediately called for regional evaluation meetings.75 Women also circulated an evaluation sheet to all WPA participants asking for their reactions. The form probed what organizations and pursuits women were involved and interested in, and then it asked for detailed commentary—instructing women to use the reverse side to write considered responses—on the different weekend workshops and

Monday’s direct action.

Returned feedback disclosed that women cared deeply about the quality of the workshops and march. Even as the vast majority of women filled their sheets with serious critique of WPA, their answers almost always concluded with the caveat that the Pentagon encircling was fulfilling, empowering and a fantastic idea. Women imparted that it was, “Incredible!” and

“Beautiful!”76 One wrote, “Creative! Sensitive! and powerful!” and another explained after her criticism of WPA, “Even though this was negative feedback, it was a great action.”77 They felt like they had finally done something, and banding together as women, they described a powerful sisterhood they felt after the weekend. “I am riding high on the power we all had,” summarized an enthusiastic protester.78 Women were appreciative—“Let me repeat that I really appreciate and admire the amount of work that was done”—and clearly invested in the future of WPA.79

They liked that they had at least tried to speak with female Pentagon workers, and many

74 T. V. Reed, The Art of Protest, xv. 75 WPA, “Post Action Bulletin No. 1,” December 5, 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 76 “Evaluation Sheets,” WLOE Papers, Box 6 of 7, Folder WPA Evaluations; “Quotes from Evaluation Forms,” WLOE Papers, Box 5 of 7, Folder WLOE Newsletter, SSC. “Evaluation Sheets,” WLOE Papers, Box 6 of 7, Folder WPA Evaluations; “Quotes from Evaluation Forms,” WLOE Papers, Box 5 of 7, Folder WLOE Newsletter, SSC. 77 Ibid. 78 Ibid. 79 Ibid. 115

commented that it mattered that they were there, at the Pentagon, using their bodies to physically block entry. For some, it was their first exposure to lesbianism, and others their first taste of a kind of lived feminism in which each participant was equal.

These positive missives aside, the extent of participants’ criticism validated how much

WPA mattered to women and elucidated the high standards to which women held the action and its impact. In a similar phenomenon, editors and writers of the feminist Ms. Magazine and women’s health guide Our Bodies Ourselves noted that women routinely wrote in to insist certain topics be more thoroughly covered or included. Holding these texts accountable, women demanded topics be attentive to women’s differences and needs but unequivocally offered the disclaimer that they greatly appreciated the magazine and book. The feminist movement of the

1960s and 1970s revealed distinct, fragmenting differences among women which belied the idea of a universal womanhood, but through collaboratively constructing feminist publications to contain inclusive coverage of many kinds of women, they in effect created a “virtual coalition.”80

In a similar project, women writing into WPA organizers likewise demanded more attentive consideration of difference in order to build and maintain their coalition-style women’s movement. They clearly cared deeply about the movement they were crafting, and they stipulated their high standards.

Many appreciated the symbolic rituals and performative nature of WPA. They explained that the dramatic, imaginative theatrics of Monday’s Pentagon demonstration unified women and helped them transition through different moods throughout the day. It allowed them to vent and

80 Amy Farrell, “Attentive to Difference: Ms. Magazine, Coalition Building, and Sisterhood,” in Feminist Coalitions: Historical Perspectives on Second-Wave Feminism in the United States, ed. Stephanie Gilmore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 48-62; Wendy Kline, “The Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves: Rethinking Women’s Health and Second-Wave Feminism,” in Feminist Coalitions: Historical Perspectives on Second-Wave Feminism in the United States, ed. Stephanie Gilmore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 63-83. 116

to express their pent-up anger.81 Several shared that the “women-only” atmosphere fostered a unique space for expression and showcased the existence of a unified bloc of women. As

Christina Rawley, involved with WLOE and WPA, said, “Women have always been excluded from the board rooms and military establishments that make the decisions that rule all our lives

… Women, more than men, are the ones who clean up the messes in the world, and because we really have no investment in things as they are, we can afford to think about a change in directions.”82

WPA protesters felt excluding men gave them both “peace and power” as they located

“the most vital energy in the world today is coming from women.”83 One twenty-one-year-old woman, Luisa Le Pera, explained her reaction to the women-only condition of WPA: “My first instinct was not to go, but the more I thought about it, the more important I decided it was to speak out as women. I’m not sure why that’s special or different for me, but it was.”84 Usually preferring to work with both men and women against nuclear weapons and energy, Luisa’s decision to join WPA earned her considerable griping from her friends who accused her of donating her energy to “separatists.”85 Marching with only other women, many noted, created a separatism that was empowering but also contributed to “an anti-male vibe” which was alienating. One woman wrote to WPA, ironically noting the divisiveness of its Unity Statement:

“First, let me say that I really like the idea of women going to the Pentagon to make a statement

81 “Evaluation Sheets,” WLOE Papers, Box 6 of 7, Folder WPA Evaluations, SSC. Epstein, Political Protest and Cultural Revolution, 162: Epstein also comments on the “striking effects of the action,” in that its aesthetics broke from “the traditional rally format of speakers and audience and allowed greater participation and personal expression.” She also explains that WPA’s idea to weave webs of yarn was picked up by other women’s groups elsewhere in the country as a metaphor to symbolize women’s power against hated institutions. 82 Peggy Eastman, “Capewomen renew crusades of ‘60s,” Cape Cod Times (Cape Cod, Maine), December 22, 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 2 of 3 Original Artwork and clippings, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 83 Nina Swaim, “Reflecting on the Women’s Pentagon Action,” Momentum, December 31, 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 2 of 3 Original Artwork and clippings, Folder Unprocessed; Karen A. Hagberg, “The Meaning of the Action: Internal Political Growth,” New Women’s Times, January 1981, WLOE Papers, Box 2 of 3 Original Artwork and clippings, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 84 Lindsy Van Gelder, “A 1960s Rebel Reviews The New Protesters,” Ms. Magazine, November 1981, 69. 85 Ibid. 117

for life and against increasing militarism and arms build-up. However, when I turned the flyer over and read the ‘Unity Statement of the Women’s Pentagon Action’ I was really turned off by the flamboyant rhetoric, the wholesale anti-men tone and the diffuse focus.”86

The weekend was far from perfect. Women explained that they felt the workshops were crowded, disorganized and poorly facilitated. Often one woman dominated the conversation, as explained on the evaluation forms, or there was not enough time for everyone to thoroughly add to the discussion. Time was tight, and too much material needed to be covered. As one woman shared, “Why were we trying to talk about so many facets of womyn’s lives? It’s too much, and it accomplishes little unless some depth is reached.”87 Women came away from these workshops exhausted and frustrated by their unrealistic parameters. One day of workshops was inadequate, it seemed, and women asked how they should address their concerns long-term.88 That WPA participants had felt galvanized to discuss as much as possible during their weekend of events was exciting, but it also exposed an unfocused and unsustainable ambition.

Furthermore, many commented that it was wonderful how many different kinds of women attended, yet this diversity impaired the feasibility of workshops conversations.

Participants came from such varied backgrounds, levels of education and degrees of political involvement that veterans of activism felt only women new to the movement or politics in general were inspired by workshop discussions. For seasoned activists, discussions were general and lacked future strategy. It seemed that being “against militarism”—against violence in various forms—was the only point of commonality among many women. Too many women did not

86 Pat Brown, “Dear Shira Badanes,” November 4, 1981, Philadelphia Women’s Encampment Papers, Box 2 of 4, Action, Folder Women’s Pentagon Action, 1981-1982, SCPC. 87 “Evaluation Sheets,” WLOE Papers, Box 6 of 7, Folder WPA Evaluations, SSC. 88 “Evaluation Sheets,” WLOE Papers, Box 6 of 7, Folder WPA Evaluations; Nina Swaim, “Reflecting on the Women’s Pentagon Action,” Momentum, December 31, 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 2 of 3 Original Artwork and clippings, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 118

know each other enough to make consensus-driven decisions. Some thought that WPA should have organized women throughout the weekend by region given that there was little cohesion among women.89

Resembling racial tensions at the WLOE conference, the WPA weekend likewise demonstrated that race was a profound issue for many. For one, the workshop on racism raised the awareness of some women unaccustomed to thinking about the concept of double oppressions—that women of color experienced discrimination on account of both sex and race.

Indicative that racism was still largely misunderstood by many women, most of the workshop was devoted to women of color explaining to white women how they inadvertently perpetuated or tolerated racial discrimination.

The session opened with an African American woman, seasoned in civil rights activism, explaining to her mostly white participants how they inadvertently benefitted from institutionalized racism. She spotlighted that years of economic and employment discrimination culminated in drastically different life options for white and black women, namely that black women were stuck in low-paying jobs while white women could afford to be career-driven in ways unimaginable for many women of color. She also, like others at this workshop, stressed historical moments in which race was a blind spot for white women. In the movement, for example, white women largely ignored the needs of women of color for the sake of securing the vote. To move away from such “barbarianism” and “to make a social revolution,” white women needed to stop condescendingly asking what they could do to help black women and

89 “Evaluation Sheets,” WLOE Papers, Box 6 of 7, Folder WPA Evaluations; “Dear Women and Life on Earth,” November 30, 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 6 of 7, Folder WPA Evaluations, SSC; Tacie Dejanikus and Stella Dawson, “Women’s Pentagon Action,” off our backs, January 1981, 3. These oob writers commented that for some women, WPA offered them their first exposure to feminism and activism in general, and convinced them to get more involved in women’s issues. 119

instead ask what black women could do or show white women.90

A Puerto Rican woman from Harlem then explained that in her culture, machismo and marianismo confined men and women to hyper-masculine and hyper-feminine roles. “If you are a lesbian or a single parent, for example,” she said, “then you’re up the creek without a paddle.”91 It was a lot to navigate, and white women did not offer much support to Hispanic women, she said. She offered the example that, perhaps unconsciously, white women often mistreated Hispanic women when they refused to visit them at home or engage with their culture.

She shared stories of sterilization abuse in Puerto Rico, and while Puerto Rican women were targeted for eugenics experiments, white American women could fly to Puerto Rico to obtain an abortion, access to which was denied to Puerto Rican women.92

A representative from Women from All Red Nations (WARN) then discussed her own experience coming from the Lakota nation in the Black Hills of South Dakota and living in intense poverty, pollution and illness. She, with the help of another woman, narrated a basic history of white dispossession of Native American lands and resources. This history had been lost or perverted, they explained, as native children learned in reservation schools that their ancestors lost rights to their land by their own mismanagement. These two women encouraged others to interrogate the narrative of colonization as racist and premised on stereotypes. For one, it assumed “Indians” were all largely the same. The media either cast them as murderous warriors or overly sentimentalized them as earth-loving and teepee-living. Not only did this ignore how Native Americans lived in poverty on reservations, but both women pushed against

90 [Redacted], “How Over 2,000 Womyn Came to Surround the Pentagon One Day In November,” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 91 Ibid. 92 For a scholarly treatment of forced sterilization and abortion access for minority women, see Rebecca Kluchin, Fit to Be Tied: Sterilization and Reproductive Rights in America, 1950-1980. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2009. 120

such these typecasts. “Okay, this is racism,” they stated, “This is the white people’s problem.”93

They tasked the women at the workshop to relearn the appropriate history, making them aware that no women’s movement, in their eyes, had done a particularly good job at confronting the issues facing Native nations. But they did not see racism as the only oppression. Rather, they conceived that behind racism, classism and sexism were other powerful forces that furthered disenfranchisement.94

The last woman to speak confessed her shock that so few nonwhite women had attended

WPA. Previously involved in gay rights and civil rights, she stated that while she was happy to be organizing with women only, the lack of diversity and self-confessing feminists worried her.

White middle-class women, she said, could talk about racism as long as the conversation contained no accusations or insults. This would always be superficial then. She continued that when WPA “outreached” to Third World women by mailing them a letter informing them of an already planned action, then of course, none of those women would want to attend or feel genuinely included. Maybe, she posited, WPA should go to one of their meetings. She, like the representative from WARN, asked the white women surrounding her to understand that this was racism. She also implored them to recognize that sometimes women of color wanted men around because those men also experienced racial discrimination. She argued that, up to then, the women’s movement had not addressed racism, class privilege or homophobia. Indeed, later in the day, an African American poet and community worker greeted WPA participants, “I’m very happy to see so many of you … I don’t mean to sound critical because it is nice to see so many of you but … this crowd is a little light for my taste. I hope next time we can have a much richer,

93 “Transcription of Racism Workshop,” November 16, 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 6 of 7, Folder Racism WPA, SSC. 94 Ibid.; [Redacted], “How Over 2,000 Womyn Came to Surround the Pentagon One Day In November,” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 121

more culturally diverse gathering.”95

Such statements and workshop explanations proved edifying for white participants.

Looking around the room, as the poet pointed out, there were almost no nonwhite faces. Some asked if women of color had even been included in planning the weekend. Indeed, many women expressed that the workshop on racism was too little too late, and that Third World women should have been more thoroughly covered. One remarked that the dedication to Yulanda Ward felt token and not thoroughly thought out. Race became an issue on Monday as well. Several

Hispanic women left the march because they could not understand the chants and directions of

Monday’s action. Many women noted that the police officers instructed to manage the march and deal with the civil disobedience were largely Black men, and several were embarrassed that

WPA seemed to target these men in their protest. “Chanting ‘Take the toys from the boys’ to

Black police men was VERY INSENSITIVE AND RACIST!” one woman noted. Another cautioned, “There was not enough sensitivity to the local neighborhood. Anti-male chants are not appropriate in a black community nor is the singing of ‘We shall overcome’. The chant ‘Take the toys away from the boys’ is not clear in the setting we were in. Most of the ‘boys’ who heard it then were black and hardly have access to the ‘toys’ we spoke of.”96 One woman, arrested for performing civil disobedience, spoke to the police officer handcuffing her and discovered he had been arrested six times for similar tactics during the civil rights movement. He asked her if she thought a Black man would ever become president. She retorted, “Why not a black woman?”

The two wished each other a merry Christmas.97

Others shared similar experiences and noted that they should not have been attacking

95 “Transcription of Racism Workshop,” November 16, 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 6 of 7, Folder Racism WPA; [Redacted], “How Over 2,000 Womyn Came to Surround the Pentagon One Day In November,” WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 96 “Quotes from Evaluation Forms,” WLOE Papers, Box 5 of 7, Folder WLOE Newsletter, SSC. 97 Lindsy Van Gelder, “A 1960s Rebel Reviews The New Protesters,” Ms. Magazine, November 1981, 69. 122

police officers who were merely doing their jobs and seemed generally supportive of their message. While some observed that the police at the Pentagon manhandled women performing civil disobedience, numerous other marchers found police to be very sympathetic and gentle.

Similarly, it seemed inappropriate to some to level their critique of the Pentagon at its workers, especially those of color. One woman stopped and spoke to a man who worked there. He stated he was equally concerned about the nuclear arms race, and afterward, assessing the interaction, she concluded that no one had actually prepared them to speak with Pentagon employees. While she was pleased with the conversation, she felt many participants’ sole mission had been to alienate and abuse workers, especially male ones, as they entered and left the building. While many appreciated that men had been excluded from the weekend, this “anti-male vibe” unsettled others.98

The tenuous relationship between those risking arrest and the police pointed to holes in the planning of the assault on the Pentagon, and to larger issues women had with the use and efficacy of dramatic action. Not all women tried to blockade the Pentagon, and especially for those who did not participate, they questioned the purpose of such a move. Seeing the protest as civil mischief as much as it was civil disobedience, they asked how much it added to a demonstration. Several interrogated if the everyday American watching the WPA event on the news could comprehend the purpose behind such theatrics. Other women did not view it as theatrical though. They expressed that performing civil disobedience was crucial to the march’s success and to effectively communicating their anger. They needed that creative outlet. One New

York University law student described that interfering with Pentagon business even symbolically was “like banging your fist on the table and saying, ‘No you can’t do that!’”99 Another woman, a

98 “Evaluation Sheets,” WLOE Papers, Box 6 of 7, Folder WPA Evaluations, SSC. 99 Lindsy Van Gelder, “A 1960s Rebel Reviews The New Protesters,” Ms. Magazine, November 1981, 69. 123

mother, insisted that she would “do civil disobedience again.”100 She elaborated, “It’s appalling to say, but I’ve never felt strong in my whole life. In jail I felt strong.”101 Others disliked it, and some women stressed that even though they did not join in, they did not know how to help those who did and were subsequently arrested.102

Women who did not partake in blocking entry often found those that did too pushy. Their actions seemed abrasive and alienating, and the civil disobedience too close to violence. Behind this critique, skeptical women asked what nonviolence was supposed to look like. How did it operate and where was the line between useful nonviolent direct action and excessive force? If women used abusive or abrasive language, was that nonviolence? Guidelines provided to WPA marchers explicated that “[f]or the purpose of building trust and a common foundation for safety” no “physical or verbal violence” would be tolerated.103 Participants had to consent that

“[w]hen continued forward motion would result in a physical confrontation we will sit down and evaluate the options.”104 Even the following year’s “Guidelines and How We Conduct

Ourselves” saw WPA further delineating what constituted verbal and physical abuse and warned women how to act around police officers and Pentagon workers. Yet these parameters failed to clarify what counted as violence.105

Furthermore, some expressed frustration that the media fixated exclusively on the blockade, and others noted only privileged women could join the blockade: “I, as many other women, am not in a position to be able to be arrested. I have two small children and must support

100 Ibid. 101 Ibid. 102 “Evaluation Sheets,” WLOE Papers, Box 6 of 7, Folder WPA Evaluations; “Quotes from Evaluation Forms,” WLOE Papers, Box 5 of 7, Folder WLOE Newsletter, SSC. 103 WPA, “Logistics for the Women’s Pentagon Action November 16 & 18,” Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Women’s Pentagon Action, Box 26 of 26, Folder 1, SSC. 104 Ibid. 105 Jill Raymond, “Brace yourself..,” Philadelphia Women’s Encampment Papers, Box 2 of 4, Action, Folder Women’s Pentagon Action, 1981-1982, SCPC. 124

them monetarily as well as physically & psychologically.”106 Others shared this sentiment, asking if “civil disobedience will become an elitist luxury in the 1980s.”107 Nevertheless, some mothers performed civil disobedience for the sake of their children. “This is the first time I’ve taken such serious action,” explained a sociology professor in front of the U.S. Magistrates Court after arrest.108 “But the new weapons, which suggest first-strike capabilities are too much. My son is eleven years old, and for the first time I’m not sure he’s got a future. And I worry about the future for all the children of this world. There is a reactor near my sister’s home which leaked yesterday and all pregnant women and small children living nearby were told to stay indoors. My sister is eight months pregnant and didn’t hear the warning.”109

To some, surrounding the Pentagon amounted to “bearing witness” to the crimes committed by the military. One woman, in her late thirties with a history of civil rights, pacifist and environmental activism, explained, “I think what we have to do is we have to deal in symbols. A very crucial or key symbol that reflects how astray this society has gone is the

Pentagon. Even if the nuclear weapons are never used, the Pentagon has already killed people by using resources that could have been used to feed and house the living.”110 She continued that she went to D.C. because she wanted “to speak truth to power” to those who work at the

Pentagon. “[U]ltimately, the only thing we have is our bodies, ourselves,” she asserted, and by committing civil disobedience, the body could be imaginatively and creatively used to demonstrate messages of resistance, peace and hope.111 The worst thing to her was not going to

106 “Evaluation Sheets,” WLOE Papers, Box 6 of 7, Folder WPA Evaluations, SSC. 107 Lindsy Van Gelder, “A 1960s Rebel Reviews The New Protesters,” Ms. Magazine, November 1981, 69. 108 “The Talk of the Town,” The New Yorker, December 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 2 of 7, Folder New Yorker Article, SSC. 109 Ibid. 110 Marcia Black, “Action at Pentagon has lasting impressions,” Daily Hampshire Gazette, December 12, 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 2 of 3 Original Artwork and clippings, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 111 Ibid. 125

jail but that “you could have done something and you didn’t.”112 Yet women who sat down in front of the Pentagon were hurt that their fellow marchers interpreted their actions not only as violent but also as gender-inappropriate. One explained that when she used her body to block

Pentagon workers, she was told by other women that she was being violent, masculine and

“butch.”113

These perceptual differences mattered because women either felt that blockading was revolutionary and required for transmitting a message of protest—or they felt that people perceived them as relics of the 1960s. Indeed, some women considered “being a hippie” deleterious to image and message. Others pondered if they should wear uniforms as they did not want to look or act “countercultural.” These were the women that suggested having a guest like

Dr. Helen Caldicott—a mother, pediatrics researcher and polished professional—give a speech at future events to sophisticate WPA. Moreover, it was imperative to them that the march had an easily discernible purpose. They feared that not only the civil disobedience but also the variety of causes the WPA represented were not understood by the media and observers.114

The feminist publication off our backs commented on the “exciting cross fertilization of ideas from different movements” that WPA hinged on: “the tactic of civil disobedience from the black civil rights and anti-nuke movements; guerilla theater, used by the yippees and 1960’s feminists; collective process and decentralized organization, developed by feminists and anarchists; a commitment to working with women and discussions about the politics of lesbianism, originated with the feminist and lesbian-feminist movement; and affinity groups,

112 Ibid. 113 “Evaluation Sheets,” WLOE Papers, Box 6 of 7, Folder WPA Evaluations; “Quotes from Evaluation Forms,” WLOE Papers, Box 5 of 7, Folder WLOE Newsletter, SSC. 114 “Evaluation Sheets,” WLOE Papers, Box 6 of 7, Folder WPA Evaluations, SSC. 126

associated with the anti-nuclear movement.”115 Indeed, participants who valued nonviolence and direct action inherited such embodied politics from a longer tradition of “bearing witness” against moral crimes.

In the early Cold War, radical pacifists in groups like as the Committee for Nonviolent

Action (CNVA) drew from Gandhian principles of nonviolence and civil disobedience to “speak truth to power” and challenge what they perceived as American iniquity—namely segregation and the escalating arms race—by carrying out visible civil disobedience and risking arrest to heighten consciousness. Beginning in 1957, for instance, CNVA “witnessed” against nuclear war by climbing fences and blocking entry to military bases where nuclear tests occurred. Configured as a loose network of individuals and small groups, CNVA and other organizations pioneered nonhierarchical structure oriented toward consensus decision-making. These groups stamped postwar American dissent, namely the New Left, with a tactical commitment to decentralized structure and to experimental protest that emphasized symbolic confrontation of institutions deemed oppressive, all the while privileging action over analysis and extolling nonviolent individual resistance.116

The New Left, then, a protest movement among white, college-educated youth arising by

115 Tacie Dejanikus and Stella Dawson, “Women’s Pentagon Action,” off our backs, January 1981, 2-4, 29. 116 Van Gosee, Rethinking the New Left: An Interpretive History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 53-59; Frank Zelko, Make It a Green Peace!: The Rise of Countercultural Environmentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 10-32; Andrew Cornell, “The Movement for a New Society: Consensus, Prefiguration, and Direct Action,” in The Hidden 1970s: Histories of , ed. Dan Berger (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2010), 231-249; James Tracy, Direct Action: Radical Pacifism from the Union Eight to the Chicago Seven (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); Marian Mollin, Radical Pacifism in Modern America: Egalitarianism and Protest (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). Both Tracy and Mollin argue that radical pacifists, which emerged out of the population of World War II, became the “principal interpreters” of on the , giving leftist dissent groups thereafter many of their tactics. Tracy also argues that in addition to peace, disarmament and anti-nuclear testing, radical pacifists were foremost focused on racial injustice in the U.S., their efforts dovetailing with the civil rights movement and by the early 1960s, with student activism (Tracy, 99-153); Mollin agrees but argues that the radical pacifist movement from World War II throughout the Vietnam War failed to be racially and gender-inclusive, and ultimately mimicked the very culture it was trying to change (one that treated African Americans and women as second-class citizens, and insisted on constructing a new pacifist version of manhood that excluded women). 127

the 1960s, inherited this “experimental protest” and “symbolic confrontation.” Questioning the loneliness, isolation and alienation of modern American society, students claimed that mid- century affluence would not provide Americans with true authenticity and democracy. Named the New Left to distance themselves from the Old Left of the century’s first half, rooted in the labor movement and focused on the struggle of workers against capitalists, these young people worked to redefine democracy in America, as one of their greatest inspirations was the Black freedom movement. Though in decline by the early ‘70s, the New Left imprinted subsequent social movements interested in equality and liberation, such as the women’s liberation movement, with its interest in and experimental tactics.117

The women’s movement of the 1980s was the heir of women’s liberation and received from it the vital lesson that culture was a political “prime ‘instrument’ of change for the movement, not some decorative addition.118 While women liberationists engaged in many large dynamic public demonstrations and zap actions—one of the most infamous involved crashing the

Miss America pageant in 1968 and throwing in a freedom trash can—they also more subtly

117 The New Left challenged Cold War , the prevailing ideology linking a bipartisan majority of Democrats and moderate Republicans in a commitment to New Deal-style big government at home and aggressive anti-communism abroad, and confronted deep enduring inequalities built into America. See Gosee, Rethinking the New Left. For older New Left scholarship, see Irwin Unger, The Movement: A History of the New Left, 1959-1972 (New York: Harper & Row, 1974); Milton Worst, Fire in the Streets: America in the 1960’s (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979). While Unger was one of the first to examine the New Left, others since him have revalued or shown the larger role that the civil rights movement, New Left women and feminism, religious sensibilities, college campuses themselves, internationalism, and violence played in shaping the New Left. For newer historiography, outside of the many memoirs written by movement participants, see Doug Rossinow, The Politics of Authenticity: Liberalism, , and the New Left in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); James Farrell, The Spirit of the Sixties: The Making of Postwar Radicalism (London: Routledge, 1997); W.J. Rorabaugh, Berkeley at War: The 1960s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Paul Buhle and John McMillian, eds., The New Left Revisited (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003); Jeremy Varon, Bringing the War Home: The , The Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004); Dan Berger, Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2006). In this newer historiography, most scholars perceive the New Left as a that stemmed from white youth participation in civil rights activism in the late 1950s and early 1960s. A few, like Gosse, see the New Left as encompassing a much larger constellation of social protest activism; whereas most others argue that there was a difference between the New Left, and both the movements it spawned (gay liberation, radical feminism and hippie counterculture) and the movements it grew from (civil rights and black power). 118 Reed, The Art of Protest, 79. 128

critiqued the divisions between the cultural and the political through consciousness-raising sessions, poetry, music, literature, art and ritual.119 The exhaustive attention paid to the Unity

Statement and the minutiae of their ritualized street protest indicated that WPA likewise imbued their words, clothing, chants and body movements with great meaning.

This idea of radically “living out” an alternative of nonviolence and “bearing witness” especially materialized in the 1970s and 1980s in environmental and peace activism, most notably in anti-nuclear energy, disarmament and animal rights. WPA should be understood as a part of these networks and campaigns. Through the efforts of Greenpeace and campaigns like the

Clamshell Alliance in and the in California signified,

Christians, pacifists, feminists and countercultural environmentalists “witnessed” against nuclear testing and power plants in the early to mid-1970s. Greenpeace members, for example, sailed the

Vega throughout the South Pacific in the early ‘70s to disrupt French atmospheric tests. By the end of the decade, they targeted nuclear weapons facilities, as the Livermore Action Group did in

Berkeley, California. This particular style of protest garnered interest among older activists but also appealed to a younger generation.120

Those one hundred fifty WPA women arrested for blockading the Pentagon with yarn and appendages did not stop its operations—but that was not really the point. Like Greenpeace and other campaigns committed to nonviolent direct action, the intent of such a strategy was more to provide WPA with a “a series of potent images that could influence world opinion” rather than to literally turn off the lights at the military headquarters.121 WPA wanted Americans

119 Ibid., 75-102; Sara Evans, Tidal Wave: How Women Changed America at Century’s End (New York: The Free Press, 2003), 142-158. 120 Epstein, Political Protest and Cultural Revolution; Zelko, Make It a Green Peace, 110-180; Gosee, Rethinking the New Left, 201; Cornell, “The Movement for a New Society,” in The Hidden 1970s, 234-241. 121 Zelko, Make It a Green Peace, 227. Zelko argues that Greenpeace’s anti-whaling and other direct actions did not save halt whaling but effectively raised animal rights’ profile. Furthermore, he maintains the Greenpeace, despite its 129

to see on their television screens the yarn weaves and oversized puppets of grief and rage, and to grasp that this women’s movement demanded life on earth.

As much of this “prefigurative, utopian approach to politics” persisted into the late 20th century, it had its issues.122 The concept of “participatory democracy” was the theoretical light for the New Left of the 1960s, and groups like Students for a Democratic Society never worked out a way to reconcile the discrepancy between militant action and critically reflective, long-term strategy.123 The social activism spawned by the New Left into the 1970s and 1980s likewise had a “disdain for lasting organizational structure.”124 Based around affinity groups, grassroots protests like the and Abalone Alliance easily disbanded or turned to new issues. These movements, centered on nonviolent direct action and nonhierarchical organization, tended to be allergic to strategy and structure. For one, using direct action to make a statement and capture media attention necessitated a continual increase in bravado and novelty to keep up with the public’s limited attention span. Such a proclivity to expressionist activism meant that symbolic protest eclipsed strategy and mundane organizing to build sustainable movements.

Additionally, these movements inherited protest strategies from postwar radical pacifists who had functioned in small groups well-suited to decentralized structure and expressive activism.

These tactics though did not translate well to movements with a mass base.125 Decisions necessitated unanimity, and as WLOE and WPA meetings displayed, activists who adhered to consensus-driven outcomes fought to move forward.

association with extremism and hippie counterculture, effectively used nonviolent direct action to promote ecological sensibility (322). 122 Epstein, Political Protest and Cultural Revolution, 16. 123 McMillian and Buhle, eds., The New Left Revisited, 3. 124 Epstein, Political Protest and Cultural Revolution, 19. 125 Tracy, Direct Action, 124-153. Tracy argues that the New Left inherited radical pacifists’ tactics but such strategy did not translate well into the New Left’s mass student base. Decentralism allowed for the emerging factionalism in the New Left to grow, and as a result, the New Left proved more successful in disrupting institutions and polices than providing last alternatives. Furthermore, the chaos of the late 1960s, the escalation of the Vietnam War, and the growing militancy black power turned some in the New Left to violence and assisted in its disintegration. 130

Moreover, Gandhi had taught that nonviolence required a calculated program for action, and this led WPA and others to equivocate on the feasibility of premeditated nonviolence alongside unrehearsed direct action. The dilemma arose from the very nature of their organizational protest which was supposed to be both spontaneous and effectively planned, both democratic and anarchic. In this troubled combination of anti-leadership and strategic direct action, dissension among WPA protesters arose because participants wanted to be intentional and consensual but their ideological convictions necessitated that each woman could say and do what she felt was right. Insistent that each woman make her own decisions, WPA was witness to the futility of trying to reconcile participatory democracy and competing opinions over what constituted successful protest. Some women wanted to perform civil disobedience; others did not. That dissonance, symptomatic of nonviolent direct action inherited from the New Left, portended that the women’s movement of the 1980s, as inclusive as it aimed to be, prescribed its own frustrated future by first welcoming all women and opinions, and then allowing certain actions to dominate and offend.

“That Troubled Decade”

Press described them as emulating a “60s-style” protest and likened the WPA event to anti-war protests of the 1960s, such as the 1967 march on the Pentagon during which 35,000 protesters shouted, “The whole world is watching” in “one of the Vietnam era’s most memorable outpourings of protest.”126 One reporter observed that WPA was the largest anti-military

126 Sandra C. Boodman, “1,300 Women Stage ’60s-Style Protest at Pentagon,” Washington Post, WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed, SSC; Tacie Dejanikus and Stella Dawson, “Women’s Pentagon Action,” off our backs, January 1981, 2. These oob writers alluded to the 1971 women’s march on the Pentagon as well. 131

demonstration by women since the ‘60s.127 Another argued that the “emotional, near-mystical flood of the 1960s’ peace and environmental movements” were “gathering their forces from many distance points and recombining in a ‘new wave.’”128 WPA was part of a “‘New Wave of

Mass Resistance,’” in which women were inspired by the spirit of the 1960s, “that troubled decade” even if they were too young at the time to actually remember those years.129 The

Washington Post commented on the WPA turnout: “most of the them white, and many of them under 25, outfitted in the ‘uniform’ of 1960s student protesters biking boots, blue jeans, ponchos and backpacks.” Post reporter Sandra C. Boodman interviewed a 52-year-old participant who had marched against the Vietnam War and was excited to see so many young women caring about protest again. The silences of the 1970s—the lack of street protest—had deeply worried her.130

On the one hand, references and comparisons to the 1960s suggested that, by the 1980s, some Americans already revered and mythologized that decade. It made sense, especially among activists, that any bold protest since the 1960s would ring of its radicalism and excitement.

Commentary then would seem only natural. One historian explained this phenomena: “To reignite passions, recruit new supporters, and raise money, activists instinctively built upon its

[the New Left of the 1960s] legacy, evoking Vietnam and the anti-war struggle, the moral dignity of civil rights, the pre-Roe v. Wade era of women’s subordination, Stonewall, and other watersheds.”131

127 Barbara Meyers Keller, “Women Take on the Pentagon,” Atlanticville (Long Branch, New Jersey), December 1, 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 2 of 3 Original Artwork and clippings, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 128 Peggy Eastman, “Capewomen renew crusades of ‘60s,” Cape Cod Times, December 22, 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 2 of 3 Original Artwork and clippings, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 129 Karen A. Hagberg, “The Meaning of the Action: Internal Political Growth,” New Women’s Times, January 1981, WLOE Papers, Box 2 of 3 Original Artwork and clippings, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 130 Sandra C. Boodman, “1,300 Women Stage ’60s-Style Protest at Pentagon,” Washington Post, WLOE Papers, Box 1 of 3, Folder Unprocessed, SSC. 131 Gosee, Rethinking the New Left, 201. 132

Undoubtedly, the women’s movement of the 1980s extended from and relied upon tenets of the New Left. Yet it would be erroneous to suggest that by the early 1980s, Americans had a clear idea of what they thought of the 1960s. The media’s comparing the ‘60s and the ‘80s, as well as WPA protesters’ hesitation to associate with the 1960s, signaled that Americans still could not make sense of that unnerving, mid-century time. Members of an older generation that participated in civil rights, anti-Vietnam and other social movements were nostalgic for that kind of zeal and sought to ascertain if the women’s movement of the 1980s signaled a rebirth of

1960s’ radicalism. For example, Ms. Magazine writer Lindsy Van Gelder assessed if and how

WPA was a throwback to the anti-war and women’s liberation movements. She not only applauded the organization for so fragrantly dissenting against the status quo but also quipped that it mattered it was a women-only action. She wrote, “I read about the demo in the papers the next day and cheered up at the thought: Someone’s ass was in gear at least. The fact that all the demonstrators were women was the icing on the cake.”132 Van Gelder, who came of age during civil rights and the Vietnam War and discovered feminism later in life, remarked on the “large, visible turnout of students and other women under 30—a generation that hasn’t been famous for its activism in general and has often seemed to take feminism for granted in particular.”133 She was disappointed, though, to find that many of her “younger sisters” were “reinventing the wheel of feminism, grappling issues and schisms and stereotypes that I’d heard a decade or more before.”134

Yet for the generation that came to political consciousness by the 1980s, there was no neat and palpable legacy to inherit from the social reforms of the preceding decades. Americans in general lacked a consensus of what the 1960s had produced. In 1966, two writers in Esquire

132 Lindsy Van Gelder, “A 1960s Rebel Reviews The New Protesters,” Ms. Magazine, November 1981, 66. 133 Ibid. 134 Ibid. 133

quipped that someone should cancel the rest of the decade because enough had happened already. This association of social turmoil and universal protest persisted in many Americans’ minds. Yet such a view ignored that many, by the 1980s, also recalled memories that did not fit within that conception.135 For one, conflating the decade solely with social disorder ignored a more accurate portrait of the ‘60s that included those that protested and the silent majority that did not.136 Additionally, alongside the New Left, a powerful conservative grassroots movement manifested then, later dubbed the “New Right," that also challenged the mid-century liberal consensus. Rooted in anti-communism and staunch nationalism, the New Right began humbly like the New Left, among ordinary Americans, especially in the south and west, and also critiqued the alienation and apathy of industrial civilization. But unlike the New Left, the New

Right rejected the secularism and relativism associated with modernity. Adherents instead embraced patriarchal authority and evangelical Christianity and opposed the growing tendency of the state to organize social and economic life in the name of public welfare. By the 1970s, after early anti-communist campaigns of the 1950s and the drive to elect segregationist Barry

Goldwater in the mid-1960s, the New Right quietly transformed itself.137

Indeed, after “that troubled decade,” the New Right—“an uneasy amalgam of religious conservatives, old-line anticommunists and antitax and anti-big-government activists”—instead targeted liberal policy that had been produced from New Left social movements, namely civil rights, the women’s movement and gay liberation.138 To deal with desegregation, for instance,

135 McMillian and Buhle, eds., The New Left Revisited, 4-7. 136 Paul Lyons, New Left, New Right, and the Legacy of the Sixties (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), 1- 5; Terry H. Anderson, The Movement and the Sixties: Protest in America from Greensboro to Wounded Knee (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). Anderson stresses that activist students were still a minority in the 1960s and that a sizable number of Americans remained silent. 137 Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). 138 David Farber, “The Torch Had Fallen,” in America in the Seventies, ed. Beth Bailey and David Farber (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004), 24. 134

these conservative Americans embraced a color-blind discourse of innocence that depicted residential and educational segregation as a class-based outcome of meritocratic individualism rather than the unconstitutional byproduct of structural racism. Rallying behind the banner of

“,” which effectively served as a smokescreen for the freedom to not associate with African Americans, they claimed the “rights” of privacy and limited governmental intervention. To maneuver the threats posed to traditional values made by the and gay and women’s liberation, they appropriated subjects originally politicized by feminism and gay rights, like the family, and launched a moral offensive hinged on an anti-feminist and an anti-social welfare backlash.139 These New Right tenets benefitted from the presidency of Ronald

Reagan, who took office in January of 1981 and mainstreamed this “particular variety of

American conservatism.”140 Not only did he embrace ‘family values’ and an anti-civil rights platform but he championed unfettered capitalism, military might and “a vision of society as an arena where individuals win or lose because of their own talents and efforts.”141 In 1980, as

WPA marched on Washington, the preceding years had produced an uneasy composite of both liberal and conservative social activism, and to many it seemed that the latter had won. The

1960s, then, were simultaneously recalled as the apex of activism yet uneasily also the birth of virulent opposition to that activism.

Another factor contributing to Americans’ muddled sense of their recent past derived

139 McGirr, Suburban Warriors; Matthew D. Lassiter. The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007); M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007); Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1991), 229-256; Rosalind Pollack Petchesky, “Antiabortion, , and the Rise of the New Right,” Feminist Studies 7, no. 2 (Summer 1981): 206-47; Philip Jenkins, Decade of Nightmares: The End of the Sixties and the Making of Eighties America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 8-10; Eric Porter, “Affirming and Disaffirming Actions: Remaking Race in the 1970s” in America in the Seventies, 64-70; Bruce J. Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (New York: The Free Press, 2001), 193-217; Sean Wilentz, The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008 (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008), 89-95, 185-187; Evans, Tidal Wave, 176-190. 140 Rossinow, The Reagan Era, 1. 141 Ibid., 2. 135

from the unrecognized difference between the New Left and the hippie counterculture.142 The decade, already by 1981, was indelibly associated with imagery of , and this distorted the extent to which radical movements and lifestyle choices were not completely synonymous.

Media coverage of WPA mostly chimed in with references to the women’s choice of clothing and physical protest style, signaling that it was their countercultural style—young faces, jeans and marching bodies—and not their political message that jogged memories. This was telling, namely because the ideas of WPA profoundly paralleled aspects of the New Left platform. The women’s movement of the 1980s inherited from the New Left both ambition and utopian expectations of revolutionizing American consciousness. Both movements articulated significant links between societal ills. Yet the press did not seem to notice such ideological synchronization.

It instead conveyed the confusing missive that WPA members resembled hippies while simultaneously referencing anti-Vietnam marches. This only perpetuated the idea that counterculture, “[t]he flowering of hippie culture from 1965 on,” and New Left movements were one and the same, and that, in this conflation, counterculture mattered less and by association denigrated political activism.143

142 Gosee, Rethinking the New Left, 202-208; Marvin Gettleman, “We Didn’t Know It Would Be So Hard: the Short Instructive History of the US New Left,” in New Left, New Right and Beyond: Taking the Sixties Seriously, ed. Geoff Andrews, Richard Cockett, Alan Hooper, and Michael Williams (New York: St. Martin’s Press, Inc., 1999), 59-60. Both Gosse and Gettleman argue that the counterculture was connected to but partially independent of the New Left. Gosse surmises, “[Countercultural] politics were about style, about being, rather than doing” (205); Worst, Fire in the Streets, 56-57; McMillian and Buhle, eds., The New Left Revisited, 1. 143 Gosee, Rethinking the New Left, 204. See Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo, Daughters of Aquarius: Women of the Sixties Counterculture (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2009). While her main objective is to show the extent feminism did impact countercultural women in the ‘70s, she also addresses the negative stereotypes ‘hippie’ women encountered, being labeled drug addicts, worthless members of society, victims of male abuse, incapable of feminist thought and the like. Similarly, see Wendy Kline, “Communicating a New Consciousness: Countercultural Print and the Home Birth Movement in the 1970s,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 89, no. 3 (Fall 2015): 527-556; David Kaiser, How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012). Kline reinforces that ‘hippie’ or countercultural women like midwives were dealt negative stereotypes but like Lemke-Santangelo shows that they played an important role in mainstream culture, in Kline’s case, showing that midwives and their popular manuals helped many Americans decide to give birth at home in the 1970s. Kaiser likewise reevaluates ‘hippies’ by examining and valuing the physicists involved in the ‘70s Fundamental Fysiks Group, their philosophical debates and their contribution to quantum cryptography. See also David Kaiser and W. Patrick McCray, eds., Groovy Science: Knowledge, Innovation, and American 136

By 1980, Americans in many ways took the New Left and Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great

Society too seriously—attributing all social problems to the excesses or failures of the 1960s— and not seriously enough—failing to acknowledge or understand the real gains of those years.

Americans’ perceptions of the ‘60s were perpetuated partly through a series of autobiographies and memoirs written by nostalgic New Left leaders. These stories began in the early 1960s with a cadre of student activists setting an agenda of civil rights and participatory democracy for their generation. The stories ended by the late ‘60s, disintegrating with the 1968 Democratic National

Convention, the “,” the Manhattan townhouse explosion and other “symbolic end- points.”144 In some ways, the social disorder of the 1960s gave those years more of a “clear-cut moral cogency” that the subsequent decades lacked.145 But by the time of WPA, unclear legacies persisted because that decade had produced uneven gains. Indeed, as one historian of the 1970s quipped that the U.S. has become “more and less equal since the 1970s.”146 Another envisioned a

Rip van Winkle falling asleep in 1970, reawaking in the 1980s, and asking, “Can you tell me please, who won [the 1960s]?”147

Throughout the 1970s, Americans witnessed many social movements of the preceding decade come to fruition. The U.S. was a more liberal and equitable society, made so by the sexual revolution, civil rights and women’s and gay liberation. Multiculturalism was in. So too was cultural nationalism and racial pride. Concrete gains to eradicate legal discrimination in public policy evidenced as much, as did shifts of cultural consciousness that naturalized racial

Counterculture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), which broadly argues that countercultural values were not necessarily at odds with science. 144 McMillian and Buhle, eds., The New Left Revisited, 4. 145 Worst, Fire in the Streets, 548. 146 Thomas Borstelmann, The 1970s: A New Global History from Civil Rights to Economic Inequality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 278. 147 Jenkins, Decade of Nightmares, 2. Jenkins argues that the “1960s” ended in 1975, and that the post-1975 years were in many ways a follow-through of 1960s liberalism—with increasing equality alongside a conservative response—contributing to a hazy sense of late 20th century America. Furthermore, Jenkins posits the post-1975 world as equally dynamic and full of change as the infamous year of 1968 (1-23). 137

and and identity politics.148 The midcentury origins of the modern environmental movement blossomed into institutionalized environmental regulation by the 1970s, and widespread grassroots support for this burgeoning movement crystallized in the massive outpouring of nationwide community activism on the first in 1970.149 But, beside the prolongation of these gains, social and financial conservatism persisted. Economic decline, in particular, contributed to America’s dampened expectations for liberal reform.

Throughout these years, the U.S. economy underwent profound transformations, making the 1960s to some the last vestige of postwar industrial success. Exacerbated by the oil crisis, the

U.S. economy slowly and painfully shifted to an inchoate service- and technology-driven one throughout the 1970s. As manufacturing sector jobs disappeared with outsourcing and automation, labor—in particular for men working well-paid blue-collar jobs—became impotent.

Northeast and Midwestern cities faced blight and white flight, in stark contrast to the continued ascent of Sunbelt cities and suburban America. Unemployment and inflation rose, and real wages declined. Disappointment with the Democrat Party’s large federal budget deficit and inability to continue to provide financial success and security for the everyday American led to the

148 Borstelmann, The 1970s, 73-121, 278-295; Worst, Fire in the Streets, 547-548; Jenkins, Decade of Nightmares, 24-46, 64-68; Anderson, The Movement and the Sixties; Porter, “Affirming and Disaffirming Actions” in America in the Seventies, 50-74; Schulman, The Seventies, 10-12, 53-77, 80-84, 159-185. 149 For the midcentury origins of environmentalism, see Michael Egan, Barry Commoner and the Science of Survival: The Remaking of American Environmentalism (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2009); Robert Gottlieb, Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2003); Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997); James Longhurst, Citizen Environmentalists (Medford, MA: Tufts University Press, 2010); Thomas Robertson, The Malthusian Moment: Global Population Growth and the Birth of American Environmentalism (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2012); Adam Rome, Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Hal K. Rothman, The Greening of a Nation? Environmentalism in the United States since 1945 (New York: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1998); Jeffrey Sanders, Seattle and the Roots of Urban Sustainability: Inventing Ecotopia (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010); Christopher Sellers, Crabgrass Crucible: Suburban Nature and the Rise of Environmentalism in Twentieth-Century America (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2012); Philip Shabecoff, A Fierce Green Fire: The American Environmental Movement (Washington, D.C.; Island Press, 2003), 71-139; David Stradling and Richard Stradling, Where the River Burned: Carl Stokes and the Struggle to Save Cleveland (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015). For an analysis of the first Earth Day, see Rome, The Genius of Earth Day: How a 1970 Teach-In Unexpectedly Made the First Green Generation (New York: Hill and Wang, 2014). 138

dissolution of its broad-based coalition. The New Deal-style welfare state crumbled as

Americans repudiated in welfare provisions, and in a profound reversal of the 1930s, embraced tenets of free market capitalism and business deregulation. Buttressed by a small handful of economists providing the intellectual underpinning for a new embrace of the free market, most notably , unrestrained capitalism was seen increasingly as a democratic force.150

America’s grand economic and social expectations that grew out of the post-World War

II years—unending industrial success, buoyance of labor, middle-class growth and increasing racial and gender equality—sputtered by the 1970s. As the rise of the New Right signaled, disappointment fostered conservatism among many Americans. Defeated, the U.S. embarrassingly retreated from Vietnam. The Watergate scandal soured Americans’ faith in their leaders and international shocks like the Iran Hostage crisis of 1979 undermined the confidence of the American people, thus cultivating a national political culture of cynicism and fatalistic indifference to social change.151 Those inclined to miss the social energy of the 1960s turned inward. They embraced projects of self-improvement and bettering their qualities of life, thus fostering the notorious association of the 1970s as the “me decade.” Those looking for someone to blame for national and economic decline found their scapegoats in the winners of the 1960s—

African Americans, women, gay and lesbian persons. As historian Philip Jenkins explained,

150 Borstelmann, The 1970s, 122-174; : Profit over People: and Global Order (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1999), 9; Jefferson Cowie, Stayin’ Alive: the 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class (New York: The New Press, 2012); James Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Jenkins, Decade of Nightmares, 8-10, 16-19; Beth Bailey and David Farber, editors, America in the Seventies (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004), 2-4; Beth Bailey, “She ‘Can Bring Home the Bacon’: Negotiating Gender in Seventies America,” in America in the Seventies, 108-109; Schulman, The Seventies, 4-8, 106-114. 151 Wilentz, The Age of Reagan, 16-25, 28-47, 78-85, 95-120. 139

“Conditions were bad, it seemed, because the sixties values had let them get so bad.”152 More

Americans moved from identifying social problems rooted in structural injustice and inequality to blaming specific villains. Most targets were based on vicious stereotypes. Indolent African

Americans caused rising welfare rates and poverty, and feminism and the sexual revolution

(which were generally conflated) were responsible for teen pregnancy, divorce and child abuse.

Many were ready to believe that traditional family values and smaller government would act as a panacea for perceived military weakness, international decline and ineffectual leadership.153

Still, the ambivalence surrounding uneven liberal gains and encroaching conservatism in the post-1960s world belied that many continued to question the status quo and contradict impressions of political apathy.154 Anti-war protests continued into the mid-1970s as the last helicopter out of Saigon left in 1975. The women’s liberation movement, gay pride and Black

Power hardly disappeared. In fact, more ardent cultural nationalist movements among Chicanos,

American Indians, Asian Americans and white ethnic Americans materialized throughout the later decades of the 20th century. The environmental movement expanded to encompass anti- nuclear energy advocates. An international disarmament movement arose by the late 1970s to combat the reversal of détente.155 WPA and other manifestations of the women’s movement by

152 Jenkins, Decade of Nightmares, 11; Borstelmann, The 1970s, 19-72, 227-277; Patterson, Grand Expectations; Worst, Fire in the Streets, 507-509, 547-549. Worst argues that by 1970, “Americans had had enough of fire in the streets. The willingness to be aroused by injustice gave way to apathy, even surliness. The country wanted a period of repose” (507). He argues that by 1970, the civil rights, antiwar and student movements waned and that the Kent State Massacre was “the climax of a thousand confrontations during the 1960s” (509), and showed that by 1970, the U.S.’ concern for social justice and tolerance for demonstrations faded. He sees the 1970s defined by self- indulgence and political pullback but also the uneasy success of civil rights and other social movements of the 1960s. 153 Bailey and Farber, eds., America in the Seventies, 6-7, Farber, “The Torch Had Fallen,” in America in the Seventies, 9-28; Bailey, “She ‘Can Bring Home the Bacon’”, in America in the Seventies, 115-120; Christopher Capozzola, “‘It Makes You Want to Believe in the Country’: Celebrating the Bicentennial in an Age of Limits,” in America in the Seventies, 29-49; Jenkins, Decade of Nightmares, 10-14, 47-54, 75-107; Schulman, The Seventies, 4- 8, 121-143. 154 Dan Berger, editor, The Hidden 1970s: Histories of Radicalism (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2010). 155 Berger, ed., The Hidden 1970s; Borstelmann, The 1970s, 227-247. 140

1980 were hardly alone on the left.

Yet for important reasons that have to do with convenient memory, the radicalism and activism after 1969 was ignored—for one, by the media, but more importantly, by everyday

Americans. WPA, then, felt like an aberration. Nothing, it seemed, could measure up to “that troubled decade.” For the left, nothing would be as great as those years. For the right, nothing would be as troublesome as those years. America collectively imbued the ‘60s with an unsurmountable legacy, to the point that Americans, even if they did not personally experience them, were incapable of not comparing their activism to the movements contained within the

Kennedy, LBJ and Nixon years. Especially for those on the left, this was an ironic, unfortunate byproduct of the 1960s. Its very reputation tripped up and burdened later generations of leftist activists who failed to see the U.S. moving, as one political theorist commented in 1976,

“vigorously left, right, and center.”156 There was a sizeable number of women involved in

WLOE and WPA—several thousand, in fact. Yet many articulated feelings of isolation, as though they were the only protesters left in 1980. The women’s movement in these late-20th century years thus countered “the declension narrative that sees the end of the 1960s as the beginning of an undifferentiated conservative era” but it also suggested that that narrative existed by 1980 and had a strong hold on activists.157

Undoubtedly, the political and cultural atmosphere, especially in 1980, was more inimical to the women’s movement. Media interpreted the draconian penalties imposed on WPA protesters as a key clear sign of the power of the Reagan era to stifle dissent but also the brazenness of the women’s movement to defy it. One journalist offered that the treatment was

156 Quoted in Jefferson Cowie, “‘Vigorously Left, Right, and Center:’ The Cross-Currents of Working-Class America in the 1970s,” in America in the Seventies, 76. 157 Berger, ed., The Hidden 1970s, 10. 141

perhaps “a harbinger of what equal rights will mean in the Age of Reagan.”158 While WPA received press, for sure, it did not receive as much as organizers anticipated. One reporter noted the glaring emission of coverage, asking, “Why were these women there and why were they cut out of the evening news, though network reporters and cameras were present at their demonstration? Fifty women with anti-abortion signs at the Capitol may draw more news coverage.”159 She suggested that it had something to do with their message, which was disagreeable to mainstream media. Major newspapers like barely covered the women. “Brace yourself for another early morning march,” mentioned the paper, “This time it’s the Women’s Action March on the Pentagon. The coalition of feminist groups is against the arms race, nuclear power, racism and for abortion rights. They gather at Memorial Bridge at

7am.”160 Still, as Van Gelder pointed out in Ms. Magazine, “[t]he government took them seriously, to say the least. Many of those arrested received jail sentences of 10 or even 30 days— unusually harsh penalties for offenses that ordinarily carry the risk of a $25-or-so fine.”161

Many within the women’s movement found humor an effective tool to navigate such an inimical atmosphere. For example, in jest, Philadelphia WPA women disseminated a bread recipe of Reagan’s which called for B1 bombers, trident submarines and MX missiles— expensive ingredients, it noted. It instructed to add the parts year by year and slowly boil them to a temperature of eighteen million degrees Fahrenheit. Serving suggestions included to “serve in

158 Mary Ellen Donovan, “Pentagon Power,” The Nation (New York, New York), December 6, 1980, 597. 159 Ann M. Davidon, “At the Pentagon: the fury of scorned women,” Welcomat (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), December 2, 1981, WPA Papers, CGDA Collective Box Women’s International Resource Center (WIRE) through Women’s Tax Resistance Assistance, Folder Women’s Pentagon Action, then Mid-Atlantic Organizing Group (Philadelphia), SCPC. 160 New York Times, November 16, 1981, Philadelphia Women’s Encampment Papers, Box 2 of 4, Action, Folder Women’s Pentagon Action, 1981-1982, SCPC. The following day’s coverage by New York Times consisted of listing how many women were arrested and that they represented “several causes.” New York Times, November 17, 1981, Philadelphia Women’s Encampment Papers, Box 2 of 4, Action, Folder Women’s Pentagon Action, 1981- 1982, SCPC. 161 Lindsy Van Gelder, “A 1960s Rebel Reviews The New Protesters,” Ms. Magazine, November 1981, 66. 142

place of school lunches and meals for senior citizens” and “without SALT.”162 It also mentioned that the recipe went well with cuts in social spending, unemployment, inflation, profits for military contractors and global insecurity. “For best digestion,” it advised, “the military chefs suggest that you: Decide there’s nothing you can do and give up. Drink, take tranquilizers, and/or watch a lot of TV.”163 Yet the card also included instructions for overcoming public indifference and cynicism. Recommending ways for women to get involved in politics, it again showcased that, in the midst of American conservatism and political skepticism, some still embraced an ambitious, leftist agenda. “Confront your feelings of powerlessness and despair: realize you can make a difference,” the recipe card concluded.164

Beyond the D.C. Action

“Where the Women’s Pentagon Action will go from here is still being discussed,” stated one of the WPA organizers in early 1981.165 “The group was a very loose network of women, who came together to plan one action. Women came from the lesbian, feminist and peace movement and planned an event that spoke to all of our concerns. One of the most important things that happened was the working relationship set up among these women who were working on many different issues. Certainly those relationships and concerns did not end with the demonstration.”166 As she anticipated, WPA as a loose network of women persisted.

For two days, on February 28th and 29th, women convened at Hampshire College in western Massachusetts in their first regional meeting after the November street protest. Many

162 Philadelphia WPA, “Bread not Bombs,” WPA Papers, CGDA Collective Box Women’s International Resource Center (WIRE) through Women’s Tax Resistance Assistance, Folder Women’s Pentagon Action, then Mid-Atlantic Organizing Group (Philadelphia), SCPC. 163 Ibid. 164 Ibid. 165 Susan Pines, “Women’s Pentagon Action,” WRL [War Resisters League] News, January-February 1981, Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Women’s Pentagon Action, Box 26 of 26, Folder 7, SSC. 166 Ibid. 143

reiterated what had already been stated on evaluation sheets: their action had been empowering, inspiring and positive. Still, improvements were due. Insensitivity to racism emerged as a major sore point. Hispanic women complained about the lack of translations of songs and chants during the march. The Unity Statement was also poorly translated.167

They devoted most of the weekend to future process and structure. Through plenary sessions and smaller meetings organized by region, WPA members confronted the weighty quandary of where their coalition should go. With too much to discuss and too little time, the future was set aside for another meeting, this one in New York City in late April. Again, on April

25th and 26th, women assembled and what emerged was a detailed plan for a decentralized WPA.

“Going national,” they felt, would stymie participatory decision-making, so they conceived that local groups could initiate a national WPA action only if all groups agreed to it, by soliciting opinions and suggestions through mail. If there was positive interest, a regional meeting would be called. Always rotating, the location of these meetings would not privilege one part of the

U.S. over another. Only with total consensus would a national action materialize. If an emergency decision needed to be made, then consensus could be reached more expediently if two-thirds of local groups agreed on a topic or action. Because WPA members prioritized diversity of women and opinion, who represented them at other conferences or to the media was a significant decision. Very few women were given an official endorsement as a

“spokeswoman.” Local WPA and affiliated groups were in charge of their own budgets but a nationwide action necessitated the pooling of funds. The mechanisms for collective budgets or national endorsements went undecided, though not undebated. Feminist process drove this

167 “Women’s Pentagon Evaluation Meetings,” WLOE Papers, Box 5 of 7, Folder WLOE Newsletter, SSC. 144

meeting. All voices had to be heard.168

Various WPA chapters met in Philadelphia on Saturday, July 11th through that Sunday to report on their local organizing efforts. Many were occupied with grant-writing and networking as the burden of funding was clear. Others had initiated spontaneous direct actions, such as blockading in Washington D.C. or “sitting-in” at a fallout shelter.

Successive conferences centered on the links between women and nonviolence proliferated. At the meeting, many wanted to discuss the pragmatics of performing civil disobedience but women from Rochester who had planned to facilitate this conversation could not attend. Instead, issues of finance and effective communications dominated the meeting. Confronted with a sizeable debt—one chapter in western Massachusetts was around $4000 in the red—WPA groups debated how to handle regional financial accountability. As always, brainstorming followed. Women broke into small groups, shared ideas, reconvened, volunteered their thoughts and then, after jotting them down, decided to send them out to their mailing lists to obtain more opinions. Only from there, at the next meeting, would more discussion ensue.169 It was, again, fair but slothful feminist process.

By mid-summer 1981, after consulting regional groups, women geared up again to march on the Pentagon in November. They fundraised, coordinated getting bodies and buses to D.C., publicized the action through film screenings and enticed other groups to get involved. They again boasted an impressive coalition that included women from anti-draft, anti-nuclear energy,

168 “Women’s Pentagon Evaluation Meetings,” WLOE Papers, Box 5 of 7, Folder WLOE Newsletter; NYC WPA, “Structure and Decision-Making for Regional WPA,” March 5, 1982, Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Women’s Pentagon Action, Box 26 of 26, Folder 2; “Draft of letter regarding women’s International DEMO in ,” Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Women’s Pentagon Action, Box 26 of 26, Folder 6, SSC. 169 WPA, “Minutes of Women’s Pentagon Action Meeting,” July 11-12, 1981, Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Women’s Pentagon Action, Box 26 of 26, Folder 2, SSC. 145

safe and alternative energy, lesbian, pacifist and anti-racism coalitions and organizations.170

Working at a feverish pace to produce a demonstration as big as the preceding year, some women began to feel the effects of intense activism. Western Massachusetts WPA, for example, communicated that although they supported the demo, those in Pittsfield and Northampton were already suffering from burnout.171 Alongside these preparations, WPA networks expanded to reach new regions. Outside of the northeast, women launched new chapters in Illinois,

California, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Arkansas. They had established a clearinghouse for information in Philadelphia, serving to collect and disseminate information about the activities of local and regional WPA groups through locally-appointed women.172

In their succeeding regional meetings, some representatives noticed a lack of clear communication at these gatherings. They expressed feelings of frustration and ineffectiveness, as though they were incapable of planning, sharing ideas and building community. Tension simmered between women yet few were capable of articulating what grievances women actually held. So much emphasis had been placed on consensus and cooperation that there was little space or willingness to work through differences to creative resolution. Some articulated that they would have preferred conflict to surface because a diversity of views, they felt, made WPA a stronger network of women. A disconcerting distinction became increasingly apparent between

170 WPA, “Dear Friends,” WPA Papers, CGDA Collective Box Women’s International Resource Center (WIRE) through Women’s Tax Resistance Assistance, Folder Women’s Pentagon Action, then Mid-Atlantic Organizing Group (Philadelphia), SCPC. 171 “Women’s Pentagon Action Regional Meeting,” October 31, 1981, WPA Papers, CGDA Collective Box Women’s International Resource Center (WIRE) through Women’s Tax Resistance Assistance, Folder Women’s Pentagon Action, then Mid-Atlantic Organizing Group (Philadelphia), SCPC. 172 “Dear Women’s Pentagon Action Contact,” July 14, 1981, WLOE Papers, Box 6 of 7, Folder Women Pentagon Action, SSC; WPA, “Sisters: May the Circle Be Unbroken,” Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Women’s Pentagon Action, Box 26 of 26, Folder 2, SSC; Philadelphia WPA, “Dear Friends,” October 1981, WPA Papers, CGDA Collective Box Women’s International Resource Center (WIRE) through Women’s Tax Resistance Assistance, Folder Women’s Pentagon Action, then Mid-Atlantic Organizing Group (Philadelphia); Philadelphia WPA, “Press Release,” November 14, 1981, WPA Papers, CGDA Collective Box Women’s International Resource Center (WIRE) through Women’s Tax Resistance Assistance, Folder Women’s Pentagon Action, then Mid-Atlantic Organizing Group (Philadelphia), SCPC. 146

more introverted women who tried to speak up but were ignored, their opinions left unacknowledged, and the louder and more dominant ones who did effectively speak their minds.

“Consensus decision-making can mask power inequalities and it’s our responsibility as a group to prevent that from happening,” WPA representatives reported, “We felt too often at the last meeting that new ideas or questions were treated as obstacles to quick decision-making rather than insights that may enrich our ultimate decision.”173

Furthermore, admitting that internal classism and racism still needed to be addressed, some WPA chapters had begun to offer workshops on racism after the critical feedback clearly identified racial insensitivity as endemic to the women’s movement.174 Others became more explicitly involved in anti-racism such as women in Boston who joined the Boston-area coalition, People against Racism and the Klan, with the NAACP, the National Anti-Klan

Network and other civil rights and peace groups.175 In the regional meeting on the Halloween before the WPA action of 1981, women brainstormed, or what they called “heartstormed,” obstacles to interracial connections. Differences in community priorities, language and privileges impeded genuine conversation and alliances. White women noted that the fear of being judged racist was a main impasse that precluded them from dialogue with women of color. White guilt paralyzed them. Women of color added that the burden always fell on them to explain what racism was. White lesbians countered that black communities resisted and judged them, to which other women retorted that homophobia and racism should not be pitted against each other. How they could foster inclusivity without tokenism agonized WPA organizers. Even what seemed like

173 Ithaca WPA, “Dear Women,” September 15, 1981, WLOE Papers, Box 5 of 7, Folder WLOE Newsletter, SSC. 174 Philadelphia WPA, “Women’s Pentagon Action offering Workshops on Racism,” WPA Papers, CGDA Collective Box Women’s International Resource Center (WIRE) through Women’s Tax Resistance Assistance, Folder Women’s Pentagon Action, then Mid-Atlantic Organizing Group (Philadelphia), SCPC. 175 Boston WPA, “Update,” October 21, 1982, WPA Papers, CGDA Collective Box Women’s International Resource Center (WIRE) through Women’s Tax Resistance Assistance, Folder Women’s Pentagon Action, then Mid-Atlantic Organizing Group (Philadelphia), SCPC. 147

minute details to white women mattered to black women. The latter, for instance, asked that the black puppet used in the street protest no longer be used to connote death, darkness and evil.

What came of these fraught admissions was the decision on the behalf of white women to pursue more self-education about racism and to sponsor a conference on racism under the auspices of

WPA in the spring. Conversations on the topic needed to be more customary, and white women needed to “feel the gut-level commitment to all of the issues expressed in the Unity Statement so we feel as personally affronted by each issue.”176

Keenly aware that white, well-educated women comprised the majority of their coalition, organizers worried that the language used by WPA, in their Unity Statement, for example, might be inaccessible to low-income women. Could all women understand the symbolism they used in their street action? Were the words “minority” or “disabled” offensive and the other “us/them type language”? Should WPA as a national network and annual event merely replicate itself year after year, or should it transform into something new each year, allowing individual women or smaller groups autonomy to create their own language and symbols?177 The topic of male involvement in their upcoming D.C. march was revisited. In one meeting, women devoted almost four hours and endured “repeated blocks on proposals from both positions (including and excluding men in different roles)” to settle on tentative, detailed scenarios in which men could contribute. For instance, men could, if absolutely necessary assist in driving ambulances and

176 WPA, “Women’s Pentagon Action Regional Meeting,” October 31, 1981, WPA Papers, CGDA Collective Box Women’s International Resource Center (WIRE) through Women’s Tax Resistance Assistance, Folder Women’s Pentagon Action, then Mid-Atlantic Organizing Group (Philadelphia), SCPC. 177 Ithaca WPA, “Dear Women,” September 15, 1981, WLOE Papers, Box 5 of 7, Folder WLOE Newsletter; WPA, “Women’s Pentagon Action Regional Meeting,” October 31, 1981, WPA Papers, CGDA Collective Box Women’s International Resource Center (WIRE) through Women’s Tax Resistance Assistance, Folder Women’s Pentagon Action, then Mid-Atlantic Organizing Group (Philadelphia), SCPC. 148

shuttles. They could prepare food but had to leave when women came to dine.178 These questions, prolonged through the use of feminist process, beleaguered WPA representatives who wanted to ensure their momentous women’s movement continued to grow.

While interracial communication proved a difficult task, international connections were easier to pursue and strengthen. WPA organizers traveled to Holland, Sweden and Denmark as part of a tour to showcase the Pentagon action to women at Denmark’s Women’s School; students there were taking part in a five-month course on international feminism and performing a support action during the 1981 D.C. demonstration. One WPA participant from Philadelphia attended the World Congress of Women in Prague upon invitation, joining twelve hundred women from one hundred sixteen countries. As the conference proceeded by each delegation stalely giving a seven-minute summary of their position, the woman read bits and pieces from the Unity Statement, explained the merits of feminist process and ended with a song “Building

Bridges.” Greeted with a roaring audience, she felt confident that the WPA document and tone had helped shift the atmosphere of the conference to one of more dialogue and discussion and less rigidity.179

On November 15 and 16, 1981, women returned to the Pentagon because, in their words,

“each day powerful men are making decisions, appointments, laws that make war on all us, especially women, people of color, working people … [b]ecause each day, the men in power flaunt that power in legislation against free choice for women, against the hard won voting rights that have given some protection to oppressed minorities…”180 Women looked to political crises

178 WPA “Women’s Pentagon Action Regional Meeting,” October 31, 1981, WPA Papers, CGDA Collective Box Women’s International Resource Center (WIRE) through Women’s Tax Resistance Assistance, Folder Women’s Pentagon Action, then Mid-Atlantic Organizing Group (Philadelphia), SCPC. 179 WPA, “Women’s Pentagon Action Regional Meeting,” October 31, 1981, WPA Papers, CGDA Collective Box Women’s International Resource Center (WIRE) through Women’s Tax Resistance Assistance, Folder Women’s Pentagon Action, then Mid-Atlantic Organizing Group (Philadelphia), SCPC. 180 “Women Return to the Pentagon Nov. 15,16-1981,” WLOE Papers, Box 6 of 7, Folder WPA Mis., SSC. 149

driven by U.S. military intervention in central America, in , the urban crisis, the slow dissolution of federally-funded social services and ongoing environmental pollution, and said “no more.”181 On Sunday, the 15th, women assembled at the Coliseum for morning workshopping along with peacekeeping and civil disobedience training. By the afternoon, they traveled to Washington Mall in front of the Air and Space Museum which housed replicas of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They held a press conference during which they argued science must not be used to create the tools and toys of nuclear war.

As they passed out leaflets and performed children’s street theater, WPA tried to engage with families nearby. Several women from Italy, Germany and Britain joined WPA, including a few from the newly-opened Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp in Britain. American women were particularly interested to hear what their British and European counterparts felt of WPA.

There was an impression among U.S. women that the women’s movement abroad was more robust than at home. Soup kitchens provided the evening meal, and WPA participants maintained a vigil until midnight outside the White House. The following day, they again marched to the

Department of Defense headquarters and encircled the five-sided building, repeating the previous year’s mourning, rage, empowerment and defiance stages of their protest.182

Assessing the action, one participant summarized:

The most exciting & unusual aspect of the W.P.A. was the creative, non-violent & spiritual connectedness of the ceremonies, as indicated in the guidelines. However, many women, it seemed, had not read these, & some were verbally abusive to the police. There was also considerable confusion during the C.D.; peacekeepers did not keep a clear, separate space around the entrances & I spoke to some women doing C.D. who had felt

181 Ibid. 182 “This is the Women’s Pentagon Action,” Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Women’s Pentagon Action, Box 26 of 26, Folder 1, SSC; WPA “Dear Friends,” October 1981, WPA Papers, CGDA Collective Box Women’s International Resource Center (WIRE) through Women’s Tax Resistance Assistance, Folder Women’s Pentagon Action, then Mid-Atlantic Organizing Group (Philadelphia), SCPC; “Scenario for Sunday and Monday,” Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Women’s Pentagon Action, Box 26 of 26, Folder 4, SSC; Jill Raymond “Brace yourself..,” Philadelphia Women’s Encampment Papers, Box 2 of 4, Action, Folder Women’s Pentagon Action, 1981-1982, SCPC. 150

too vulnerable by being so crowded in. There was also dissatisfaction with the predominance of white, middle-class women attending, despite workshops on racism, before the action. Outside the Air & Space Museum one Afro-American woman took the microphone (which was inadequate) & spoke angrily about racism within the organization. I personally felt the action was too introverted….183

Here again, one year later, despite strenuous and genuine efforts to remove obstacles between women and between contrasting styles of protest, WPA remained in a stalemate of racial tension and unease about nonviolent direct action and other legacies of the preceding decades. This particular episode in the women’s movement of the 1980s points to the growing rift between the movement and its philosophy in that its feminism could no longer sustain a coherent movement.

As their Unity Statement embodied, women conceived of a movement that paid attention to a litany of injustices and included a vast range of women. This, however, did not map evenly or neatly into a coherent, sustainable movement. Their investment in being diverse precipitated their unfocused nature, and in reality, a movement with so many causes and so many kinds of women, numbering in the thousands by the early ‘80s, could never genuinely include all of them.

Furthermore, WPA’s relapsing problems more broadly suggested the schizophrenic culture confronting America in the early 1980s. The 1960s and 1970s had produced liberal gains, albeit alongside a growing conservative movement insistent on reversing those same gains. The women’s movement, heirs of the New Left and especially women’s liberation, clearly believed in the successes of the 1960s yet still stumbled with conceptualizing the merits and lessons of those years. It is telling of the memories and legacies of the 1960s that the women’s movement of the 1980s—which mirrored New Left ideology and ambition in its mission to demand life on earth for all—hesitated to grasp and fully embrace its own heritage. Its members, like others on the left, were both apprehensive of and nostalgic for the ‘60s, to the point that those years

183 Jill Raymond, “Brace yourself,” Philadelphia Women’s Encampment Papers, Box 2 of 4, Action, Folder Women’s Pentagon Action, 1981-1982, SCPC. 151

assumed a mythological status that did not help them move forward in their own protest in 1980.

152

Chapter Three:

Motherhood & Politics in the 1980s: The Women’s Party for Survival,

Another Mother for Peace and Women Against Military Madness

***

The Mother’s Day Coalition for Disarmament, May 1981

On May 3, 1981, Boston woke up to a full-page ad in its Sunday paper proclaiming a halt to the arms race. “In honor of Mother’s Day, May 10, 1981,” the advertisement heralded, “we affirm the sanctity of all life. We call for an end NOW to the nuclear arms race. As women we demand the right to be involved in our country’s life and death policy-making decisions.”1 Such an intrepid announcement came from yet another coalition of women determined to raise national awareness of the nuclear arms race. The group decided to march in Washington D.C. on

Mother’s Day, recalling the holiday’s origins after the Civil War as a reminder of the suffering war brought to mothers. Over one hundred years later, the sentiment still had appeal for many who believed that war and violence uniquely aggrieved women.

At noon on Sunday, May 10th, 1981, in a pouring , women, men and children met at the steps of the capitol building and then marched to the . Dr. Helen

Caldicott, an Australian pediatrics researcher, gave a speech, followed by Dr. Randall Forsberg, founder of the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies, and Edith Villastrigo of Women

Strike for Peace. By 3pm, the rally disbanded for regional meetings to plan future local events.

The next morning, the coalition assembled again on the steps of the capitol for another rally

1 “A Call to Halt the Arms Race,” Boston Globe (Boston, Massachusetts), May 3, 1981, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 23 of 33, Folder W.P.S. 1981, Sophia Smith Collection [hereafter SSC], Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts. 153 before dispersing to lobby representatives. All afternoon, women met with their senators and congressmen to discuss nuclear disarmament.2

The Mother’s Day march grew out of the Women’s Pentagon Action (WPA) in

November 1980, after which organizers transitioned to planning this May event. Helen

Caldicott’s Women’s Party for Survival (WPFS) was actively involved. Founded by Caldicott in early 1980 “to give women a voice in the political process for survival,” WPFS aimed to politicize women around concern for nuclear weapons.3 Members of WPFS had been engaged in planning the WPA event, attending meetings and providing WPA with its mailing lists to better circulate news of the November 17th event, and these networks of women continued to work together for the Mother’s Day march.4 The cooperation—but also the tension—inherent in these collaborative efforts dually showcased the inclusivity of the women’s movement of the 1980s, and portended growing divisions based on ideological differences.

For one, moments like the Mother’s Day March provided a snapshot of the women’s movement in the late 20th century when a cross section of women from various political persuasions put aside differences and united behind their shared commitment for a safer and more sustainable planet. Many even commented that their differences made their coalition all the stronger. To them, the arms race was senseless, and they articulated the well-worn idea that women suffered disproportionately from the messes war and violence made. As organizations

2 “Mother’s Day Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament,” Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, Box 3 of 36, Folder 20 “Women’s Party for Survival 1981, n.d.,” SSC. 3 “Women’s Party for Survival Organizes,” New Women’s Times (Rochester, New York), January 1981, Women and Life on Earth (hereafter WLOE) Papers, Box 2 of 3 Original Artwork and clippings, Folder Unprocessed, SSC; Lawrence S. Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the Present (Stanford: Stanford University Press 2003), 172: Wittner briefly mentions the Women’s Party for Survival (later renamed WAND, or Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament) as one of the many women’s peace groups resisting the nuclear arms race, alongside Women Strike for Peace (WSP) and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). All played to the fact that women, more so than men, passionately rejected nuclear war. See also Harriet Hyman Alonso, Peace as a Women’s Issue: A History of the U.S. Movement for World Peace and Women’s Rights (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1993), 240: Alonso references WPFS, or WAND, as one of the organizations “of the traditional mold” in the revival of feminist peace activism in the 1980s. 4 Helen Caldicott, “Dear Anna,” October 26, 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 6 of 7, Folder Women WP—Outreach, SSC. 154 like Women and Life on Earth (WLOE), WPA and WPFS exemplified, both women who identified as radical feminists and those who primarily saw themselves as homemakers and mothers harmonized over the need for a future in which women had a genuine voice in major national and international policy decisions. A new conception of womanhood—empowered, empathetic and engaged for the sake of life on earth—cut across differences and illustrated that many women voiced strikingly similar sentiments.

Despite their initial collaboration with WPFS, WPA and WLOE decided not to officially endorse the Mother’s Day march. Their leaders communicated that their organizational networks represented feminists while WPFS acted for “the average American housewife.”5 That WPFS often referred to motherhood as its primary engine and justification troubled some feminists within the networks of WPA and WLOE who uneasily perceived motherhood and maternal arguments in activism by the 1980s. As historian Sara Evans tellingly noted of this time, “It is an interesting paradox that an essentialist, maternalistic, cultural feminism, which emphasized difference between women and men, continued to attract a following at the same time that women struggled with deep differences among themselves.”6 WPFS saw itself extending women’s role as protector of children beyond the private domain of the household into the public and political arena. Yet, this task alienated some who felt that—as feminist writer Simone de

Beauvoir stated—“[w] should desire peace as human beings, not as women” or as

5 “The Mother’s Day Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament has not been easy as apple pie to digest,” WLOE Papers, Box 5 of 7, Folder WLOE Newsletter; [Redacted], “Dear Helen,” November 12, 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 6 of 7, Folder Women WP—Outreach, SSC. 6 Sara Evans, Tidal Wave: How Women Changed America at Century’s End (New York: The Free Press, 2003), 211. Evans argues that many American women were attracted to an emphasis on female differences and maternal values of peacemaking, nurturance and cooperation because, in part, such as emphasis echoed the broader culture of the time in which women in the workplace and in popular culture took cues from cultural and ecofeminism that encouraged gender polarization. She notes women holding women-only leadership workshops in the workplace as one example of this focus on separatism and gender difference that appealed to women by the 1980s. 155 mothers.7 WPFS members animated their activism with maternal imagery and argumentation to express women’s sense of betrayal regarding the agreement that they as mothers had made with society. They had sacrificed their own interests and careers to raise the next generation, but such a decision seemed jeopardized by the revived nuclear arms race in the early ‘80s. Many mothers argued that if men continued to endanger the next generations, then they would continue to step up to save the world. The philosophical differences among American women over these maternalist politics led to disparate organizational principles, which often further prevented mothers-based groups from collaboration with networks like WLOE and WPA.

But to discredit the efforts of WPFS would be an oversight. In effect, embracing feminist principles of female empowerment without necessarily naming it as such, mothers in WPFS and other national and local organizations like Another Mother for Peace (AMP) and Women

Against Military Madness (WAMM) were a powerful force in the women’s movement of the

1980s. By early 1982, WPFS boasted seventy chapters and affiliated groups across the country.

Its mailing list included 25,000 names. As Boston Globe staff writer Carol Stocker assessed the

1982 Mother’s Day march, she noted mothers had moved from “passivity to activity,” and one mother at the march explained, "With everything going on today, motherhood has become the most acceptable reason for becoming politically involved."8 WPFS members, led by Helen

Caldicott, and women involved in AMP and WAMM revalued parental and especially maternal anxiety as one of the most justifiable reasons for involvement in the disarmament movement.

Forming organizations in living rooms as busy but distressed mothers, women in these organizations showed the home to be a potential site for radicalization and a major impetus for many American women to get involved in politics. Also through their work as concerned

7 Quoted in Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace, 239. 8 Carol Stocker, “Mothers Rethink Mothers’ Day,” Boston Globe, May 9, 1982. 156 mothers, they dislodged negative connotations associated with emotions such as empathy, nurturance and conflict resolution by bringing them to bear in their activism and asserting that an impassioned response to the Cold War was the only appropriate one.

This maternalist strategy should not indict mothers as political neophytes. Rather, as astute activists, leaders of WPFS, AMP and WAMM understood that appealing to women’s maternal instincts drew many American women to politics. Importantly, these organizations tried to deftly navigate biological determinism, despite what some of their feminist detractors claimed.

Mothers-based groups were careful in asserting that women’s biology did not give them a monopoly on compassion and peace activism, and many members experienced and expressed personal radicalization and empowerment due to their political mobilization. As women transitioned into adept public speakers and campaigners intent on disrupting the status quo of the

Cold War arms race, these individual metamorphoses mattered greatly. It was, in a sense, doing feminism without necessarily claiming to be feminists. Furthermore, as evidenced by groups like

WPFS, AMP and WAMM, mothers’ own conceptions of peace or environmentalism broadened by the late 20th century as they evolved to assert significant connections between military spending, environmental degradation and poverty at home and abroad. Drawing meaningful links between disparate issues, mothers too claimed “that ecological right” which characterized the activism of WLOE and WPA, and the women’s movement of the 1980s at large.

A Women’s Party for Survival

In the late months of winter in 1981, members of the Women’s Pentagon Action (WPA) and its resource organization Women for Life on Earth (WLOE) debated if and how their networks should collaborate with the Mother’s Day activities. Spokeswomen finally affirmed

157 that though they supported individual women’s involvement, their organizations were too strapped for resources and time to commit more attention to the march. Other reasons, rooted in philosophical differences, surfaced as well. As women’s organizations like WPA, WLOE and

WPFS diverged over the place of motherhood in activism and whether or not to focus explicitly on disarmament, these differences manifested in different organizational principles and structures which made collaboration difficult and exhausting. Women steering the efforts of

WPA and WLOE felt that the Caldicott-inspired Mother’s Day action was not a continuation of the political work begun by their groups. They discerned that while many American women shared a concern for future generations and opposed nuclear weapons, politics and process differed between organizations. Relying on feminist participatory, consensus-driven process and elucidating the links between philosophies of anti-militarism and feminism, some members of

WLOE and WPA expressed hesitation on partnership with WPFS because they did not want to dilute these feminist politics they so intentionally crafted and foregrounded.

This disinclination manifested in the early planning for the Mother’s Day march. On

February 1st, 1981, sixty women and three men attended the first meeting in Boston. The vast majority had participated in the WPA demonstration and wanted to sustain such energy.

However, the meeting soon revealed that WPFS had already finished much of the planning for the Mother’s Day event, which included two days of activities to showcase the immediate goal of banning the production, testing, recycling, deployment and research and development of all nuclear weapons in the U.S.9 WPFS conceived of the D.C. event as “a peaceful, legal action” in which families marched alongside one another. “We want our children to survive,” women

9 “The Mother’s Day Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament has not been easy as apple pie to digest,” WLOE Papers, Box 5 of 7, Folder WLOE Newsletter; “Women’s Party for Survival,” WLOE Papers, Box 6 of 7, Folder Women WP—Outreach, SSC. 158 actively involved in WPFS reasoned.10

Organizational friction escalated when this conceptualization went undiscussed at the

February meeting. WPFS convened the gathering by breaking women and men into task forces without first consulting for any feedback from meeting attendants. Women accustomed to the consensus decision-making process treasured by WLOE and WPA were struck and offended by such abruptness. Soon, though, some compromising followed this contestation. Acknowledging the diversity of groups and ideas involved, WPFS agreed to name the event the Mother’s Day

Coalition for Disarmament, but it refused to compromise on other points of order. For one, members rejected the women-only separatism which characterized WLOE and WPA events and they insisted men and women be allowed to participate in the day’s activities. All meeting participants agreed to keep the action focused on the singular issue of nuclear disarmament.11

Spreading word through mailing lists and chain letters, the original idea of two planned days of activities remained. Organizers prepared for women and men to march through the capitol on

Sunday, May 10th, 1981, dressed in gray, and to conclude with some kind of dramatic portrayal of the effects of nuclear war. The following day, there would be a rally at the Pentagon.

Participants were to wear their “Sunday best” to appeal to “the legislature and middle

America.”12 Planners agreed that before the march participants would be encouraged to form local groups and collect signatures of support for the bilateral freeze on nuclear testing and on the production and deployment of nuclear weapons.13 WPFS anticipated the involvement of

Helen Caldicott as the main speaker at the rally as she encapsulated so many of the group’s

10 “Mother’s Day Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament,” Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, Box 3 of 36, Folder 20 “Women’s Party for Survival 1981, n.d.,” SSC. 11 “The Mother’s Day Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament has not been easy as apple pie to digest,” WLOE Papers, Box 5 of 7, Folder WLOE Newsletter, SSC. 12 The Mother’s Day Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament,” WLOE Papers, Box 5 of 7, Folder Mother’s Day/WPA Related Correspondence, SSC. 13 “Chain Letter,” WLOE Papers, Box 5 of 7, Folder Mother’s Day/WPA Related Correspondence, SSC. 159 ideas. In a form letter sent to supporters, Caldiott asked women to attend the D.C. Mother’s Day march “with your children, husbands or friends.”14

While WLOE and WPA members included mothers, the constant attention WPFS gave to motherhood and children unsettled some. Relying on the platform of motherhood from which to base political activism seemed to some to sideline other “women’s issues” such as reproductive rights or rape awareness. Framing WPFS as a single-issue disarmament campaign likewise troubled WLOE and WPA who sensed that peace was being privileged over women’s liberation.

To WLOE and WPA, all manifestations of violence and patriarchal power held equal significance, so that the anti-abortion Human Life Amendment faced Congress mattered as much as the nuclear arms race.15 Spokeswomen for these organizations expressed that their ranks came from “feminist, anti-oppression, safe energy and anti-militarism networks” whereas they conceived that WPFS attracted only women moved by Helen Caldicott’s speeches.16

WPFS insisted, “we won’t get involved in tangential issues.”17 With its more exclusive emphasis on the nuclear arms race, WPFS understood that its singular focus would distance some women. With many in its membership new to activism, WPFS relied on more conventional tactics and justifications. Their leadership worked to ensure the mainstream media covered their activities in a positive light. WLOE and WPA tended to repudiate—or at least scoff at—these major news networks. WPFS routinely contended their disarmament politics descended from concerns of motherhood. Such decisions read as uninspired and far too traditional to some members of WLOE and WPA who felt “that now is not the time to obscure and compromise

14 Helen Caldicott, “Dear Friend,” March 11, 1981, Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, Box 3 of 36, Folder 20 “Women’s Party for Survival 1981, n.d.,” SSC. 15 “Mother’s Day Coalition for Disarmament,” WLOE Papers, Box 5 of 7, Folder WLOE Newsletter, SSC. 16 “The Mother’s Day Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament has not been easy as apple pie to digest,” WLOE Papers, Box 5 of 7, Folder WLOE Newsletter, SSC. 17 Women’s Party for Survival [hereafter WPFS], “Meeting with Washington people,” May 15, 1981, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 23 of 33, Folder W.P.S. 1981, SSC. 160 feminist issues in order to appeal to the ‘average American housewife.’”18

To be fair, the importance of the political context of the 1980s cannot be overstated.

Women watched as rights and cultural authority they had gained in the two preceding decades receded. Faced with both the media and a popular grassroots conservative movement blaming feminism for disrupting traditional family values, WLOE and WPA understandably felt hostile and guarded against other women who seemed to be championing status quo gender norms. It was the era of “I’m not a feminist, but….”19 Furthermore, in what felt like a perverse manipulation of rhetoric and ideas to WLOE and WPA, other groups such as Pro-lifers for

Survival welcomed all “citizens against the use or preparation of nuclear weapons and all genotoxic weapons, in attempt to protect the lives of the unborn.”20 Headquartered in Erie,

Pennsylvania, with affiliate chapters throughout the Midwest, Pro-lifers considered themselves a bridge between disarmament activists and the anti-abortion movement, making the political right aware of nuclear concerns and showing the left the immorality of justifying abortion. “After all,” one of their newsletters put it, “a kid is equally dead whether the instrument of death is Iodine-

131 or the suction curette.”21 Pro-Lifers pointed out, then, what they saw as the moral and logical hypocrisy of both ends of the political spectrum. As leadership stated that the group “does not take any stand on legislation,” they viewed their campaigns as moral high ground above left and

18 “The Mother’s Day Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament has not been easy as apple pie to digest,” WLOE Papers, Box 5 of 7, Folder WLOE Newsletter, SSC. 19 Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1991); Susan J. Douglas, Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1994), 221-244, 269-294; Rosalind Pollack Petchesky, “Antiabortion, Antifeminism, and the Rise of the New Right,” Feminist Studies 7, no. 2 (Summer 1981): 206-47; Sean Wilentz, The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008 (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008), 89-95, 185-187; Evans, Tidal Wave, 176-190. 20 Pro-lifers for Survival (hereafter PS), “Dear Friend,” Pro-lifers for Survival Papers (hereafter PS Papers), CDGA Collective Box, Prince of Peace League through Purvis, Harry, Folder 17, Swarthmore College Peace Collection [hereafter SCPC], Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. 21 PS, “Principles,” PS Papers, Folder 17, SCPC. 161 right national politics.22 On one flyer, Pro-lifers sketched various depictions of immorality and injustice throughout history, including the genocide of Native Americans, in the U.S., women’s lack of suffrage, the Holocaust, nuclear technology and the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision. By constructing abortion as another episode of mass murder comparable to genocide, they positioned themselves as human rights advocates.23 Campaigning for the rights of the unborn and vehemently opposing nuclear weapons because of their potential to destroy unborn babies and heighten the risk for childhood leukemia and birth deformities, Pro-lifers often marched in major peace demonstrations alongside disarmament groups. What distinguished them were the signs they hoisted which read, “Bombs Abort,” “The Bomb Aborts Us All,” “War-

Radiation-Abortion: the Little Ones Suffer the Most,” “Nukes, Little Knives, Abort” and “Ban the Bomb, not the Baby.”24 When WPFS, then, relied on similar adages such as “Choose Life,”

WLOE and WPA cringed with how easily messages of peace could be politicized and appropriated by the right, and thus they distanced themselves from Caldicott’s women’s party.

The attention given to the family and reproduction by both Pro-lifers and groups like

WPFS indicated the ongoing politicization and contestation of “family values” in the 1980s. As much as women’s liberationists in the 1970s had critiqued the restrictive structure of the nuclear family and cited women’s disempowerment in traditional gender roles, the contemporaneous conservative movement of the New Right likewise imbued the family with significant meaning.

Pro-lifers also revealed the renewed role of in political activism by the late 20th century. Members insisted that “such weapons are intrinsically immoral” and often quoted

22 PS, “Questionnaire,” PS Papers, Folder 17, SCPC; Judi Loesch, “Against Left and Right,” November 1, 1981, National Catholic Register, PS Papers, Folder 17, SCPC. 23 PS, “How Society Protects Almost Each and Every Person flyer,” PS Papers, Folder 17, SCPC. 24 PS, “Against War on the Unborn,” PS Papers, Folder 17; PS, “Prolifers for Survival: Why We’re Coming to New York,” PS Papers, Folder 17, SCPC. 162 biblical passages to affirm their messages.25 “Therefore choose life,” one pamphlet cited from

Deuteronomy, “so that you and your children will live.”26 The use of Old and New Testament reminders to be mindful of God prodded Pro-lifers to consider that people presently should be more aware of the man-made dangers of abortion and nuclear technology.27 Distributed questionnaires to potential new members solicited responses to ascertain recruits’ religious leanings alongside questions about their political affiliations. Even as the national organization accepted that some in the disarmament movement were pro-life for “natural, secular, and/or ethical reasons,” Pro-lifers was clearly pro-peace and anti-abortion for moral and biblical reasons.28 The “life/peace issues” important to them and informed by biblical evangelicalism included “traditional morality, sexuality, fertility [and] .”29

Finally, Pro-lifers included both male and female members, but notably women involved in this organization represented an important segment of the female population in late-20th- century America who felt they had “lost out” from the sexual revolution of the 1960s.30 “The sexual revolution was a battle we (women) lost,” wrote one Pro-lifers member.31 As this revolution in contraception, abortion access and ideas about sexuality and sexual behavior broke down a set of hierarchies that most took for granted, men and women began to share a single standard for sex. Policy and new cultural practices allowed women by the 1960s to begin to

25 PS, “Against the War on the Unborn pamphlet,” PS Papers, Folder 17, SCPC. See Wilentz, The Age of Reagan, 92-95;186-187; see also Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the American New Right (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002) as she discusses how resurgent Christian evangelicalism among the conservative right informed their activism on social issues such as abortion, , or taxation by the early 1970s 26 Ibid. 27 Judi Loesch, “Nukes and the Next Generation,” , PS Papers, Folder 17, SCPC. For more religious references and examples of PS including bible readings and prayers in their events and conferences, see also PS, “P.S. Newsletter,” March-April 1982, PS Papers, Folder 17, SCPC. 28 PS, “Questionnaire,” PS Papers, Folder 17, SCPC. 29 PS, “PS pamphlet,” PS Papers, Folder 17, SCPC. 30 See Kristin Luker, When Sex Goes to School: Warring Views on Sex—and Sex Education Since the Sixties (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006). 31 Linda Hammer Demler, “Reflections: Personal and Political” in “P.S. Newsletter,” March-April 1982, PS Papers, Folder 17, SCPC. 163 conduct their sex lives as men had done; sex and procreation were increasingly divorced from one another. While many women celebrated these developments, those who lacked education or career options and ambitions suffered. Previous gender norms and expectations—some of which provided women with a safety net and less vulnerability—disintegrated with the sexual revolution so that if a woman got pregnant, the man could be less likely to remain by her side.

Thus the women who wanted foremost to be mothers and wives viewed themselves as the losers of this sexual revolution. They found in organizations like Pro-lifers, which celebrated traditional motherhood and family obligations, a welcome departure from mainstream society which advocated women’s independence from the family, a point with which women involved in organizations like WPA and WLOE had a difficult time grasping.

The discomfort with which WPA and WLOE viewed mothers-based activism derived from deeper concerns among feminists in the late 20th century who were reluctant to embrace any philosophy or political strategy rooted in a conservative celebration of motherhood.

Epitomized in the words of sociologist Barbara Katz Rothman when she discovered she was pregnant in the 1970s, “I was a feminist and I was pregnant. Those terms should not be mutually exclusive, but in 1972 it often felt as though they were. There had to be a way of having a baby with dignity and joy—as a feminist, not in spite of being a feminist.”32 While women’s liberationists politicized the family in the ‘60s and ‘70s by linking women’s oppression to the nuclear family, these mostly young, white, unmarried women “built real barriers to the very women [married women and mothers] they hoped to reach.”33 In a particularly telling example, the Feminists, founded by Ti-Grace Atkinson and active in the late 1960s and early 1970s, decided that no more than one third of its voting membership could be formally or informally

32 Barbara Katz Rothman, In Labor: Women and Power in the Birthplace (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1982), 13. 33 Evans, Tidal Wave, 54. 164 married to a man.34 These positions seared modern feminism with the lasting, deleterious impression that wives and mothers were not welcome, an idea that stuck for many years after the

1970s. During the women’s movement of the ‘80s, some feminists continued to turn off women interested in both liberation and children. Their behavior only served as fuel for the increasingly vocal social conservatives who championed that feminism sought to destroy the family.

As WLOE and WPA claimed, WPFS did draw many housewives. But, its attraction was broader than they estimated and it was never as one-dimensional as they pegged it to be. The women’s party, founded in the spring of 1980 in Boston by Helen Caldicott, marketed itself as “a national political organization for men and women led by women.”35 In WPFS' first months, women interested in mitigating the arms race began to meet, quite humbly, in living rooms. They first operated out of one woman’s Cambridge home and later a subleted office in Watertown.36

Quickly though, they moved to an office space to keep pace with the demand for WPFS activities. With only a few unpaid and paid staff members, the organization took cues from its

National Council, comprised of fifteen women, many very young with small children. Chapters gradually emerged with bylaws parallel to those of the national office.37 Registered by the

Federal Election Committee as a political party, WPFS organized women and their communities via congressional districts to publicize the danger of nuclear war. It encouraged women to vote only for candidates who would subscribe to the platform of WPFS, which included pursuing a policy to ban all nuclear weapons at all stages, negotiate with the U.S.S.R. for an immediate bi- lateral freeze, establish a Department of Peace and foster better communication between Cold

34 Ibid., 54-56. 35 WPFS, “The Women’s Party for Survival,” Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, Box 3 of 36, Folder 20 “Women’s Party for Survival 1981, n.d.,” SSC. 36 Helen Caldicott, A Desperate Passion: An Autobiography (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996), 296. 37 Sayre Sheldon, “Organising a National Campaign: Women’s Party for Survival, U.S.A.,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 3 of 4, Folder 1983, SSC. 165

War superpowers. Since it viewed nuclear weapons as the most urgent issue facing the human race, it operated as a one-issue party “to unite all people.”38 “It is the right of all people to survive, irrespective of race, age, sex, color, or nationality. It is the right of all children to grow up in a healthy and fear free environment,” its pamphlet stated. Because it observed that governments across the board failed to guarantee such human rights, “as mothers of the human race,” WPFS took charge.39 Unlike others in the women’s movement, then, WPFS relied on more traditional channels of political protest. Endorsing pro-disarmament elected representatives seemed to many in its ranks like a more levelheaded and effective strategy than dramatic civil disobedience as WPA had committed.

Women in WPFS were particularly wary in the early 1980s of new launch-on-strike technologies that enabled computers to fire U.S. missiles with no possibility of recall. Cold War technology had progressed to a terrifying precipice in their minds. American and Soviet nuclear arsenals contained weapons thousands of times more powerful and destructive than the original

Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs that killed almost 150,000 instantaneously. They found it perverse that, in Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s line of thinking from the 1960s, the

U.S. had developed a “yardstick of sufficiency” for deterrence. Estimating how many bombs the nation required to effectively deter a Soviet attack, the U.S. by the early ‘80s maintained 10,000 strategic nuclear warheads and 20,000 tactical nuclear weapons—several hundred times over what McNamara projected was necessary.40

WPFS disagreed that this strategy of deterrence acted as national security. The group furthermore pressured the nation to think about where the money to develop and sustain such an

38 WPFS, “The Women’s Party for Survival,” Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, Box 3 of 36, Folder 20 “Women’s Party for Survival 1981, n.d.,” SSC. 39 WPFS, “The Women’s Party for Survival,” Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, Box 3 of 36, Folder 20 “Women’s Party for Survival 1981, n.d.,” SSC. 40 Ibid. 166

“advantage” was coming from, and where else the funds could go. Its pamphlets provided statistics on world hunger and poverty as well as foreboding quotes from “big men” like John F.

Kennedy, General Douglas MacArthur and who bemoaned the nuclear

Frankenstein that the U.S. had created for itself. Snippets by Margaret Mead, the World War I- era Women’s Peace Party and Helen Caldicott likewise stressed the fragility of global affairs but positioned women as the civilizers and conflict-resolvers. Indeed, Calicott explained, “We

[women] have a highly developed nurturing instinct. I think if we get moving we can save the earth . . . [the WPFS includes] every woman in this country, every single woman! You don’t have to be liberated to realize that your children may not survive to the year 2000.”41

WPFS called on women to refuse to be passive victims of states and corporations and specifically saw itself as the accessible medium for women to gain entry into politics. “We invite

ALL WOMEN, young, old, black, white, lesbian, straight, working inside and outside of the home… to join us,” the group welcomed, “Remember, WOMEN ARE THE MAJORITY!!”42

The organization insisted that it was essential for women to build a multi-racial, multi-ethnic women’s movement. It explained, “We believe that as women, so long kept voiceless and powerless yet constituting a full half of the human species, we have an obligation to declare ourselves as a force for rational life, to stake our claim for a fully human future and to struggle for it.”43 Its leadership specified that ramifications of the nuclear buildup—rising poverty rates, attacks on civil and rights, cuts in welfare programs and a sharp rise in racism—hit minorities the hardest. Third World “sisters and brothers” furthermore felt the arms race through

41 Ibid. 42 “Women’s Party for Survival,” WLOE Papers, Box 6 of 7, Folder Women WP—Outreach, SSC. 43 Ibid. 167 the “constant threatening of war.”44

Indeed, much of its rhetoric sounded strikingly similar to that of WLOE and WPA. While

WPFS tagged itself as a “single-issue” organization, its literature and leadership often took the topic of nuclear arms and extrapolated its varied manifestations into a broader platform critical of militarism and violence. These ecological connections, nonetheless, were more implicit than at the WPA protest. Still, they existed. In other ways too, WLOE, WPA and WPFS should be understood as part of the same—albeit broadly conceived—women’s movement of the 1980s.45

All insisted on women’s right to be involved in national policy decision-making. All reasoned that where men historically made war, women had to preserve what was left of life. All endorsed emotion, especially those feelings gendered feminine, such as worry, empathy and compassion.

As WPFS wrote, “for not to be emotional about the end of the world is to be emotionally sick.”46

In reality, one characteristic of the women’s movement of the 1980s was that many women dealt in deterministic rhetoric that elevated womanhood and vilified masculine hawkishness. But the fact that WPFS elevated motherhood alongside, or perhaps more, than womanhood troubled

WLOE and WPA, and incited them to castigate WPFS as reductive.

In its campaigning, WPFS undoubtedly privileged the plight of mothers and their children. During the holiday season, for instance, WPFS members sent greeting cards to the

White House demanding a bilateral freeze. Included was a photo of either their child or one they knew, mailed with the hope that President Reagan would contemplate his policy decisions

44 [Redacted], “Dear Friends,” WLOE Papers, Box 5 of 7, Folder Mother’s Day/WPA Related Correspondence, SSC. 45 In Tidal Wave, Evans argues that one characteristic of the women’s movement by the 1980s was its fragmentation and its more acute, genuine attention to women’s differences along the lines of race, class and sexuality. This led to a diffusion of focuses and a blurring of boundaries between women and their interests. See Evans, Tidal Wave, 203- 211. 46 WPFS, “Organizational Packet,” September 1980, Women’s Action for New Directions Papers [hereafter WAND Papers], CDGA Collective Box, Folder 1980-1982, SCPC. 168 alongside children’s futures.47 Those involved in WPFS were encouraged “to use their power, political economic, spiritual and sexual, to ensure healthy and fear free survival of the world’s children.”48 Rarely, though, did the organization’s promotional material and spokeswomen attribute members’ motives to mere biology. Rather, it was women’s ability to empathetically listen that WPFS tended to highlight. One chapter member from California explained, “Dr.

Caldicott reminded us to not approach our national leaders with anger. We must use our intelligence, our organizing skills and our babies. Sit a 6 month old baby on the desk of your

Representative while you talk. Listen to your children—your anger will be dispelled. You will be led to answer.”49

Metaphorically or literally placing a baby on a presumably male congressman’s desk represented an idea that was much more profound than at first glance and possessed currency with women in the 1980s. In a piece of biting sarcasm, Ms. Magazine writer Mary Kay Blakely offered that men and women had different babies to concern themselves with; the former worried over Oppenheimer’s baby—the atomic bomb—while the latter had actual mouths to feed. In fact, she argued, in a sentiment shared by many women, men spoke an entirely different, indiscernible language. BAMBI to men was not a doe but the Ballistic Missile Boost Intercept system.

“Disadvantaged” did not mean “without food or shelter” but “with fewer nuclear weapons.”

Blakely proposed that American men and women lived in such separate spheres that women felt disoriented when men spoke of national security and defense. The jargon to her was incomprehensible and off-putting. Blakely concluded with a vision of the world’s leading men sitting with infants on their laps. Mothers watched from afar, joined by Nancy Reagan, all

47 Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament [hereafter WAND], “Send One More,” December 1982, WAND Papers, Folder 1982-1983, SCPC. 48 WPFS, “Organizational Packet,” September 1980, WAND Papers, Folder 1980-1982, SCPC. 49 Jane Flood, “Evening with Helen Caldicott,” Nuclear Realities Chronicle, November 1981, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 23 of 33, Folder W.P.S. Chapters—1981, SSC. 169 missing their babies. Yet in this dream women realized something changed. The men began to attend to the children and exchanged BAMBIs for pampers and pacifiers.50 Mothers’ worry represented their moral high ground and difference from men; yet in this scenario, men’s altered behavior importantly represented the ability of parental, nurturing values to change one’s priorities.

WPFS did not conflate womanhood with motherhood, and it generally framed the latter as a task that women were socialized to perform. “As women, we have traditionally been assigned the responsibility of caring for and raising children,” offered a 1980 organizational packet. If women, then, were tasked with child-rearing, and male-driven policy endangered their success with keeping children alive, something had to change. The women’s party championed that women had cultivated many skills necessary for conflict resolution, which positioned them as candidates for steering the world towards disarmament. Furthermore, especially by the

1980s, as many juggled the double shifts of motherhood and career—by 1989, two thirds of all mothers were in the work force, and many in fulltime positions—they were keen multi-taskers and skilled organizers.51 In recruitment efforts, WPFS insisted members deploy these traits of conflict resolution and efficiency. It encouraged its ranks to speak prudently and listen compassionately. Advice manuals suggested women tread carefully through topics such as the

Vietnam War and to make a concerted effort to never alienate listeners on the basis of labels.

WPFS instructed its chapters to avoid casting a potential recruit as a dove or hawk, a liberal or a

50 Mary Kay Blakely, “The Great Baby Sit-in For Peace,” Ms. Magazine, December 1987, 83-85. 51 WPFS, “Organizational Packet,” September 1980, WAND Papers, Folder 1980-1982, SCPC. Arlie Russell Hochschild, Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home (New York: Viking Penguin Inc., 1989), 2. Hochscild traces with survey work how by the late 1970s into the 1980s, the majority of married American women and mothers worked full-time and performed housework and raised children. In addition to Hochschild, for literature on women in the labor force and women and family life by the late 20th century (in particular claims about “the breakdown of the American family”), see Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Really Are: Coming to Terms with America’s Changing Families (New York: BasicBooks, 1997); Judith Stacey, Brave New Families: Stories of Domestic Upheaval in Late Twentieth-Century America (New York: BasicBooks, 1990); Judith Stacey, In the Name of the Family: Rethinking Family Values in the Postmodern Age (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996). 170 conservative. Members should be firm and committed in their disarmament stance but heavy- handedness would get them nowhere. “Questions for Small Group Discussion” framed interrogatives in personal terms, asking “how do you feel…” or “are you worried…?”52

Yet, even as it applauded skills sets women garnered from motherhood, WPFS disproved its singular appeal to housewives and catered to the varied roles women filled. Aware that women were often the ones buying household appliances and goods, the women’s party encouraged members to expose and corporations involved in nuclear technology like

Bendix, , Westinghouse, Singer or Raytheon. WPFS also tailored some of its messages to women as workers, labor union members and community representatives. It occasioned women to broach the topics of economic conversion and demilitarization of local economies with their co-workers and neighbors.53 Finally, WPFS addressed women as voters during mass registration drives. It partnered with the Human SERVE [Service Employees

Registration, Voting and Education] campaign to register women, especially those least likely to vote, through social service agencies. Collaboration with SERVE illustrated the “strong and natural connection between women working on disarmament and women working on economic survival issues.”54 With the mantra “Generate the Gender Gap and Retire Ronald Reagan,”

WPFS also allied with the Gender Gap Action Campaign, sponsored by a coalition of women’s and peace groups, to capitalize on women’s penchant to vote for disarmament more than men.55

The ongoing letter-writing campaigns to representatives likewise served to mobilize women as enfranchised citizens. WPFS initiated a postcard drive in which women wrote positive missives about SALT II and either mailed them to their representatives or took them in person in their

52 WAND, “Depolarizing Disarmament Work: Twelve Guidelines to Help Us Reach New People,” WAND Papers, Folder 1983, SCPC. 53 WPFS, “Organizational Packet,” September 1980, WAND Papers, Folder 1980-1982, SCPC. 54 WAND, “Women Vote for Survival ’84,” WAND Papers, Folder 1984, SCPC. 55 The Women’s Trust, “Women Running Against Reagan,” WAND Papers, Folder 1984, SCPC. 171 local “Apple Pie Committees.”

Armed with actual apple pies, women conveyed in their visits to congressmen and senators that they represented “concerned American women.”56 The use of apple pies intimated a playful reappropriation of one of the most lasting images of traditional motherhood in the U.S.

The Santa Cruz chapter of WPFS, for example, hosted a Sunday afternoon of “Apple Pie and

Nuclear Awareness.”57 The flyer for the event juxtaposed news of this educational opportunity to learn more about nuclear technology with a gendered rendering of a woman’s stomach containing the earth. That conveyed both the traditional idea that women guarded the future of the planet and the less conventional idea that women should be knowledgeable about the arms race. This invitation served to draw in women attracted to time-honored themes of traditional motherhood and less inclined to political activism, and it also reclaimed and reinvented certain images of American womanhood to 1980s standards. WPFS imbued baking an apple pie with subversive meaning and repudiated the idea that motherhood, politics and careers were mutually exclusive.

Its founder, Helen Caldicott, served as a central spokeswoman for many of these ideas.

As a pediatrics researcher, she not only gave her organization a professional and polished bent, but in her speeches and platform she blended her medical expertise with her motherhood, and in doing so she appealed to a variety of American women. Insisting that her passion for disarmament derived from her own maternal unease, Caldicott legitimized parental concern as a valid—if not, the valid—reason for anti-nuclear activism. She valorized emotions like desperation and anxiety as sane responses to the nuclear arms race and condemned stoicism,

56 WPFS, “Organizational Packet,” September 1980, WAND Papers, Folder 1980-1982, SCPC; Jan Meriwether, “Dear Friend,” March 14, 1984, WAND Papers, Folder 1984, SCPC; WAND, “Women Vote for Survival ’84,” WAND Papers, Folder 1984, SCPC. 57 Santa Cruz WPFS, “Apple Pie and Nuclear Awareness,” Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 23 of 33, Folder WPS Chapters 1982, SSC. 172 especially among men in science, medicine and politics. In doing so, she effectively politicized science and medicine by staking the claim that her political protest was the ultimate form of preventive medicine. For the women’s movement, her emotive campaign struck a chord with thousands of American women who still gravitated towards a more traditional understanding of womanhood. In her celebration of motherhood but also female empowerment, she implored women to become more involved in politics, and showed that motherhood could be an accessible venue through which women did so.

“This beautiful planet of ours is terminally ill”: Helen Caldicott and Passionate Medicine

“This beautiful planet of ours is terminally ill,” Helen Caldicott announced to a crowd of seven hundred at Harvard University’s Phi Beta Kappa oration in 1981, commencing her talk as she often did.58 Constantly touring the U.S., Caldicott gave countless speeches on what she considered “the greatest health hazard the world has ever known”—nuclear weapons and nuclear power.59 Born in 1938, she read ’s depiction of the world after a nuclear war, On the

Beach (1957), as a fifteen-year-old growing up in , Australia. This novel indelibly imprinted on Caldicott who began to notice mounting news coverage of nuclear research and testing. In medical school at the , she learned about effects of radiation by observing irradiated fruit flies over generations. Deeply discomforted, she agonized over the consequences of French atmospheric testing in the Pacific. She tried to speak to her university administration but nobody listened. Fulltime motherhood and marriage, though, quickly consumed her. In the mid-1960s, with three young children in tow, she followed her husband and

58 Helen Caldicott, “This Beautiful Planet,” Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder Phi Beta Kappa Address; Helen Caldicott, “Commencement,” Harvard Magazine (Cambridge, Massachusetts), July/August 1981, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder Phi Beta Kappa Address, SSC. 59 Helen Caldicott, “Dr. Helen Caldicott- August 6, 1977, Faneuil Hall, Boston,” Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder H.C. Statements, Arm Race General, SSC. 173 fellow physician Bill Caldicott to Boston for his fellowship in radiology at Harvard Medical

School. She began to work part-time for the Children’s Hospital Medical Center in the Cystic

Fibrosis Center.60 Children, hers and others, filtered constantly through her mind and thus informed her activism: “By the time I was 23 I had three children. I even wondered, then, in

1963, should I bring children into this world?”61

Once she and her family returned to Australia by the early 1970s, she established a cystic fibrosis clinic in Adelaide. Alongside ongoing research, she joined the National Parks and

Wildlife Council of and the Aboriginal Education Foundation, and soon launched herself into a public role as a regular commentator every time France performed nuclear tests over the Pacific atoll of Mururoa. Prevailing blew radioactive fallout to

Australian cities, and Caldicott, well aware of the dangers of radiation and genetic disease, began to write to local papers and appear on television across Australia. Reading and

Germaine Greer and watching the civil rights and anti-Vietnam protests unfold, she was compelled by the idea of righteous activism, the use of democracy to achieve political ends and her role as a woman as she crafted her first years of anti-nuclear protest. Spearheading the grassroots campaign to halt French atmospheric tests, Caldicott and other Australians and New

Zealanders successfully turned the tables. In 1972, Australians elected a Labor government that took France to the International Court of Justice over their decision to continue testing which, combined with adverse international publicity, forced France to test underground.62

Not one to stop, Caldicott transferred her energies to halting the mining and exportation

60 Helen Caldicott, “Transcript of the NGO Committee on Disarmament meeting on April 19, 1978,” Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, H.C. Statements, Arm Race General, SSC; Caldicott, A Desperate Passion, 83-86. 61 Helen Caldicott, “The Consequences of Nuclear War,” 1981, WAND Papers, Folder 1982-1983, SCPC. 62 Caldicott, A Desperate Passion, 3-4, 14, 43, 99-126; Helen Caldicott, “The Consequences of Nuclear War,” 1981, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder Recent Speeches; Helen Caldicott, “Uranium and What You Should Know About It,” Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder H.C. Statements, Arm Race General, SSC; Helen Caldicott, “The Consequences of Nuclear War,” 1981, WAND Papers, Folder 1982-1983, SWPC. 174 of uranium. She met with Australian trade unions, especially miners, various state officials and physicians to convince them of the dangers. Her activism transferred to America in 1975 when she returned to Boston with her family. Working at the Boston Children’s Hospital in the cystic fibrosis clinic, she and her husband decided to become permanent residents in 1977. Her educational awareness campaigns took her around the U.S., and with the prodding of Peggy

Taylor, current editor of New Age magazine, Caldicott became convinced to write her first book,

Nuclear Madness (1978). For this she benefited from her new friendship with Randall Forsberg, then the former secretary at the Swedish Institute for Peace Research and later the founder of the

Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies, who was contemporaneously in Boston studying at MIT.63

In 1978, she assisted in the rebirth of the anti-nuclear Physicians for Social Responsibility

(PSR). Not a new group, PSR had formed in 1961 in Boston, and by fall 1962, through the efforts of Drs. H. Jack Geiger, and Victor Sidel, had published two articles in the

New England Journal of Medicine which detailed what would happen if a twenty-megaton bomb exploded in Boston.64 They helped to shift the conversation from preparation for nuclear war toward prevention as they aided in the abolishment of the shelter program under President

Kennedy and the success of the 1963 partial test ban treaty. By the late 1960s and into the 1970s, akin to many anti-nuclear organizations, there was a lull in activity for this one-issue organization. Injected with Caldicott’s fervor, though, they revived, and by 1982, they boasted seventy-five chapters and upwards of 10,000 members.65

63 Caldicott, A Desperate Passion, 213. 64 Peter H. Stone, “The Bomb: ‘the Last Epidemic,’” Reports and Comment, Helen Caldicott Papers, 1961-1987, Organizations, Box 24 of 33, Folder PSR Clippings, SSC. 65 Physicians for Social Responsibility [hereafter PSR], “Physicians for Social Responsibility,” May 21, 1981, Helen Caldicott Papers, 1961-1987, Organizations, Box 24 of 33, Folder P.S.R. Symposia; PSR, “1981 Report,” Helen Caldicott Papers, 1961-1987, Organizations, Box 24 of 33, Folder P.S.R. General 1982, SSC. 175

In late March 1980, Caldicott attended the New England Environment Conference at

Tufts University. After speaking for an hour on the medical implications of nuclear power and war, she had a conversation with a Swiss woman, Renate von Tsarner. Both deeply moved, they decided to create the Women’s Party for Survival (WPFS). By the end of the year, as the founder of this new organization and the president of PSR, Caldicott reluctantly quit her job at Boston

Children’s Hospital to funnel all of her time and energy into her medical activism.66 As the spokeswoman for WPFS and PSR, she indefatigably performed circuits of speech- and interview-giving at town halls, organizational meetings, colleges, graduation commencements, press conferences, political functions, demonstrations, rallies, churches, on National Public

Radio, at hearings and on television shows such as Donahue, Merv Griffin, the

Today Show, Good Morning, America and 60 Minutes. Considered by many the face of anti- nuclear resistance, she was known as the “pediatrician activist” and routinely discussed nuclear arms from the dual perspectives of medicine and parenthood.67

This ingenious combination offered ordinary American women an accessible entry into political activism. As much as she used medical terminology to discuss the fate of the planet,

Caldicott almost always accentuated that her power and passion for disarmament derived from her own children and those that she cared for in her professional work: “I see the position of the world today from the view point of a physician. I am totally and utterly committed to life. I have three children, I’m a woman, I’m a child of the atomic age and I see that we are in imminent danger of extinction.”68 By declaring nuclear war as the ultimate parental and medical issue, she

66 Caldicott, A Desperate Passion, 189-191, 213-214. 67 Philip M. Boffey, “Knocking the Nukes: Nuclear,” New York Times, August 26, 1979; Carolyn Merchant, Earthcare: Women and the Environment (London: Routledge, 1996), 152-154: Merchant refers to Caldicott as a “visionary prophet” in the anti-nuclear movement. 68 Helen Caldicott, “Transcript of the NGO Committee on Disarmament meeting on April 19, 1978,” Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder H.C. Statements, Arm Race General, SSC. 176 validated and empowered parental anxiety over the arms race and imbued it with as much legitimacy as medicine in the fight to prevent a nuclear war or accident: “There is no other issue at the moment that matters more than saving the lives of the babies on Earth. And there are no capitalist babies or communist babies. A baby is a baby.”69 Dethroning the arms race as an inaccessible topic for many parents, she relocated the heart of the matter in the future of children through statements such as, “Have these politicians and these people who build these things down here ever seen a child die of leukemia?”70 Furthermore, she ensured that parents understood their power in this battle by distilling medical and technical explanations into digestible concepts and language.

Usually, Caldicott organized her speeches and interviews around a well-rehearsed “worst case scenario,” the final medical epidemic after a thermo-nuclear war. Elaborating on its grotesque consequences, she maintained that physicians like herself had a duty to share this prognosis of a “terminally ill planet infected with lethal ‘macrobes’” metastasizing rapidly.71 Her

“history of illness” included the story of nuclear technology in the U.S. since the 1940s, and the

“[p]resent physical examination” noted how many hydrogen-bombs the U.S. possessed.72

“Prognosis. Gloomy,” she dismally stated.73 The terminal event would be “[a] strategic nuclear war between the superpowers would be complete within thirty to sixty minutes”; the

“[a]etiology” was, to Caldicott, most obviously “psychiatric.”74

In her universal repudiation of nuclear weaponry, Caldicott’s medical expertise

69 Helen Caldicott, “Conversion Plenary: The Call for Global Action,” Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder Helen’s Speech, SSC. 70 Helen Caldicott, “Helen Caldicott’s Speech at Barnwell, S.C. Demonstration,” April 1978, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder H.C. Statements, Arm Race General, SSC. 71 Helen Caldicott, “This summary will be presented as a medical analysis,” Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder H.C. Statements, Arm Race General, SSC. 72 Ibid. 73 Ibid. 74 Ibid. 177 authorized her scathing critique of both past and present officials’ decisions. She repudiated their idea of “mutually assured destruction” as inane—“Pentagonese, MAD, and that’s what they are, mad”—and disparaged male world leaders for their misassumption that stockpiling modern weapons meant security.75 “I thought security meant looking after our bodies, and our souls,” she challenged.76 In her criticism, Caldicott juxtaposed herself as a pragmatic practitioner of preventive medicine with politicians who acted like “little boys”77: “I feel the ultimate form of preventive medicine is to stop this race toward extinction. There can be no other issue of any significance, any significance, if in fact we are going to destroy civilization.”78 From her observations of fathers with sick children, she argued men often psychologically denied the possibility of death, whereas women, including female physicians, more likely embraced feelings of desperation. Caldicott championed the idea, taken up by groups like WPFS, that to deny death and to be “psychically numb” was to be mentally unstable.79 This issue of psychic numbing was gravely important to Caldicott and explains her at times exaggerated pleas. Appropriating psychological stages of grieving, she wanted to “penetrate your soul” and exhort her audience to first feel shock and disbelief, followed by depression, anger and finally adjustment and action.80

She legitimated that emotion should play a role in how Americans understood the life-or- death consequences of nuclear technology through her mixture of emotive, sometimes hyperbolic

75 Helen Caldicott, “Dr. Helen Caldicott- August 6, 1977, Faneuil Hall, Boston,” Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder H.C. Statements, Arm Race General; Helen Caldicott, “Helen Caldicott speech September 27, 1980 at Hunter College,” Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder H.C. Statements, Arm Race General, SSC; Helen Caldicott, “Helen Caldicott speech September 27, 1980 at Hunter College,” Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder H.C. Statements, Arm Race General, SSC. 76 Helen Caldicott, “Transcript of the NGO Committee on Disarmament meeting on April 19, 1978, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder H.C. Statements, Arm Race General. 77 Helen Caldicott, “Helen Caldicott’s Speech at Barnwell, S.C. Demonstration,” April 1978, Helen Caldicott Papers, Folder Box 15 of 33, H.C. Statements, Arm Race General, SSC. 78 Helen Caldicott, “Helen Caldicott speech September 27, 1980 at Hunter College,” Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder H.C. Statements, Arm Race General, SSC; Katie Leishman, “Pediatrician, Mother, Activist—Helen Caldicott: The voice of nuclear industry fears,” Ms. Magazine, July 1979, 50-51, 92-93. 79 Helen Caldicott, “Helen Caldicott speech September 27, 1980 at Hunter College,” Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder H.C. Statements, Arm Race General, SSC; Caldicott, A Desperate Passion, 43-57. 80 Helen Caldicott, “The Consequences of Nuclear War,” 1981, WAND Papers, Folder 1982-1983, SCPC. 178 rhetoric with the authority of a physician.81 These often-embellished speeches served to shock her audience and propel them to question nuclear research and development. She viewed speech- giving as a symphonic composition, replete with moments of allegro, adagio and crescendo.82 In doing this, Caldicott joined the ranks of other “activist” scientists and medical practitioners who debated the social ramifications of their professions. Particularly after the atomic bomb was dropped to end World War II, many of its curators concluded that decision-making in science required moral and political assessment. Given the new, terrifying scales of hazards, others in the postwar era, like mathematician Warner Weaver and biologist Barry Commoner, continued to emphasize scientists’ responsibilities to the public by fighting for the accessible dissemination of information to people regarding nuclear radiation, the petrochemical industry and other environmental toxins. These dissenting scientists sought a redefinition of risk, to move it beyond a series of statistics that measured hazards in parts per million or billion, and to instead include considerations of race and class geographies and change over time. Questioning the moral authority and governance of production behind risk assessments, scientists called for lay people to be involved in those discussions.83

These postwar “politico-scientists” became virtual pariahs in some of their professional communities. Yet, it was the age of Vietnam, civil rights, oil spills, rivers burning, , DDT kills, Three Mile Island and Love Canal. Growing American disillusionment with policy and its neglect of public participation in the mid- to late 20th century meant that many ordinary citizens saw dissenting science and medicine as intellectual leadership. Indeed, a striking feature of the nuclear disarmament movement of the late 1970s and 1980s was its large

81 Helen Caldicott, “We are all hostages,” Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder H.C. Statements, Arm Race General, SSC. 82 Caldicott, A Desperate Passion, 155. 83 Michael Egan, Barry Commoner and the Science of Survival: The Remaking of American Environmentalism (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2009). 179 proportion of scientific, medical and other professional groups, exemplified in numerous organizations like Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the

Lawyers Alliance for Nuclear Control, Educators for Social Responsibility, High Technology

Professionals for Peace, Architects for Social Responsibility, Computer Professionals for Social

Responsibility and Social Workers for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament.84 “In contrast with the civil rights movement of the early 1960’s and the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations of the late

1960’s that drew on mass organizations or students, the anti-nuclear activists have put together organizations built around the professions,” one New York Times reporter explained.85 He further elaborated that this allowed the movement to avoid the labels and “divisiveness of the Vietnam

War protests” and include less “bearded radicals” and more “middle-aged and middle-class men and women, many accustomed to positions of responsibility and privilege.”86 Moreover, individuals like Caldicott fit within and spoke to a contemporaneous, grassroots environmental movement concerned with public health. In places like Love Canal, New York, and Warren

County, North Carolina, everyday people became their community’s own health investigators to demand governmental decontamination of toxic sites such as chemical waste sites and landfills.87

Caldicott underscored the lack of a national conversation about nuclear weapons. In this way, she galvanized her audience to feel disempowered, and then to realize their untapped

84 Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition, 173-175; Egan, Barry Commoner, 2009. 85 Fox Butterfield, “Professional Groups Flocking to Antinuclear Drive,” New York Times, March 27, 1982; Butterfield, “Anatomy of the Nuclear Protest,” New York Times, July 11, 1982. 86 Ibid. 87 Elizabeth Blum, Love Canal Revisited: Race, Class, and Gender in Environmental Activism (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011); Phil Brown and Edwin Mikkelson. No Safe Place: Toxic Waste, Leukemia, and Community Action (Oakland: University of California Press, 1990); Pete Daniel, Toxic Drift: Pesticides and Health in the Post-World War II South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005); Lois Gibbs, “Citizen Activism for Environmental Health: The Growth of a Powerful New Grassroots Health Movement,” in Echoes from the Poisoned Well: Global Memories of Environmental Injustice, ed. Hood Washington, Paul C. Roiser and Heather Goodall (Lanham, Boulder, New York, Toronto and Oxford: Lexington Books, 2006), 3-16; Lois Gibbs, Love Canal: The Birth of the Environmental Health Movement (Washington, Covelo and London: Island Press, 2011); Eileen McGurty, Transforming Environmentalism: Warren County, PCBs, and the Origins of Environmental Justice (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2007). 180 potential to change world affairs. “Look what I have done, and I’m a woman, and I’m an

Australian,” she challenged.88 She advocated for her listeners to “take back your democracy” by vocalizing the perils of nuclear technology. “The only weapon,” she stated, “we have at our disposal in this day and age is the larynx.”89 Indeed, through “the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the world,” ordinary individuals could demand more from their governments by electing certain politicians who voted for disarmament.90 This was the therapy portion of her medical prognosis for the planet: “by medical education of the masses,” everyone on this planet would grieve and thus agonize about the potential loss of our planet.91 Sometimes she posed questions to her audience—what the difference between a tactical and strategic weapon was—and required a response. She demanded an engaged audience, their minds saturated with technical information. They had to know their material in order to change the world, and they might have to work for that information.92

In her speeches, she exposed an “incestuous” relationship between the Pentagon, companies involved in arms manufacturing and Congress, and often noted the absence of ordinary individuals. She explained, “We, the people, and our babies are not being represented.”93 Determined to secure a brighter future for the world and make American

88 Helen Caldicott, “New Directions,” October 8, 1983, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder Recent Speeches, SSC. 89 Helen Caldicott, “WAND: A prescription for ending the nuclear arms race,” Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder Recent Speeches; Helen Caldicott, “This Beautiful Planet,” Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder Phi Beta Kappa Address, SSC. 90 Helen Caldicott, “Helen Caldicott speech September 27, 1980 at Hunter College,” Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder H.C. Statements, Arm Race General; Helen Caldicott, “Dr. Helen Caldicott- August 6, 1977, Faneuil Hall, Boston,” Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder H.C. Statements, Arm Race General, SSC. 91 Helen Caldicott, “This summary will be presented as a medical analysis,” Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder H.C. Statements, Arm Race General, SSC. 92 Helen Caldicott, “Nuclear Madness From Tritium Exports to Star : A Prescription for Change,” April 12, 1985, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder Toronto Speech: 4/12/85, SSC. While her circuit of public appearances mostly targeted American audiences, she visited other countries as well. Caldicott delivered a speech at the University of Toronto in 1985, for example, also calling on the Canadian government to improve its behavior, namely to stop exporting uranium. 93 Helen Caldicott, “The Consequences of Nuclear War,” 1981, WAND Papers, Folder 1982-1983, SWPC. 181 democracy informed and active, she galvanized her supporters to mobilize as voters.94 In spring of 1984, for instance, in a graduation speech, she implored them to work against Reagan’s reelection: “…we have 5 ½ months to save the earth—5 ½ months. In 5 ½ months there is an election, in November.”95 As she advocated for her audiences to become educated and disseminate their knowledge, she followed her own prescription by writing numerous editorials and op-ed pieces in major newspapers and journals like the Boston Globe, Washington Post and the New England Journal of Medicine. Presenting her case or correcting misinformation about either herself or her cause, she always welcomed any debate on medical or ecological effects of nuclear war, and did not hesitate to go head to head with private citizens, technical experts, editors-in-chief or even Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger.96 She encouraged all

Americans to do the same.

Caldicott’s impassioned pleas contained a wealth of revised risk assessments geared toward waking up America. By showcasing nuclear technology’s insidious side effects, her dissenting medical opinion positioned it as unmistakably political. Furthermore, the fact that

Caldicott was a woman doing this mattered. She explained, “Like a Cassandra, I often seem to be the only one imparting a message of dire concern, but because I am a woman, I’m easy to dismiss as ‘emotional.’ It can be extremely frustrating.”97 That she counted on an emotional

94 Helen Caldicott, “New Directions,” October 8, 1983, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder Recent Speeches, SSC. 95 Helen Caldicott, “Dr. Helen Caldicott’s Speech,” May 20, 1984, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder Recent Speeches. 96 Helen Caldicott, “Dear Sir,” Waltham News Tribune (Waltham, Massachusetts), July 7, 1982; “Dear Sir,” Boston Globe, May 24, 1982; “Dear Sir,” Boston Globe, December 22, 1982; “Dear Sir,” Washington Post (Washington, D.C.), December 14, 1982; “Preventing Nuclear War: The Secretary of Defense Replies to His Critics,” New England Journal of Medicine (Massachusetts), February 10, 1983; Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder Letters to the Editor, SSC. 97 Caldicott, A Desperate Passion, 137. Cassandra refers to the mythological daughter of Priam, King of Troy, who had the gift of prophecy. Environmentalists have labeled people who predict future or looming problems as Cassandras. 182 response from her audience dismayed other scientists.98 Some accused her of scientific inaccuracies, notably that she overinflated the extent to which nuclear weaponry and energy actually presented a radioactive health threat to humans.99 Her books, Nuclear Madness (1978) and Missile Envy (1984), garnered similar attention. Critics charged her writing as too emotional and passionate, and that she was a “supercharged melodramatic version of Dr. Spock.”100

Throughout her lifetime, environmental pioneer Rachel Carson encountered similar resistance to the use of emotion in science. As Caldicott scripted her speeches, Carson also wrote very passionately about the natural world and its degradation. The publication of Silent Spring

(1962) incited many male scientists and detractors to posit that Carson’s gender made her overly hysterical and subjective about pesticides. Yet Carson was aware of this. She insisted that her style was indicative of her belief that science should not be too specialized or remote from the average person. People needed to bring their emotion to bear in order to understand and appreciate the environment and its destruction.101

A generation later, Caldicott relied on Carson’s treatment of gender and emotion to likewise contend that passion was not misplaced in science and medicine. Even more than admitting their appropriateness, Caldicott accepted that certain emotions were associated with women—nurturance, empathy, preservation of life—and valorized them. In fact, she claimed that scientists and medical practitioners who did not embrace these feelings were the mad ones.

She insisted that“[i]t is inappropriate to be dispassionate right now.”102 Projecting the grief she

98 Dullea, “Helen Caldicott’s Many Lives: Pediatrician, Mother, Activist,” New York Times, May 25, 1979; Caldicott, A Desperate Passion, 111-112. 99 Philip M. Boffey, “Knocking the Nukes: Nuclear,” New York Times, August 26, 1979; Helen Caldicott, “Letters: Radioactive,” New York Times, October 28, 1979. 100 Taylor Branch, “Prescribing Against Terror: MISSILE ENVY The Arms Race and Nuclear War,” New York Times, July 29, 1984. 101 Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997). 102 Helen Caldicott, “The Consequences of Nuclear War,” 1981, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder Recent Speeches, SSC. 183 felt every time she and others diagnosed a child with leukemia, she viewed the world similarly, sick with cancer. Heartache to her was appropriate and reasoned. Despite asserting that women tended to possess these abilities more than men, she never assumed men, or women without children, could not be as nurturing.103 “We are the curators of life on Earth,” she pronounced as she recommended a redefinition of masculinity, one that allowed men to be as soul-bearing and emotive as women.104 Her impetus for WPFS was “to mobilize the mothering instinct in all of us—particularly in the women because they are very passionate, but also in men who can be passionate.”105

That Caldicott accentuated her own subjectivity in medicine and science indicated the ongoing, profound disruption of ideas regarding scientific knowledge, women and medical practice. Modern science had long privileged laboratory research that touted its objectivity as rational and detached, and gendered its approach as masculine. Empathy, which many saw as an inherently feminine trait, did not belong in medical and scientific research and practice. Yet feminist scholars and health reformers in the late 20th century challenged how this “objective” approach seemed to forget its subject—the patient—and the important role of compassion.106

The dominant view of the sciences came under revision by the mid-20th century when dissenting scientists, historians, theorists and activists posited that science and medicine were never innocent. Critics questioned that scientific knowledge “consisted of logical reasoning applied to observational and experimental data acquired by value-neutral and context-independent methods” could always result “in a single, unified account of an objective and determinate

103 Helen Caldicott, “WAND: A prescription for ending the nuclear arms race,” Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder Recent Speeches, SSC. 104 Julia Featherstone, “Transcript of Interview With Dr. Helen Caldicott on the Medical Effects of Nuclear Bi- Products,” Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder Beth May 17, 91; Helen Caldicott, “New Directions,” October 8, 1983, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder Recent Speeches, SSC. 105 Helen Caldicott, “The Consequences of Nuclear War,” 1981, WAND Papers, Folder 1982-1983, SCPC. 106 Wendy Kline, Bodies of Knowledge: Sexuality, Reproduction, and Women’s Health in the Second Wave (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2010), 1-2. 184 world.”107 In particular, feminist theorists showed that many scientific disciplines were fundamentally shaped by their historic exclusion and misrepresentation of women. Not only were women barred from being scientists and physicians which contributed to profound bias in experimentation and interpretation, but feminist scholarship also revealed that science and medicine were “immutably grounded, embodied, and partial… [their goals] subject to contestation; and that the dream of absolute, universal, and comprehensive truth is, like the dream of a final theory, just that i.e. a particular dream, the product of a particular historical and cultural moment.”108 This new paradigm of thought situated science “as a human instead of a masculine project” and renounced “the division of emotional and intellectual labor that maintains science as a male preserve.”109 Caldicott, in her insistence that it was inappropriate to be dispassionate about the perils of nuclear science, contributed to this feminist theory and practical reclamation of subjectivity and empathy in science and medicine.

She was not known for her feminism though. In fact, she was most recognized for her maternal concern. She almost always spotlighted the most innocent victims of insidious nuclear technology—children and babies—who were extremely susceptible to radiation’s effects because of their rapidly dividing cells. Caldicott even claimed she made a time capsule in her native

Australia containing a photo of a normal baby to ensure she would remember the world before a nuclear accident.110 For one, her choice to constantly refer to children was her way to pit a very sanguine future against one of destruction and death. It was a teaching device. She asked, “How many leaders of the world emotionally understand what they are doing? . . . How many leaders

107 Evelyn Fox Keller and Helen E. Longino, “Introduction,” in Feminism and Science: Oxford Readings in Feminism, eds., Evelyn Fox Keller and Helen E. Longino (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 1. 108 Keller and Longino, “Introduction,” in Feminism and Science, 12; Evelyn Fox Keller, “Feminism and Science,” in Feminism and Science: Oxford Readings in Feminism, eds., Evelyn Fox Keller and Helen E. Longino, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 28-40. 109 Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 178. 110 Helen Caldicott, “Dr. Helen Caldicott- August 6, 1977, Faneuil Hall, Boston,” Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder H.C. Statements, Arm Race General, SSC. 185 of the world may have witnessed the explosion of a hydrogen bomb? … How many have witnessed the miracle of the birth of a baby?”111 Her own medical research on cystic fibrosis also stipulated constant mindfulness of children—and especially ill ones. Thus, her preoccupation with how children would be impacted by nuclear war revealed the mind of a pediatrics researcher and a mother. But she did not focus solely on children and in subtle ways, in her insistence that emotion belonged in scientific evaluation and medical practice, for example, she exhibited a feminist agenda.

Like many other women who claimed nuclear power was a feminist or woman’s issue, she implicated women’s health and reproductive rights in her protest. She emphasized that because radioactive isotopes disproportionately concentrated in women’s fatty tissues and organs like the ovaries, women experienced a unique health crisis when it came to radioactivity.112 This was a strategy appropriated and perverted, in many women’s eyes, by groups like Pro-lifers for

Survival who also claimed women were uniquely affected by radiation. In one flyer in particular,

Pro-Lifers anatomized a woman’s body and explicated how her organs would be affected by and long half-lives. Concentrated in the lungs, liver, muscles and skin, isotopes especially hurt a woman by accumulating in her ovaries and thyroid.113 Pro-lifers emphasized that this wreckage on a woman’s body mattered in that it hurt fetal and infant life.

While Caldicott and the masses of women that supported her generally sidestepped such

111 “Dr. Helen Caldicott Addresses National Press Club,” Congressional Record (Washington, D.C.), February 28, 1983, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder National Press Club Address (2/25/83), SSC. 112 The assertion that nuclear power or disarmament was a feminist or woman’s issue because of its unique health implications for women was an extremely common one in organizational literature as well as in feminist and women’s publications. See Carolyn Projansky, J. Sidney Oliver, Gerri Traina, and Sara Grusky, “nuclear power is a feminist issue,” off our backs, May 1979, 5; Margie Crow, “nukes vs. anti-nukes: malignant monster meets critical mass movement,” off our backs, May 1979, 2-6; Spiderworts , “spiderworts’ statement,” off our backs, July 1979, 22; Alix Dobkin, “cowrie vs. nukes,” off our backs, July 1979, 26; Andrea Chesman, “working with men in a crisis,” off our backs, July 1979, 26. 113 PS, flyer, January 1980, PS Papers, CDGA Collective Box, Prince of Peace League through Purvis, Harry, Folder 17, SCPC. 186 a reductive evaluation of women, she represented how many women, by the 1980s, were affected by women’s liberation. As the New York Times reported, “[i]n a movement that has stirred women in this country as have few others in recent years … Women prominent in the antinuclear campaign say that the women’s liberation movement has provided their cause with experience and confidence gained in the struggle to stop the war in Vietnam.”114 Far from debating and espousing words of “liberation” and “patriarchy,” many subtly embraced feminist tenets of empowerment and felt compelled by female leaders like Caldicott who celebrated womanhood and prodded women to get more politically involved in democracy. “And women,” Caldicott impressed upon her audience, “you can’t blame the men for your lack of presence in the ranks of elected officials. We’ve been wimps, we’ve done nothing since we won the vote sixty years ago, so it’s time to get to it.”115

She saw in women “a tremendous untapped majority.” Thankful for—not derisive of— feminism, Caldicott explained, “Feminists have an important role to play. What they’ve done over the last 10 years has been vital—they’ve helped women find their power. But now women have to move or we all won’t be here much longer.”116 She did view men and women as distinct, due to conditioning and hormonal differences, and valorized men of “extraordinary strength and inner courage” who showed emotion.117 “Through the women’s liberation movement, men have indeed become more nurturing and gentle,” Caldicott wrote in Missile Envy, which she titled as a playful feminist dig to Sigmund Freud’s concept of penis envy. She insinuated “[t]hese hideous weapons of killing and mass genocide may be a symptom of … [men’s] inadequate sexuality and

114 Judith Miller, “3 Women and the Campaign for a Nuclear Freeze,” New York Times, May 26, 1982. 115 Helen Caldicott, “Closing Event: Conversation Plenary Session, The Call for Global Action: The Challenge of the Nuclear and Environmental Crisis,” Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 15 of 33, Folder Recent Speeches, SSC. 116 Rob Okun, “Dr. Helen Caldicott: Waking America Up to the Nuclear Nightmare,” New Roots, March/April 1980, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box Organizations, 23 of 33, Folder A.N.D. Organization Packet, Sophia Smith Collection. 117 Helen Caldicott, Missile Envy: The Arms Race and Nuclear Power (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1984), 294. 187 a need to continually prove their virility.”118

Sometimes she made statements that rang of reductive essentialism. She once commented, “I think women by nature are passive. We haven’t been bred to power.”119 Yet almost always Caldicott elaborated to explain that if women did not realize and utilize their power, then power unused was power lost. She insisted motherhood did not preclude women from feminism, a stance which appealed to those turned off by women’s liberationists’ derision of the family.120 Superficially, then, with her intense emphasis on children, it would seem like

Caldicott played into every stereotype feminists sought to avoid, yet she actually performed a task very similar to what women in organizations like WLOE and WPA were doing.

Reappraising subjectivity, emotion and care traditionally associated with women, Caldicott aided in the project to commend and respect women’s difference.

Growing Pains: The Evolving Structure of the Women’s Party for Survival

With her at the helm, the ranks of WPFS utilized and benefitted from Caldicott’s reinterpretations of parental anxiety, dissenting science and maternal emotions in the Cold War.

Using her philosophy as their anchor, WPFS developed into a different kind organization than others in the women’s movement. With highly structured, agenda-driven meetings and a board of directors, WPFS did not embrace the anti-leadership characteristic of WLOE and WPA.121 In contrast to meetings driven by feminist process in which there were no time constraints and

118 Caldicott, Missile Envy, 297. 119 Rob Okun, “Dr. Helen Caldicott: Waking America Up to the Nuclear Nightmare,” New Roots, March/April 1980, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box Organizations, 23 of 33, Folder A.N.D. Organization Packet, SSC. 120 The anti-mother reputation associated with women’s lib not only distanced mothers but also hid the important work done by many feminists in the realms of childcare, childbirth and breast feeding. See Rosalyn Baxandall and Linda Gordon, Dear Sisters: Dispatches from the Women’s Liberation Movement (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 128-129, 234-236; Kline, Bodies of Knowledge, 127-155. 121 Sayre Sheldon, “Organising a National Campaign: Women’s Party for Survival, U.S.A.,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 3 of 4, Folder 1983, SSC; Diane D. Aronson, “Dear Friend,” March 4, 1982, WAND Papers, Folder 1982-1983, SCPC; WAND, “The History of WAND PAC,” WAND Papers, Box 2 of 4, Folder History of WAND PAC, SSC. 188 emotional outpourings were the norm, WPFS board meetings were rigorously time-oriented.

Each person received five to ten minutes to update others on finances, lobbying, membership changes and other cut-and-dry topics.122 Meetings began on time, motions were passed, and the gatherings adjourned before two hours had passed.123 WPFS was not dictatorial in its instructions or culture. It encouraged all chapter meetings to begin with everyone introducing themselves and explaining why they cared about disarmament, but its national leaders articulated that only a nationally organized, sharply focused public movement could move the nation towards the direction of disarmament. They encouraged women to form their local chapters, guided by the national office and paying membership dues, educate themselves on the arms race through study groups, publicize the issues in their communities and write letters to representatives to press an anti-nuclear agenda. WPFS mandated women be knowledgeable of nuclear technology and its accompanying jargon. Directors routinely sent out statements containing their official stance on policy decisions of the Reagan administration for chapters to adopt and promote. The women’s party provided its membership with a detailed list of books recommended by the Institute for

Policy Studies as well as recommended monthly subscriptions to magazines and journals like the

Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the Defense Monitor and the Progressive. Study groups were expected to fluently talk about different weapons, medical implications of a nuclear blast and economic arguments for and against the arms race. It was a lot to know, and involvement came with the expectation that women could and would conquer this technical information. All of these requirements and steps were provided to members through organizational packets and

122 WAND, “Annual Board Meeting,” November 13, 1983, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box Organizations, 25 of 33, Folder WAND—Board Meetings, SSC. 123 Action for Nuclear Disarmament [hereafter AND] Education Fund, Inc., “Meeting of the Board of Directors,” February 1, 1982, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 23 of 33, Folder WAND General; AND Education Fund, Inc., “Meeting of the Board of Directors,” May 10, 1982, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 23 of 33, Folder WAND General; AND Education Fund, Inc., “Meeting of the Board of Directors,” June 7, 1982, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 23 of 33, Folder WAND General; WAND Education Fund, Inc., “Board Meeting,” July 11, 1983, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 25 of 33, Folder WAND—Board Meetings, SSC. 189 letters from the directors.124

On the one hand, this structure was merely pragmatic and served to offer helpful advice for political newcomers and allowed chapters to form from humble beginnings. In May 1981, for example, in Deborah, a small town in northeastern Missouri, local women heard of the upcoming

Mother’s Day disarmament activities and pondered if they too should do something. After attending a talk by a local professor on disarmament, they viewed the film “The Medical Effects of Radiation” and passed around Helen Caldicott’s Nuclear Madness (1978). Thereafter, seven women committed themselves to forming a WPFS chapter. Their message was bold but their methods appealed to a sleepy Midwestern town. They canvassed at picnics, summer fairs and college orientation booths. Their letter writing and phone-a-thon campaigns to senators about the

B-1 bombers and MX missiles gradually elicited the support of housewives, clergymen and local college students.125

While women in the networks of WLOE and WPA chaffed at such nationally-mandated structure and organizational rules, WPFS chapters did not find it suffocating. Feminist process driven by consensus decision-making and anti-authoritarianism did not appeal to all women across the U.S. WPFS anticipated that its membership might be drawn from women previously unengaged in politics or activism. These women, it was estimated, needed more authoritative leadership and step-by-step instructions on how to organize. In addition to being inexperienced activists, WPFS members were often young mothers with demanding home and work lives.

Feminist process, as empowering as it could be, was in some ways a privileged mode of

124 WPFS, “Announcement of State Meeting,” Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, Box 3 of 36, Folder 20 “Women’s Party for Survival 1981, n.d.”; Women’s Party for Survival, “Action for Nuclear Disarmament,” January 1982, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box Organizations, 23 of 33, Folder A.N.D. Organization Packet, SSC; WAND, “Starting an Affiliate Group,” WAND Papers, Folder 1983, SCPC; WPFS, “Dear Chapter Director, or contact person,” October 1, 1981, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 23 of 33, Folder W.P.S. Folder, SSC. 125 Northeast Iowa Chapter of WPFS, “Deborah, Iowa,” Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 23 of 33, Folder W.P.S. Chapters – 1981, SSC. 190 operation. It necessitated long, often interminable meetings that many women did not have the time or patience for. WPFS, on the other hand, provided a space for political novices and busy mothers by maintaining regulated meetings and specific, pointed advice.

Furthermore, anti-leadership was not a selling point for all American women. Many members expressed that it was Caldicott herself that lured them to disarmament activism. One young Harvard University college student wrote to Caldicott, “I heard you speak on campus several months ago as I was starting to learn more about madness; your words and descriptions crystallized my nightmares. I am writing to say thank you.”126 Another woman, Margaret

Kennedy, saw Caldicott speak on television and was so inspired she started a new chapter in her town of Muncie, Indiana. Struck by Caldicott’s knowledge, Kennedy agreed that it was time for women to extend their traditional peacekeeping in the home into the world. A wife, mother and college instructor in computer science, her different roles belied the assumption that women associated with WPFS were merely housewives.127

WPFS’ events tended to be family-friendly, community-oriented and less boundary- pushing than the civil disobedience promoted by WLOE and WPA. Most often, there were picnics, sermons, children’s walks, baby buggy parades, public meetings, press conferences, vigils, signature-collecting for petitions or letter-writing campaigns.128 The Santa Cruz chapter sponsored a “Children’s Write a Letter for Peace” party. There, children sketched rainbows, the sun, wildlife, trees and other treasured components of life on earth underneath poignantly scribbled words such as, “Nuclear weapons may destroy the world. Then ther [sic] won’t be this

126 Julie Ann Fuchs, “Dear Dr. Caldicott,” Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 23 of 33, Folder W.P.S. 1981, SSC. 127 Eloise McConnaughey, “Education of the public is major goal of Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament,” Muncie Evening Press (Muncie, Indiana), September 29, 1984, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 25 of 33, Folder WAND, SSC. 128 WAND, “Depolarizing Disarmament Work: Twelve Guidelines to Help Us Reach New People,” WAND Papers, Folder 1983, SCPC; WAND, “TO: WAND Affiliates and Special Contacts,” May 31, 1984, WAND Papers, Folder 1984, SCPC; Sonoma County WPFS, Nuclear Realities Chronicle, November 1981, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 23 of 33, Folder W.P.S. Chapters—1981, SSC. 191 planet. This beautiful planet. There’s fish, reptiles and more.”129 As the Mother’s Day Coalition for Disarmament march in 1981 indicated, activities planned on and for Mother’s Day were quite popular. One that rainy day, Caldicott trumpeted that nuclear weapons were “the ultimate issue. The earth is our womb. We are living on borrowed time. We are hostages. The only escape is to use our democracy to tell our President what we want him to do.”130 Her message and choice of event targeted families, just as WPFS’ 1983 Millions of Moms campaign.

As “[m]illions of mothers and grandmothers recognize that the ultimate mothering issue is life of all our children,” this May campaign included nationwide Mother’s Day activities, a major publicity drive for disarmament and a promotional tape featuring actresses such as Meryl Strep,

Sally Field, Goldie Hawn and advocating for peace. Still, WPFS sought to empower women as women. The first measurable objective of their Millions of Moms drive was a training program in which two hundred selected women were to become proficient public speakers.131

Despite its nationally-organized structure, WPFS devolved enough autonomy to local groups that those who wanted to pioneer more dramatic actions and non-disarmament issues could.132 On the same day as Caldicott’s rally in Boston, a chapter in Santa Barbara, California, participated in a direct action blockade of Livermore Laboratories.133 Another California branch in Sonoma County collaborated with the anti-nuclear Abalone Alliance who relied on the use of

129 Santa Cruz WPS, “Children’s Write a Letter for Peace Party,” Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 23 of 33, Folder WPS Chapters 1982, SSC. 130 Paul Sullivan, “2000 rally at rainy Mom’s Day N-protest,” Boston Herald (Boston, Massachusetts), May 10, 1982. Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 3 of 4, Folder Nuc Arms Race Materials 1981 82 Women’s Party for Survival to WAND, SSC. 131 WAND, “Funding Proposal: Millions of Moms Campaign,” WAND Papers, Folder 1982-1983, SCPC. 132 Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament, P.A.C., “Meeting of the Board of Directors,” February 1, 1982, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 23 of 33, Folder W.A.N.D. General 1982; Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament, P.A.C., “Meeting of the Board of Directors,” March 3, 1982, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 23 of 33, Folder W.A.N.D. General 1982, SSC. 133 AND, “Thousands Across the United States Pause to Remember True Meaning of Mother’s Day,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 3 of 4, Folder Nuc Arms Race Materials 1981 82 Women’s Party for Survival to WAND, SSC. 192 nonviolent direct action to shut down the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. Members of this

West Coast WPFS chapter also trespassed at the Concord Naval Weapons Station in a feat of civil disobedience.134 One woman reflected on her fence-climbing there, “I am buoyed by the force of addressing the truth.”135 She expressed that women had enough facts and figures about the arms race at this point; now, it was time to act. A member of WPFS, she hailed direct action as the best way to bear witness to the U.S. government’s crimes, and she saw her moral authority deriving from her Christian convictions. She explained, “[W]hose law am I obedient to? Our government is preparing to break a higher law which has guided us, in the form of the words of

Christ.”136 Her daring actions and explanation disrupted the rigid categorization of women in the

1980s as either radicals compelled to perform civil disobedience or mothers politely writing letters to elected officials. This woman, willing to serve a jail sentence, joined a national organization for and by mothers, yet clearly her politics were also informed by radical traditions of “bearing witness.”137 The women’s movement of these years encompassed these intricacies and supposed contradictions.

The Sonoma chapter routinely cooperated with other peace groups, even the Democratic

Workers Party, a Marxist-Leninist party active in California, and extrapolated the varied

134 Sonoma County WPFS, Nuclear Realities Chronicle, February 1982, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 23 of 33, Folder WPS Chapters 1982, SSC. 135 Sunshine Appleby, “Reflections on Climbing the Fence at Concord Naval Weapons Station,” Nuclear Realities Chronicle, February 1982, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 23 of 33, Folder WPS Chapters 1982, SSC. 136 Ibid. 137 Bearing moral witness in the name of peace or environmentalism was common among radical pacifists and also some sections of the modern environmental movement in the mid- to late-20th century. Many in anti-nuclear energy, anti-toxin and animal rights campaigns used nonviolent direct action to critique governmental, scientific and industrial uses and exploitations of nature. Informed by environmental activists like Barry Commoner and later , these environmentalists—in organizations like Greenpeace, for example—tended to be more interested in decentralized, populist organizing, participatory democracy and ideas of and environmental justice. See Barbara Epstein, Political Protest and Cultural Revolution: Nonviolent Direct Action in the 1970s and 1980s (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California, 1993); Robert Gottlieb, Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2003); Frank Zelko, Make It a Green Peace!: The Rise of Countercultural Environmentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). 193 manifestations of violence in U.S. culture by connecting issues of poverty, racism and sexism.

National leadership may have guided WPFS as a single-issue organization but its chapters could and did broaden their focus.138 Some branches were in fact quite disappointed with the tacit connections drawn by national board members. The Bay Area chapter, for example, ultimately resolved to abandon its affiliation with WPFS over this issue. “The Bay Area WPS steering committee,” chapter members informed WPFS leaders, “believes that in order to do anything about the arms race, we must address it within the context of the larger picture, i.e., the nuclear issue cannot be separated from all the other problems affecting the quality of life on our planet.”139 Inspired by the late-20th century ecological philosophy called “deep ecology and “new physics” that sought “a new balance and harmony between individuals, communities and all of

Nature” based on people “cultivating ecological consciousness” of “the needs for the planet,”140 the California group believed “that all is connected, and life, all life, on this globe is based on interdependence.”141 Coined in 1973 by Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess, “deep ecology” represented the interests of many environmentalists by the 1970s in valuing the worth of all life on the planet, regardless of a species’ importance to modern industrial society. The philosophy took cues from earlier, well-known environmentalists like John Muir and Aldo Leopold who embraced a more personal, co-existing relationship with nature.142 The Bay Area section wrote to

138 Sonoma County WPFS, “Nuclear Realities Chronicle,” November 1981, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 23 of 33, Folder W.P.S. Chapters—1981; Sonoma County WPS, “Sonoma County Women’s Party for Survival,” Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 23 of 33, Folder W.P.S. Chapters—1981; Sonoma County WPS, Nuclear Realities Chronicle, February 1982, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 23 of 33, Folder WPS Chapters 1982, SSC. 139 Bay Area Women’s Party for Survival Steering Committee, “Dear Diane and WAND Board of Directors,” January 26, 1984, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 25 of 33, Organizations, Folder WAND—Women’s Party for Survival, SSC. 140 Bill Devall and George Sessions, Deep Ecology (Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith, Inc., 1985), 7-8. See also Don Worster, Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1994) as he discusses mid-20th century ecological philosophies. 141 Bay Area Women’s Party for Survival Steering Committee, “Dear Diane and WAND Board of Directors,” January 26, 1984, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 25 of 33, Organizations, Folder WAND—Women’s Party for Survival, SSC. 142 See Devall and Sessions, Deep Ecology. 194 the national board that it sought to attract more working-class and minority women, and even men, in contrast to WPFS’ membership core in “upper and middle-class white America.”143 The

California women also explained that beyond electoral politics they would like to perform more civil disobedience, direct actions and boycotts. Implied, then, was that they felt they could not undergo these changes under the auspices of WPFS. Their reasoning indicated that while mothers-based, single-issue groups like WPFS can be retrospectively interpreted as far more complex than ‘moms against the bomb,’ many women in the ‘80s experienced a chasm between feminist activists and maternal activists.

As these philosophical differences among WPFS chapters manifested and led to considerable organizational variability in the early 1980s, national board members expressed that their party suffered from growing pains. Chapters proliferated but leadership doubted its effectivity. By fall 1981, due to this equivocation and her own preoccupation with Physicians for

Social Responsibility (PSR), Caldicott withdrew from overt involvement in WPFS. Dismally for the women’s movement, elections had enthroned Reagan that year, but ironically this hostile climate for women proved to be the push that WPFS needed to re-energize itself.144

By early 1982, WPFS leaders reorganized. They formed a new board with clearer goals, fashioned a new name and garnered the renewed support of Caldicott. Earlier conversations had failed to determine if WPFS would become more explicit about issues beyond disarmament.

Board members ultimately chose to distance the organization from this approach and retain its national bent toward the singular focus on disarmament. They felt this would still unite more

143 Bay Area Women’s Party for Survival Steering Committee, “Dear Diane and WAND Board of Directors,” January 26, 1984, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 25 of 33, Organizations, Folder WAND—Women’s Party for Survival, SSC. 144 Sayre Sheldon, “Organising a National Campaign: Women’s Party for Survival, U.S.A.,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 3 of 4, Folder 1983; Helen Caldicott, “Dear Janice and Katherine,” November 10, 1981, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 23 of 33, Folder W.P.S. 1981, SSC. 195 women. With such a mindset, the Women’s Party for Survival bifurcated into two sister organizations, each with its own board and funding. One was an educational, tax-deductible

Action for Nuclear Disarmament Education Fund (AND). The other, Women’s Action for

Nuclear Disarmament (WAND/PAC), was a political committee, financed through dues-paying members and fundraising, that researched and endorsed pro-disarmament congressional candidates of both sexes. “WAND” seemed like a better name. It avoided the confusion WPFS had provoked with the words “party” and “survival” since people wondered whether or not it was actually a political party and if men were allowed to join. Furthermore leaders wanted to avoid the association with “survivalist” groups which formed to practice outliving a nuclear war.145

WAND’s board permitted member groups to either switch to the new naming system, or retain their old “Women’s Party for Survival” titles. The majority of chapters admitted a name change was favorable, with some notable exceptions from California, Massachusetts and

Arizona.146 In a letter to national board members, the Sonoma County chapter explained the preservation of their group name: the word “survival” appropriately jarred people, and if people had an issue with the idea of a “women’s party,” “then perhaps they should join an anti-nuclear organization which is not women led.”147 Others explained that “Women’s Party for Survival” clued in women that the organization was not “male-led and impersonal.”148 Still, in a show to be inclusive rather than ideological, women in Burlington, Vermont, approved of the name

145 Sayre Sheldon, “Organising a National Campaign: Women’s Party for Survival, U.S.A.,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 3 of 4, Folder 1983; WPFS, “Special Meeting of the Central Governing Committee of the National Women’s Party for Survival,” December 21, 1981, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 23 of 33, Folder W.P.S. 1981, SSC. 146 AND Education Fund, Inc., “Meeting of the Board of Directors,” January 8, 1982, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 23 of 33, Folder WAND General; “Results of the Survey,” Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 23 of 33, Folder W.A.N.D. General 1982, SSC. 147 Jane Flood and Tula Jaffe, “Dear Board Members,” January 2, 1982, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 23 of 33, Folder W.P.S. Chapters—1981, SSC. 148 “Results of the Survey,” Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 23 of 33, Folder W.A.N.D. General 1982, SSC. 196 modification since “[a]ssociations with or as a feminist group also seem to make potential joiners hesitant.”149 Palo Alto members concurred, “We need everybody in this movement.”150 One woman from Gary, Indiana, agreed with the decision, commenting that she never dreamed of the problems that would arise from the moniker “Women’s Party for Survival.” “There was such an uproar over the name, in order to get anything accomplished we called ourselves ‘Citizens

Against Nuclear Arms.’ I’m sure we’ll double our membership immediately . . . I’ve had to sit on my feminist views.”151

With renewed purpose, vigor and an organizational plan, WAND and AND received unprecedented attention after Caldicott gave an interview on a national TV talk show. A few days later, a mail truck delivered four boxes of letters. Written from all backgrounds and ages, the letters showcased both profound fear and a deep desire to get involved. AND responded to each with a form letter, an article about Caldicott and a list of resources and nearby affiliated groups. Those dedicated enough to start a new WAND chapter received an Organizational

Manual. By early 1982, then, seventy chapters and affiliated groups existed across the country.

The mailing list grew to 25,000 names. Most of the members were women, though men and families comprised a significant minority of the membership. WAND and AND aimed to teach women how “to use democracy” so that “some day we shall be able to talk of a People’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament,” wrote Sayre Sheldon, a professor of American literature at Boston

University and WAND’s president from its restructuring in 1982 until 1987.152

Throughout the early 1980s, in addition to backing certain candidates, WAND PAC sent

149 Ibid. 150 Ibid. 151 Ibid. 152 Sayre Sheldon, “Organising a National Campaign: Women’s Party for Survival, U.S.A.,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 3 of 4, Folder 1983; WAND, “Budding Affiliates,” November 10, 1983, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 25 of 33, Folder WAND—Board Meetings, SSC. 197 out “alerts” when resolutions and amendments such as HJ Resolution 521, proposing a bilateral nuclear freeze, came to their attention. Chapters nationwide were asked to write and phone congressmen to vote for disarmament.153 Certain states were targeted as they contained congressional districts with a large number of members of key committees. WAND PAC provided their chapters there with additional lobbying and district mobilization support in the form of educational workshops, speakers, concerts, media campaigns and voter registration drives.154 Intent on changing electoral politics, WAND PAC effectively took advantage of the growing gender gap in which American women tended to vote for peace more so than men.155 It also spawned another women-led network by 1984, the Women’s Peace Initiative (WPI). Started by Dr. Margaret Brenman Gibson of , WPI coordinated women across the U.S. to lobby legislators for a nuclear freeze through ongoing voter registration drives as well as the Gender Gap ’84 and Freeze Voter ’84 campaigns.156 Like WAND, WPI endorsed certain

153 WAND PAC, “Guidelines for Responding to a WAND/PAC Congressional Action Alert,” Helen Caldicott Papers, Box Organizations, 23 of 33, Folder W.A.N.D. General 1982, SSC. 154 WAND PAC, “For All Interested Individuals and Organizations,” July 12, 1982, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box Organizations, 23 of 33, Folder W.A.N.D. General 1982, SSC; WAND, “Congressional Action Alert: Budget Committees Debating 1984 Nuclear Weapons Spending,” WAND Papers, Folder 1982-1983, SCPC. 155 Press and the women’s organizations themselves commented on this gender gap in which women tended to vote for and care more than men about funding for social services, social justice issues, and global peace. For a few examples, see Adam Clymer, “Polls Shows Sharp Rise Since '77 In Opposition to Nuclear Plants,” New York Times, April 10, 1979; Judith Miller, “3 Women and the Campaign for a Nuclear Freeze,” New York Times, May 26, 1982; Adam Clymer, “Male-Female Split on Politics Found a Key Factor in Polls,” New York Times, October 27, 1982; Dotty Lynch, “As Women's Very Real Power at the Polls Becomes Visible,” New York Times, December 29, 1982; Adam Clymer, “Political Strategists Aim At Women and Minorities,” New York Times, July 10, 1983; Theodore H. White, “New Powers, New Politics,” New York Times, February 5, 1984; and Mim Kelber, “Women vs. Reagan,” New York Times, February 12, 1984; Jane Perlez, “Women, Power And Politics: THE 'GENDER GAP' WORRIES BOTH PARTIES, AS PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES WOO WOMEN VOTERS -- WITH MIXED RESULTS. WOMEN AND POLITICS WOMEN AND POLITICS,” New York Times, June 24, 1984; Abzug and Kelber, “Despite the Reagan Sweep, a Gender Gap Remains,” New York Times, November 23, 1984; Harriet Kurlander, “Gender Gap is Real,” New York Times, August 28, 1988; Louis Harris, “The Gender Gulf,” New York Times, December 7, 1990. For more on the gender gap that emerged by 1980, see Faludi, Backlash, 61, 271-276, 459. 156 Women’s Peace Initiative [hereafter WPI], “Women’s Peace Initiative,” Women’s Peace Initiative Papers [hereafter WPI Papers], CGDA Collective Box, Women’s International Resource Center (WIRE) through Women’s Tax Resistance Assistance, SCPC; “1984 Women’s Peace Initiative,” Freeze Focus, April 1984, WPI Papers; “Women’s Congressional Action,” WPI Papers; WPI, “Dear Friend,” May 23, 1984, WPI Papers; WPI, “Dear Colleague,” August 1, 1984, WPI Papers; WPI, “Women’s Peace Initiative Agenda, June-December 1984,” WPI Papers, SCPC. 198 candidates and legislation, determined to change the fact that women “have been virtually excluded from the formulation and implementation of foreign policy.”157

Led by a national advisory board with a notable number of Hollywood female celebrities such as Sally Field, Jane Alexander and , AND disseminated to affiliate groups and communities educational resources to encourage “‘citizen literacy,’ informing people about the avenues available to express their democratic right to voice their opinion.”158 The celebrities involved gave the organization a popular, recognizable face in mass media, and readings such as

Caldicott’s “On the Medical Consequences of Nuclear War” and Dr. Randall Forsberg’s “Is a

U.S.-Soviet Weapons Freeze Possible?” provided valuable information for “serious lay persons.”159 Disputing military and government expertise, AND leaders steered Americans away from investing too much trust in “isolated ‘experts’” and encouraged instead individual reassessment of national political decisions.160 The formula, then, was for AND to educate

American women, and WAND to guide them to the voting polls. With this organizational reconstitution, an energized leadership and membership sustained the politics pioneered by

WPFS as women passionately lobbied for disarmament and for their unique role in this fight.

‘War is not healthy for children and other living things’: Another Mother for Peace and

Women Against Military Madness

157 WPI, “Women’s Peace Initiative,” 1988, WPI Papers, SCPC. 158 WAND Education Fund, “WAND Education Fund Special Publication,” WAND Papers, Folder 1984, SCPC; AND, Inc., “Newsletter,” April 1982, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 23 of 33, Folder WAND General, SSC. For more on celebrities’ involvement in political activism, see Kathryn Brownell, Showbiz Politics: Hollywood in American Political Life (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014). Brownell shows that since the 1920s, with the growing importance of mass media, politicians have understood the appeal of allying with a celebrity. In a similar vein, see also Barron H. Lerner, When Illness Goes Public: Celebrity Patients and How We Look at Medicine (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008). Lerner discusses the implications for medicine, science and patient options when famous persons with diseases and illnesses ‘go public’ with their conditions. 159 AND Education Fund, Inc., “What Can I Do? Suggestions for Individuals from AND Education Fund, Inc.,” Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 23 of 33, Folder WAND General, SSC. 160 AND, Inc., “Newsletter,” April 1982, Helen Caldicott Papers, Box 23 of 33, Folder WAND General, SSC. 199

WAND was not the only organization in late-20th century America to protest nuclear disarmament as a group of impassioned and politicized mothers. Another Mother for Peace

(AMP), which began during the Vietnam War and continued into the 1980s, and Women Against

Military Madness (WAMM), founded in 1982, likewise showcased how women gathered under the premises of maternal concern and slowly launched themselves into increasingly public roles as lay experts on the dangers of the nuclear arms race. Given their organizational start in the late

1960s, AMP members especially demonstrated the personal evolutions that anti-war and disarmament activism offered to mothers over the course of years of involvement. By the late-

1970s, like other mothers-based groups like Women Strike for Peace (WSP), AMP chapters gradually turned their attention to environmentalism, poverty and widespread social inequality.

Members protested the heightened nuclear arms race as the Vietnam War faded into memory.

Their diversified platform and the mounting years of experience that members accumulated showed that these mothers were not political neophytes. In fact, participation in organizations like AMP, WAMM, WSP and WAND offered countless American women an accessible entry into political activism that should be counted as a vital part of the women’s movement “for life on earth” in the late 20th century. Furthermore, it would be erroneous to completely dichotomize this movement into mothers-based groups and feminist-identified ones. Best exemplified by the attitude and organizational tactics of WAMM, women identified as feminists and mothers, belying some totalizing contradiction between these roles and revealing the philosophical and demographic diversity within the women’s movement.

Born out of the Vietnam War, Another Mother for Peace (AMP) began humbly, like

WAND. Fifteen close friends from Beverly Hills, California, under the leadership of Barbara

Avedon, gathered in each other’s living rooms beginning in 1967, galvanized by the desire to

200 move the nation away from war. Prodding women to take a more active role in anti-war activism,

AMP encouraged mothers to demand that their elected representatives in Washington work to withdraw troops from Vietnam. In May 1967, members showered D.C. with 200,000 cards with the simple axiom that “[w]e who have given life must be dedicated to preserving it.”161 It was an organization by mothers and for mothers. The following year, its “invest in peace” campaign raised money that was then donated to legislators who had voted accordingly. AMP envisioned and promoted a new position for the president’s cabinet, a Secretary of Peace, as well as a new

Department of Peace. During these years, its popularity soared. It boasted 35,000 members, and had the backing of celebrities like , Donna Reed and Dick Van .162

A young mother, married to a physician, and a bit of a Hollywood celebrity for earning an Oscar for a movie script, Avedon was wealthy and successful. Still, she sought to reach out to all mothers, regardless of class, race and background, to ensure that her young son Joshua did not end up dead in Vietnam like too many other sons. With these young men in mind, AMP members drove cars with bumper sticks that read, “All Our Sons in Vietnam Are POWS. Bring them home!” “They make war on war itself,” explained one journalist, “with the most improbable of weapons, a flowered greeting card with the slogan, ‘War is not healthy for children and other living things.’”163 Leading this single-issue organization, Avedon and her ranks asked only for peace. They mailed Christmas and Mother’s Day cards containing simple messages like, “For my Mother’s Day gift this year, I don’t want candy or flowers, I want an end

161 Another Mother for Peace [hereafter AMP] “Another Mother for Peace brochure,” Another Mother for Peace Papers [hereafter AMP Papers], Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Another Mother for Peace, Box 4 of 26, Folder Another Mother for Peace: Brochures, Cards, Pamphlets, Reprints and Misc. 1962-1976, n.d.. SSC. 162AMP, “Another Mother for Peace brochure,” AMP Papers, Box 4 of 26, Folder Another Mother for Peace: Brochures, Cards, Pamphlets, Reprints and Misc. 1962-1976, n.d., SSC; Richard L. Lyons, “Enough’s Enough,” Washington Post, February 7, 1969; “Secretary of Peace for Cabinet Urged,” LA Times (Los Angeles), June 25, 1968. 163 Elyse Lewin, “The Watchables,” McCalls, undated, AMP Papers, Box 4 of 26, Folder Another Mother for Peace: Brochures, Cards, Pamphlets, Reprints and Misc. 1962-1976, n.d., SSC; Norm Bigelman, “‘’ Map Gigantic Mailing,” Herald Tribune (Woodland Hills, California), May 11, 1967. 201 to killing. We who have given life must be dedicated to preserving it. Please talk peace.”164

Determined, they mailed a total of 300,000 of these to President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Their genius lay in their maternal minimalism. The mission of AMP was simple yet poignant, and in this way it created an accessible entry into activism for many busy mothers.

Participants produced a datebook that contained almost daily reminders, beneath the day and week, that prodded women to write their senators, discuss foreign affairs with friends instead of playing bridge, visit veterans or check birth notices to send an AMP newsletter to the new mother. Members put war and peace on women’s minds constantly, and they showed that peace activism could begin and succeed in the home. Valuing that domestic space as a crucial site for changing the national course of action, AMP empowered mothers by making clear that the private and public spheres were one.165

Far from being tractable stay-at-home moms, AMP women only became bolder in their advocacy. By the early 1970s, the group applauded draft resisters and conscientious objectors.166

By the mid-1970s, as the Vietnam conflict deescalated, members turned their gaze to environmental hazards such as pollution, wildlife destruction, Dieldrin and other insecticides, radioactive waste and growing nuclear arsenals, which they specifically designated a “critical issue for women” in 1974.167 “In the name of defense,” AMP condemned nuclear technology,

“they’re poisoning our land… our air… our water… and our children,” as it asserted that “it’s

164 “Mothers Seek End to War, Show Cards on Fulbright,” Arkansas Gazette (Little Rock, Arkansas), May 16, 1967. 165 AMP, “Another Mother’s Datebook for Peace,” AMP Papers, Box 4 of 26, Folder Another Mother for Peace: Brochures, Cards, Pamphlets, Reprints and Misc. 1962-1976, n.d., SSC. 166 AMP, “Another Mother for Peace Newsletter,” June 1971, AMP Papers, Box 4 of 26, Folder Another Mother for Peace Newsletters 1967-85, SSC. 167 AMP, “Another Mother for Peace Newsletter,” 1974, AMP Papers, Box 4 of 26, Folder Another Mother for Peace: Brochures, Cards, Pamphlets, Reprints and Misc. 1962-1976, n.d., SSC; AMP, “Another Mother for Peace Newsletter,” April 1971, April 1972, October 1975, AMP Papers, Box 4 of 26, Folder Another Mother for Peace Newsletters 1967-85, SSC. 202 your village” now, too, being bombarded with such insidious hazards.168 In the later years of the

Vietnam debacle, AMP conceived that “war” had spread beyond Vietnam to college campuses, manifested as poverty and hunger in Appalachia and justified heightened defense spending to the detriment of social services. “Our cities are burning and we’re buying napalm,” AMP lamented.169 It published materials on weapons systems like ballistic missiles, highlighting their costs and imagining how that money could be spent on domestic social services. It encouraged women to vote yes on anti-nuclear energy initiatives. News of the San Luis Obispo Mothers for

Peace featured in their newsletters as AMP saw itself in solidarity with this mother’s group opposed to the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant.170 Throughout the 1970s, AMP only became more vocal against military spending. It produced well-researched, well-articulated pamphlets and boldly opined connections between the nuclear arms race, increasing environmental pollution and the financial and physical disintegration of cities. These developments, AMP communicated, illustrated how off-center national priorities and budgets had become.

Nonetheless, the group continued to rely on domestic imagery and maternal themes. In one pamphlet that depicted a woman and her daughter grocery shopping, a checklist derisively enumerated goods for the woman to buy, such as DDT, cigarettes, MIRV, thalidomide and baby foods with salt or MSG.171 Juxtaposing these noxious substances with the serene portrayal of motherhood worked to capture mothers’ attention and incite alarm in them. AMP appealed not

168 AMP, “Another Mother for Peace Newsletter,” April 1972, AMP Papers, Peace Collection, Box 4 of 26, Folder Another Mother for Peace Newsletters 1967-85, SSC. 169 AMP, “Another Mother for Peace Newsletter,” June 1970, AMP Papers, Peace Collection, Box 4 of 26, Folder Another Mother for Peace: Bess Myerson Grant-Speech and Film 1970, SSC. 170 AMP, “Is your future worth $1.80?” AMP Papers, Peace Collection, Box 4 of 26, Folder Another Mother for Peace: Brochures, Cards, Pamphlets, Reprints and Misc. 1962-1976, n.d.; AMP, “Another Mother for Peace Newsletter,” October 1975, AMP Papers, Box 4 of 26, Folder Another Mother for Peace Newsletters 1967-85; AMP, “The Nuclear Initiative,” AMP Papers, Peace Collection, Box 4 of 26, Folder Another Mother for Peace Newsletters 1967-85; AMP, “Another Mother for Peace Newsletter,” February 1976, AMP Papers, Box 4 of 26, Folder Another Mother for Peace Newsletters 1967-85, SSC. 171 AMP, “Shopping List,” AMP Papers, Peace Collection, Box 4 of 26, Folder Another Mother for Peace: Brochures, Cards, Pamphlets, Reprints and Misc. 1962-1976, n.d., SSC. 203 only to mothers’ indignity but also to women’s role as the main consumer for household goods.

This was a successful strategy. It provided women with the names of U.S. manufacturers throughout the Vietnam War who produced weapons and domestic products, insisting that “you don’t have to buy war.”172 “Can your Whirlpool washer wash away the knowledge that the adjoining assembly line is filled with Fletchettes designed to tear the flesh?” it posed to its membership.173 Furthermore, by itemizing DDT alongside a variety of lethal drugs and weapons,

AMP drew connections between disparate issues. Nuclear weapons, unsafe pharmaceuticals and food additives all adversely affected children, and illustrated that mothers needed to publicize and alter military and scientific research and funding.

Other women’s peace groups, rooted in a similar maternal tradition, mimicked AMP’s gradual radicalism and expanding platform over the 1970s. Women Strike for Peace (WSP), for instance, was a group of white, middle-class homemakers that had focused solely on opposing nuclear atmospheric testing in the early 1960s, but by the Vietnam War and thereafter, not only advocated for troop withdrawal from Indochina, draft resistance and a dramatic de-escalation of the nuclear arms race but members shared with AMP the experience of personal empowerment that accompanied their years in activism. Both organizations portrayed how mothers left their homes to save their children and life on earth, and in doing so, gradually found themselves transformed and politicized.174

The origin story of WSP mirrored that of WAND and AMP. In a living room in

Washington D.C., in the fall of 1961, concerned mothers gathered with their heads together,

172 AMP, “Dear Friends,” October 31, 1970, AMP Papers, Box 4 of 26, Folder Another Mother for Peace Newsletters 1967-85; Bess Myerson Grant, “You Don’t Have to Buy War, Mrs. Smith,” May 9, 1970, AMP Papers, Box 4 of 26, Folder Another Mother for Peace: Bess Myerson Grant-Speech and Film 1970, SSC. 173 AMP, “Another Mother for Peace Newsletter,” June 1970, AMP Papers, Box 4 of 26, Folder Another Mother for Peace: Bess Myerson Grant-Speech and Film 1970, SSC. 174 Amy Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1993), 125-186. 204 enraged that the world was headed toward a nuclear holocaust. By word of mouth, chain letters,

PTA phone books and church membership rolls, WSP materialized out of these informal female networks and grew into a national organization with locally-run chapters, in contrast to more hierarchical peace organizations like National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE) and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). Members articulated preservation of life was their main concern, and the protest derived from their indignation that the state was making their vocation as mothers impossible. Protesting in the name of the hallowed institution of motherhood, WSP tapped into women’s moral outrage.175 Like AMP,

WSP insightfully exposed power assumptions in technocratic language when it critiqued how male politicians spoke of and promoted the military and its technology. Women instead posed their “female concern for life as an antidote to male abstraction and detachment.”176

While AMP and WSP both mainly attracted housewives, by the 1970s, women in these organizations along with WAND members took a cue from the New Left, counterculture and the burgeoning women’s liberation movement to be bolder and to consider nascent messages of feminism. Historian Amy Swerdlow explained, “A decade of political struggle against the gendered uses of power, and a sense of personal efficacy and female solidarity based on working in a separatist movement, propelled the women [in WSP] to question and reexamine their assumptions regarding the female role in the family as well as in national and international politics.”177 By 1970, WSP members were “marching in the first Women’s Equality Day March, carrying a banner that read, ‘The Women of Vietnam Are Our Sisters.’”178

While many AMP and WSP members continued into the 1970s to position their activism

175 Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace, 17-19, 50. 176 Ibid., 22. 177 Ibid., 5. 178 Ibid. 205 from the vantage point of motherhood, they did so to continue to appeal to mainstream America.

This positioning, as Chapter One describes, unsettled some radical feminist critics of maternalist peace politics who maintained that female identification with empathy and nurturance trapped women in an essentialist view and prevented female empowerment. In their 1984 position paper in the feminist publication off our backs, the Radical Feminist Organizing Committee epitomized many of these critical ideas in their astonishment that women “are waving the banner of feminism while they organize” against nuclear disarmament.179 The Committee insisted that bombs did not discriminate, so why would women have a special interest in preventing nuclear war? “And if [women are] being encouraged to be pacifists in the name of motherhood, that’s just a ruse by men who are trying to lead women back to the womb,” feminist members explained.180 “It amazes us,” they continued, “that a woman should be asked to set aside the question of her right to control her body in favor of a campaign to preserve the human race.”181

In their eyes, women involved in nuclear disarmament yet again set aside their own liberation for what others considered “more pressing” concerns, further diluting “women’s issues.” “In fact, men would prefer us to focus on the pentagon rather than on their behavior. Certainly men would rather see women climbing fences than disturbing .”182 In another piece of critical commentary in oob, reporters Tacie Dejanikus and Stella Dawson lamented that “…not one woman we talked to [at the Women’s Pentagon Action] was upset about the women’s protest against militarism planned by Helen Caldicott’s Women’s Party for Survival for Mother’s Day,

March 1981. The choice of Mother’s Day reinforces the idea of women as mothers.”183

179 Terry Mehlman, Debbie Swanner, Midge Quandt, Lorraine Sorrel, and Tricia Lootens, “obliteration as a feminist issue: a position paper by the Radical Feminist Organizing Committee,” off our backs, March 1984, 16. 180 Ibid. 181 Ibid., 17. 182 Ibid., 25. 183 Ibid. 206

Yet organizations like AMP, WSP and WAND very much saw themselves disturbing male privilege by politicizing nurturance and the profound concern for life they held.

Furthermore, the avalanche of negative feedback the oob position paper received indicated many women found the Committee’s stances “deeply distressing.”184 Several agreed that the women’s movement reinvented peacemaking and nonviolence as assertive tactics through which women could reject traditional views of power and power relationships. By insisting that their caretaking and motherhood informed their activism and righteousness, women in organizations like AMP,

WSP and WAND subverted male power relations by refusing to participate in them and instead crafted their own political space in activism in which they did not acknowledge “power over” others as a legitimate strategy to change the world.185 Furthermore, mothers challenged and transformed traditional interpretations of motherhood by redefining it as collective and political.

184 Sonia Johnson, “, not renouncing,” off our backs, May 1984, 25; Puget Sound Women’s Peace Camp, “obliteration as a feminist issue: responses: the women’s peace camp: feminist revolutionary force for change,” off our backs, May 1984, 24-25; Star Lavender Bluejay, “being there,” off our backs, May 1984, 25; T.S. Siegel, “obliteration backlash,” off our backs, May 1984, 25. 185 This was not a novel approach but rather something that groups like AMP and WSP inherited from earlier women reformers who were interested in peace and social justice and compelled to form largely women-only organizations to advance their causes. Since the late 19th century, due to their exclusion from formal politics, some women constructed a political niche for their activism in opposition to what they saw as male patriarchal destruction of human lives, and they asserted women were the ones “charged with the future of childhood and with the care of the helpless and the unfortunate” (Quoted in Alonso, Peace as a Women’s Issue, 64). Outside of traditional politics and avenues for expressing dissent, women grounded their actions in their childbearing capabilities and general interest in nurturance, compassion and conflict resolution as evidence that women were different from men and possessed a more ardent desire to bring more racial, social, economic, and political justice to the world. By using maternalist-based justifications, they set themselves and their activism above the normal political sphere. For examples of women reformers and how they crafted a subculture of maternalist-based politics in peace and social justice issues, see Alonso, Peace as a Women’s Issue; Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace; Linda Gordon, “The Peaceful Sex? On Feminism and the Peace Movement,” National Women’s Studies Association Journal 2, no. 4 (Autumn 1990): 624-634; Andrea Estrepa, “Taking the White Gloves Off: Women Strike for Peace and ‘the Movement,’ 1967-73,” in Feminist Coalitions: Historical Perspectives on Second-Wave Feminism in the United States, ed. Stephanie Gilmore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 84-112; Susan Lynn, Progressive Women in Conservative Times: Racial Justice, Peace, and Feminism, 1945 to the 1960s (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992); Leila Rupp, Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’s Movement (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997); Kathryn Kish Sklar, Florence Kelley and the Nation’s Work: The Rise of Women`s Political Culture, 1830-1900 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997); Amy C. Schneidhorst, Building a Just and Secure World: Popular Front Women’s Struggle for Peace and Justice in Chicago During the 1960s (New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2011). 207

As Caldicott often insisted, they were mothers for the entire world.186

In their repudiation of ideological language and argumentation, AMP, WSP and WAND were not anti-intellectual or non-feminist but rather knew the moral-mother was a timeworn, successful tradition that had currency with the media and the public. It was an astute organizing tool, and its use did not discount the personal empowerment women received from their activism. In her assessment of WSP, Amy Swerdlow concluded that WSP members originally possessed “little awareness of their contribution to sex-role stereotyping and female oppression” and that “they were not aware in their early years that they were fighting a battle of the sexes, a woman’s battle against the male elites who decided issues of life and death for all of humanity.”187 Years later, though, after “…years of struggle, planning strategies, and making programmatic and tactical decisions, they began to feel their power, enjoy their victories, and savor their political acuity. They also began to perceive the forces that held them back personally as well as politically.”188 Mothers-based activism transformed ordinary housewives and mothers into leaders, speakers, organizers and strategists and promoted a female culture that valued maternal competence alongside organizational skills.189

Furthermore, AMP, WSP and WAND borrowed from the contemporaneous civil rights,

New Left and ecology movements a mindset that saw poverty, inequality and pollution as

186 Another example of mothers-based activism in the late 20th century in which women protested as outside of established political institutions and relied on a collective definition of maternal concern is the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina in the last decades of the 20th century who protested the disappearances of their children by the military junta. See Marguerite Guzman Bouvard, Revolutionizing Motherhood: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1994). Bouvard explains that the Mothers provide a telling example of not only how women wielded their motherhood to protest a dictatorial state but also that they sought to transform their state to reflect their maternal values of children’s well-being, democratic participation, and concern for full employment, education and peace. They exploded “the myths that the private sphere is isolated and irrelevant to the political system and that middle-aged and elderly women are powerless” (16). 187 Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace, 233-234. 188 Ibid. 189 Other scholars have noticed this phenomenon in which in the late 20th century mothers, compelled to protest out of maternal concern and indignation, were personally transformed, empowered and politicized by their involvement in environmental and peace activism. See also Garcia-Gorena, Mothers and the Mexican Antinuclear Power Movement; Blum, Love Canal Revisited. 208 interlocking issues rooted in capitalist and military priorities.190 All began as single-issue organizations but evolved and diversified to conceive of “peace” as a state that encompassed the absence of conventional war and the presence of a more equitable and healthy nation at home.

The real enemy, then, was not communism or the Vietnamese but smog, hunger and poverty.191

In 1976, in a bout of frustration, AMP expressed that as much as it had tried to respond to the country’s myriad of problems, it seemed like no one was listening. “So we decided to join the system. We are now FOR imperialism,” members mordantly joked. In their barbed commentary, they suggested the U.S. should invade all communist countries, resort to patronage and bribery, end welfare and defund education.192 Jokes aside, the litany of problems they had isolated was indicative of the larger women’s movement that claimed “that ecological right” to connect a number of social and political problems.

While it would be convenient to catalog and dissect the women’s movement of the 1980s into organizations adherent to maternal concerns and those who clung to a more feminist identity, in truth the movement and those in it exemplified a kind of ideational messiness. When, for instance, Maine Women for a Nuclear-Free Future decided to host their own Mother’s Day

Celebration in Bath, Maine, in 1981, members disseminated an information packet replete with factual information on nuclear weapons and energy and the potential for a nuclear freeze. They argued that nuclear power was a feminist issue as it had profound implications for women’s reproductive health. Articles articulating connections between violence and patriarchy were included alongside the WPA Unity Statement.193 Yet, despite touting that nuclear issues

190 Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace. 191 Bess Myerson Grant, “You Don’t Have to Buy War, Mrs. Smith,” May 9, 1970, AMP Papers, Box 4 of 26, Folder Another Mother for Peace: Bess Myerson Grant-Speech and Film 1970, SSC. 192 AMP, “Dear Ms. Smith,” 1976, AMP Papers, Box 4 of 26, Folder Another Mother for Peace Newsletters 1967- 85, SSC. 193 “Mother’s Day Celebration for Peace,” May 10, 1981, Bath, Maine, WLOE Papers, Box 5 of 7, Folder Anti War Military/Peace Groups, SSC. 209 implicated feminists, Maine Women also relied on more traditional means of protest—the ballot and petitions, for example—and dedicated themselves to “seeking a powerful future for the world’s children.”194 Encouraging Maine residents to vote yes on a nuclear referendum in the fall of 1980, around eight hundred women organized against Maine Yankee nuclear power plant.

They placed an advertisement in local papers. In it, below a large photo of a group of smiling children, the ad stressed that nuclear radiation posed a unique threat to women’s bodies, making them more susceptible to thyroid and and increasing pregnant women’s likelihood for birth defects. Alongside such gendered appeals, an economic argument appeared as Maine

Women emphasized that nuclear power provided few jobs for the state economy, and if an accident did occur, it would most certainly affect Maine’s tourism, farming and marine resources.195

Similarly, Women Against Military Madness (WAMM), with the adage of “women’s empowerment,” ticketed itself as a “mass response of women who are alarmed by the present role of the military in U.S. society.”196 In a process akin to consciousness-raising, WAMM, based in Minneapolis, borrowed therapy tactics for the grieving process. Its members wanted to

“empower” women to understand, grieve and be emboldened to challenge the imminent death facing life all people and ecosystems if the militarization of the world went unchecked.197 They also wanted to radicalize women to see that military spending contributed to the feminization of

194 “A Message from Maine Women,” Maine Sunday Telegram (Portland, Maine), September 21, 1980, WLOE Papers, Box 5 of 7, Folder NE Women + Nukes, SSC. 195 Ibid. 196 Women Against Military Madness (hereafter WAMM), “64 cents Out of Every Tax Dollar Goes to the Military!”, Women Against Military Madness (hereafter WAMM) Papers, CDGA Collective Box, Women Earth Feminist Peace Initiative though Women Against Military Madness, Folder 8, SCPC. Alonso, Peace as a Women’s Issue, 241-242: Alonso mentions that WAMM was an all-female peace group in the 1980s that formed out of women’s frustration from the power structure that excluded women. See also See Evans, Tidal Wave, 210: Evans argues that women provided the backbone of the in 1984 in organizations like WAMM with their “female vision of a humane world.” 197 WAMM, “Antidote to Despair: Empowerment & WAMM”, WAMM Papers, CDGA Collective Box, Women Earth Feminist Peace Initiative though Women Against Military Madness, Folder 8, SCPC. 210 poverty. WAMM pamphlets explained that military priorities meant cuts to social services and federally-funded child care, which particularly hurt women and children and especially female- headed households. In the same literature, WAMM pushed women to see that pay differentials between men and women also discriminated, and the sex-segregated nature of women’s work in

“pink-collar” service and clerical jobs translated to lower wages and job instability. It rallied women to “demand a change” and a voice for women in politics.198 Nowhere did WAMM label group members as feminists, but the ideas it imparted to women rang of feminist truths.

The group began when two friends from Minneapolis, Marianne Hamilton and Polly

Mann, became concerned enough over the fragile state of global affairs that they held a conference in January 1982 on women and militarism. Joined by over one hundred other women, these Minnesotans decided to form WAMM at this gathering. They celebrated the birth of their group by marching in freezing temperatures through Minneapolis. One year later, one thousand received their newsletters, half of whom considered themselves active members. It became a ritual that every Friday during rush hour WAMM women lined the sides of the highway entrances with banners reading, “Support the Nuclear Freeze” and “No First Strike.” They also dutifully wrote representatives in D.C. twice a month to urge them to move the government’s spending priorities and policy decisions toward a nonviolent management of world affairs, and they routinely peppered local newspapers with editorials on the subject of nuclear war. Assessing what had been printed versus what they submitted, they then wrote additional rounds of editorials berating the media’s selective coverage on the uncomfortable topic. They provided newspapers along with local schools the resources to educate citizens on foreign policy. Others created a slideshow which insinuated unnerving connections between military weapons and

198 WAMM, “Antidote to Despair: Empowerment & WAMM”, WAMM Papers, CDGA Collective Box, Women Earth Feminist Peace Initiative though Women Against Military Madness, Folder 8, SCPC. 211 lookalike war toys for children.199

One of WAMM’s projects was a boycott of Rambo dolls and other war toys. Group members asked stores to stop stocking these goods and partnered with veteran’s organizations and child care facilities to protest this “militarization” of children.200 Its literature articulated that that one reason why women should get involved was for the “domestic tranquility” of the country. Relying on the very traditional argument that the state of U.S. national security was predicated on stability at home, WAMM argued that “domestic tranquility is not possible with hundreds of thousands of Americans unemployed, hungry, homeless and poverty-stricken.”201

Such argumentation which placed women’s protest as an extension of their household duties seemed to belie their axiom of “women’s empowerment.” Yet, like AMP, WSP and WAND,

WAMM conceptualized motherhood and the home as a site for radical change. Such a perspective was illustrated when Simone Wilkinson, a British peace activist, came to

Minneapolis for Mother’s Day activities.

Meeting with some two hundred WAMM members, she explained that her own pregnancy prompted her to care about the future of the world. WAMM members expressed how comforting it was to know that an “ordinary, hardworking mother” who had not “done anything

‘radical’” could become such a skilled public speaker and advocate for peace.202 As Wilkinson informed WAMM of the opening of the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp west of

London, England, many members sympathized with the British women involved. The camp

199 Kaia Sven, “Peace Tactics: An Action A Day,” Ms. Magazine, March, 1983, 21; Unitarian Universalist Social Concerns Grant Panel, “Application Form,” WAMM Papers, CDGA Collective Box, Women Earth Feminist Peace Initiative though Women Against Military Madness, Folder 8, SCPC. 200 WAMM, “Rambo Doll/War Toys Boycott,” WAMM Papers, CDGA Collective Box, Women Earth Feminist Peace Initiative though Women Against Military Madness, Folder 8, SCPC. 201 WAMM, “Antidote to Despair: Empowerment & WAMM”, WAMM Papers, CDGA Collective Box, Women Earth Feminist Peace Initiative though Women Against Military Madness, Folder 8, SCPC. 202 Zoe Nicholie, “You Can’t Hug Your Child With Nuclear Arms!” WAMM Papers, CDGA Collective Box, Women Earth Feminist Peace Initiative though Women Against Military Madness, Folder 8, SCPC. 212 grew from a peace march initiated in August 1981 when thirty-six British women assembled at

Cardiff, Wales, and marched one hundred twenty miles to the U.S. Air Force Base at Greenham

Common, NATO’s proposed site for ninety-six cruise missiles. While Britain already housed

U.S. bombers and its own nuclear weapons, cruise missiles—“first strike” weapons—represented a new, destabilizing weapon in the Cold War arms race. Women who marched called for a public debate on this issue. Ignored, they decided to remain at the base, and by 1982, this continual encampment became the women-only Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp which lasted throughout the 1980s. For some British women, Wilkinson explained, the impetus for marching to the air base developed out of motherly concerns for their children’s futures but “they have moved to a broader understanding that includes a more global concern.”203 Within the narrative

Wilkinson gave, the protest of ordinary British mothers and women had matured from parochial, albeit important, beginnings based on mothers’ worries to a globally-oriented movement that considered implications of militarism across the planet. WAMM women, likewise, identified with such a plot progression, and anticipated their own organizational evolution. They wanted to change the world, and starting from motherhood was a humble but noble place to launch their protest.

Furthermore, WAMM leadership believed that women needed a variety of activities and a litany of issues to which they could become committed. WAMM diversified its program to permit an array of women to become engaged. Being a mother was not a prerequisite. Members could generate lectures, man information tables, write editorials, create new topical committees or door-to-door canvass. WAMM recognized that women were busy and needed avenues of activism that could easily fit into pinches of available time.204 Newsletters enumerated for

203 Ibid. 204 Kaia Sven, “Peace Tactics: An Action A Day,” Ms. Magazine, March, 1983, 21. 213 women a fury of different conferences, training sessions, fundraisers, rallies and meetings which varied in political punch. Some were religiously-oriented, others quite radically feminist. This activism targeted a range of problems such as defense spending, the feminization of poverty,

Third World women, the Middle East, Reagan’s Star Wars program, voter registration, tax resistance and South African apartheid.

WAMM was, like many in the women’s movement, plugged into international networks.

It sent representatives to the United Nations World Conference on Women in Nairobi, two

Soviet Union peace conferences, the Canadian at Halifax, the Canadian

International Peace Garden Festival and informal peace discussions in East Germany. Women from the Soviet Union, Spain, West Germany, Grenada and El Salvador also visited WAMM members in Minneapolis. Women maintained a separately funded legislative action committee expressly for lobbying state representatives.205 Along with many women’s groups in the U.S. and

Europe, WAMM was “going to peace,” refusing to be numb with nuclear fear, and it perceived itself as an integral part of a surge of anti-militarism across the planet.206

Conclusion

By the 1980s, many women united behind a common commitment to transform state policy to reflect values of conflict resolution, empathy and compassion. They believed that these ideals—which they projected as both maternal and feminist ones—would led to a better world defined by equity, democratic participation and international peace. Mothers in groups like

205 WAMM, “1985 WAMM Activities,” 1985, WAMM Papers, CDGA Collective Box, Women Earth Feminist Peace Initiative though Women Against Military Madness, Folder 8, SCPC. 206 Mary S. White and Dorothy Van Soest, “Empowerment of People for Peace,” WAMM Papers, CDGA Collective Box, Women Earth Feminist Peace Initiative though Women Against Military Madness, Folder 8, SCPC; WAMM, “A risky Midwest course,” January 1984, WAMM Papers, CDGA Collective Box, Women Earth Feminist Peace Initiative though Women Against Military Madness, Folder 8, SCPC; WAMM, “The Pacific Command,” February 1984, WAMM Papers, CDGA Collective Box, Women Earth Feminist Peace Initiative though Women Against Military Madness, Folder 8, SCPC. 214

WAND, AMP and WAMM represented an important thread within this women’s movement. As explicated in this chapter, these organizations offered many American women a way to embrace feminist principles of female empowerment through the initial impetus of maternal concern.

WPFS members, steered by Helen Caldicott, and women involved in AMP and WAMM legitimated parental and in particular maternal concern as a significant reason for involvement in the disarmament movement. Launching their organizations from the unassuming setting of their living rooms, mothers in these organizations radicalized the home as the site from which many

American women became involved in politics. They worked to disrupt negative associations surrounding emotions such as empathy, nurturance and conflict resolution by maintaining that a passionate, distressed response to the arms race was the appropriate one.

Leaders of WPFS, AMP and WAMM were adept activists in that they understood they could draw many American women into politics through the lens of “the concerned mother.”

These organizations tried to navigate their rhetoric away from biological determinism, often asserting that women’s biology did not give them a monopoly on compassion and peace activism. One major consequence of involvement in this movement for many members was a sense of personal empowerment. As women transitioned into astute public campaigners against the Cold War arms race, they were, in a sense, doing feminism without necessarily claiming to be feminists. Furthermore, as seen through the evolutions of groups like WPFS, AMP and

WAMM, mothers’ understandings of peace broadened by the late 20th century to grasp significant connections between military spending, environmental degradation and poverty at home and abroad, thus claiming “that ecological right” like WLOE and WPA similarly asserted.

From a bystander’s perspective, the women’s movement of the 1980s, informed by “that ecological right,” was impressive in its commitment to a diversity of women and their respective

215 campaigns to weed out a variety of injustices. Yet as the incident of the Mother’s Day coalition of 1981 heralded, organizations such as WLOE and WPA usually chose not to collaborate with mothers-based groups. Such actions revealed a divisive tendency within the women’s movement to bifurcate along the very lines of difference that they purported to endorse.207 These tensions suggest that as ambitious and impressive as the philosophy for “women and life on earth” was, its ideas did not map onto the movement as well as intended. That some chose to ignore how maternal activism appealed to and revolutionized many American women fundamentally contradicted the spirit of the Unity Statement and other movement artifacts produced by women for life on earth in the 1980s.

207 “The Mother’s Day Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament has not been easy as apple pie to digest,” WLOE Papers, Box 5 of 7, Folder WLOE Newsletter, SSC. 216

Chapter Four:

The Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, 1981-1985

***

Introduction: Women Leaving Home for Peace

In August 1981, thirty-six British women assembled at Cardiff, Wales, and marched one hundred twenty miles to the U.S. Air Force Base at Greenham Common, NATO’s proposed site for ninety-six cruise missiles. While Britain already housed U.S. bombers and its own nuclear weapons, cruise missiles—“first strike” weapons—represented to the British public a new, destabilizing weapon in the Cold War arms race. Women who marched called for a public debate on this issue. Ignored by the media and Minister of Defence John Nott, they decided to remain at the base, embarking on their indefatigable fight to raise public awareness of the missiles’ presence through continual encampment, near-constant blockading, fence cutting and trespassing. Known by 1982 as the women-only Greenham Common Women’s

Peace Camp, the camp proclaimed women would stay until the weapons were removed, and even when the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty dictated cruise removal in the late 1980s, participants remained until 2000. In December 1982, on the anniversary of NATO’s

1979 decision to deploy the missiles at Greenham, 30,000 women encircled the base. The following year, 40,000 came.1 Far from representing a fringe movement, the camp’s women, their actions, and philosophy “inspir[ed] other camps, other campaigns, and a fresh new style

1 Greenham Women’s Peace Camp, “Greenham Women Against Cruise Missiles,” handbook, Folder 10 “Subjects: Peace, Peace Encampments, Greenham Women Against Cruise Missiles 1982-87, n.d.,” Joan E. Biren Papers, Series V. Subject Files, Judaism (cont’d—Peace), Box 84, Sophia Smith Collection (hereafter SSC), Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts.

217 of nonviolent protest linking personal gender politics and global power politics.”2 Indeed, the women at Greenham informed a major, worldwide current of the women’s movement of the late 1970s and 1980s.

While at once a unique expression of British women, considering the presence of cruise and Pershing II missiles placed on their soil by NATO and the hawkish leadership of Prime

Minister Margaret Thatcher beginning in 1979, Greenham always operated as a space for any and all women interested in eradicating nuclear weapons. In its early years, from 1981 until

1985, participants, visitors and supporters mushroomed from a few dozen to tens of thousands in its first years. It boasted a class, national and political diversity that illustrated how broad- based women’s concerns for disarmament were, and especially among British women, how much they disliked their government’s role as a Cold War U.S. ally. Powerful for the women’s movement, the camp provided both a physical meeting point and sprawling networks to

2 Jill Liddington, The Road to Greenham Common: Feminism and Anti-Militarism in Britain since 1820 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1989, 1991), 1. More than other historians, Liddington contextualizes Greenham as a part of a longer trajectory of British women’s involvement in both feminism and anti-militarism. For other historical coverage, see Lawrence S. Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971-Present (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003): he considers Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp “the best-known disarmament venture” (133), and argues that the camp importantly raised questioned by separatist women-only peace activism and the use of civil disobedience (133-34). In Peace: A History of Movements and Ideas (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2008), David Cortright also calls the Greenham camp “[o]ne of the most significant antinuclear peace mobilizations of the 1980s” (147) and says it prompted the creation of camps at more than a dozen sites in Britain, Europe and New York (147-48). See also Josephine Eglin, “Women and peace: from the Suffragists to the Greenham women,” in Campaigns for peace: British peace movements in the twentieth century, ed. Richard Taylor and Nigel Young (Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1987), 221-259; Margaret L. La Ware, “Circling the Missiles and Staining Them Red: Feminist Rhetorical Invention and Strategies of Resistance at the Women’s Peace Camp at Greenham Common,” National Women’s Studies Association Journal 1, no. 3 (Fall 2004): 18-41. La Ware argues that the Greenham Camp is especially significant because it is an example of feminist protest in the 1980s, in which women used their physical bodies and symbolism to refuse and disrupt patriarchal notions of military vs. civilian space, private vs. public spheres and womanhood vs. manhood. Much of what has been written about Greenham Common women are memoirs by participants or observers. See, for instance, Caroline Blackwood, On the Perimeter (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1984); Alice Cook and Gwyn Kirk, eds., Greenham Women Everywhere: Dreams, Ideas and Actions from the Women’s Peace Movement (Boston: South End Press, 1983); David Fairhall, Common Ground: The Story of Greenham (London and New York: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd., 2006); Barbara Harford and Sarah Hopkins, Greenham Common: Women at the Wire (London: The Women’s Press, Ltd., 1984); Beth Junor, Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp: A History of Non-Violent Resistance, 1984-1985 (London: Working Press, 1995); Ann Pettitt, Walking to Greenham Common: How the Peace-camp began and the Cold War ended (South Glamorgan, Wales: Honno, 2006).

218 connect women across the western world in their ideas and direct actions for disarmament.

Women’s transnational activism, which existed before Greenham, received an inimitable boost from the camp’s powerful presence and reputation.

That Greenham was a protest by and for women mattered. Described by the Sunday

Times writer Bel Mooney as a “potent, even dominating force in the new peace movement,” camp protesters imbued their relentless civil disobedience with gendered messages and playful, subversive meaning.3 Echoing others in the women’s movement, those at Greenham argued that there was a fundamental difference in perspective for the majority of men and women when it came to war, and that women’s inclination to be emotional and sensitive set them apart from “male values of mechanistic logic and aggression.”4 While still maintaining their own separatism from men—men were asked to leave the camp in February 1982—Greenham women wanted to disrupt the idea that the man belonged in the public sphere of politics and the woman at home. By “leaving home for peace,” as women routinely stated, they turned the area around the base into their home, hoping to show the British public “that private nightmares, private fears do indeed have a role in public discourse.”5 Campers insisted that values of nurturance, nonviolence and emotion belonged next to a military base, and mimicking the militant of the early 20th century, Greenham women sought to use civil disobedience to convey that women were not passive.

Beyond being a crucial political tactic and creative outlet, nonviolent civil disobedience

3 Bel Mooney, “Pax Britannia?” (London, England), April 10, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box15, Women’s Library (hereafter WL), London School of Economics, London, England. 4 Ibid. See also Jean Stead, “Why the feminist camp must take the reins,” (London, England), April 25, 1984, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/2), Box16, WL. 5 “The Greenham Factor,” Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, Box 3 of 26, Folder 10a Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp 1984, 1989, SSC; Gwyn Kirk, “Our Greenham Common: Feminism and Nonviolence,” in Rocking the Ship of State: Toward a Feminist Peace Politics, eds. Adrienne Harris and Ynestra King (Boulder, and London: Westview Press, 1989), 29.

219 served to unite women. Yet importantly, it also managed to distance women, again illustrating the unattainable balance between premeditation and spontaneity, consensus and individualism within the movement. Furthermore, while it began with an insular anti-cruise message, by the mid-1980s, the camp transitioned to a space for and by women and their alternative values. In this transformation, activating a feminist philosophy that identified connections between a variety of causes and campaigns became important and subsumed the issue of nuclear weaponry. Many Greenham women, then, also claimed “that ecological right,” as the Women’s

Pentagon Action (WPA) Unity Statement expressed, and listed as theirs “almost every known cause—Namibia, food mountains, prison conditions, racism, South Africa, sexism, inner cities, the Third World and much more.”6

Yet through this transformation, Greenham slowly became less inclusive. Just as civil disobedience failed to be agreeable to all women, the camp-turned-feminist-community did not satisfy all participants, again revealing the inherent problem with a philosophy that speaks for all women but also claims each woman must be heard. For some, the transition to a feminist space was a powerful and welcome one. For many others, though, Greenham read as utopian, lacking a concrete political program and inviting only to the most radical women willing to leave everything and everybody behind. “Four years on the political climate has changed,” Guardian writer commented in 1985. “The cruise has come and the world is still with us …

Arms control is back on the agenda. Famine rather than peace is the cause of the year … The bandwagon has moved on but the Greenham women are left behind in the rain.”7 Toynbee noted

6 Polly Toynbee, “Behind the Lines,” The Guardian, December 9, 1985, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/3), Box17, WL; see also Leonie Purchas, “Coming off the fence,” September 2000, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/5), Box19, WL. Purchas likewise argues that the camp lost its anti-nuclear focus as several of its original founders and became occupied with broader women’s issues. 7 Ibid.

220 of the camp’s next action—dubbed “Widening the Web”—which ironically did not entail widening the number of women at Greenham; protesters knew that by 1985 they could not command the impressive number of participants they used to, “but they say they don’t mind.”8

This was the ironic twist to Greenham and a quandary shared by others in the movement.

Its initial focus on the cruise served it well because it provided a tangible nucleus and goal that literally united tens of thousands of women across the world. But by the mid-1980s when it had become a space for a small core of women to live out a feminist, minimalist lifestyle, attracting more women to the camp was not their priority. So, even as they wished to be inclusive and inviting, their actions belied such intentions. “Being there and believing has become an end, a success in itself … The longer they sit, the more they weave for themselves a web of impossible goals,” Toynbee concluded.9

“Interesting things can happen when women get together”: The Origins of Greenham

Common

The series of women’s conferences throughout Western Europe, Britain and America, beginning in 1975 with the women’s workshop on feminism and militarism at the War

Resisters’ International (WRI) triennial in Holland, sowed the seeds for the Women’s Peace

Camp at Greenham Common. These gatherings reactivated and reconsidered linkages between women and violence. The reemergence of feminism in the ‘60s and ‘70s had galvanized many to challenge both legal discrimination and cultural assumptions about women, and one of their major projects was a wholescale redefinition of violence, pushing the focus beyond militarism to include the personal experience of men’s sexual and domestic violence. This grounding of

8 Ibid. 9 Ibid.

221 violence in gender difference evolved throughout the 1970s and culminated by the 1980s in the viewpoint taken up by many women that personal episodes of male-on-female violence related to state militarism, violence and ecological destruction. Claiming “that ecological right,” women in Britain, Western Europe and America linked a litany of oppressions and recalibrated feminism to include issues of peace, nonviolence and environmentalism.10 Beyond this, the more specific political context of Britain in the late 20th century incubated the origins of

Greenham. In addition to women’s liberation in the 1960s and 1970s, the anti-nuclear movement, the New Left students’ movement, the Gay Liberation Front, environmentalism and the anarchist squatters’ movement in London “offered a major challenge to the military- industrial complexes of Western capitalist ,” and using spectacular disruptions and nonviolent direct action, pioneered radical, confrontational politics out of which Greenham emerged.11

In May 1979, the Conservative Party election victory of Margaret Thatcher challenged these leftist impulses. Calling for a return to older values, the reduction of power and severely reduced public expenditures, she attacked what she termed “the progressive

10 Liddington, The Road to Greenham Common, 1-194; 197-220; Sasha Roseneil, Disarming Patriarchy: Feminism and Political Action at Greenham (Buckingham, UK and Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1995), 1-29; Fiona Stevens, “Peace campers attacked by ‘keepers of the peace,’” The Leveller (London, England), May 28-June 10, 1982, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL. Both Liddington and Roseneil cite Greenham’s historical grounding in women’s peace and feminist activism in Britain (with influences from Western Europe and America) since the early 19th century. Roseneil argues that “there is a considerable history of opposition to militarism in which women qua women have drawn attention to the gendered social and cultural practices which sustain armed forces, defence establishments, and the activity of war” (4). As Liddington and Roseneil explain, women have protested war from the platforms of motherhood and female difference to male aggression; women have also utilized a materialist perspective in which they saw militarism contributing to feminization of poverty and male-on-female violence. They also stress that women’s mass entry into labor market since postwar era and the opening up of state benefits to women were vital conditions for emergence of Greenham as they allowed for the financial and economic opportunity for many to go to the camp. 11 Roseneil, Disarming Patriarchy, 20; see also Sasha Roseneil, Common Women, Uncommon Practices: The Queer Feminisms of Greenham (London and New York: Cassell, 2000), 27-30.

222 consensus” as well as Keynesian economics and 1960s social policies.12 Furthermore, championing a Western nuclear buildup, she convinced many women across Britain that nuclear war was a possibility when she argued that “a nuclear weapon-free world … was neither attainable nor even desirable.”13 As a Cold War ally with the U.S. and a founding member of NATO, Britain had participated in the arms race. It spent the 1970s, even under

Social Democrat Prime Minister James Callaghan, testing, upgrading and increasing its nuclear arsenals in case of a Warsaw Pact conventional attack on Western Europe.14 In general in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s Western leaders experienced depreciating interest in disarmament as the Soviet military invasion of Afghanistan shocked many and realigned them to a more pro- military stance. Efforts to secure a Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban dwindled as both U.S. officials and Thatcher and her Ministry of Defence looked to Afghanistan as a chilling example of Soviet aggression. In the early months of 1981, treaty talks stalled, with no date scheduled for resumption.15

Contributing to this anxious time in the Cold War, on December 12th, 1979, NATO announced its plans for the installment of U.S. cruise and Pershing II missiles in Britain and

Europe. Highly accurate, cruise missiles had the capacity to destroy fifteen towns the size of

Hiroshima. Housed in giant silos, the missiles and their warheads—in times of grave international tensions—would be loaded onto trucks and taken to the countryside to be safely able to destroy pre-programmed targets. Beginning in the fall of 1983, the plan stipulated that the U.S. government would place 464 cruise and 108 Pershing II missiles at strategic locations

12 Paul Addison, No Turning Back: The Peacetime of Post-War Britain (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 259-314; Jeremy Black, The Making of Modern Britain: The Age of Empire to the New Millennium (Phoenix Mill, England: Sutton Publishing Limited, 2001), 233-243. 13 Quoted in Lawrence S. Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the Present (Stanford: Stanford University Press 2003), 97. 14 Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition, 3-4, 42. 15 Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition, 97-106.

223 in Great Britain, Italy, Holland, Belgium and Germany. NATO also stipulated that alongside such an aggressive move it would begin negotiations with the Soviet Union for the reduction or elimination of all nuclear missiles on the continent. It was an uneasy compromise between grassroots support for disarmament and anxiety over the recent Soviet installation of SS-20 missiles.16

Peace and disarmament groups blossomed in northern Europe and Britain in reaction to such hawkishness. Mass demonstrations materialized against cruise and Pershing II missiles and the British government’s Trident submarine-launched nuclear missiles. Polls demonstrated majorities in Britain, Holland, Norway and West Germany cited nuclear weapons as one of their greatest concerns. Surveys likewise indicated a profound rise in fears of nuclear war.

Between 1977 and 1980, the percentage of British that feared the possibility of a nuclear conflagration rose from thirteen to thirty-nine percent. Membership in Britain’s oldest anti- nuclear organization, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), which had experienced a contraction in membership in the 1970s, surged from 9,000 in 1980 to over 100,000 by 1985.

Newer groups flourished as well. Many organized through religious and church affiliations and along professional lines like Teachers for Peace, Clergy Against Nuclear Arms, Journalists

Against Nuclear Extermination and Scientists Against Nuclear Arms. The majority of trade unions chose to formally align with CND’s disarmament stance, and major political parties like the Labour, Liberal Party and Social Democrat Parties favored a de-escalation of the nuclear

16 Ibid., 99-102; Cook and Kirk, Greenham Women Everywhere, 7-9; Jean Stead, “Greenham Common: 25 Years On,” September 2006, Jayne and Juliet Nelson Papers (Ref Np. 7JAN), Box 1, WL. Some governments in which the missiles were to be stationed made formal reservations: while the British government led by the Labour Party under James Callaghan agreed to NATO’s decision and made it a “security matter” not open to parliamentary debate, the Dutch government shelved its decision on accepting them until the end of 1981, and the Belgian government followed suite.

224 arms race.17

Such developments were frightening enough that four ordinary British women—Ann

Pettitt, Karmen Cutler, Lynne Whittemore and Liney Seward—also decided to take a stand.

Raised in Lancashire in the immediate aftermath of World War II, Pettitt came from left- leaning parents, both of whom taught their daughter “that people could change things . . . that if people didn’t bother to stop bad things happening, they were nearly as responsible as the active perpetrators.”18 She attended Bristol University for English in the late 1960s, years “not especially conducive to sitting in a library quietly making notes on plot construction in Henry

James’ novels,” and moved to London thereafter to train as a teacher.19 Part of “the semi- communal world of ,” Pettitt soon tired of this experimental and male-dominated lifestyle. She later recollected, “Since I had been a Stalinist at ten, a Trotskyist at fourteen and an anarchist at sixteen, by the time I was twenty I had literally heard it all before and I was already allergic to ists and isms of every variety, including even feminism.” She then moved to

Wales with her partner Barry in 1978 for a simpler life. At the same time, she “was thinking all the time about nuclear war.” With two small sons, she realized she felt “inescapably vulnerable.”20 She explained, “I, like most Seventies feminists, used to disbelieve utterly the notion of maternal instinct,” but later she reassessed, “[t]hat if any harm came to my children, then I would feel anguish even greater than that I would feel over the death of my parents.”21

As one of the future founders of the peace camp, Pettitt’s background—her leftist leanings, her

17 Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition, 130-136; Cook and Kirk, Greenham Women Everywhere, 7-11; Connie Mansueto, “peace camp at Greenham Common,” off our backs, February 1983, 2-3; Liddington, The Road to Greenham Common, 197. The Labour Party passed anti-nuclear resolutions in 1981 and by the following year adopted a unilateralist resolution through a two-thirds majority. The Liberal Party and Social Democratic Party also condemned the escalation of the nuclear arms race and rallied behind multilateral nuclear disarmament. 18 Pettitt, Walking to Greenham Common,16. 19 Ibid., 19. 20 Ibid., 25. 21 Ibid., 25-26; Liddington, The Road to Greenham Common, 222-223.

225 education, her experience in the London squatters’ movement, her interest in back-to-the-land living and her profound nuclear fears—represented common characteristics among many women at Greenham.

In the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, Pettitt began to notice mounting news coverage of nuclear power and weapons, and with local townspeople from Carmarthen, she began to run the

Carmarthen Anti-Nuclear Campaign (CANC). This activism against nuclear waste and energy soon drained her though because of “the way [fellow activists] seemed to be creating a re-run of the CND campaigns of the Sixties.”22 “We stuck to the same script, the usual suspects doing the usual thing in greater or lesser numbers,” Pettitt explained, “We were another item of conventional furnishing in the political room—what was the point of your local town declaring itself a ‘nuclear-free zone’ when what we were facing was the possibility of a nuclear war

‘limited’ to Europe?”23 Her disappointment with mainstream peace activism characterized many other women who came to Greenham as well.

What did inspire Pettitt was a magazine cover in the spring of 1981. On ,

Pettitt noticed a group of women walking from Copenhagen to Paris to protest the threat of nuclear war. She felt terribly excited, and she quickly knew that she wanted a large group of women to walk to (RAF) Greenham Common near Newbury, England, the first of many sites on which NATO would place ninety-six of its cruise missiles. Pettitt, through her partner and the local CND, met Karmen Cutler in May 1981, and shortly afterwards Lynne

Whittemore and Liney Seward as well. The four women, three with below-school-age children,

22 Pettitt, Walking to Greenham Common, 26. In Britain, from the late 1950s until the mid-1960s, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) was “Britain’s largest and most dynamic mass movement” that had yearly marches, along with the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War, to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston in early “ban the bomb” efforts. At their zenith, these marches drew over 100,000 people. See Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition, 8; Wittner, Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), 59-60, 111. 23 Pettitt, Walking to Greenham Common, 26; see also Fairhall, Common Ground, 9. Fairhall comments that many of the original marchers had tried and grown impatient with CND.

226 agreed to map out a women’s one-hundred-ten-mile walk from south Wales to Greenham

Common. The date was set for two weeks in August, which at that point was only three weeks away. Stumbling upon the name “Women for Life on Earth” when repeatedly asked what they called themselves, they derived their sense of purpose from the urgency they felt as mothers and citizens. Between the four of them, they realized, “We were better informed on the subject [of nuclear weapons] than was the Secretary of State for defense and most of his staff of civil servants.”24

Nor were they alone. In the opposition to the NATO missiles, women proved to be one of the largest, most vocal sectors of protest in Britain and across Western Europe. One Gallup poll in January 1983 identified that the vast majority of British women opposed Trident nuclear submarines and cruise missiles, compelling many to organize out of “total horror and panic,” as one described.25 “I have dreamt many times of the first few moments after a nuclear explosion,” a woman named Carol wrote, and another expressed, “There is no waking up from this nightmare.”26 Mobilized, one woman explained, “I had a feeling that many women felt as I did, however, and finally put an advertisement in Spare Rib, asking women to contact me if they had had dreams about nuclear war. All through that summer in 1980, I received letter after letter from women talking about their own bad dreams.”27

Pettitt and her fellow organizers tapped into these private nightmares. They began to meet in each other’s kitchens, bringing their children in tow. All had some anti-nuclear activism and experience in the squatting movement under their belts, which imbued them with some

24 Ibid., 39; Liddington, The Road to Greenham Common, 224-225. 25 Cook and Kirk, Greenham Women Everywhere, 15, 19. 26 Ibid., 17, 21. 27 Ibid., 13.

227 knowledge of direct action activism.28 They wanted the march to be women-only but they feared that would be too alienating. After much deliberation, it was decided the march would be women-led but would permit men to join given they acknowledge women as the leaders. Women would hold the meetings during the walk while the men would watch the children.

Their first goal was to “gatecrash the closed world of the media debate on defence issues,” and they hoped their march would prompt people to question why their government permitted NATO to place cruise missiles on British soil.29 For the march, Pettitt and the others made a banner, painting an earth and a tree on an old, dyed-pink sheet. Their crude publicity leaflet posed a question on the front—“Why are women walking 120 miles across Britain, from a nuclear weapons factory to a base for cruise missiles?”—and the back of the paper, next to a photograph of a deformed infant in the aftermath of the Hiroshima bomb, read, “This is why.

Stopping nuclear weapons starts with you.” Such a heart-wrenching appeal along with notices in

CND newsletters, small mentions in women’s magazines and simply word of mouth spread news of Women and Life on Earth. The four organizers made sure to contact CND chapters, feminist groups, churches and sympathetic hosts in each town and city along their route in order to provide sleeping arrangements. They planned lunches and nightly entertainment and hired vans to carry their luggage.30

Everything was set, and on the warm summer evening of August 26th, 1981, thirty-six women, four men and three children assembled in the Quaker meeting house in Cardiff, Wales.

Pettitt later remembered the diverse group of women there: “There were nurses, a midwife, a probation officer, social workers, students, young girls, single mothers, married mothers, grandmothers, women with a history of political activism and feminism and women—the

28 Ibid., 38-39. 29 Ibid., 42. 30 Ibid., 43-50; Liddington, The Road to Greenham, 225-229.

228 majority—for whom this was their first protest of any kind.”31 One woman commented,

“[I]nteresting things can happen when women get together.”32 The few men on the march walked behind the women, and to some, their presence was already an issue.33

The next morning, they set off from City Hall in Cardiff and marched twelve miles to

Newport wearing scarves in the suffragette colors of purple and green on white. After Newport, it was on to Bristol, Bath, and Melksham. Many smaller towns boasted small but enthusiastic parties to greet the marchers. Bristol proved to be a low point as few showed to welcome the walkers. Walking in the middle of the road, miles and miles each day, they inspected their feet regularly for blisters and chanted often as they entered a village or town, “Take the toys from the boys!” and “No !” They made a point of insisting, if anyone asked, that they had no leader, a point of order they sustained at the future peace camp. A relay of police cars escorted them, switching out at different county boundaries and sympathetically working with the women to decide routes through different towns. 34

Much to their chagrin, local and national media failed to run a story on the .

This media blackout prompted them to consider other ways to earn the public’s attention. Pettitt and other organizers decided that the walk should conclude with some women chaining themselves to the fence at Greenham Common. Despite the fact that all the participants had lives to return to, they resorted to this civil disobedience, “a kind of hostage situation,” Pettitt formulated, “with your body as the hostage. The authorities, you hope, will feel forced to notice you and react.”35 This decision, which all four organizers agreed upon, necessitated the first instance of consensus decision-making for Women and Life on Earth. Some women worried the

31 Pettitt, Walking to Greenham Common, 50 32 Ibid.; Liddington, The Road to Greenham, 228-229. 33 Fairhall, Common Ground, 6. 34 Pettitt, Walking to Greenham Common, 48-70; Liddington, The Road to Greenham, 228-230. 35 Pettitt, Walking to Greenham Common, 61.

229 civil disobedience would cast them as fools or invite police brutality. Some simply did not want to risk arrest, especially given many were mothers or had jobs on the line. Others wondered if they had already made enough of a statement with the march. The group had several meetings, yet most objections dissipated when, one day on the march, one elderly woman chimed in,

“What are we here for? What’s worse than a nuclear war? I’ll do it!” Statements such as “I agree with Eunice….” and “She’s right” soon followed, and all but two agreed that they would support four women—Seward, Whittemore, midwife and mother Helen John and Eunice Stallard, the white-haired instigator—who would actually chain themselves to the fence.36 They also decided that upon arrival at Greenham they would call for a televised, public debate between their representatives and the Secretary of State for Defence John Nott. Discreetly, they purchased several yards of chain, and made their way to Newbury, the town a mile and a half from the airbase at Greenham Common, by September 5th.37

By 7:30am, the four women, dropped off outside the main gate, chained themselves to the fence and Cutler who accompanied them read their statement, “This is an open letter from the

Women’s Peace March to the Base Commandant, US Air Force, Greenham Common, Berkshire

…We represent thousands of ordinary people who are opposed to these weapons and we will use all our resources to prevent the siting of these missiles here.”38 The sole police officer there mistook the women for cleaners until he saw their chains. The rest of the marchers arrived, and other women joined soon, including supporters from London, Newbury and Oxford and protesters from Reading who dressed in all black and began to keen, an old feminine tradition of loudly weeping to express grief. Women eventually chained themselves to the fence on the left-

36 Ibid., 56-66. 37 Ibid., 62-72; Liddington, The Road to Greenham, 230-231. 38 Pettitt, Walking to Greenham Common, 73-76; Liddington, The Road to Greenham, 232.

230 side of the main gate which did not impede access to the base.39 They took turns in the civil disobedience. One read another letter, demanding the televised debate and addressing their request to John Nott. A few reporters interviewed them, but in general, the Ministry spokesman announced the women could stay as long as they liked. They were on common ground and thus not the Ministry’s problem. The marchers had not made as big a splash as they wanted, nor did they achieve the televised debate they had requested.40 So, through more consensus decision- making, they decided to remain, initiating “a decade-long protest the like of which Britain had not seen since the suffragettes fought for the vote in the early years of the century.”41

“We aren’t going away. We’ll be there for as long as it takes”: the Early Years of Greenham

After some decided to dig in their heels and build a more permanent encampment, marchers and newcomers invested in supplies—purchasing or obtaining from home and supporters old clothes, tents, sleeping bags, firewood, food reserves, and PortaKabins—and other tasks like setting up postal service at the camp. Benders, pieces of polythene stretched over saplings and weighted down with stones for waterproofing, served as shelters for women.

Makeshift homes gradually emerged as camp fires encircled by stones became living rooms, and tables surrounded by pots and pans, hung up on nails on wooden boards, comprised kitchens.

Granite stones packed into the mud made areas dry enough for sitting and walking. “Shit pits” became restrooms, and bracken ferns created a floor for sleeping. Women often found themselves completely occupied with the endless chores of preparing food, cooking, cleaning

39 Women in the movement also keened at the Women’s Pentagon Action demonstrations and at other nonviolent direct actions during the late 1970s and 1980s as a way to express their profound grief over the state of the world— one in which war and violence was common. Like other aspects to their movement, their reliance on keening suggested their interest in female-only traditions and values, and that they chose to keen—conjuring up images of grieving mothers—played a role in their project of essentializing women and the values they believed all women held. 40 Pettitt, Walking to Greenham Common, 70-78, 131-135; Liddington, The Road to Greenham, 232-233. 41 Fairhall, Common Ground, 8.

231 and washing. Nonetheless, try as they might, one visitor and future Greenham participant,

Ginette Leach, aptly commented, “Everything was damp, some things soaking, but this was just accepted by the women as part of their lives.”42 Indeed, such stark conditions did not seem to faze the women who maintained an attitude “that nothing was impossible” in their “organised chaos.”43 Leach first went to Greenham in the fall of 1982 and eventually became an integral member at its Orange Gate. Born in 1933 in West Sussex, she transitioned from a conservative upbringing to leftist politics by adulthood, later getting involved in 1950s’ CND and

Aldermaston marches. During her time at Greenham, she maintained a detailed diary, capturing the mundane drudgery of it alongside the drama of civil disobedience and arrest.44

Pettitt and many others remained skeptical that staying was the best course. But, as winter approached with its rain and “acres of mud,” women were encouraged by a steady onslaught of telegrams and letters: “letters of support from all over the country and some also from Europe

[that] applauded our stand and told us we had to stay there. They talked about the war—World

War II, and some also about World War I … Waves of emotion poured from the hand-written pages—of anger, disgust and despair at the blind stupidity of our governments.”45 Anti-nuclear, peace and feminist groups expressed their support, and news of the camp’s existence “criss- crossed southern England on the slender tendrils of CND, peace movement and feminist grapevines.”46 While Greenham profited from these organizational webs, the camp itself proved particularly advantageous for women’s peace groups who had previously been isolated from one another. Women’s Peace Alliance materialized as a kind of umbrella organization that

42 Ginette Leach, “Greenham Common Peace Camp,” November 1982, Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL. 43 Ibid. 44 Ginette Leach, “Ginette Leach (Neé Bell Syer),” March 2012, Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/04), WL. 45 Pettitt, Walking to Greenham Common, 140; Jean Stead, “Greenham Common: 25 Years On,” September 2006, Jayne and Juliet Nelson Papers (Ref Np. 7JAN), Box 1, WL. 46 Liddington, The Road to Greenham, 233.

232 encouraged contact between the Greenham camp and numerous other activists.47 Still lacking mainstream news coverage, the camp relied on sympathetic small magazines and word of mouth to gain exposure. By early winter though, after Pettitt addressed a 250,000-strong CND rally in

Hyde Park and when Joan Ruddock, a vocal advocate of Greenham, became CND’s chair, the camp benefitted from increased publicity.48

Outside of USAF Greenham Common, the camp was near the town of Newbury, sixty miles west of London. The base, contained within a nine-mile fence, was a long narrow stretch of land on which USAF headquarters sat along with an airfield, runway, underground bunkers and cruise missile silos.49 After requisitioning the land in 1941 for an air force base, the Ministry of Defence (MOD) officially purchased Greenham Common in 1951 and leased it to the U.S. by the late 1960s.50 MOD police formed the outer layer of security, augmented by local Newbury police. British soldiers also often confronted campers through the perimeter wire. Strict instruction prohibited American troops from interacting with Greenham women.51

Early on, women discovered there were seven road entrances into the base. These gates became the mini-neighborhoods of Greenham. All were named after colors of the rainbow— yellow, green, red, indigo, woad, blue, violet and turquoise—and each grew to have a distinct atmosphere and reputation. The original Main Gate off of the A339 road became Yellow Gate, the first established and the last to close. Green Gate, hidden in the woods, attracted many

47 “Leaderless peace movement keeps law at arm’s length,” The Guardian, March 31, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box15, WL; Liddington, The Road to Greenham, 216-217, 235. 48 Liddington, The Road to Greenham, 231-235; Fairhall, Common Ground, 26. 49 Jean Stead, “Greenham Common: 25 Years On,” September 2006, Jayne and Juliet Nelson Papers (Ref Np. 7JAN), Box 1, WL; Fairhall, Common Ground, 44. 50 Steve Murphy, “Protests remain active after a 20-year battle,” NWN2, June 28, 2001, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/5), Box19, WL; “The Greenham Factor,” Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, Box 3 of 26, Folder 10a Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp 1984, 1989, SSC; Harford and Hopkins, eds. Greenham Common, 7. 51 Fairhall, Common Ground, 54; Jean Stead, “Ring of resolve to stop cruise,” The Guardian, December 10, 1982, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL.

233 lesbian women and those interested in spirituality and mysticism. Orange Gate conversely consisted mainly of older women, mothers with children and Quaker and CND activists who brought to their gate a maternal comfort. Younger women, many of them lesbians and many sporting blue and a punk look, occupied Blue Gate, closest to Newbury.52 Indigo Gate, “the most inhospitable of the gates—a narrow strip of sloping verge between fence and tarmac,” forced women “up against the wire like that” into more sustained and at time genuine communication with soldiers than at other gates.53 Turquoise Gate was notoriously vegan, and the women at Violet more conventionally feminine.54

Indicative of the fact that the gates fostered these different personas, Greenham initially and for its first several years consisted of a genuine diversity of women.55 Mothers came alongside radical feminists and lesbians. Grandmothers joined sixteen-year-olds. “I will be 84 years of age this spring, and I wish to go to Greenham Common for my birthday,” wrote one elderly woman who expressed the wishes of others “who are capable and wishful of using their remaining few years in something more active than cosy ‘Over 60s’ clubs.”56 The impetus was fear as well as disillusionment with groups like CND and the Labour Party. Many, though not all, had prior experience in feminism, environmentalism, student politics, the anti-apartheid struggle, trade unions and other leftist politics, and through personal contacts, word of Greenham spread and attracted newcomers. It was especially difficult for mothers to leave behind families,

52 Pettitt, Walking to Greenham Common, 144-145; Map of Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, Jill Truman Papers, Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp Papers (7JTR/1), Box 1, WL; Fairhall, Common Ground, 45-46; Christina Welch, “The Spirituality of, and at, Greenham Common Peace Camp,” Feminist 18, no. 2 (January 2010): 232-233. 53 Jill Truman, “Night Watch at Greenham Common,” November 1984, Jill Truman Papers, Writings about Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, News from Greenham (7JTR/2/1), Box 1, WL. 54 Welch, “The Spirituality of, and at, Greenham Common Peace Camp,” 232-233; Map of Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, Jill Truman Papers, Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp Papers (7JTR/1), Box 1, WL. 55 See Roseneil, Common Women, 48-67. 56 Kathleen Nightingale, “Pensioners’ Visit to Greenham Common,” May 20, 1984, Greenham Common Collection, Pamphlets (5GCC/B), WL.

234 but as camp member, Simone Wilkinson, explained after leaving her husband and two children,

“There seemed no point in in doing anything at all if the children were not going to have any future.”57 Greenham boasted a minority of permanent dwellers—“the campers,” many of which were lesbians—alongside more short-term “stayers” and “visitors” who came for a weekend or particular action. The hope was always that such disparate time commitments should not amount to a hierarchy among the women as many at Greenham were intent on building an egalitarian community. But this point “was never settled” and “became one of the many small, cumulative issues contributing to a bitter division within the Greenham community in later years.”58

Furthermore, some of the most involved were well-educated and middle-class, another point on which future problems hinged.59

Media and local townspeople and authorities perceived Greenham as “a hotbed of feminism,” yet throughout its early years the feminism of Greenham was never heavy-handed.60

In contrast to the women’s movement in America, the equivalent groundswell of women’s activism in Britain was initially much less focused on building a broad-based feminism. Until the mid-1980s, even as some women connected nuclear weapons to larger issues of global power relations and violence, Greenham operated as a more insular statement against cruise missiles.

As much as Greenham was a crucial space in the transnational women’s movement, the fact that it was first and foremost a protest launched and sustained by British and European women mattered. Not only did it count that the cruise missiles had been deployed to Britain and Europe,

57 Jean Stead, “Ring of resolve to stop cruise,” The Guardian, December 10, 1982, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL. 58 Fairhall, Common Ground, 47, 46; Jill Truman, “The Women’s Peace Camp at Greenham,” March 24, 1984, Jill Truman Papers, Writings about Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, News from Greenham (7JTR/2/1), Box 1, WL. 59 Roseneil, Disarming Patriarchy, 30-59. 60 Elizabeth Dworan, “cruise missiles may violate international law: greenham women sue u.s.” off our backs, December 1983, 1, 20, Joan Biren Papers, Series V. Subject Files, Judasism (cont’d)-Peace, Box 84, Folder 10 Subjects: Peace, Peace Encampments, Greenham Women Against Cruise Missiles 1982-87, n.d, SSC.

235 giving rise to the fears that a U.S.-Soviet war would take place on British and European soil, but memories and references to World War II and foreign occupation fostered a distinctly anti-

American attitude among many Greenham protesters.61

“I know how it feels now to live in an occupied country,” stated camp member Jill

Truman, revealing that the presence of the U.S. military and its weaponry amounted, in her mind, to a foreign occupation of Britain. Another participant, Hazel Whiskerd, explained, “It was terrible to feel like you lived in an occupied country. When the American soldiers drove past us they would jeer and shout ‘Go home’. We felt impotent.”62 One German woman visited

Greenham and instantly suffered flashbacks to World War II as the base fence grimly reminded her of concentration camps and the family she lost in the Holocaust.63 Many Greenham women shared the feeling of one older woman whose sign read, “We lived through two world wars.

We’re here, determined they’ll never be a third.”64 On Halloween of 1983, women hung written statements across the coils of barbed wire. One read, “This fence is our Berlin Wall. We can only begin to tackle the concrete and barbed wire that divides our world when we start with that on

61 For more on anti-Americanism in postwar Europe and Britain, see Alexander Stephen, ed., The Americanization of Europe: Culture, Diplomacy, and Anti-Americanism after 1945 (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2006) and specifically Hugh Wilford, “Britain: in Between,” 23-43. Wilford argues that since the end of World War II, America’s governmental and cultural interventions in Europe and Britain increased dramatically, most apparent in the ubiquity of mass-produced U.S. cultural imports that many—both conservatives and more left-leaning working- class and socialist Britons—feared were swamping British culture. In his introduction, Alexander Stephen likewise explains anti-Americanism emerged throughout Britain and Europe among the right and left during the Cold War, much of the European left being critical of America as the stronghold of capitalism and imperialism. 62 Jill Truman, “Night Watch at Greenham Common,” November 1984, Jill Truman Papers, Writings about Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, News from Greenham (7JTR/2/1), Box 1, WL; Alexandra Topping, “Greenham Common Revisited,” The Guardian, September 9, 2006, Jayne and Juliet Nelson Papers (Ref Np. 7JAN), Box 1, WL. See also “The Greenham Factor,” Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, Box 3 of 26, Folder 10a Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp 1984, 1989, SSC. Many Greenham women stated they did not want another World War II or Holocaust; others felt like England was an occupied country. 63 Fairhall, Common Ground, 108. 64 “The Greenham Factor,” Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, Box 3 of 26, Folder 10a Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp 1984, 1989, SSC.

236 our doorstep.”65 While the camp’s presence in the Conservative town of Newbury increasingly served as a sticking point between protesters and residents, the base’s presence and operation was the one point on which Greenham women and many Newbury locals could see eye to eye. In

1983, polls showed sixty percent of the British opposed cruise missile deployment, and an overwhelming ninety-four percent registered the sense that the U.S. had sole control over missiles despite that NATO regulated the cruise. It was the worrisome realization among British that America had over one hundred military bases and 27,000 military personnel on their island.66 Active Greenham member Helen John epitomized this concern as she stated of the missiles, “If they’re sited here, the British government won’t have any control over them, the

Americans will control them and, I think, use them.”67

Furthermore, Greenham’s diversity of women in its initial years meant that no one viewpoint or ideology came to dominate then. “Greenham was never intended as a specifically feminist action," Leila Finn wrote to off our backs, "The importance of Greenham has been its definition as a place where women can plan and participate in political action and act on their concerns about the very real nuclear threat.”68 Indeed, some participants had more faith in conventional political parties and channels, but common to all Greenham women, one reporter

65 Quoted in Fairhall, Common Ground, 59; Aileen Ballantyne and Jean Stead, “Police arrest 187 as Greenham women pull down fences,” The Guardian, October 21, 1983, Joan Biren Papers, Series V. Subject Files, Judasism (cont’d)-Peace, Box 84, Folder 10 Subjects: Peace, Peace Encampments, Greenham Women Against Cruise Missiles 1982-87, n.d, SSC. 66 Center for Constitutional Rights, “Greenham Women Against Cruise Missiles,” Joan Biren Papers, Series V. Subject Files, Judasism (cont’d)-Peace, Box 84, Folder 10 Subjects: Peace, Peace Encampments, Greenham Women Against Cruise Missiles 1982-87, n.d, SSC. 67 “Peace movement after Greenham,” Morning Star (London, England), January 26, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box15, WL. 68 Leila Finn, “women’s peace camps, here and abroad,” off our backs, December 1984, 31. Finn was specifically responding to an argument in the article “‘make love not war.’ vs. ‘make war not love’” in the July 1984 edition of oob in which the author claimed Greenham attracted only feminists, experienced political activists and women who appreciated female-only groups.

237 described, “Their politics are frankly emotional; they just do not want the world to blow up.”69

Indeed, they sought to demonstrate and convince the world of the validity of values such as nurturance, nonviolence and empathy.

The oft-used slogan “Greenham women are everywhere” embodied that any woman who visited, sent resources or merely supported the camp counted as “a Greenham woman.” Campers consistently noted how major direct actions attracted women from Great Britain, European nations like West Germany, Ireland, Italy, Holland, , the Scandinavian countries and

Spain, as well as the U.S., Canada, South Africa and even far-flung New Zealand. Other peace camps based in Britain, Western Europe and America sent women to Greenham, and many contacted Greenham to share resources, advertise each other’s events and provide moral support in the fight for disarmament.70 Greenham women visited women in Northern Ireland, Sicily, the

U.S., Hungary and even the Soviet Union.71 Campers often used imagery, like a spider web, to

69 Joan Smith, “The Greenham women,” The Sunday Times, December 19, 1982, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box15, WL. 70 “The Greenham Factor,” Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, Box 3 of 26, Folder 10a Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp 1984, 1989, SSC; Ann Snitow, “Holding the Line at Greenham,” , February-March 1985, 30, 32, Joan Biren Papers, Series V. Subject Files, Judasism (cont’d)-Peace, Box 84, Folder 10 Subjects: Peace, Peace Encampments, Greenham Women Against Cruise Missiles 1982-87, n.d, SSC; Jill Truman, “Report from the Women’s Peace Camp at Greenham,” March 23, 1984, Jill Truman Papers, Writings about Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, News from Greenham (7JTR/2/1), Box 1, WL; Jill Truman, “10 Million Women,” October 2, 1984, Jill Truman Papers, Writings about Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, News from Greenham (7JTR/2/1), Box 1, WL; Jill Truman, “News from Greenham,” April 26, 1986, Jill Truman Papers, Writings about Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, News from Greenham (7JTR/2/1), Box 1, WL; Ginette Leach, “9th-13th Dec 83,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL; Ginette Leach, “27th-28th April 1984,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL; Ginette Leach, “18th September to 30th September 1984,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL. See also Roseneil, Disarming Patriarchy, 112-114. She writes, “Over the years Greenham women were invited to thousands of such events, ranging from CND and other peace groups, student unions and Labour Party branches, to the Women’s Institute, Housewives’ Register and Townswomen’s Guild. Greenham women were also asked to take part in delegations to Nicaragua, to give lectures at peace conferences all over Europe and the US, and to speak at miners’ rallies and galas during the strike” (114). 71 Gwyn Kirk, “Our Greenham Common: Not Just a Place But a Movement,” in Rocking the Ship of State, 276; See Harford and Hopkins, eds., Greenham Common, 113-137, for women’s descriptions of their trips to these places.

238 illustrate this internationalism and connectedness between all women. “We’re all part of the goddess, mother earth, weaver of life,” one leaflet stated.72

In imitation of the original peace walk, the peace camp operated without formal structure or leadership. Greenham was, as feminist scholar Ann Snitow put it, “[i]nventive, leaderless, a constantly rotating population of women.”73 No spokeswomen existed, a fact that particularly perplexed the media, and many visitors commented on how laid back the camp seemed upon first visit.74 News of camp events arrived only by informal chain letter or word of mouth. Without organization, sympathizers donated food, sleeping bags, bicycles and even a car.75 No one told another what to do. All participants had to take full responsibility for themselves and their actions, thus the common moniker “Greenham woman” belied the fact that there was no singular

Greenham woman or story.76 Camper Rebecca Johnson confirmed this, “[Greeham] didn’t preach feminism, and didn’t oblige women with family responsibilities to leave their homes or break the law. All it maintained was that you should be personally responsible for what you did or did not do.”77

72 Leonie Caldecott, “Greenham and the web of life,” The Sunday Times, December 19, 1982, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box15, WL; Common Women’s Day,” flyer, May 30, 1984, Greenham Common Collection, Pamphlets (5GCC/B), WL; “The Greenham Factor,” Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, Box 3 of 26, Folder 10a Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp 1984, 1989, SSC. See also Welch, “The Spirituality of, and at, Greenham Common Peace Camp,” 230-248. As the use of goddess and spider symbolism and mythology suggest, Welch argues that eco- feminist matriarchal spirituality played a bigger role in Greenham women’s activism and time at the camp than scholars have previously estimated. See also Liddington, The Road to Greenham Common, 236: Liddington also agrees to this point: “ritual, symbol and incantations soon assumed a vital role in sustaining such an likely being as a women’s peace camp outside a nuclear base.” 73 Ann Snitow, “Holding the Line at Greenham,” Mother Jones, February-March 1985, 30, 32, Joan Biren Papers, Series V. Subject Files, Judasism (cont’d)-Peace, Box 84, Folder 10 Subjects: Peace, Peace Encampments, Greenham Women Against Cruise Missiles 1982-87, n.d, SSC. 74 “Leaderless peace movement keeps law at arm’s length,” The Guardian, March 31, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box15, WL. 75 Jill Truman, “The Women’s Peace Camp at Greenham,” March 24, 1984, Jill Truman Papers, Writings about Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, News from Greenham (7JTR/2/1), Box 1, WL. 76 Fairhall, Common Ground, 2. 77 Leonie Purchas, “Coming off the fence,” September 2000, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/5), Box19, WL.

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Nonviolence was the only steadfast rule, and any decisions that affected the whole camp had to end in consensus. Most often though, “all very typically Greenham … everyone decided to do their own thing.”78 Women organized daily life and direct action through small affinity groups within the larger network of the camp. As each gate developed its own unique personality, women tended to live at or visit only one, thus most decisions at Greenham were made per gate and by gate. When Orange Gate received a one-thousand-pound donation at

Christmas in 1983, the twenty or so women there convened and “thrashed out” how best to spend the money. The other gates informed the Orange Gate campers how they felt about their ideas, yet the ultimate decision was left to only the ones who received the gift.79 Greenham women were proud of their anti-structure, and some projected the camp’s as unique: “I don’t think anarchy would work with men, but it certainly seems to with the women at Greenham,”

Leach assessed.80

Most of the daily routine of Greenham consisted of simply surviving in the midst of rudimentary living conditions generally made much worse by poor weather, but still women held workshops and meetings. Ideas for direct actions materialized almost daily. Structurelessness was intentional, and at times, vexing. One student, Alison Vernon-Smith, expressed frustration with the absence of hierarchy and organization at Greenham, “Nothing seemed to get decided.

There was a lot of bickering about chores. At times you almost wished a load of men would turn up and say, ‘Right, this is what we’re going to do now….’”81 The camp benefitted from donations of food and clothing from supporters. Also profitable for Greenham was the proliferation of support groups which mushroomed throughout Britain, Europe, North America

78 Ginette Leach, “4th-7th May 1984,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL. 79 Ginette Leach, “28th Dec 83-1st Jan 1984,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL. 80 Ginette Leach, “20th-22nd Jan 1984,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL. 81 Leonie Purchas, “Coming off the fence,” September 2000, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/5), Box19, WL.

240 and beyond. These were the under-the-radar volunteers fundraising, operating telephone trees and distributing Greenham leaflets.82 London Greenham Support group was one which, headquartered on Featherstone Street in London, served as a “channel of communication,” connecting women to peace camp activities and other nonviolent demonstrations and campaigns.83

Greenham women would occasionally network and partner with more mainstream peace organizations, namely groups like CND, yet women at the camp were very clear that they ran their own show.84 In one instance, CND expressed interest in supporting a direct action at

Greenham that would include both sexes, and Greenham immediately insisted otherwise.85 The women’s camp understood that their manner of expressing their politics—“frankly emotional”— contrasted with more conventional modes of protest, and in their indefatigable encampment and relentless episodes of civil disobedience, Greenham women “inaugurated a new kind of campaigning” that influenced the mainstream peace movement in their resuscitation of nonviolent direct action.86 Beyond their infamous struggle to rid Britain of cruise missiles, they also revived playful gender politics by placing women at the vanguard of the protest and in doing so furthered not only an anti-militarist platform but a pro-woman one too.

“It was Greenham Common, of course, that inaugurated a new kind of campaigning.”

82 Fairhall, Common Ground, 188. 83 “Summer News from Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp,” Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Publicity Materials, Newsletters Produced by GCW, (5GCW/D/1), Box 11, WL; “London Greenham Newsletter,” September 6, 1985, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Publicity Materials, Newsletters Produced by GCW, (5GCW/D/1), Box 11, WL. 84 Jean Stead, “Ring of resolve to stop cruise,” The Guardian, December 10, 1982, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL. 85 “Dear CND Council Member,” Greenham Common Collection, Pamphlets (5GCC/B), WL. 86 “We survived, and we’re still protesting,” Monday Review of the Independent (London, England), April 16, 2001, Jayne and Juliet Nelson Papers (Ref Np. 7JAN), Box 1, WL.

241

In the cold winter of 1981, women began to sit down in front of what was later to become the Green Gate where lorries involved in the production of the missile silos went in and out. This first instance of nonviolent civil disobedience at Greenham, which led to arrests but also inexorably to construction and operations delays, heralded what would become one of the main functions of the women’s camp—continuous base disruption through nonviolent direct action.

Women sat in the road, blocked deliveries, laid in trenches cut for construction projects, cut the fence and invaded the base.87 A few months into the next year, on March 22nd, 1982, following a

Spring Equinox festival, women blockaded the base for an unremitting twenty-four hours. They held nonviolence training sessions in small groups which readied the one hundred fifty women, including one of Greenham’s most vocal advocates, Dr. Lynne Jones, who chained themselves together across the gates. By autumn that year, Helen John, one of the original campers to chain herself to the fence, joined a group of women from Wales in the first small-scale occupation inside the base. Cutting through the fence, they snuck into the sentry-box inside the main gate where they remained undetected for half an hour until they answered the telephone. The shocked

U.S. military personnel who answered subsequently arrested them. The Newbury Magistrates

Court soon became accustomed to these endless Greenham arrests and subsequent trials.

Women’s assiduous interference proved effective over time. In the early 1980s, when activity was near ceaseless, Home Secretary Leon Brittan estimated that the cost of policing the area around Greenham amounted to nearly three million pounds.88

Like participants of the WPA events, Greenham women who engaged in civil disobedience took nonviolent direct action and subsequent arrest very seriously as many believed that nonviolent intervention would lead to a just world. In fact, some were dismayed when, in an

87 Pettitt, Walking to Greenham, 142-143. 88 “We survived, and we’re still protesting,” Monday Review of the Independent, April 16, 2001, Jayne and Juliet Nelson Papers (Ref Np. 7JAN), Box 1, WL.

242 effort to ignore and subdue campers, military and police officers stopped arresting trespassers and merely escorted them from the base.89 Whoever came up with a nonviolent direct action circulated the idea around the camp, and each woman was free to partake or refrain. News of coming events spread “mainly by word of mouth, phone-calls, badly photographed leaflets.”90

Some actions were bolder and more criminal, and others more playful—women rushing onto the runway to paint “Greenham Women Are Everywhere” or splashing “holy water” on the gates to terrify American troops.91 Once, Greenham women, led by German Green Party founder Thyra

Quensel, even crashed a disco party in the base to dance and discuss cruise missiles with soldiers.92 In another incident among thousands, they latched shut the gates with strong bicycle locks, and American soldiers had to bulldoze the main gate in order to let civilian workers in and out.93

Women conceived of their protest as a constant reminder to the authorities and government officials of their state’s misplaced priorities. They also wanted to affect “people working in the trade unions, in armament industries, and in all the industries that support the arms race,” as Helen John emphasized.94 Above all, the initial purpose behind the camp and its relentless civil disobedience was to provide an alternative to apathy, “an ‘alternative icon’ to

89 Jill Truman, “Winter Solstice at Greenham,” January 20, 1985, Jill Truman Papers, Writings about Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, News from Greenham (7JTR/2/1), Box 1, WL. 90 Jill Truman, “10 Million Women,” October 2, 1984, Jill Truman Papers, Writings about Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, News from Greenham (7JTR/2/1), Box 1, WL. 91 Fairhall, Common Ground, 87. 92 Jean Stead, “Greenham women gatecrash base for spot of peace on the dance floor,” The Guardian, November 20, 1982, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL; Ann Pettitt, “The Greenham parallel with Poland,” The Guardian, November 19, 1982, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL. 93 “Camp that will not go away,” The Times (London, England), May 2, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL. 94 “Peace movement after Greenham,” Morning Star, January 26, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box15, WL.

243

Thatcherite values.”95 Despite mixed coverage throughout its two-decade-long existence, the one thing most media outlets and public commentary agreed upon was Greenham’s success in breaking through a public numbness surrounding nuclear weapons. In eschewing more conventional political channels for this kind of nonviolent direct action, Greenham women

“inaugurated a new kind of campaigning,” the Monday Review of the Independent stated.96

Trading in the “tired obsolete CND march” for “a spectacle so dramatic,” Greenham “snatched a single issue in a single place and made it a symbol of a universal dilemma.”97

Furthermore, participants sensitized the British public to missiles through nontraditional actions. Distancing themselves from conventional peace demonstrations, Greenham women stopped being concerned “with numbers primarily” and instead “with creating a situation in which different options and responses can be explored.”98 Performances like their die-in outside the London Stock Exchange in June of 1982, for example, sought to personify connections between weapons, people benefitting financially from that industry and the everyday Londoner’s complicity in that system.99 In these imaginative tactics, the mindset and strategy of nonviolent action gave Greenham women feelings of control, belying associations of passivity and weakness with nonviolence. “Though you appear to be surrendering your body, you are in complete control,” two Greenham women conveyed.100 They judged their effectiveness by their own emotional reactions and trusted that others would be swayed over time in witnessing their

95 Yvonne Roberts, “There’s more power in female protest,” Independent on Sunday (London, England), May 21, 2000, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/5), Box19, WL; Ann Snitow, “Holding the Line at Greenham,” Mother Jones, February-March 1985, 30, 32, Joan Biren Papers, Series V. Subject Files, Judasism (cont’d)-Peace, Box 84, Folder 10 Subjects: Peace, Peace Encampments, Greenham Women Against Cruise Missiles 1982-87, n.d, SSC. 96 “We survived, and we’re still protesting,” Monday Review of the Independent, April 16, 2001, Jayne and Juliet Nelson Papers (Ref Np. 7JAN), Box 1, WL. 97 Polly Toynbee, “Behind the Lines,” The Guardian, December 9, 1985, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/3), Box17, WL. 98 Cook and Kirk, Greenham Women Everywhere, 67. 99 Ibid. 100 Ibid., 70-71.

244 symbolic actions.101 Importantly though, such confident explanations of nonviolent strategies veiled how some, notably those recovering from personal situations of abuse and violence, struggled with its use. Other women aptly noted the contradiction that they at once supported national liberation movements such as the one in Northern Ireland, yet in that backing, they inadvertently defended violent means. One woman asked, “We espouse the principle of non- violence and yet we cut fences. Is this not a form of violence?”102

The nonviolent, confrontational campaigns pioneered by Greenham inspired numerous other peace camps around Britain, some of them mixed-sex, including ones at Molesworth in

Cambridgeshire, also due to receive cruise missiles, Upper Heyford in Oxfordshire, and Falsane on Clydeside in Scotland, the base for Polaris submarines.103 Greenham also galvanized CND to recalibrate its perception and disapproval of civil disobedience. In the 1950s and early ‘60s, the

British peace movement, in particular the Direct Action Committee against Nuclear War (DAC) and the Committee of 100, spearheaded nonviolent direct action in the form of mass sit-downs, blockades and peace marches near or on military facilities and public spaces. These organizations remained unconvinced that CND’s Labour Strategy, in which CND worked to sustain the Labour’s commitment to unilateral disarmament, would work.104 While many CND members organized and performed mass demonstrations like the peace marches between London and the Atomic Weapons Research Establish at Aldermaston, the more militant civil disobedience of the DAC alienated some. Not until Greenham did CND slowly embrace or at

101 Ibid., 63-79. 102 Harford and Hopkins, eds. Greenham Common, 41. 103 Liddington, The Road to Greenham, 237; “Women set up peace camp at RAF base,” The Guardian, December 29, 1981, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL. 104 Roseneil, Disarming Patriarchy, 20; Lawrence S. Wittner, Resisting the Bomb: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1954-1970, Vol. 2 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 185- 196.

245 least condone nonviolent direct action. Spokespersons referred to Greenham as a phenomenon, albeit a positive one, and expressed support for the camp’s insistence on nonviolence.105

By the summer of 1984, CND even endorsed nonviolent direct action by its member groups.106 Still, even as its members nominally supported Greenham, many worried that it was too separate from the mainstream peace movement. Some men involved in CND disliked that

Greenham women seemed to claim a monopoly on compassion.107 There was also the impression, as Maggie Naish commented in Sanity, that the camp had “a different style of politics and background” in that it was feminist whereas CND attracted women who accepted

“the fact that women will always be child bearers and carers.”108 While in its early years

Greenham contained women who embraced traditional and others who boasted more radical politics, that CND members presumed this division among British women reveals more about perceptions of Greenham than actual reality.

Guardian writer Polly Toynbee commented that the camp not only reinstated nonviolent civil disobedience but it “summed up the counterculture of the times, placing woman in the vanguard of a struggle.”109 Beyond impacting the mainstream peace movement, women at

105 Shyama Perera, “Growing army roughs it for peace,” The Guardian, August 23, 1982, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL; “Peace movement after Greenham,” Morning Star, January 26, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box15, WL. 106 Paul Brown, “CND ‘delighted’ as discipline and strength flow into London protest,” The Guardian, June 11, 1984, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/2), Box 16, WL. 107 Bel Mooney, “Pax Britannia?” The Sunday Times, April 10, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box15, WL. 108 Maggie Naish, “Dear Sanity,” Sanity (London, England), December 1982, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box15, WL; “Peace movement after Greenham,” Morning Star, January 26, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box15, WL. 109 Polly Toynbee, “Behind the Lines,” The Guardian, December 9, 1985, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/3), Box17, WL. The British counterculture—known as the Underground— was similar in ideas and demographics to counterculture in America. Like in the U.S. and undoubtedly influenced by the American variety, British counterculture drew in hippies, students, left-leaning individuals and others with varying levels of political commitment. Opposition to the Vietnam War and belief in personal self-expression united many. Some were ardently political, gravitating toward Maoism, Marxism and socialism and attending civil rights, student and antiwar demonstrations. For most though, counterculture was more about lifestyle. While their lifestyle choices were still political—believing in environmentalism, racial and sexual freedom and free expression—most

246

Greenham crafted their direct action aware of their gender since, as one of their flyers read, “[a] million women going to Greenham for a picnic—a powerful political statement—women refusing to be made invisible—showing the world what we want—a world without war.”110

Media accentuated that Greenham was a women’s protest, and later a women-only space after a decision in February 1982 necessitated men leave the camp. Talk of a distinct “women’s peace movement” by press and authorities suggested that gender, as it had in the past, mattered in the late-20th-century peace movement.111 Newspapers carried bylines such as “Sexual politics is in the headlines again.”112 Guardian coverage reported on Greenham that “its women-only mode of living and its conclusions about the causes of militarism find increasing echoes among feminist groups in Britain and abroad.”113 In The Sunday Times, Bel Mooney mentioned that women were a “potent, even dominating force in the new peace movement.”114 In fact, Mooney made explicit comparisons between sentiments expressed by ’s 1938 treatise on women and war—“As a woman I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world”—and the ethos of the emergent women’s peace movement. As Woolf

who engaged with counterculture did so through acts of consumption. It had inextricable parallels and links to rock music, the so-called British invasion, and ‘hippie’ and drug culture. Like in America, women in counterculture also saw how male-dominated it was, helping them to conclude that sexual freedom did not free women as it did men. Toynbee’s comment that Greenham embodied counterculture was indicative that Greenham drew in a wide range of women and political commitments yet they shared beliefs of peace, environmentalism, participatory democracy and, for many, greater self-expression. See Mark Donnelly, Sixties Britain: Culture, Society and Politics (London: Pearson Education Limited, 2005), 124-130; Jonathon Green, All Dressed Up: The Sixties and Counterculture (London: Jonathan Cape, 1998). 110 Common Women’s Day,” flyer, May 30, 1984, Greenham Common Collection, Pamphlets (5GCC/B), WL. 111 William Tuohy, “Nuclear protests in Britain,” Oakland Tribune (Oakland, California), April 2, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box15, WL; Paul Brown, “Peace women’s high hopes,” The Guardian, April 23, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box15, WL; Connie Mansueto, “peace camp at greenham common,” off our backs, February 1983, 2- 3, Joan Biren Papers, Series V. Subject Files, Judasism (cont’d)-Peace, Box 84, Folder 10 Subjects: Peace, Peace Encampments, Greenham Women Against Cruise Missiles 1982-87, n.d, SSC. 112 Beverly Mason, “Don’t fall for male stereotypes,” The Sunday Times, March 13, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box15, WL. 113 “Women in the van of peace,” The Guardian, July 30, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box15, WL. 114 Bel Mooney, “Pax Britannia?” The Sunday Times, April 10, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box15, WL.

247 expressed that there was a fundamental difference for most men and women when it came to war, Greenham echoed in agreement that compassionate and emotional values set women apart from “male values of mechanistic logic and aggression.”115

Beyond these gendered messages of peace, Greenham women made explicit use of their bodies and surrounding physical space to impart their ideas about women, violence and life on earth.116 For one, they perceived that they disrupted historical notions of separate spheres—that the man belonged to the public sphere of politics and the woman to home and hearth—by

“leaving home for peace,” as women routinely stated, and camping outside of a military base, a traditionally male-only zone.117 Greenham women often explained that men in the past left for war; now it was women’s turn to leave for peace. Guardian writer Jill Tweedie said as much when she intimated that the act itself of “leaving home” was “the ultimate weapon” wielded by many women.118 Women at Greenham severed their ties, temporarily or more permanently, with their domestic, private responsibilities. Tweedie saw this as a radical, shocking thing for women to do and, in this way, an effective way for them to get across their arguments for peace. One participant from Loughborough, Ev Silver, stated, “Walking through the small towns on the way

115 Ibid. See also Jean Stead, “Why the feminist camp must take the reins,” The Guardian, April 25, 1984, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/2), Box16, WL. 116 See La Ware, “Circling the Missiles and Staining Them Red,” 18-41. La Ware argued that Greenham became an important site for feminist rhetorical invention in that women relied on their bodies to challenge, reframe and appropriate gender ideologies and boundaries. In their “embodied rhetoric,” Greenham participants drew on the social and historical aspects of the category of “woman” to then challenge gender norms. See also Roseneil, Common Women. Roseneil argues for more historical investigation of Greenham’s “queer” tendencies, meaning its anarchic ways, its disruption of traditional power relations between women and the military, and its “unruly sexualities, desires and emotions as dynamic forces which disturb the heteronormative social order” (5). 117 “The Greenham Factor,” Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, Box 3 of 26, Folder 10a Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp 1984, 1989, SSC; La Ware, “Circling the Missiles and Staining Them Red,” 26. La Ware explains that Greenham women subverted separate spheres by camping outside the base not as prostitutes—the female demographic historically present near a military camp—but as “infiltrators”: “Being away from the confines and associations of ‘home,’ transferring ‘home’ to the military base, made the Greenham women appear to be transgressing the boundaries of respectability and acceptable notions of ‘woman.’” 118 Jill Tweedie, “Leaving home is the ultimate weapon,” The Guardian, November 16, 1981, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL.

248 here you could almost hear people saying to each other, ‘hello, the women are out in the streets now, something must be up.”119 Another woman echoed her, “As women we have been actively encouraged to be complacent, by sitting at home and revering men as our protectors: we now reject this role.”120 In his editorial to the Guardian, one man reflected that as much as women demonstrated against the cruise, Greenham was also a revolt against the home: “…perhaps these women are saying that if they are going to be driven back into the home—under the impact of unemployment and the ideology of Thatcherism—then they are only going to return on very different terms from those they obtained when they left.”121

Greenham women also insisted that their values belonged next to a military base. As one woman put it, “And we have made our response sane—brought it out of ‘foolish tears, silly emotional women’—so now those who fail to weep are the inadequately matured. In doing all of these things, we feel less like powerless victims. We may not have changed any government's mind, but we have found a way of not going ‘gentle into that good night’ … I am back with a nervous system that I had as an adolescent, when I got my first inkling of nuclear warfare.”122

Simultaneously, they also contended nuclear war made everyone, including the military, impotent; or as Ann Snitow stated, “being women they dramatize powerlessness but they also disarm the powerful.”123 Illustrating the ineffectuality of the base through their constant

119 Leonie Caldecott, “Greenham and the web of life,” The Sunday Times, December 19, 1982, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box15, WL. 120 Cook and Kirk, Greenham Women Everywhere, 108. 121 Untitled editorial, The Guardian, December 15, 1982, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL. For more editorials by men and women supporting the female-only nature of Greenham: “The reasons why Greenham should be a women’s world,” The Guardian, December 15, 1982, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box15, WL; “The positive discrimination of Greenham,” The Guardian, December 18, 1982, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box15, WL. 122 Seller, “Greenham: A Concrete Reality,” 28, 31. 123 Ann Snitow, “Holding the Line at Greenham,” Mother Jones, February-March 1985, 30, 32, Joan Biren Papers, Series V. Subject Files, Judasism (cont’d)-Peace, Box 84, Folder 10 Subjects: Peace, Peace Encampments, Greenham Women Against Cruise Missiles 1982-87, n.d, SSC.

249 incursions into it, women rejected the fence as a legitimate boundary, and repudiated that the base and military in general provided Britain any security.

In their “new kind of gender specific and peaceful protest,” Greenham women banked on the novelty and physicality of their protest.124 They noted that police and military authorities seemed unsettled by their mass civil disobedience, and at times, clueless how to physically discipline and arrest Greenham women. Even when authorities responded to nonviolent blockades and other instances of civil disobedience with violent confrontation, Greenham women felt that those interactions forced authorities to rethink women’s bodies and their associated passivity. As Dr. Lynne Jones explained, “A policeman trying to pull two arms apart in a firmly linked human chain has to directly confront his own feelings about human contact, handling women not as sexual objects but as powerful beings.”125

In what some women viewed as the feminist practice of making “the personal political,” they transformed the camp into both their private home and a public space for women, completely severing the boundary between domestic and political spheres.126 In other ways too they transferred symbols of the private world—photographs of family, children’s toys, diapers, colorful scarves and artwork which they hung along the fence—to the base. Greenham participants Alice Cook and Gwyn Kirk reinforced this, “A fundamental principle of women’s actions is that the personal issues are seen to be an integral part of the process, not an embarrassing diversion to be left at home and dealt with separately on our own. Crossing this barrier of silence and isolation is the first step in breaking the chain of powerlessness.”127 They

124 John Kippin, Cold War Pastoral: Greenham Common (London, England: Black Dog Publishing, 2001), 4. 125 Quoted in La Ware, “Circling the Missiles and Staining Them Red,” 33. 126 See Gwyn Kirk, “Our Greenham Common: Feminism and Nonviolence,” in Rocking the Ship of State, 115-130; see also Kirk, “Our Greenham Common,” 263-280, for a discussion of how she views women’s nonviolence, expressed through assertiveness, enjoyment, openness, support, preparation, flexibility, resistance, personal responsibility as a feminist practice. 127 Cook and Kirk, Greenham Women Everywhere, 32.

250 also juxtaposed life, represented through these objects, with death, the base itself. Women imbued their civil disobedience with playful objects, colorful clothing, flowers and other signs of life as “[r]itual, symbols and incantations soon assumed a vital role in sustaining such an unlikely being as a women’s peace camp outside a nuclear base.”128 “[T]o contrast the destruction of life on the other side of the fence,” women transformed their stark landscape into a candle-lit, colorful space in which they created art, held vigils, played music and performed theater.129

Sometimes they would paint their faces to resemble spiders or wear witch hats.130 During a full moon, the Dragon Festival in the summer of 1983 prompted participants to “remember the earth our home, the , birds, insects, trees and flowers we share this planet with, that would also be annihilated by the man made weapons of mass murder in any nuclear war or accident.”131 Formed from patchwork, banners and cloth paintings, their dragon—whose ancient meaning was “to see clearly”—symbolized women’s desire to build a future in which “profit, gain, aggression and domination are not valued and have no power.”132 Flyers for the festival depicted a large dragon breathing a plume of smoke out of which the universal symbols for woman and peace arose. Women wrapped the dragon’s body, created from women’s handicrafts, around the base fence. After the festival, another group of women inherited the dragon as the

128 Liddington, The Road to Greenham, 237. 129 “July 4th-8th: International Women’s Blockade at Greenham Common,” flyer, Greenham Common Collection, Pamphlets (5GCC/B), WL. 130 Aileen Ballantyne and Jean Stead, “Police arrest 187 as Greenham women pull down fences,” The Guardian, October 21, 1983, Joan Biren Papers, Series V. Subject Files, Judasism (cont’d)-Peace, Box 84, Folder 10 Subjects: Peace, Peace Encampments, Greenham Women Against Cruise Missiles 1982-87, n.d, SSC. See also Roseneil, Common Women, 16-21. Roseneil shows how Greenham women saw themselves descending from witches as well as the 17th-century and Ranters (the latter two groups because they advocated nonviolence, minimalist living and an anarchic abolition of traditional power relations). 131 “Call to Women,” June 25, 1983, flyer, Greenham Common Collection, Pamphlets (5GCC/B), WL. 132 Ibid.

251 intention was for the ritual to repeat in a variety of places, “spreading and joining women’s creativity and strength.”133

Given that many women in the movement viewed nonviolent civil disobedience as a crucial political tactic and creative outlet, being at Greenham trained them to replicate similar direct actions elsewhere, in the same way that civil rights activists in America trained through workshops offered at Highlander Folk School in Tennessee in the 1950s and 1960s. It was more inadvertent at Greenham though; as much as Highlander was the educational center of the civil rights movement, Greenham never operated with that express of a purpose.134 More significant to

Greenham women was the fact that civil disobedience united them. “There is this curious kindred spirit, complete understanding and togetherness, mixed with the knowledge that over the weekend we had all broken the law and cut the fence,” Leach explained, “I don’t know, its [sic] hard to define, unless you experience it, perhaps it is a sort of mental rapport.”135

That “complete understanding and togetherness” was most easily felt and expressed in large-scale demonstrations, in particular in one of the most famous actions at Greenham. On

December 12th, 1982, the anniversary of the NATO decision to site U.S. cruise missiles across

Britain and Europe, around 30,000 women arrived at Greenham to “embrace the base,” in what would be the largest episode of nonviolent civil disobedience at Greenham. Today, it remains

“the largest women’s demonstration in modern day history.”136 Around that year, months before the demonstration, one of the campers had transformed various sections of the base’s chain-link fence into an art gallery and stage to see live dance, theater, film and puppet shows.

133 Ibid. 134 Pepi Leistyna, “Horton Hears a Who: Lessons from the Highlander Folk School in the Era of Globalization,” in Grappling with Diversity: Readings on Civil Rights Pedagogy and Critical Multiculturalism, eds. Susan Schramm- Pate and Rhonda B. Jeffries (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008), 57-74; John M. Glen, Highlander: No Ordinary School (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1996). 135 Ginette Leach, “31st Oct. 83,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL. 136 Alexandra Topping, “Greenham Common Revisited,” The Guardian, September 9, 2006, Jayne and Juliet Nelson Papers (Ref Np. 7JAN), Box 1, WL.

252

This creative use of the perimeter propelled other women there to consider additional inventive reappropriation of Greenham. Barbara Doris, one of the original marchers from Cardiff, suggested that women should surround the base “with love.” Agreed upon, the Embrace the Base action materialized in two short months, publicized through chain letters, telephone calls and

CND and WILPF networks. It was ambitiously planned for over 10,000 women. By ten o'clock on the cold but clear Sunday morning of December 12th, women arrived by the thousands, dropped off in cars near the perimeter. As women quietly encircled the base, each attached something of themselves to the nine miles of fence. They peppered its length with photographs of family, baby diapers, painting, sculptures, flowers, toys, wedding dresses and even sanitary napkins. British and American soldiers just watched. With linked arms, women sang “You Can’t

Kill the Spirit” as squads of police from inside and outside of the base arrived. Officers pulled and dragged women away from the fence, some gently, others punitively flinging protesters onto the ground. More women simply replaced those arrested, to the effect that female bodies remained in position all day. Around six thousand camped into the night. The following day, many thousands decided to lie down in front of gate entrances or at various sections of the fence out of which internal base roads exited. Greenham camp made its way onto every Brit’s television that night.137

In total, an estimated 30,000 women embraced the base that day.138 “It was a horrible day, and cold. We were all togged up in our winter clothes,” recollected Joan Sheldon who was a sixty-year-old at the time and had been an activist since childhood when she assisted her father in

137 Pettitt, Walking to Greenham Common, 142-150; Ginette Leach, “12th-13th December, 1982,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL; Jean Stead, “Greenham Common: 25 Years On,” September 2006, Jayne and Juliet Nelson Papers (Ref Np. 7JAN), Box 1, WL; “Judy Foreman, “Linked hands circle wire at Greenham,” The Times, December 13, 1982, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL; Paul Brown, “30,000 women at Greenham,” The Guardian, December 13, 1982, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL; Fairhall, Common Ground, 39-42. 138 Jean Stead, “Greenham Common: 25 Years On,” September 2006, Jayne and Juliet Nelson Papers (Ref Np. 7JAN), Box 1, WL.

253 the Republican Movement for the . Despite the inhospitable weather, she remembered, “It was so powerful because we really thought we could do something. And we did.”139 Karen Thomas, another participant in her mid-thirties, commented, “You felt like if you did just one political thing out of your normal ordinary life, this was what it had to be. You just had to go.”140 One woman from Dublin explained, “And so I went, for a hundred different reasons, for the earth, for the children, for the Greenham women, for peace and for the Spirit that had overtaken me. I knew nothing except that nuclear war was wrong and here was a chance for me to say no.”141 “The atmosphere was a mixture of euphoria and desperation,” noted another,

“Even if we couldn’t change anything, I felt we had to do it anyway.”142 Middle-aged Hazel

Whiskerd remembered linking hands with other women as “an extraordinary, electric moment— almost quasi-religious. It was a terrible time but at least we were doing something together.”143

Helen John remembered that day as the moment “when Greenham really started.”144

In their subversive, symbolic tactics and sisterly comradery through civil disobedience,

Greenham women intentionally mimicked their Edwardian suffragette predecessors, notably

Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Christabel and Sylvia. Resisting the state in a calculated performance aimed at dramatizing women’s exclusion from their historic constitutional rights, these militant suffragettes reasoned that liberal Britain failed to be truly democratic and representative, and thus they worked outside traditional political parties to demand suffrage and

139 Alexandra Topping, “Greenham Common Revisited,” The Guardian, September 9, 2006, Jayne and Juliet Nelson Papers (Ref Np. 7JAN), Box 1, WL. 140 Ibid. 141 Quoted in Harford and Hopkins, eds. Greenham Common, 91. 142 Alexandra Topping, “Greenham Common Revisited,” The Guardian, September 9, 2006, Jayne and Juliet Nelson Papers (Ref Np. 7JAN), Box 1, WL. 143 Ibid. 144 Quoted in Fairhall, Common Ground, 42.

254 what they saw as corrupt government.145 Similarly, Greenham women, wearing the suffragette colors of purple, white and green, operated beyond conventional politics. They likewise saw themselves as militantly protesting an immoral state that allowed cruise missiles to be housed on British soil without a parliamentary debate.146 In a Guardian editorial, Pettitt made the analogy that through such behavior, the British government was acting “like the other side”—meaning the Soviet Union.147

While Greenham women did not suffer the brutal prison sentences that suffragettes endured in their solitary confinement and force-feeding, they experienced increased hostility in reaction to their permanence. Relationships between the base, British police, local townspeople and the camp slowly soured. On May 27th, 1982, bailiffs arrived at the main gate with bulldozers

145 See Laura E. Nym Mayhall, The Militant Suffrage Movement: Citizenship and Resistance in Britain, 1860-1930 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). Especially after the Boer War forced citizens to think about their relationship to the state, militant suffragettes increasingly refused to support the war effort as long as the state denied them their right to vote. From there, the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) and other militant groups worked apart from conventional political parties and means to demand suffrage and resist what they saw as corrupt government. Suffragettes chained themselves to Whitehall, broke windows, committed arson, posted letter bombs, engaged in hunger strikes, petitioned and picketed, all the while using their physical bodies to be heard. 146 See also Julia Emberley and Donna Landry, “Coverage of Greenham Common & Greenham Common as ‘Coverage,’” Feminist Studies 15, no. 3 (Autumn 1989): 485-498. They likewise affirm that Greenham women subverted hierarchical power relations through their nontraditional protest and refused to accept governmental authority as legitimate and just: “The strategy of Greenham-ness works at reversing and displacing the hierarchical relations between such concepts as "center" and "margin." The center and the margin not only require one another for purposes of conceptualization, they interpenetrate in practice, usually to the detriment of the margin. For those millions of us excluded from exercising state power, but over whom and in whose name it is exercised, symbolic direct action that challenges this oppressive relation between citizenry and state makes sense” (491). Greenham women routinely commented on their similarity to the suffragettes as they both put their bodies on the line in a demonstration; both saw themselves as morally and ideologically correct in resisting a corrupt government; and both refused to pay fees to avoid imprisonment. See Mayhall, The Militant Suffrage Movement; Fairhall, Common Ground, 30-34; Paul Brown, “Five more women choose gaol to fight missile,” The Guardian, November 17, 1982, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL; Jean Stead, “Why the feminist camp must take the reins,” The Guardian, April 25, 1984, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/2), Box16, WL. 147 Ann Pettitt, “The Greenham parallel with Poland,” The Guardian, November 19, 1982, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL. Their repudiation of many traditional political channels to redress injustices indicated not only their disillusionment with that system but also their conscious understanding that through that very system women had been historically excluded from political debates. Still, for the general elections in 1983, some like Jean Hutchinson entered as independent candidates under the ticket “women for life on earth.” See “Peace movement after Greenham,” Morning Star, January 26, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL; Joan Smith, “Peace women split over elections,” February 20, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL.

255 and a heavy police presence. Targeting the camp site on the common land owned by the

Newbury District Council, this eviction along with others in the early months of 1982 “was the beginning of a sort of giant game of hopscotch” in which women would be evicted from

Council-owned land, move to adjacent Department of Transport (DOT) property, then be forcibly removed from there, only to migrate back to Council land.148 This did not deter

Greenham women who continued to tear down fence, spray paint military property and enter the base.149

While the use of civil disobedience was undeniably important to many Greenham women, such tactics were not immune from internal criticism. Tensions over the use of nonviolent direct action signaled that the women’s movement in both America and Britain struggled with how to plan both a premeditated and spontaneous protest. Movement women pondered the egalitarianism of civil disobedience. If each woman was encouraged to do and say what she individually believed, how could all women feel represented and satisfied with the larger direct action? Furthermore, some wondered if it was effective. “Sitting on roads, forming human chains is all very well,” Leach assessed, “but somehow I don’t feel we are gaining many more supporters this way. Is it all just self indulgence?”150 She also questioned the longevity of civil disobedience: if only the all-women protests at Greenham that drew thousands were successful, then, she asked, “where do we go from here?”151 These debates only snowballed throughout the 1980s.

148 Fairhall, Common Ground, 35; Jean Stead, “Ring of resolve to stop cruise,” The Guardian, December 10, 1982, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL. 149 “No Sitting On The Fence At US Base,” City Limits (New York, New York), July 16-22, 1982, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL. 150 Ginette Leach, “Easter 1983,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL. 151 Ibid.

256

Greenham’s direct actions universally bothered local authorities and townspeople, and it was noted that their hostile reaction prevented anti-cruise solidarity between Newbury and the camp. In the spring of 1983, evictions continued unrelentingly, to the point that twenty-one women were issued with a permanent injunction that stipulated two years of imprisonment if they returned to the camp.152 Yet, as reporter Michael Davie noted, Greenham women almost thrived on the legal battles. Furthermore, no matter how many women went to trial and prison, more “would come forward, volunteering to be guinea pigs, going to court or prison.”153 Still, stalwart Greenham met its match in local opposition, most notably with the Newbury Council.154

Some British policemen and American military personnel at the base were initially friendly with the Greenham campers, and some remained so. The camps “right up against the wire” forced soldiers and protesters into conversation more often than at other gates, and some women observed that these troops gradually sympathized with the camp.155 During one week- long blockade, women from various gates broke into and entered the base, and in a telling instance of some policemen’s flexibility with Greenham, camper Jill Truman described, “At one stage, a policeman who stood by a whole section of flattened fence, said to a hesitating woman:

‘you might as well come in, everyone else is!’” Still, she ended with the caveat, “But, of course, for every account of a policeman with a sense of humor there are dozens of unnecessary

152 Cook and Kirk, Greenham Women Everywhere, 113. 153 Michael Davie, “Who’s afraid of wimmin,” The Observer (London, England), March 13, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL; Peter Deeley, “Peace women: ‘Don’t gag us,’” The Observer, March 13, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL. 154 Michael Davie, “Who’s afraid of wimmin,” The Observer, March 13, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL. 155 Jill Truman, “News from Greenham,” March 1985, Jill Truman Papers, Writings about Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, News from Greenham (7JTR/2/1), Box 1, WL.

257 aggression, obscenity, roughness and brutality. The significant factor is, however, that the women never respond to any of this with violence.”156

Some Greenham women recognized the headaches they caused Newbury authorities.

Ginette Leach said as much when she commented, “I don’t think the police at Newbury enjoyed their afternoon with Diana and Zuphie [two Greenham women arrested for civil disobedience], and at times I can understand why Greenham Women are not popular with everyone.”157 Still, as

Leach’s “report of horrors” detailed, women also experienced increasingly cruel and violent behavior of soldiers including “having a spike being thrust through a bender … masturbating in front of the women, peeing in the washing and washing up bowls, smearing toothbrushes with excrement and mud, and the same on bedding, threats of gang rape, and the usual verbal abuse which goes on most of the time.”158

While some locals supported Greenham women—or at least their message of “cruise missiles out”—a vocal majority disdained that their homes were “invaded by hippies.”159 Those angriest believed or bred the stereotypes that all Greenham women were communists, incapable of washing themselves and hateful of men. Others simply did not want the women near their town and were upset when several protesters registered to vote through their residency at

Greenham.160 Often Greenham women experienced subtle hostility when shopping in Newbury.

People crossed to the either side of the street, for example, to avoid being near them.

156 Jill Truman, “10 Million Women,” October 2, 1984, Jill Truman Papers, Writings about Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, News from Greenham (7JTR/2/1), Box 1, WL. See also Cook and Kirk, Greenham Women Everywhere, 49-50. 157 Ginette Leach, “12th Dec 1983: Diana’s Story,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL. 158 Ginette Leach, “20th-22nd Jan 1984,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL. In addition to soldiers, local residents engaged in similar paramilitary violence as well. See Fairhall, Common Ground, 73. 159 Paul Brown, “30,000 women at Greenham,” The Guardian, December 13, 1982, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL. 160 “3 arrested during peace protests,” The Guardian, December 14, 1982, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL; “Greenham peace women defend their right to vote,” The Guardian, December 28, 1982, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box15, WL.

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Storeowners sometimes refused to hand them change but rather placed it on the counter to avoid touching the women’s hands. Only two pubs allowed Greenham women inside.161

Such antagonism also characterized a fair amount of the press the camp received.162

Initially, as Greenham women wanted to sensitize the British public to the issue of cruise missiles, positive media was crucial, yet in general, campers noted in frustration that their activities rarely made headlines on national television stations or on the radio. Some took the media blackout in stride, concluding that the camp must be more powerful than they thought.

When media did pay attention to Greenham, though, it consistently gravitated towards episodes of confrontation between the camp and nearby residents or authorities. One participant explained that she often watched cameramen and reporters chase after footage of women being forcefully arrested; she remarked that “non-violence is non-news.”163 Press either reported brutal evictions and arrests, or media invented episodes in which women reacted violently. After an accusation that certain campers had thrown rocks at soldiers, Greenham camper Katrina Howse commented that she no longer wanted to even throw paint or eggs at convoys coming and going from the base.164 It was too risky and too close a line to violence. In general, Greenham women expressed

161 Confrontational incidents between Greenham women and local residents began with the camp’s formation and steadily continued over the years. See “Camp that will not go away,” The Times, May 2, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL; Aggie Jakubska, “Mourning the dead, preserving the living,” Spare Rib, August 1982, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL; Harford and Hopkins, eds. Greenham Common, 73-77. 162 Cook and Kirk, Greenham Women Everywhere, 91-107. See also Emberley and Landry, “Coverage of Greenham Common & Greenham Common as ‘Coverage,’” 497: they describe how Greenham received poor, misinformed press coverage because of its “sophisticated fracturing of mass media coverage: its spectacles, chain-letter networks of communication, constantly shifting means of resistance, constantly shifting body of women. These make it ‘uncoverable,’ despite the barrage of tropes its presence generates in the mainstream press. By representing themselves in alternative forms, the Greenham women open up a gap between official coverage and their own.” 163 Jill Truman, “10 Million Women,” October 2, 1984, Jill Truman Papers, Writings about Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, News from Greenham (7JTR/2/1), Box 1, WL; Jill Truman, “News from Greenham,” April 26, 1986, Jill Truman Papers, Writings about Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, News from Greenham (7JTR/2/1), Box 1, WL; Press Cuttings, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1--5GCW/E/5), Box 15-19, WL. 164 Katrina Howse, “Wednesday Evening,” in Summer News from Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp,” Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Publicity Materials, Newsletters Produced by GCW, (5GCW/D/1), Box 11, WL;

259 frustration that reporters, often male, seemed to barge into camp gates—into Greenham women’s

“sitting rooms”—and domineeringly interview women without actually investigating why women were there in the first place.165

This flavor of media coverage contributed to a distinctly negative impression of

Greenham women and their purpose. It also more broadly suggested that as much as civil disobedience and an alternative lifestyle made sense to movement women, such decisions discomforted a more conservative British public. Even as many Brits registered deep discontent with escalating nuclear stockpiles, nonviolent direct actions and all-female alternative lifestyles seemed too extreme or too inappropriate to many. Disdain for Greenham also pointed to late-

20th-century social conservatism, akin to the New Right in America. Attacking trade union power and the protests of the 1960s, the British version upheld free market doctrines and applauded

Thatcher’s cuts in social expenditures. As some hoped the economic downturn of the 1970s would be reversed by Thatcherite values, many laid blame on the men and women, such as those at Greenham, that they felt abused and drained the welfare state. Furthermore and unhappily to some conservatives, Greenham epitomized an increasingly permissive Britain, thanks to the women’s and gay liberation movements.166

These movements of the 1960s and ‘70s continued to divide Britain. Some viewed them positively and others as dangerous developments that disregarded family values. Alongside accusations that Soviet agents had infiltrated Greenham, rumors that all Greenham women were lesbians only worsened over the years. One visitor overheard someone say they had no idea

165 Ginette Leach, “1st to 5th March 1984,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL; Ginette Leach, “18th-19th March 1984,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL; Ginette Leach, “29th March 1984- 6th April,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL. 166 Addison, No Turning Back, 259-314, 341-363.

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“there were so many drop-out, unemployed, lesbian, commie women in England.”167 Another critic in his Guardian editorial projected that Greenham women were social misfits: “lonely, single parents, lesbians, unemployed.”168 Even Jill Truman included this assumption in her play about Greenham, that when a woman went there, she inevitably become a lesbian or feminist, or both, as the two were often conflated.169

Yet there were many lesbian women there, as one popular Greenham song “Brazen

Hussies” went, “Men call us names to be nasty and rude / Like lesbian, man hater, witch and prostitute / What a laugh, ‘cause half of it’s true.”170 While it contained both heterosexual and homosexual women, the camp presented “the possibility of a positive lesbian identity” and a safe space for women to express their sexuality. While gay liberation in Britain in the 1970s had boldly articulated a confident political agenda in which to be gay was to be proud, lesbians had a minority presence in the Gay Liberation Front, and when many instead joined the women’s liberation movement, they also found that not particularly welcoming. By the early 1980s, consequences of these developments meant that many lesbians organized outside of gay men and straight feminists. Many also continued to find the mainstream political climate of Britain inhospitable to public expressions of homosexuality. At Greenham, then, the considerable diversity in age, class backgrounds and experience in homosexuality among lesbians made and identifying as one a more accessible and appealing decision.171 One woman

167 Ginette Leach, “12th-13th December, 1982,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL; Fairhall, Common Ground, 91-92. 168 “The positive discrimination of Greenham,” The Guardian, December 18, 1982, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box15, WL. 169 Jill Truman, “The Web,” 1991, Jill Truman Papers, The Web (7JTR/3/1), WL. 170 Greenham Women are Everywhere Songs,” Jill Truman Papers, Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp Papers (7JTR/1), Box 1, WL. 171 Roseneil, Disarming Patriarchy, 56-57, 157-162; Rebecca Jennings, A Lesbian History of Britain: Love and Sex between Women since 1500 (Oxford, England and Westport, CT: Greenwood World Publishing, 2007), 169-179; Leonie Purchas, “Coming off the fence,” September 2000, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/5), Box19, WL.

261 described, “I think Greenham was about … realizing I was a lesbian. I wouldn’t be where I am today … if I hadn’t gone to Greenham, and if I wasn’t a lesbian, I wouldn’t be me.”172 Moreover, it was hard to judge normalcy in a place like Greenham, and exposure to homosexuality proved to be an eye- and mind-opening experience for some heterosexual women. Several who had to leave for family responsibilities noted that the more permanent lesbian participants who did not have children to care for largely kept the camp going through some of its toughest times.173

Despite these positive personal experiences, it was hard not to be disillusioned with such unabated hostility from the media, local residents and authorities. Truman logged in her diary in the summer of 1985, “If we had about 300 years, we might change the world.”174 Reporters zeroed in on “grimy faced women … the filthy rat infested kitchen” and other unpleasant observations.175 Any drug use, uncleanliness, unusual punk dress and, always, lesbianism preoccupied press. Greenham women expressed disappointment that coverage, almost all written by men, depicted police only in neutral, justified terms while for women, “[t]hey churn out all the familiar stereotypes—sincere grandmothers, concerned housewives, burly lesbians, chaos and arrests—as if they captured all the really newsworthy facts, without finding out how we saw it all, and without ever admitting the limitations of their views.”176 Only when newswriting proved particularly vicious did a few editorialists and contributors in major newspapers call out what they saw as poor journalism which they cited as reasons to sympathize with, not disdain,

172 Roseneil, Disarming Patriarchy, 160. 173 Fairhall, Common Ground, 187. See also Roseneil, Common Women, 277-309. 174 Jill Truman, “Life is relatively quiet,” June 26, 1985, Jill Truman Papers, Writings about Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, News from Greenham (7JTR/2/1), Box 1, WL. 175 “Greenham: behind a protest for peace that shattered a dream,” 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL. 176 Lucinda Broadbent, “Greenham common: the media’s version,” Peace News (London, England), January 21, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL. See also “A Different View of Greenham?” Ham and High (London, England), July 27, 1984, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/2), Box 16, WL; Sarah Bond, “Life and love in the camp that bans men,” Daily Express (London, England), April 10, 1984, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/2), Box 16, WL.

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Greenham women.177 Over the years, those remaining at Greenham increasingly stopped caring about media messages. It was in part because they gave up the hope that coverage would ever be adequate and also because the camp lost its initial, singular focus on cruise missiles and instead became a feminist community that did not think it needed national attention to survive.

Throughout the summer of 1983, the base amped up construction to prepare for the coming missiles, resulting in women’s heightened civil disobedience.178 In July 1983, a week- long International Women’s Blockade at Greenham Common drew thousands of women from across Great Britain and beyond.179 After the 501st Tactical Missile Wing scheduled its first public road test of a missile convoy, women also launched the first of many “cruise alerts” in which they tracked and exposed the convoy vehicles’ successive movements upon leaving the base. A telephone tree connected Greenham women to concerned locals, and person by person, news spread of the convoy’s progress. This process and network grew into Cruisewatch which engaged many far beyond Greenham and exposed many Brits’ desire to disrupt the convoys and invalidate the USAF’s operational concept. Greenham women’s role, most often, was to halt the convoy by placing their bodies at the airfield gates or sitting down in the road.180 Cruisewatch benefitted from “transatlantic peace connections” in that organizations as far away as the

177 Peter M. Cornish, Ian Griffiths, Christopher Coppock, and Robert W.D. Boyce, “We’ve seen nothing yet at Greenham,” The Guardian, April 7, 1984, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/2), Box 16, WL. 178 Paul Brown, “The women of Greenham concede that the cruise will come,” The Guardian, July 8, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box15, WL; Shyama Perera, “Greenham numbers swell to 1,000,” The Guardian, July 9, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box15, WL. 179 “July 4th-8th: International Women’s Blockade at Greenham Common,” flyer, Greenham Common Collection, Pamphlets (5GCC/B), WL. 180 Greenham women began these cruise alerts by March 1983. Fairhall, Common Ground, 73-74, 82-85; “Cruise is out,” in “Summer News from Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp,” Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Publicity Materials, Newsletters Produced by GCW, (5GCW/D/1), Box 11, WL. Many Americans involved in women’s and peace groups spread news of cruise movements as well. See “Greenham Common Women Against the Cruise Missiles,” Joan Biren Papers, Series V. Subject Files, Judasism (cont’d)-Peace, Box 84, Folder 10 Subjects: Peace, Peace Encampments, Greenham Women Against Cruise Missiles 1982-87, n.d, SSC.

263

Women’s Pentagon Action (WPA) worked directly with Greenham Women Against Cruise

Missiles. It helped that British women completed a circuit through twenty-five states from 1983 to 1985 to explain the Cruisewatch to their American counterparts.181

All of these disruptive activities slowed base operations and exposed that the U.S. military was not as covert as it tried to intimate. Still, this onslaught of civil disobedience did not stop the cruise missiles. In December 1983, they finally arrived. The women continued their nonviolent action.182 On Christmas 1983, Rebecca Johnson and two other women broke into the central control tower on the airbase, and climbing to the top, hung a sheet with the words “Peace on Earth” in the window. They remained for an hour. They sang Christmas carols and wrote messages of peace on various documents throughout the office. Eventually, to be discovered and arrested, they had to switch the lights on and off repeatedly.183 A few days later, early in the morning on New Year’s Day, in an action that produced one of the most enduring images of

Greenham, dozens of women danced on half-finished missile silos. Women broke into the base through gaps in the fence after climbing sections of the fence by throwing carpets over the barbed wire.184

Such actions resulted in arrest, thousands in the first years. In their intimation of militant suffragettes and others who exposed injustices through civil disobedience, arrest was an expected, even desirable, part of bearing witness against the cruise missiles. As one woman

181 Greenham Women Against Cruise Missiles, “Transatlantic Peace Connections,” Joan Biren Papers, Series V. Subject Files, Judasism (cont’d)-Peace, Box 84, Folder 10 Subjects: Peace, Peace Encampments, Greenham Women Against Cruise Missiles 1982-87, n.d, SSC. 182 Mirror Reporter, “Barricades go up for cruise fury,” Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL. 183 Jill Truman, “Greenham Women: Trial by Jury,” April 25, 1985, Jill Truman Papers, Writings about Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, News from Greenham (7JTR/2/1), Box 1, WL; Fairhall, Common Ground, 87. 184 Patrick Bishop, “Peace women’s raid: 44 charged,” The Observer, January 2, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL; Jill Nicholls, “Keeping the camp fires burning,” City Limits, January 7, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL; Fairhall, Common Ground, 28-29; Pam Isherwood, “update,” off our backs, February 1983, 3, Joan Biren Papers, Series V. Subject Files, Judasism (cont’d)-Peace, Box 84, Folder 10 Subjects: Peace, Peace Encampments, Greenham Women Against Cruise Missiles 1982-87, n.d, SSC.

264 testified to the Newbury Magistrates Court, those arrested viewed themselves as morally above the law: “I do not feel I stand here today as a criminal … The law is concerned with the preservation of property. We are concerned with the preservation of life.”185 What was unexpected and beyond exasperating for many women, after being handed over to the MOD police and tried, was the legal reaction the courts held against Greenham women. Nonviolent direct action—walking into the base, hanging peace banners, lying in front of a gate—earned serious charges such as criminal damages which frustrated many who asked, “if—instead of these nonviolent women, malevolent saboteurs had entered the tower—what then? a nuclear explosion?”186 Katrina Howse likened the draconian trials and jail sentences to witch hunts in early modern Europe.187

Still, they saw their time on trial as integral because it was another opportunity during which Greenham women yet again subverted and reframed their environment. “Greenham women cut through all that,” feminist solicitor Jane Hickman described, “all that” meaning the

“male-dominated legal profession” and “rigid, authoritarian principles.”188 Inundating a traditionally male space with emotion, women made “the court listen to arguments that were articulate, intellectually coherent and historically wise” and they did it “by poems, singing, and some cried while they spoke.”189 Individual histories, dreams and priorities constituted the defense, and those on trial took the stand one by one to defiantly explicate that cruise missiles posed a serious, personal threat. As scaffolding of their testimonies was experiential, women

185 Quoted in Cook and Kirk, Greenham Women Everywhere, 108-109. 186 Jill Truman, “Greenham Women: Trial by Jury,” April 25, 1985, Jill Truman Papers, Writings about Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, News from Greenham (7JTR/2/1), Box 1, WL. 187 Katrina Howse, “Support” in Summer News from Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp,” Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Publicity Materials, Newsletters Produced by GCW, (5GCW/D/1), Box 11, WL. 188 Cook and Kirk, Greenham Women Everywhere, 117, 121. 189 Ibid., 118.

265 made private nightmares a legitimate public conversation.190 Rebecca Johnson, for example, recounted her reoccurring nightmares of London after an atomic explosion: “I could distinctly see the broken dome of St. Paul’s cathedral.”191 Magistrates tired as cases multiplied and women insisted on either explaining at length or singing why they protested.192

Greenham protesters insisted on using only female lawyers such as Hickman. They called forth noteworthy witnesses such as E.P. Thompson, Dr. Barbara Cowie, another Helen Caldicott- like spokeswoman on the medical effects of nuclear weapons, the Bishop of Salisbury, Labour politician and , an American radiation researcher and nun. Hickman, a member of Lawyers against the Bomb, proved to be hugely supportive of the women but struggled with how best to represent them as whole areas of law common in America—public interest law, protective legislation, administrative law—were absent in Britain.193

Convinced they were not criminals but rather vigilantes who wanted to put bellicose world leaders on trial, Greenham women pursued this angle all the way to the U.S. Federal

Court. Some women had tried and failed to convince Newbury magistrates that nuclear cruise missiles constituted genocide and should be subject to the Genocide Act of 1969. By the summer of 1983, then, they targeted President Reagan and his Secretary of Defense, Secretary of the Air

Force and Secretary of the Army with these charges. Working with the Center for Constitutional

Rights and the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy and backed by Congressmen Ron Dellums

190 Cook and Kirk, Greenham Women Everywhere, 121; La Ware, “Circling the Missiles and Staining Them Red,” 29. 191 Quoted in Fairhall, Common Ground, 38. 192 Fairhall, Common Ground, 95-96; Fiona Stevens, “Peace campers attacked by ‘keepers of the peace,’” The Leveller, May 28-June 10, 1982, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL; Tony Samstag, “36 women jailed at anti-nuclear ‘carnival,’” The Times, February 17, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL; Paul Brown, “Court gaols 36 Greenham women,” The Guardian, February 17, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL. 193 Caroline Moorhead, “The sharpish new voice of the Greenham women,” The Times, March 23, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL; Cook and Kirk, Greenham Women Everywhere, 115-118; Harford and Hopkins, eds. Greenham Common, 104-106.

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(D-CA) and Ted Weiss (D-NY), thirteen “Greenham Women Against Cruise Missiles” served as plaintiffs in a plan to convince the U.S. Federal Court in New York City that cruise missile deployment violated international law, the U.N. Charter and Declaration of Human Rights, and the Nuremberg Principles. Through the 1789 Alien Tort Claims Act that required U.S. federal courts to hear cases brought by aliens suffering from civil wrongs committed in violation of international law, they called for the impending deployment to be halted. On November 9th, five day before the missiles’ arrival, a candlelight vigil lit up the steps of the New York courthouse, and similar support surged across Britain. Twenty-four-hour protest camps materialized at all of the one hundred two U.S. military bases or facilities across the country. The plaintiffs and their team accumulated four hundred pages of testimony in less than two months, from scientists like

Dr. Alice Stewart, church leaders, and even former NATO generals like Robert Aldridge and

Admiral LaRocque. Still, the judge refused to grant the injunction and entertained the U.S. government’s argument to reject the court case entirely. The following year, the judge decided the case’s complexity meant the issue was unresolvable. Greenham women appealed, simply citing the weapons violated United Nation principles and constituted genocide.194

While these efforts proved futile, Greenham women did not stop fighting even upon legal defeat or personal conviction. Once arrested and tried, the vast majority found guilty refused to pay fines in the tradition of militant suffragettes and were sentenced to a few days or weeks at

Holloway Prison in north London. Often an outpouring of support materialized for the arrested.

194 Fairhall, Common Ground, 99-100; Greenham Women Against Cruise Missiles, “British Women’s Lawsuit Against President Reagan,” December 2, 1983, Joan Biren Papers, Series V. Subject Files, Judasism (cont’d)-Peace, Box 84, Folder 10 Subjects: Peace, Peace Encampments, Greenham Women Against Cruise Missiles 1982-87, n.d, SSC; Elizabeth Dworan, “cruise missiles may violate international law: greenham women sue u.s.” off our backs, December 1983, 1, 20, Joan Biren Papers, Series V. Subject Files, Judasism (cont’d)-Peace, Box 84, Folder 10 Subjects: Peace, Peace Encampments, Greenham Women Against Cruise Missiles 1982-87, n.d, SSC. The court case was ultimately dismissed by the Court of Appeals in February 1985. See “Greenham Common Women Against the Cruise Missiles,” Joan Biren Papers, Series V. Subject Files, Judasism (cont’d)-Peace, Box 84, Folder 10 Subjects: Peace, Peace Encampments, Greenham Women Against Cruise Missiles 1982-87, n.d, SSC.

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Greenham and other sympathetic women held vigils and demonstrations outside of Holloway to remind those inside they were not alone.195 Confined to cells sometimes with other Greenham women, arrested campers often noted that fellow prisoners had committed only petty crimes, suffered from mental illness, or were Irish or nonwhite. From their time at Holloway, many campers developed a critical analysis and interest in women and prison.196

After the cruise missiles arrived, conditions worsened at Greenham. Evictions escalated, at worst with several occurring per week. Jill Truman even expressed relief when evictions were

“down to about two per month.”197 Indeed, evictions became so relentless, Dr. Lynne Jones penned a Guardian editorial asking if Greenham was not unimportant to the peace movement and the conversation about nuclear weapons, “Then why try to get rid of us?”198 Women adapted to these dislodgments by keeping possessions to a minimum, using bicycles to warn other gates, building mobile benders on wheels so that supplies could be loaded quickly. At Blue Gate, women endured the most harassment and did away with any kind of shelter other than sleeping bags.199

As their removals suggested, authorities’ disdain of Greenham women did not dwindle over time, and in addition to evictions, manifested in overt legal hostility toward the campers. In

1984, Secretary of State for Defence Michael Heseltine, who had been offered the job by

Margaret Thatcher in early 1983, announced that trespassers risked being shot. He argued that

195 Renee Sams, “Women’s vigils back Greenham heroes,” The New Worker (London, England), Feb. 24, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL. 196 Ginette Leach, “Jan 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 1985,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL; Fairhall, Common Ground, 96-98; Jean Stead, “Ring of resolve to stop cruise,” The Guardian, December 10, 1982, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, WL; Harford and Hopkins, eds. Greenham Common, 106-113. 197 Jill Truman, “Life is relatively quiet,” June 26, 1985, Jill Truman Papers, Writings about Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, News from Greenham (7JTR/2/1), Box 1, WL. 198 Lynne Jones, “Unimportant? Then try to get rid of us,” The Guardian, April 10, 1984, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/2), Box 16, WL. 199 Jill Truman, “Report from the Women’s Peace Camp at Greenham,” March 23, 1984, Jill Truman Papers, Writings about Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, News from Greenham (7JTR/2/1), Box 1, WL.

268 troops guarding Greenham might have difficulty distinguishing between protesters and terrorists.

Heseltine doggedly had tried to discredit the peace movement including Greenham since his initial appointment given his role to deliver British cooperation with NATO and minimize embarrassing protest. Despite his threats to Greenham women, 50,000 attended a mass demonstration at the camp that December. Again, authorities cracked down.200 Taking effect in

April 1985, new bye-laws imposed fines up to one hundred pounds for trespassing on the base. A

Heseltine-idea, the MOD used the Military Lands Act of 1892 to draft these new laws, stipulating it was a criminal offense to trespass on the airfield.201 Yet, again, this did not deter many Greenham women. By September, 1,500 had been arrested, effectively clogging the

Magistrates Court, the police cells at Newbury and, for those who refused to pay the fines, the prison cells at Holloway and Styal Prisons.202

While Greenham continued to attract larger numbers of women for mass civil disobedience into the mid-‘80s, by the anniversary of the fourth year, the number of “stayers” was low, at times totaling only two dozen. Evictions continued regularly. Sometimes a gate encampment would close but would reopen if more women arrived.203 That the cruise missiles had arrived played a role in dwindling quantities of campers, and to press and authorities, seemed to insinuate Greenham’s growing purposelessness. Still, many women expressed the missiles’ presence did not negate their commitment to the camp because, after its first years, it lost its singular focus on cruise missiles. Beginning with the decision in February 1982 to only permit women at Greenham, it gradually transitioned into an alternative community for women

200 Fairhall, Common Ground, 48-49, 55; “We survived, and we’re still protesting,” Monday Review of the Independent, April 16, 2001, Jayne and Juliet Nelson Papers (Ref Np. 7JAN), Box 1, WL. 201 Fairhall, Common Ground, 109. 202 Jill Truman, “Happy Birthday, Greenham, ” September 5, 1985, Jill Truman Papers, Writings about Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, News from Greenham (7JTR/2/1), Box 1, WL. 203 Jill Truman, “Happy Birthday, Greenham,” September 5, 1985, Jill Truman Papers, Writings about Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, News from Greenham (7JTR/2/1), Box 1, WL.

269 to live out feminist values of egalitarianism and nonviolence. Weaving webs of connections between social and global injustices like others in the women’s movement, campers launched a grand experiment that was personally transformative for many yet their desire for inclusivity proved futile and unsustainable.

“The Greenham Thing”: Greenham’s Transition from Protest Camp to a Women’s

Community

In February 1982, the camp became not only women-led but women-only. Such a decision entailed contestation between women and foreshadowed future events in which some

Greenham women felt comfortable in collaboration with men and others ardently expressed the need for female separatism. It also posed problems for Greenham’s relationship with the mainstream peace movement. Organizations such as CND split over how to regard the camp.

Chair Joan Ruddock applauded Greenham as exceptional and steered her hesitant council to support Greenham while suppressing reservations about some of its tactics and gender exclusivity.204 The vote that ultimately cast men out of Greenham occurred for a number of reasons yet all revolved around an essentializing of gender. For one, many women expressed that

Greenham was so powerful because it was a “desperate” image of women “opposing with their bodies policemen and soldiers, barbed wire and guns, helicopters and cruise missilelaunchers.”205

204 Liddington, The Road to Greenham, 235; Pettitt, Walking to Greenham Common, 143, 273. Pettitt recalled one instance in the fall of 1983 when CND wanted to hold a mass demonstration with the Greenham women at the camp which would have involved around 500,000 protesters; women in the camp disagreed over the presence of and collaboration with CND men at Greenham; Fairhall, Common Ground, 26-28. 205 Jill Truman, “Having burbled on for months,” January 1985, Jill Truman Papers, Writings about Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, News from Greenham (7JTR/2/1), Box 1, WL; Fairhall, Common Ground, 28. Fairhall argues that from a journalist’s perspective, making it a women-only camp was “a stroke of public relations genius” as it provided every new editor with “a clear-cut storyline.”

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The presence of men would dilute this effect. Indeed, as one reporter commented, “[i]n a deliberate sequence of images, the camp dramatizes sexual polarity and the feminine sphere.”206

Others saw men as more likely to react in violent confrontation with police or the military when arrests occurred. “There are contradictory aspects about being a woman,” Helen John explained, “… on the one hand you’re oppressed but on the other hand people will be nice to you in certain circumstances; they aren’t quite so likely to hit you over the head with a baton.”207

Some merely stated that it was women’s turn. Men had historically gone to war, and now, women were leaving home for peace. There was the worry that if men remained, they would insist on establishing a more formal mode of organization. Women worried this would disempower them, especially the more reticent women who lacked the confidence to speak their minds. Beyond that, many explained that they went to Greenham because it was a space in which cooperative, consensual living informed day-to-day life. They did not want leaders or hierarchy.

They want to be in a place in which values they associated with women had the opportunity to flourish.208

With men gone, Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp became, at least in theory, this space. It began as a protest in opposition to the heightened sense of nuclear war, yet it slowly morphed from this constant vigil to a women’s community in which, in Pettitt’s words, “[y]ou didn’t necessarily have to blockade a gate or get into the base to make your protest and cause

206 Marina Warner, “The feminist frontline: from 1825 to Greenham Common,” March 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box15, WL. 207 “Peace movement after Greenham,” Morning Star, January 26, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box15, WL. 208 Jill Truman, “Having burbled on for months,” January 1985, Jill Truman Papers, Writings about Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, News from Greenham (7JTR/2/1), Box 1, WL; Fiona Stevens, “Peace campers attacked by ‘keepers of the peace,’” The Leveller, May 28-June 10, 1982, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box15, WL; Fairhall, Common Ground, 24-28; Cook and Kirk, Greenham Women Everywhere, 80-90.

271 inconvenience—the bottom line was simply to be there.”209 The initial purpose of Greenham—

“to restore the human perspective” to the Cold War’s arms race, as the Guardian defense specialist David Fairhall commented—attracted a diversity of women. Even though the cruise remained there until the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty mandated their removal in the late 1980s, women shifted their focus away from nuclear weaponry.210 By the mid-‘80s, Greenham became “an alternative community of wimmin where we can stay for a week or a year and grow out of patriarchy and work hard at living together, getting over the problems that arise from that, and create new visions of the future.”211 As much as disarmament had originally mattered to thousands of women, slowly an egalitarian, back-to-the-land lifestyle driven by feminist, nonviolent principles became equally important. As Helen John remarked,

“Something actually happens when women go down there—they change;” Greenham became “a sort of academy for the women’s peace movement—somewhere women can go and work out their feelings,” Sarah Bosley reported for the Guardian.

Until December 1983, when the cruise missiles arrived, their tunnel vision on nuclear weapons delayed this transition, but after missile installation, some feared that their arrival rendered the encampment purposeless. “Had we outlived our usefulness,” Leach asked herself in the spring of 1984.212 Yet, indicative of the transformation underway at Greenham, most agreed that the meaning of Greenham had shifted to being a “completely free centre for women to live and express themselves.”213 The cruise missiles, then, proved to be the impetus—“the straw that

209 Pettitt, Walking to Greenham Common, 287. Jill Truman also articulates the same sentiment. See Jill Truman, “News from Greenham,” Jill Truman Papers, Writings about Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, News from Greenham (7JTR/2/1), Box 1, WL. 210 Fairhall, Common Ground, 184. 211 Newsletter, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Publicity Materials, Newsletters Produced by GCW, (5GCW/D/1), Box 11, WL. 212 Ginette Leach, “27th-28th April 1984,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL. 213 Ibid.

272 could break the back of women’s political quiescence,” one reporter quipped—and later the enduring excuse for women to remain in this alternative world.214

Leach admitted that Greenham was “an extraordinary life style but once you have stayed there and become part of it, I can understand how this becomes the real world.”215 She elaborated, “I don’t think I could cope with it for too long, but when I am there, I’m totally at home, at ease, feel invigorated, and am part of something: the new revolution, anarchy, feminism, a different lifestyle. We talk a lot about this, about ourselves, why we are there, and its

[sic] not just cruise missiles.”216 Women called the kind of sisterly comradery “the Greenham thing,” and explained its lure as “like a drug.”217 Many echoed Leach’s sentiment as to “whether

Greenham is the real world,” and some expressed they only felt the pressures of the “real world” when a lack of money plagued the camp.218

In a Guardian editorial, Jill Truman insisted on “the enormous influence of the peace camp on the women’s movement and consequently on society at large.”219 The camp at

Greenham Common did serve to connect many who were invested in a de-escalation of the Cold

War, but moreover, it provided women with a personally transformative experience. She wrote,

“Every time I visit Greenham, I see more new faces than familiar ones. The population there is constantly changing, constantly renewed … There is no way of calculating how many thousands of women have been there during the camp’s four years of survival, or how much each

214 Leonie Caldecott, “Greenham and the web of life,” The Sunday Times, December 19, 1982, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box15, WL. 215 Ginette Leach, “4th-6th November,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL. 216 Ginette Leach, “20th-22nd Jan 1984,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL. 217 Ginette Leach, “23rd-36th Nov. 1983,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL; Ginette Leach, “9th-13th Dec 83,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL. 218 Ginette Leach, “2nd-5th November 84,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL. 219 Jill Truman, “Dear Sir/Madam,” December 21, 1985, Jill Truman Papers, Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp Papers (7JTR/1), Box 1, WL; see also Seller, “Greenham: A Concrete Reality,” 26-31, for an account of her time at Greenham and how personally empowering it was. Likewise, Gwyn Kirk affirms this point; see Kirk “Our Greenham Common,” 274-275.

273 individual woman has changed her attitudes and ideas, her values and aspirations … It is evolving a new philosophy of caring and loving. It had made us realise there is something we can do to change things. It had made us glad to be women.”220 When she visited Greenham in late

September of 1984 for the Ten Million Women for Ten Days demonstration, the camp’s transition continued unabated. Truman was “amazed by the uncountable quantities of tents, benders, camp-fires, women … women everywhere.”221 She explained, “I cannot describe how it feels to be a woman among so many other women quietly asserting by their presence their unflinching opposition to nuclear weapons.”222 Surveying the thousands of women, she noted that “most were just sitting round the fires in small groups talking, talking, talking. Women have never talked like this before.”223 This “talking” mattered because “much time at the camp was spent sitting around the fire talking about politics and personal experience,” and these “fireside discussions often worked as consciousness-changing sessions.”224 In raising consciousness, in all of this talking, Greenham most notably impacted women by giving them an individually meaningful and life-altering experience.

For one, the experience emboldened and fortified women to take command in their everyday lives. As consensual decision-making instilled them with a sense of real participation and that their opinions mattered, Greenham participants left “as individuals with agency.”225 “It’s made me brave,” a twenty-three-year-old woman stated, and another noted, “I’ve become more autonomous. I am less fearful of doing what I want to do, if it’s not what society would approve

220 Jill Truman, “Dear Sir/Madam,” December 21, 1985, Jill Truman Papers, Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp Papers (7JTR/1), Box 1, WL. 221 Jill Truman, “10 Million Women,” October 2, 1984, Jill Truman Papers, Writings about Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, News from Greenham (7JTR/2/1), Box 1, WL. 222 Ibid. 223 Ibid. 224 Roseneil, Disarming Patriarchy, 144. 225 Ibid., 156.

274 of.”226 “I think Greenham changed me enormously … I felt at the beginning that I could push the world over, almost,” an elderly visitor explained.227 Helen John commented that women first

“tiptoed in timidity [but] became bold human beings.”228 A single mother confessed to another

Greenham woman how difficult it was to singlehandedly raise her daughter but that she gained

“enormous strength from Greenham.”229 An unmarried woman expressed that at Greenhan, for the first time, she felt no one judged her as “a spinster” but accepted her as a person.230

Numerous participants explained that in traveling to Greenham, by going to the fence, they felt they confronted their fears, not only about cruise missiles but about themselves.231

It was also personally transformative for many to spend time at Greenham without the presence and assistance of men. Finding food and shelter for themselves empowered many, and especially due to their treatment by local police and the military, prompted them to also question local and state authority, the justice system and power relations in general.232 Given the substantial lesbian population there, it also incentivized heterosexual women to ponder the rather homophobic status quo in Britain and consider what lesbianism meant to lesbians. “I had lots of my assumptions knocked,” Leah, a middle-aged woman, assessed. “It made me realise how excluded lesbians are, how invisible they are in day to day life,” another camper admitted, “And

226 Ibid. 227 Ibid. 228 Ibid., 157. 229 Ginette Leach, “9th-13th Dec 83,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL; see also “The Greenham Children,” The Guardian, September 21, 1984, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/3), Box17, WL. Single mothers brought their children to Greenham as it provided a ready supply of caregivers. A baby was even born there. 230 Ginette Leach, “9th-13th Dec 83,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL. 231 “Women in the van of peace,” The Guardian, July 30, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box15, WL. 232 Jill Truman, “News from Greenham,” April 26, 1986, Jill Truman Papers, Writings about Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, News from Greenham (7JTR/2/1), Box 1, WL; Ginette Leach, “5th October 84,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/04), WL; Mary Maguire, “Peace women show Europe the way, Public Service, May 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box15, WL; Roseneil, Disarming Patriarchy, 153-155.

275 that for women to meet each other you have to make a conscious decision and effort to do it.”233

In bringing together disparate women, some lesbian and some straight, some older and some quite young, from a diversity of national backgrounds, the women-only atmosphere fostered close friendships among women. “I’ve made friends who are the most important people in my life,” one young woman explained.234

Greenham infamously cracked open unhappy marriages and encouraged women to come out if they had not done so.235 Helen John, one of the original protesters, separated from and then divorced her husband during her time at Greenham. Her husband, supportive of her activism initially, realized that his wife prioritized Greenham over family. While she felt the nuclear threat was the most pressing parental issue, her husband did not share or comprehend her logic.236

Ginette Leach and others shared with Helen this experience of marital discord and self- discovery.237 Leach explained, “Greenham inspired me to change my life, go to university, get divorced and become the real me, which I very happily did.”238 Indeed, her time at the camp propelled her to embrace her sexuality—she had relationships with women thereafter—and like many other Greenham participants to continue her activism beyond Greenham.239 Leach, for example, went on to work with AIDS patients.240 She elaborated on her beginning at Greenham,

“Oddly enough it ends as it starts with the inevitability of changing relationships. When I went to

233 Quoted in Roseneil, Disarming Patriarchy, 147. 234 Quoted in Roseneil, Disarming Patriarchy, 146. 235 Roseneil, Disarming Patriarchy, 150-153. 236 Fairhall, Common Ground, 39-40. 237 For another similar story from long-time camper Sarah Hipperson, see also Emma Nugent, “I wanted to protect the world, not just my kids,” Evening Times (Glasgow, Scotland), September 9, 2000, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/5), Box19, WL. 238 Ginette Leach, “Ginette Leach (Neé Bell Syer),” March 2012, Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/04), WL. 239 Alexandra Topping, “Greenham Common Revisited,” The Guardian, September 9, 2006, Jayne and Juliet Nelson Papers (Ref Np. 7JAN), Box 1, WL; Fairhall, Common Ground, 203-204. See also Roseneil, Common Women, 310- 322. She explains that many Greenham women continued their activism after Greenham, their causes multiplying in diversity. Many expressed missing the lifestyle of Greenham and pursued non-traditionally female trades (such as carpentry) and holistic living. 240 Ginette Leach, “Ginette Leach (Neé Bell Syer),” March 2012, Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/04), WL.

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Orange Gate a year ago I was in a state of personal crisis and unhappiness,” yet the women at

Greenham, regardless of their differences, gave her the strength to make the changes necessary to regain happiness.241 “I think that the broken homes syndrome which is often bandied about,”

Leach clarified, “would have happened whether the individual woman had or hadn’t come to

Greenham.”242

Women treasured the physical place itself. Their desire to rescue “life on earth” broadened from the singular mission of preventing a nuclear war to also considering environmental responsibility. Despite the brutality of evictions and constant exposure to weather, the grand experiment recharged and calmed women. Leach elaborated, “I must say that the longer I stay here, the less in some ways I seem to do, and the more I talk in agreement and harmony. We all do I think.”243 Greenham had become her home. She described she could not sleep well outside of Greenham, and even noticed herself opening all her windows in her house in imitation of conditions at the camp.244 In thinking of Greenham as a special space, it nurtured environmental consciousness, especially given that women lived outdoors. Newly sensitive to their impact on the Common’s , women learned to “come round completely to think that dealing with those things is much more important, is as important as other issue-based things,” as twenty-two-year-old Penny explained. “Greenham extended my viewpoint,” she continued, “The fact that capitalism in Bangladesh means that they go in and they chop all the trees down and it means 4 million people drown next summer. And why should women here being battered be more important than women drowning in Bangladesh?”245

241 Ginette Leach, “5th October 84,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/014), WL. 242 Ibid. 243 Ginette Leach, “29th March 1984- 6th April,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL. 244 Ginette Leach, “10th April,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL. 245 Sasha Roseneil, “Transgressions and Transformations,” Experience, consciousness and identity at Greenham, in Practising Feminism: Identity, Difference, Power, ed. Nickie Charles and Felicia Hughes-Freeland (London: Routledge, 1996), 95. See also Roseneil, Common Women, 130-131. Roseneil maintains that eco-feminist ideas,

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As one of the lasting effects of Greenham’s transition by the mid-1980s, its message and function broadened and feminism became more explicit and intertwined with disarmament and ecological concerns over time.246 In contrast to its initial years when a feminist agenda was important for only a minority, the camp over time turned “feminists into disarmers and disarmers into feminists,” as one participant stated.247 Sociologist and Greenham participant Sasha

Roseneil reinforced such a transition, saying, “Greenham was not feminist because it was women-only, but became women-only as it was becoming feminist.”248 That she emphasized the camp’s gender exclusivity as a key factor in making it more feminist is significant. The feminism that some Greenham women crafted—at its root, centered on these personally transformative experiences—required a women-only atmosphere.

This feminism was slower to develop and manifest at Greenham than in organizations in the women’s movement in America. Women in Britain had been preoccupied with the pressing threat of cruise missiles being sited in their backyards. Yet once the missiles inevitably arrived and once the camp had existed for a few years, the core of women who remained at Greenham or active in its continual presence increasingly identified with a feminism that accentuated the interconnectedness of global injustices. Dr. Lynne Jones echoed this, “We live in a society whose organizing principles are violence and a disregard for human life … I am saying that nuclear weapons are the product of a patriarchal society and incompatible with a feminist one, and that is why the struggle for disarmament cannot be separated from the struggle to change the

brought to England by American women involved in groups like WPA, also encouraged Greenham women to rethink their relationship with nature. 246 See Sybil Oldfield, Women Against the Iron Fist: Alternatives to Militarism (Oxford, England and Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell Ltd., 1984), 207-218. Oldfield argues that over time Greenham became more separatist and more feminist, though she disbelieves that most women in this movement in Western Europe were so extreme in their separatism and anti-men stance. She categorizes the philosophy of its earlier years as humanist. 247 Quoted in Fairhall, Common Ground, 187. 248 Roseneil, Disarming Patriarchy, 63.

278 way all of us live.” 249 Campers like Jones increasingly looked beyond cruise missiles to “[act] as a powerful catalyst for a range of issues.”250 Journalist Jean Stead reflected, “Women’s networks had spread—to campaigning against the destruction of the Pacific Islands, the growth of militarism, the food mountains, and they were taking action against corporations that supported apartheid and the commercial exploitation of pornography. Women from Greenham went to

Zimbabwe and Nicaragua, to the US and the Soviet Union and linked up with other women.”251

By the mid-‘80s, nothing was off limits for Greenham, indicating its ambitious feminism.

“Whether the world will ever accept or even begin to understand this basically female re- assessment remains to be seen,” Truman wrote, “but it could be a key to survival of the planet.”252 This repertoire of campaigns signaled how “the wider Greenham network was the catalyst for many women for the development of a global consciousness.”253

It should not be underestimated that Greenham deeply mattered to tens of thousands of women in the late 20th century. That so many women from Britain and elsewhere came together as women in reaction to the cruise missiles suggests a profound gender gap in issues of peace and social equity then. That they chose to organize as women also reveals both something powerful about gender separatism in these years. While the “anti-nuclear movement has a musty, dusty, pre-Internet feel” to it, Independent writer Fay Weldon commented in 2000, Greenham

249 Women and Life on Earth (hereafter WLOE), “The following is a copy,” Women and Life on Earth Papers (hereafter WLOE Papers), Accn. #03S-17, Unprocessed, Box 1 of 7, Folder WLE Foundation—file, SSC. WLOE kept Jones’ speech, writing that it “expresses so much of what we feel Women and Life on Earth is about.” 250 Jean Stead, “Greenham Common: 25 Years On,” September 2006, Jayne and Juliet Nelson Papers (Ref Np. 7JAN), Box 1, WL. 251 Ibid. 252 Jill Truman, “Happy Birthday, Greenham,” September 5, 1985, Jill Truman Papers, Writings about Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, News from Greenham (7JTR/2/1), Box 1, WL; “Workshops,” October 23, 1983, Jill Truman Papers, Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp Papers (7JTR/1), Box 1, WL. See also Sue Finch, “Socialist-Feminists & Greenham Common,” Feminist Review 23 (Summer 1986): 96-98, for a discussion of Greenham’s widening campaigns. 253 Roseneil, Disarming Patriarchy, 148.

279 women did—to many—make a difference.254 Weldon impressed upon her readers to empathize with the campers how real sexism and the Cold War felt: “[i]t is hard for a new generation to comprehend just how alarming the MAD years were. Hard for today’s young women to comprehend how far apart in attitude men and women were: how easy it was to categorise all men as violent aggressors and all women as nurturers.”255 Gender, as Weldon imparted, was a separating power and big part of the women’s movement.

Yet, the slow disintegration of its anti-nuclear focus and its embrace of larger women’s issues spelled trouble for Greenham. For one, this transition caused problems at home. Outside of the camp, many women experienced hostility from loved ones and friends who disliked the time spent away from family as well as the altered appearances and attitudes campers brought home with them. Leach commented that on one return visit, several friends telephoned her to see if she was the Greenham woman on the news for disorderly drunkenness.256 In her play about the peace camp, The Web, Truman depicted several marriages crumbling as husbands cornered wives to pick between family obligations and Greenham. Not unreasonably, husbands’ demands indicated the stress that mothers’ absences placed on fathers. Furthermore, her characters debated the merits of female separatism, and she showed that the decision by Greenham to exclude men was far from consensual. Many women in her play, representative of real women, missed their partners and felt ardent separatists incorrectly projected an innate violence on all men.257

254 Fay Weldon, “Goodbye and thank you, Greenham women. We owe you,” The Independent (London, England), January 2, 2000, Jayne and Juliet Nelson Papers (Ref Np. 7JAN), Box 1, WL; see also Fay Weldon, “Mother’s Day,” The Sunday Times, September 12, 1999, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/5), Box19, WL. 255 Fay Weldon, “Goodbye and thank you, Greenham women. We owe you,” The Independent, January 2, 2000, Jayne and Juliet Nelson Papers (Ref Np. 7JAN), Box 1, WL. 256 Ginette Leach, “Jan 1984. Deal,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL. 257 Jill Truman, “The Web,” 1991, Jill Truman Papers, The Web (7JTR/3/1), WL. See also Roseneil, Common Women, 142-155, as she elaborates on contestation over female separatism at Greenham.

280

Indeed, men’s mandated absence was off-putting to some. To Pettitt and others, it represented an anti-male, militant feminism guaranteed to alienate. As one of the founders of the camp, she expressed over the years—as she became less involved in the day-to-day at

Greenham—that she disliked the anti-man line. It was too aggressive and created “the image that to this day causes many people to be more frightened than they are inspired by the words

‘Greenham Women.’”258 Pettitt in general criticized that the lifestyle of Greenham came to dominate its image.259 Other women, especially those with connections to the mainstream peace movement, found the female separatism and its budding feminism hard to understand.260 These problems point to the quandary inherent in Greenham’s purpose as an exclusive community of women. Once women dropped the emphasis on the cruise missiles, differences among women, along the fault lines of class, race, politics and levels of time committed to Greenham, surfaced and began to fracture the fragile experiment. The dual impulses of community and individual identity struggled to co-exist, and its philosophy which meant to represent and include all women failed to adequately address all voices and perspectives.

One dilemma was that, like in America, the feminism Greenham women slowly embraced read as biological essentialism to some. As Beverly Mason wrote in The Times,

Greenham women used “male-created images of women (gentle, pacific, life creating etc.) as an underpinning for their philosophy” and gave the impression that these stereotypes were

258 Pettitt, Walking to Greenham Common, 287. 259 Pettitt, “Common people acting with common sense,” heddwch (Wales, UK), Summer/Autumn 2001, 2-3. 260 Jill Truman, “News from Greenham,” April 26, 1986, Jill Truman Papers, Writings about Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, News from Greenham (7JTR/2/1), Box 1, WL. See also Roseneil, Common Women, 156- 164. She describes that as the constituency at Greenham changed by the mid-1980s, from the original marchers to “generally younger, child-free, more radical, anarchist and feminist … many of whom identified as lesbians,” conflict emerged over this transformation and what the future of Greenham should be (156). She refers to these two camps as “queer Greenham” and “respectable Greenham.”

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“inescapable.”261 Just as men should not be excused to justify their violence through their biology, Mason argued, women should not explain their pacifism as a given. Many other women likewise did not see the merit of the ways in which Greenham played with assumptions of female passivity and male aggressiveness. They concluded that the camp’s feminism went astray when women relied on the very stereotyping women’s liberation despised. Mason worried like others that when peace became associated as a “women’s issue,” politicians trivialized it.262 While some at Greenham were unhappy with men’s regulated absence, media covered those women most vocally opposed to men, and that solidified the perception that a man-hating attitude unequivocally pervaded Greenham.263

In “the entirely-female way of life” of Greenham, it was not supposed to matter if a woman lived there permanently or had only visited once.264 Their adage “Greenham women everywhere” encapsulated that “[e]very woman is welcome … [w]hether you’ve spent the last three years at Greenham Peace Camp or if you’ve just decided you want to find out what’s going

261 Beverly Mason, “Don’t fall for male stereotypes,” The Times, March 13, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box15, WL. 262 Janet Radcliffe Richards, “Why should women have the monopoly on virtue?” The Guardian, May 10, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box15, WL; Nicholas Palmer and Jane Leitch, “It’s a man’s world—but would women make it any better?” The Guardian, April 26, 1984, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/2), Box16, WL; Sarah and Rachel Baxter, “Unimportant? Then try to get rid of us,” The Guardian, April 10, 1984, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/2), Box 16, WL. See also Ann Snitow, “Holding the Line at Greenham,” Mother Jones, February-March 1985, 30, 32, Joan Biren Papers, Series V. Subject Files, Judasism (cont’d)-Peace, Box 84, Folder 10 Subjects: Peace, Peace Encampments, Greenham Women Against Cruise Missiles 1982-87, n.d, SSC. Snitow expressed that, as a feminist, she was at first uneasy with Greenham’s philosophy on female nurturance and interest in peace. See also Connie Mansueto, “peace camp at greenham common,” off our backs, February 1983, 2-3, Joan Biren Papers, Series V. Subject Files, Judasism (cont’d)-Peace, Box 84, Folder 10 Subjects: Peace, Peace Encampments, Greenham Women Against Cruise Missiles 1982-87, n.d, SSC. See also Roseneil, Disarming Patriarchy, 135. She likewise argues that some radical feminists viewed Greenham as damaging to women’s liberation. 263 Jill Truman, “Having burbled on for months,” January 1985, Jill Truman Papers, Writings about Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, News from Greenham (7JTR/2/1), Box 1, WL; “July 4th-8th: International Women’s Blockade at Greenham Common,” flyer, Greenham Common Collection, Pamphlets (5GCC/B), WL. 264 Jill Truman, “The Women’s Peace Camp at Greenham,” March 24, 1984, Jill Truman Papers, Writings about Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, News from Greenham (7JTR/2/1), Box 1, WL.

282 on.” 265 Still, another division surfaced between women since the more time and energy some funneled into Greeenham, the more they constructed the space as theirs. While many of the more permanent campers warmly—albeit cautiously at first—greeted visitors, Leach commented during her first visit to Greenham, “I asked one [long-time camper] … what will happen next?

She looked surprised and said of course they would stay, nothing would happen, nothing could happen. Their faith in themselves, in the closed community that they have created, almost shut out outsiders like … me.”266 Such a feeling portended a growing division between newcomers and original or long-time participants at Greenham, in that the latter felt particularly defensive of how much time and energy they expended at the camp.267 “It is perhaps inevitable,” one woman

Barbara commented, “that people who are centrally involved in the camp and have stayed there for many months end up taking leadership roles, though often they are created by the expectation of others.”268 Most understood the extreme fatigue that came with constant residency at

Greenham, and that the few women who permanently lived there deserved that recognition.

Permanent dwellers expressed that newcomers did not respect or treasure the place as much as they should. Still, that it felt like a closed community to some—including those that lacked time or the financial ability to live there—translated into poor advertising and refuted the adage

“Greenham Women Everywhere.”

Press picked up on other tensions, publishing stories that “the real leaders of the movement” profited from an enormous bank account, bloated from donations of several

265 “Many Visions Many Heads” in Summer News from Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp,” Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Publicity Materials, Newsletters Produced by GCW, (5GCW/D/1), Box 11, WL. 266 Ginette Leach, “Greenham Common Peace Camp,” November 1982, Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL. 267 Polly Toynbee, “Behind the Lines,” The Guardian, December 9, 1985, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/3), Box17, WL. Toynbee commented that women tried not to discuss who had been there the longest as that bred hierarchy and animosity. 268 Harford and Hopkins, eds. Greenham Common, 25.

283 thousand pounds while their “shivering sisters” at the camp went hungry.269 Even feminist publications like off our backs described a communication barrier and conflict in priorities between those permanently living at the camp and other women, namely those who started the camp and were considered to be the core leaders even though they no longer resided there. The former group, off our backs assessed, tended to be younger, more radical and interested in an alternative lifestyle whereas the latter remained committed to a more insular anti-missile campaign.270

As much as the shrinking core of participants wanted to craft a community for all women and each woman’s priorities, they soon found this dream of global sisterhood unfeasible. Even as women expressed, “A Woman in Russia is the same as myself, the same emotions, leading the same sort of life,” this sentiment contradicted that many at Greenham felt unrepresented, either by their class, race, opinions over civil disobedience or female separatism.271 They also revealed that only a core group experienced some kind of sisterhood. For most women, the category

“woman” and female values associated with womanhood failed to adequately encompass all needs and views.

Importantly, the demographic composition of Greenham was not reflexive of Britain in the late 20th century, and genuine efforts by some aside, the majority of white middle-class campers could not attract or adequately include working-class and nonwhite women. One participant encapsulated this realization when she dramatized a sample conversation between two campers. One woman, a mother, began, “Green Gate is a woman’s space—They certainly

269 “Greenham: the inside story,” Daily Express, April 9, 1984, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/2), Box 16, WL. 270 Connie Mansueto, “peace camp at greenham common,” off our backs, February 1983, 2-3, Joan Biren Papers, Series V. Subject Files, Judasism (cont’d)-Peace, Box 84, Folder 10 Subjects: Peace, Peace Encampments, Greenham Women Against Cruise Missiles 1982-87, n.d, SSC. 271 “The Greenham Factor,” Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, Box 3 of 26, Folder 10a Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp 1984, 1989, SSC; Harford and Hopkins, eds. Greenham Common, 43.

284 include lots of middle-class women—Not many working-class women—Few black women.

What about mothers of boy children?” The other woman replied, “Well Green Gate is a woman’s space,” to which the original speaker quipped, “Oh sorry, I thought I was a woman.”272 Though publicity for the camp specified all were welcome, class disparities experienced by nonwhite and working-class participants led to heated camp discussions.273 One evening at Orange Gate, for example, these issues emerged as one woman explained that she lived and ate better at Greenham than she would if she had remained at home on social security. Working-class women expressed they felt unwelcome and out of place at Greenham, as even small differences magnified into significant differences. Leach explained, “They feel we are superior, use words they don’t understand, and even the fact that some women drink herb tea and eat odd food, (vegans and vegetarians are numerous) makes some of these other women feel like outsiders.”274

Indeed, unlike in America, class remained a powerful dividing line in Britain at this time.

Women who could not afford to leave their jobs and risk arrest to participate in Greenham then lost out on the camp experience. One Guardian editorialist wagered that a majority of British women, especially low-income and working-class ones, might support the camp but confessed it spoke only to “the converted” and did not draw new recruits.275 The majority that could manage time at Greenham were only middle-class and lower-middle-class British women. The sisterhood that campers espoused, then, hid that the women who felt closest to one another were perhaps similar to each other to begin with. Leach even commented that police tended to treat her well given her middle-class status and grey hair.276

272 “Letter from Melissa” in “Summer News from Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp,” Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Publicity Materials, Newsletters Produced by GCW, (5GCW/D/1), Box 11, WL. 273 “May 24 Women’s Day for Disarmament,” flyer, Greenham Common Collection, Pamphlets (5GCC/B), WL. 274 Ginette Leach, 30th May-2nd June 1984,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL. 275 Jane Leitch, “It’s a man’s world—but would women make it any better?” The Guardian, April 26, 1984, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/2), Box16, WL. 276 Ginette Leach, “18th September to 30th September 1984,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL.

285

Race proved to be another sticking point at Greenham, which revealed underlying and unaddressed racial tensions within British second-wave feminism and also larger issues surrounding race relations and an increasingly diverse British population. During the early postwar years, Britain moved from being a fairly homogenous society to a multicultural one with the immigration of eight hundred million citizens from 1945 until 1962, at which point national policy drastically restricted the right to enter. Indeed, abetted by the process of decolonization,

Britain transitioned from a postwar, non-white population of 30,000 to one by the end of the century that boasted some three million immigrants from Africa, the Pacific Rim, the Caribbean and the . These black and Asian immigrants disproved the monolithic idea of

English whiteness, and the rise of nationalism in Scotland and Wales further placed a question- mark over the nature of citizenship. Tensions stemming from these developments only bred racial discrimination, or at least a lack of sensitivity on the part of white Britons towards those of color.277

A group of Greenham visitors from London explained that they had tried to reach out to women of color to join their women’s group yet “had suggested that two groups get together for a social evening, and said that the coloured group could do the catering for it!”278 Indeed, for many British women at Greenham, given their whiteness, racial discrimination was foreign to them, and they were woefully ignorant of decolonization occurring around them and their nation’s history of imperialism. When two Black South African women visited Green Gate to give a performance about their lives, many were moved yet “realised that [their own] lives were

277 Randall Hansen, Citizenship and Immigration in Post-War Britain: The Institutional Origins of a Multicultural Nation (New York: Oxford University of Press, 2000), v, 3. For more on immigration, race and multiculturalism in postwar Britain, see Addison, No Turning Back, 222-256; Kathleen Paul, Whitewashing Britain: Race and Citizenship in the Postwar Era (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997). 278 Ginette Leach, “28th Dec 83-1st Jan 1984,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL.

286 really easy in comparison with the brutality of the police and hatred of the whites.”279 While class and racial divisions surfaced by the mid-1980s, as these examples illuminate, they prefigured the worst conflicts which did not emerge until the late 1980s.

Other problems plagued Greenham as well, which also only worsened as the years wore on. The various gates established strong personalities which respectively attracted different kinds of women and disrupted the communal nature of Greenham. At one “general/money meeting” in the spring of 1984, around forty women gathered to discuss how the camp spent donated money as Greenham was consistently “very short of money.”280 Many felt Yellow Gate had more than its fair share and suggested a more equitable distribution of money between gates. Others mentioned that funds often went to frivolous, often individual needs. The meeting resulted in no concrete solutions and presaged growing “gateism” among women at Greenham—or as Leach quipped, “perhaps it should be called oneupwomanship.”281 While the gates helped Greenham women manage their differences, they ultimately exposed deep racial and class tensions among camp participants and heralded the slow demise of the camp as a cohesive protest.

The very structure of Greenham—leaderless—also encumbered its future. In 1985, frustrated campers invented “re-birth weekends” to try and attract more visitors and residents.

Advertising their invitation in the camp newsletter, women inadvertently explained that their conundrum of low participation was rooted in structurelessness: “No-one is organizing anything—it’s all gone past that we’re all equal and all responsible—there are not doers and supporters. We are all one. We’ve always said there are no leaders—let’s really get that one

279 Ginette Leach, “18th September to 30th September 1984,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL. 280 Ginette Leach, “28th June- 1st July 1984,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL. 281 Ginette Leach, “27th-28th April 1984,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL; Ginette Leach, “30th August-2nd September,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL; Roseneil, Disarming Patriarchy, 90-93.

287 together and start turning up in large numbers.”282 No one could command any woman to come to Greenham or instruct any woman there. If there were problems—which there were—they had to be solved slowly and exhaustively through consensus decision-making. Yet, as evidenced by some Greenham women’s dissatisfaction with certain decisions, such as expelling men in

February 1982, their decision-making process only reached consensus by excluding or ignoring those who disagreed.

All of these issues were manifest by the mid-80s. Throughout the later years of the decade and into the 1990s, as the epilogue of this dissertation details, race would become an even bigger sticking point as Greenham slowly lost numbers and each gate became a self-contained camp. Strong personalities dominated, and few newcomers joined the alternative women’s community at Greenham Common. In an undated camp newsletter, one contributor unknowingly exposed the growing gap between the core of women at Greenham who believed in their mission and the rest of the world. She wrote of Greenham women and their ambitious plans, “We are all different parts of the same struggle … Our ultimate goals: Peace, Freedom & Anarchy.”283 Yet, only sentences later, she detailed the response she often received from talking to people about the camp: “Greenham Common! Is that still going on then? I thought all the wimmin had left.”284

Conclusions: “Could we live together in such harmony without the tension of cruise, without the mud and cold and physical discomfort?”

282 “Phoenix Camping Action. For Women. At Greenham,” in Summer News from Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp,” Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Publicity Materials, Newsletters Produced by GCW, (5GCW/D/1), Box 11, WL. 283 Newsletter, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Publicity Materials, Newsletters Produced by GCW, (5GCW/D/1), Box 11, WL. 284 Ibid.

288

While bus and car loads of women continued to show up at Greenham into the mid-

1980s, it was clear that numbers at the gates had dwindled. “It is still cold at Greenham,” Jill

Truman commented in March 1985, “Often boring and always stressful. The complete lack of privacy and constant discomfort make it hard to bear for long stretches of time. On my last visit there were no camps at red, indigo or turquoise gates.”285 Another lamented, “Do you realize that it would only take 2-3 thousand women giving around 4 days a month to being at Greenham, to have a constant presence of hundreds of us there?”286 Even in its first few years, Greenham regulars commented on the slowly depreciating population at the camp. “Only 10 per cent of the numbers they had hoped for came to throw their bodies into human barricades to prevent the construction workers entering and leaving the base,” commented Guardian reporter Paul Brown in the summer of 1983 after the Labour Party had failed to champion the case for unilateral disarmament and win.287 Still, after mentioning that supporters numbered in the hundreds and not the thousands, Brown asserted that international attention from women continued to sustain the camp.

This last point speaks to the successes and merits of Greenham. It did manage to attract tens of thousands of women in its early years, serving as a meeting point for many in their quest for disarmament. What began as a one-hundred-twenty-mile, anti-missile march by a few ordinary women transformed into a permanent, all-women encampment that slowly embraced a broad-based feminism and bold, playful nonviolent direct action. The story of Greenham in its early years fits as a chapter within the larger story of the transnational women’s movement of the

285 Jill Truman, “News from Greenham,” March 1985, Jill Truman Papers, Writings about Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, News from Greenham (7JTR/2/1), Box 1, WL. 286 “Phoenix Camping Action. For Women. At Greenham,” in Summer News from Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp,” Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Publicity Materials, Newsletters Produced by GCW, (5GCW/D/1), Box 11, WL. 287 Paul Brown, “The women of Greenham concede that the cruise will come,” The Guardian, July 8, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box15, WL.

289 late 20th century in which tens of thousands doggedly pursued a better future for women and life on earth. The scope of such a movement revealed its appeal and power, but it also mattered that problems emergent in organizations like Women and Life on Earth (WLOE) and the Women’s

Pentagon Action (WPA) likewise surfaced thousands of miles away at Greenham. Along the fault lines of race, class, sexuality and ideology, differences split women in both locations.

Facing a hostile public, many debated the efficacy of their civil disobedience despite the fact that nonviolent direct action meant so much to them. Lack of structure impeded progress for many.

Furthermore, the scaffolding of the women’s movement was diversity, inclusivity and a commitment to the values of empathy, compassion and nonviolence. But, as much as emotion and ambition animated women’s activism in the late 1970s and 1980s, it did not evolve into a sustainable movement. The philosophy, built at Greenham and at events like the WPA marches, sought to represent all women equally and simultaneously let all women’s voices and experiences be heard, a formula that proved unworkable. Their essentialization of women was flawed because not all women were the same. Notably, very few in the movement knew how to talk about Margaret Thatcher since her womanhood, conservatism and hawkish Cold War leadership did not fit their idea of what it meant to be a woman.

In the winter of 1984, Ginette Leach captured the bittersweet nature of this movement.

Suggesting that Greenham might not have materialized had the world not been in peril, she asked, “Could we live together in such harmony without the tension of cruise, without the mud and cold and physical discomfort? Its [sic] hard to separate these things. Is it the bad which makes it good?”288 Women, it seemed, had to have an excuse as extreme as nuclear weapons to come together, yet even then, their broad-based feminism was inhospitable for a diversity of needs and philosophies.

288 Ginette Leach, “20th-22nd Jan 1984,” Ginette Leach Papers (7LEA/A/01) Box 1, WL.

290

Chapter Five:

The Seneca Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice,

1983-1986

***

Introduction

On July 4th, 1983, only months before NATO’s placement of Pershing II and cruise missiles through Italy, Britain, Holland, Belgium and Germany, 10,000 women traveled to

Upstate New York near historic Seneca Falls to witness against this Cold War maneuver.

Viewing their protest as an extension of the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, women from across America erected their own peace camp—named the Seneca Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice—as a statement of solidarity with their British and European

“sisters.” Emerging out of the Global Feminist Disarmament conference in June of 1982, the

Seneca peace camp was another moment in the women’s movement of the late 20th century in which members sought to unite all women around principles of nonviolence, feminism and ecology. Their immediate call to action targeted the Cold War, and in particular, Seneca women aimed to halt missile deployment from the U.S. to Europe and Britain by camping outside and nonviolently invading, blockading and sabotaging the Seneca Army Depot (SAD), rumored to be a major transshipment point. But beyond protesting the imminent threat posed by nuclear weapons, Seneca participants hoped to simultaneously fashion and foster an alternative community within the confines of the fifty-one-acre farm near Romulus, New York. Relying on the extant scaffolding of their movement—gender separatism, the revaluation of subjective qualities projected onto women and the unfading belief in a world informed by their ecological

291

and nonviolent ideas—Seneca participants succeeded in creating a peace camp that encompassed both purposes.

The camp began in the summer of 1983, with the original plan to last only until Labor

Day. It lasted, instead, until 2006. When September of 1983 arrived, planners and campers alike concluded that their protest against SAD and their experiment in egalitarian, consensus-driven living felt unfinished. Admittedly, major problems, namely their significant debt and the physical upkeep of the land, inhibited the camp’s longevity then and in the subsequent years. Even more so, interpersonal conflicts divorced women from one another. The decision to exclude men and adolescent boys alienated some women. Straight women felt overwhelmed by the numbers and behavior of lesbians. Some appreciated the long hours of consensus-driven meetings yet others groaned from the tedium. While a contingent asked for more structure, others inched the camp toward a more anarchic state. No one could agree on the balance between organization and spontaneity. Differing work expectations led to overwork by some and their subsequent bitterness. Minority women expressed feelings of tokenism, and planners, try as they might, could not attract and accommodate more low-income, rural and women of color. These confrontations and conflicts surfaced in the camp’s first summer and lingered. Seneca organizers and participants indefatigably brainstormed and attempted solutions, to little or no effect.

Seneca was not alone in its existence or its dilemmas. As much as Greenham inspired it into creation, the British peace camp and worldwide interest in disarmament galvanized other women-only peace camps. Across America, Western Europe and Britain, women identified military facilities, erected nearby primitive encampments and embarked on relentless civil disobedience to defy militarism. Tellingly, all camps floundered like Seneca and Greenham, for all of these installations and their movement at large faced the same quandary. Asking for the

292

impossible, participants wanted to unite and accommodate all women. Yet differences formed powerful fault lines that shared values and interests could not bridge. Representative of others in her movement, Ynestra King, planner of the Women and Life on Earth (WLOE) conference, dejectedly pondered in 1984, “Can feminism be a movement of all women without invalidating the experience and concerns of some women?”1

The Seneca Women’s Encampment, Summer 1983

In June 1982, the U.S. chapter of the Women’s International League for Peace and

Freedom (WILPF) and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) convened a Global

Feminist Disarmament meeting at Barnard College, New York, in which over three hundred women from eleven different countries assembled to broaden their knowledge of the Cold War arms race and its connections to violence and sexism at home. In the words of one attendant,

Barbara Zanotti, “Each participant recognized what was abundantly clear: Patriarchy is a state of war. Violence is the inevitable outcome. Feminism is the politics of global right relation [sic].”2

In line with conversations had at the Women and Life on Earth (WLOE) conference, those present at the Global Feminist Disarmament convention understood themselves as part of a

“vibrant legacy of Womanpeace” and perceived of feminism not as “a laundry list of women’s concerns,” but rather “a political perspective on life” that identified “the mutually reinforcing

1 Ynestra King, “A Story—Thinking about Seneca,” in Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice (hereafter WEFPJ), “Happy New Years!” 1984, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 7, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Newsletters + Mailings 1983-85, Sophia Smith Collection (hereafter SSC), Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts. Note for this chapter: some names of participants involved in the Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice have been redacted according to the Schlesinger Library and Sophia Smith Collection’s restrictions on these records. 2 Barbara Zanotti, “Memories that Endure,” Philadelphia Women’s Peace Encampment Papers, Box 3 of 4, Actions and Women’s Peace Encampments, Folder Feminist Disarmament meeting, June 11, 1982, Swarthmore College Peace Collection (hereafter SCPC), Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. 293

relationship of militarism and sexism.”3 Thereafter, some of the participants from WILPF and the Upstate Feminist Peace Alliance decided that American women should witness against

NATO missile deployment in solidarity with the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp.

They began to conceive of a temporary, summer-long women’s peace camp near the Seneca

Army Depot (SAD) in Romulus, New York.4

Many of the organizers originated from the Upstate area, and had seen “a big article [in] the Rochester paper, about the Seneca Army Depot and how the depot was storing nuclear weapons,” as planner Carrie Stearns described.5 “There were maybe 9 or 10 of us when we started thinking about the idea of a peace camp outside the depot. It felt like the time definitely called for it - that's what I thought as a young person – that a peace camp would be an appropriate response to what was happening globally. It was pretty exciting to feel a part of something that big.”6 Women further validated their chosen location given the hearsay “that

[Seneca] county had the highest rate of cancer and that the Manhattan Project tailings had been dumped in the Seneca Army Depot,” with rumored “sightings of white everything … white deer, white fox, white skunk, white everything.”7 Located on 11,000 acres of rural land, SAD was alleged to be one of the Department of Defense’s facilities for housing nuclear weapons before deployment to Europe, and a major East Coast transshipment point at that. Seneca planners

3 Ibid.; Philadelphia Women’s Peace Encampment, “Report of Charlotte Bunch’s Speech and the Meeting,” Philadelphia Women’s Peace Encampment Papers, Box 3 of 4, Actions and Women’s Peace Encampments, Folder Feminist Disarmament meeting, June 11, 1982, SCPC. 4 Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice (hereafter WEFPJ), “Agenda for UFPA WILPF Meeting 10’9 in Ithaca,” Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice (hereafter WEFPJ) Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, agendas, etc., 1982-July 1983, Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America (hereafter SL), Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 5 Michele Kramer and Estelle Coleman, " 001 Carrie Stearns," PeaceCampHerstory, April 10, 2006, accessed November 21, 2016, http://peacecampherstory.blogspot.com/2006/04/herstory-001-carrie-stearns.html. 6 Ibid. For another account, see Michele Kramer and Estelle Coleman, "Herstory 006 Shad Reinstein," PeaceCampHerstory, October 5, 2014, accessed November 21, 2016, http://peacecampherstory.blogspot.com/2008/05/herstory-006-shad-reinstein.html. 7 Michele Kramer and Estelle Coleman, "Herstory 004 Michelle Crone," PeaceCampHerstory, October 4, 2014, accessed November 21, 2016, http://peacecampherstory.blogspot.com/2006/12/herstory-004-michelle-crone.html. 294

contended that since 1944, SAD was complicit in nuclear weapons storage and production given the depot purportedly housed uranium for the Manhattan Project.8 Camp organizers also claimed that beginning in 1957, the depot stored tactical nuclear weapons, and by 1961, began to distribute nuclear weapons components and repair parts. To them, SAD seemed to have the space and resources for weapons storage in its large earth-covered bunkers and 28,000 square-foot building for plutonium maintenance. It also boasted over two hundred military police, enough to convince the peace campers of its role in weapons manufacture and deployment.9

Many camp coordinators had already demonstrated at SAD. Organizer Carolyn Mows explained, “We planned a women’s action up at Seneca Army Depot - that must have been in

1982 and then Greenham Common was happening and so we had this feminist thing happening that was sort of focused on the Seneca Army Depot and our region and then we got the idea of having a peace camp. But we really did think in the beginning that we were just going to go and

8 The Manhattan Project was preceded by research by British, America and European physicists on the atom, radioactivity and the nuclear chain reaction through the 1930s. In 1939, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt received a letter, written by Leo Szilard and signed by Albert Einstein, urging a governmental role in atomic science developments in case successfully conducted similar research on nuclear science. This incentivized FDR to create the Manhattan Engineering District (and its effort to build the bomb, “the Manhattan Project”) in 1942, under the direction of General Leslie R. Groves and the Army Corps of Engineers. The Manhattan Project established government-run programs to research and process uranium isotopes and plutonium on a massive scale and build weapons out of the processed material at the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago and at Hanford, Washington, Oak Ridge, Tennessee and Los Alamos, New Mexico. Scientists designed two different bomb types based on uranium and plutonium; President Harry Truman used this technology on Japan, levelling Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and three days later, Nagasaki. After controversy surrounding the Baruch Plan and who should be in charge of atomic energy regulation, the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, preceded by the McMahon Bill, closed down the Manhattan Project and transferred its authority and facilities to the Atomic Energy Commission, which was headed by five civilians with advisory boards (one that was military) and answerable to both the president and Congress. See Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986); James P. Delgado, Nuclear Dawn: The Atomic Bomb from the Manhattan Project to the Cold War (Oxford, England and New York: Osprey, 2009). 9 “Seneca Army Depot Face Sheet,” WEFPJ Papers, Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Box 7 of 26, Folder 7, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice 1983, n.d. (Newsletter), SSC. The Seneca camp regularly disseminated this information through pamphlets and orientation material to newcomers, citing, for example, William Arkin and Richard Fieldhouse’s Nuclear Battlefields: Global Links in the Arms Race (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger/Harper & Row, 1985) and the Institute for Policy Studies which documented that Pershing II missiles regularly traveled through SAD on their way to Europe. See WEPFJ, “Women’s Peace Encampment Orientation Information,” WEFPJ Papers, Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Box 7 of 26, Folder 7, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice 1983, n.d. (Newsletter), SSC; WEFPJ, “For Immediate Release,” June 15, 1985, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 1, Look to women for courage: research: Women’s Peace Camps: General 1982-84, SSC. 295

set up our tents - we didn’t think we would buy the land – we thought we would do like

Greenham Common and camp out and get arrested. We had no idea it would turn in to such a big thing.”10 Many of the lead planners were from the Northeast, and in particular Upstate New

York, and most were already committed members of the women’s movement, having attended events like the Women’s Pentagon Action (WPA) demonstrations. Several were quite young—in their early twenties, “young, idealistic, and righteous,” as one described. Others were notably older, having been involved in 1950s’ ban-the-bomb protests as well as later demonstrations against the Vietnam War and for civil rights, women’s liberation and gay and lesbian rights.11

After months of fundraising and meeting, women collectively elected to purchase a fifty- one-acre farm near SAD in Romulus, and name their space the Seneca Women’s Encampment for Peace and Justice.12 For weeks prior to the July 4th opening in 1983, crews prepared the land, its farmhouse and barn for thousands of women. With fire pits dug and Porta Potties trucked in, planners spread news of the camp through organizations like WILPF, WPA, the War Resisters

League (WRL), Mobilization for Survival (Mobe), Finger Lakes Peace Alliance (FLPA) and other women’s and peace-oriented groups—vital contacts and networks with which the camp would maintain over the years.13 Like the majority of other women’s peace camps, planners ensured this space as a women-only one, namely because they felt men’s presence prevented

10 Michele Kramer and Estelle Coleman, "Herstory 002 Carolyn Mow," PeaceCampHerstory, August 20, 2006, accessed November 21, 2016, http://peacecampherstory.blogspot.com/search?q=carolyn+mow. 11 Michele Kramer and Estelle Coleman, "Herstory 006 Shad Reinstein," PeaceCampHerstory, October 5, 2014, accessed November 21, 2016, http://peacecampherstory.blogspot.com/2008/05/herstory-006-shad-reinstein.html. In addition to New York, lead organizers also came from Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Canada. 12 WEFPJ, “Introduction” in “Resource Handbook,” WEFPJ Papers, CDGA, Seneca Falls, NY 1983, Box 1 of 1, Folder 1, General Information, SCPC; WEFPJ, “Minutes from April 6 Meeting—Geneva 1983,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, agendas, etc., 1982-July 1983, SL. The word “justice” was added to be the camp’s title after the Third World Women’s Caucasus suggested as much to camp planners. 13 [Redacted], “Thinking about Seneca,” 1984, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 10, Folder Writings About Encampment, 1983-85, n.d., SL. 296

women’s expressiveness, confidence and friendships necessary for building their movement.14

“An action of this length without men … allows for creativity and a community unique within the American peace networks,” one woman, Terry, explained, and others too reaffirmed their commitment to separatism.15 “To me it is a vast statement that no longer will women sit back and allow men to make the decisions alone which affect the entire globe,” stated one, and another camper added, “that as women we have to set up a separate consciousness about our ties to this

“Patriarchy” that can no longer preserve life on earth.”16 By the first of July, around five hundred women poured in for the opening celebration.17

Beyond the fact that the camp sat near a military facility, the area also boasted a history rich in women’s rights and activism. Campers very much saw themselves as part of a continuum of these traditions, which compelled several to compose a series of poems immortalizing these connections. Indeed, their movement relied on civil disobedience, as WPA made obvious, but poetry and drama likewise allowed them to express their ideas and fashion a culture to that protest. “Women are coming,” one penned, “coming to the Seneca Army Depot / coming to stop

Cruise and Pershing missiles from / going to Europe / here in Seneca County / here where native women of the Iroquois Nation gathered in 1590 / to demand an end to war among the tribes / here where women’s rights activism was born in / 1848 at the first Women’s Rights Convention /

14 In Seneca’s planning stages, its leaders debated the merits and pitfalls of including men on the camp yet they ultimately decided to look to what their “European sisters” were doing and follow suite. Like at Greenham, then, Seneca decided to exclude men from most of the camp and heavily monitor what else they could do. While this decision alienated many, it also emboldened and pleased many others. See WEFPJ, “Minutes for UFPA Meeting, Nov. 6, Rochester,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, agendas, etc., 1982-July 1983, SL; WEFPJ, “Minutes of the Third Planning Meeting for the Women’s Peace Encampment,” November 20, 1982, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, agendas, etc., 1982-July 1983, SL; “Staff Notes,” September 15, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 10, Folder Writings About Encampment, 1983-85, n.d., SL. 15 WEFPJ, “Why a Women’s Peace Camp?” brochure, WEFPJ Papers, CDGA, Seneca Falls, NY 1983, Box 1 of 1, Folder 1, General Information, SCPC. 16 Ibid. 17 “Women are coming,” Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 5, Women’s Encampment Handouts, fliers, pamphlets, and other ephemera 1983-86, nd,, SSC; WEFPJ, “Why a Women’s Peace Camp?” brochure, WEFPJ Papers, CDGA, Seneca Falls, NY 1983, Box 1 of 1, Folder 1, General Information, SCPC. 297

here where lived and aided the / underground railroad in the 1800’s.”18 As much as the women’s movement conceived that all women could unite behind shared values, members also believed that, temporally, women were connected in their “noble peacemaking tradition.”19

Furthermore, Seneca women shared with others in the movement the project of revaluing the intrinsic worth of emotiveness and other qualities projected onto women. “A strong woman is a woman who loves / strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly / terrified and has strong needs,” penned one woman. Many conceived of women as “close to nature” and adversely tended to essentialize and villainize men as technocratic and aggressive, a gendered dichotomy they inserted into their understanding of feminism.20 “Feminism is a value system,” wrote Seneca participant Helen Michalowski, “which affirms qualities that have traditionally been considered female: nurturance of life, putting others’ well-being before one’s own, cooperation, emotional and intuitive sensitivity, attention to detail, the ability to adapt, perseverance.”21 Conversely, to many movement women, their decision to organize outside of mixed-sex groups indicated their opinion that, as another participant Joan Cavanagh wrote, “Masculinity has made of this world a living hell / Masculinity made ‘femininity’ / Made the eyes of our women go dark and cold.”22

Women also held nonviolence and feminism in tandem, arguing both philosophies sought to

18 “Women are coming,” Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 5, Women’s Encampment Handouts, fliers, pamphlets, and other ephemera 1983-86, nd,, SSC. 19 Joan Cavanagh, “Feminism and Nonviolence,” in “Resource Handbook, WEFPJ Papers, CDGA, Seneca Falls, NY 1983, Box 1 of 1, Folder 1, General Information, SCPC. For more poetry written by Seneca campers that illustrates how many saw themselves as similar to all other women, see “Dear Sisters of the Women’s Peace Camp,” August 17, 1983; WEFPJ Papers, Carton 10, Folder [Poems], SL; “Women’s Camp II,” July 14, 1984, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 10, Folder [Poems], SL; “I am not a little ,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 10, Folder [Poems], SL; “I am the sea,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 10, Folder [Poems], SL. 20 Leslie, “We come together as women,” 1984, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 10, Folder [Poems], SL. 21 Helen Michalowski, “Some Thoughts on the Connections Between Feminism and Non-Violence,” in “Resource Handbook, WEFPJ Papers, CDGA, Seneca Falls, NY 1983, Box 1 of 1, Folder 1, General Information, SCPC. 22 Joan Cavanagh, “I Am A Dangerous Woman,” in “Resource Handbook, WEFPJ Papers, CDGA, Seneca Falls, NY 1983, Box 1 of 1, Folder 1, General Information, SCPC. 298

subvert status quo power relations, with “liberation [that] consists of affirming ‘I am’ without objectifying the Other.”23

Claiming “that ecology right,” as coined by the WPA Unity Statement, Seneca women correlated all oppressions and rooted them in violence. They perceived a preponderance of problems, including “[r]adiation from Lovecreek, Church Rock, Rocky Flats, / Three Mile

Island, West Valley, Hanford … the Diablo Canyon plant … bombs, Trident, the draft beginning again … plastic bags from Dow Chemical,” and asked, “What good will one woman never again using plastic bags do / in the face of tons of plutonium, recombinant DNA, / a hundred thousand rapists?”24 Given the movement defined patriarchy as “competition, aggressiveness, its rule by domination and control no matter what its political process,” solving one problem was never satisfactory.25 At Seneca and beyond, movement women essentialized that they all shared an urgent desire to eradicate these issues together. “I want to talk to the president,” another poem read, “I want to go with other mothers / and meet with the president. / And I want mothers from

Russia there. / And the head of Russia. / And Chinese mothers / And the head of China,” because she judged that all women prioritized and understood the exigent need for peace.26 As the idea of

Seneca emerged out of the Global Feminist Disarmament meeting and preceding conferences like the WLOE gathering, planners’ conceptualization of women and their ecologically-oriented understanding of oppressions resonated with movement women, already attuned to these messages. They saw an appreciation of ecology as a natural extension of feminism, the two

23 Helen Michalowski, “Some Thoughts on the Connections Between Feminism and Non-Violence,” in “Resource Handbook, WEFPJ Papers, CDGA, Seneca Falls, NY 1983, Box 1 of 1, Folder 1, General Information, SCPC. 24 Drea, “Yesterday I read they tried to kill Dr. Rosalie Bertell,” Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 5, Women’s Encampment Handouts, fliers, pamphlets, and other ephemera 1983-86, nd,, SSC. 25 Joan Durant, “Dear Friends,” WEFPJ Papers, CDGA, Seneca Falls, NY 1983, Box 1 of 1, Folder 2, SCPC. 26 Drea, “I want to talk to the president,” Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 5, Women’s Encampment Handouts, fliers, pamphlets, and other ephemera 1983-86, nd,, SSC. 299

philosophies intersecting at the nexus of opposing violence, whether directed toward women or the earth.

Seneca attracted a variety of women initially, and in the first summer its numbers swelled to over 10,000.27 Strikingly intergenerational and religiously diverse, those experienced in protest and others unseasoned came to protest SAD, claiming that missile deployment began there and that they had an obligation to witness against it in solidarity with Greenham and other

British and European women. Women arrived from the Northeast, the Midwest and the West

Coast—from thirty states and twelve different countries, including Australia, England, Italy, El

Salvador, England, Japan, Canada and West Germany, in total. Some, like Grace Paley and Bella

Abzug, were already heavily involved in the movement, and many others came in affinity groups associated with local and national women’s organizations. Campers were especially excited when Susan B. Anthony’s great niece showed up later in the summer, calling Seneca women

“daughters of dissent.”28 Notably, it was mostly white women who came. The peace camp made a point of welcoming and accommodating mothers as it offered childcare, though male children over the age of twelve were not permitted in the camp. Men and the media were only allowed in the front yard at specific times and days.29

27 “On July 4th,” 1987, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 10, Folder Writings About Encampment, 1983-85, n.d., SL. 28 Mariela Moyano and Susan Cavin, “Women’s Peace Camp,” Big Apple Dyke News (New York, New York), August-September 1983, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 3, Women’s Encampment Clippings 1983 May-Sep, SSC. 29 WEFPJ, “Children are the weavers of life,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 8, Folder Notebook of Childcare Affirmations, 1983, SL; WEFPJ, “Job Description,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 8, Folder Childcare Web, SL; WEFPJ, “Come Celebrate Mother’s Day” Flyer, WEFPJ Papers, Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Box 7 of 26, Folder 7, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice 1983, n.d. (Newsletter), SSC; WEFPJ, “Eight women,” February 14, 1985, WEFPJ Papers, Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Box 7 of 26, Folder 7, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice 1983, n.d. (Newsletter), SSC; WEFPJ, “Women’s Peace Encampment Orientation Information,” WEFPJ Papers, Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Box 7 of 26, Folder 7, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice 1983, n.d. (Newsletter), SSC; Grace Paley, “The Seneca Stories: Tales from the Women’s Peace Encampment,” Ms. Magazine, December 1983, 54, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 4 “Women’s Encampment Clippings 1983-1988, n.d., SSC; “Women are coming,” Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 5, Women’s Encampment Handouts, fliers, pamphlets, and other ephemera 1983-86, nd,, SSC; Joan E. Biren, Look to the Women for Courage: Stories From the Seneca Encampment for Peace and 300

On July 4th, Seneca officially opened, with opening ceremonies including a Native

American woman blessing the land, and another participant reciting the Declaration of

Sentiments from the Women’s Rights Convention of 1848. In the first of many episodes of symbolic civil disobedience comparable to Greenham, celebrations welcoming women to culminated in a slow walk from the camp to the depot. Women decorated its main gate with large drawings of women and a banner which read, “We will not become shadows on the ground.”30 As some wailed and keened, participants linked themselves to the gate with yards of ribbon and yarn, blocking traffic in and out of SAD. They delivered a statement of demands to the depot commander. Their protest, they explained, encompassed the dual goals of halting the arms race and providing an empowering space for women. While planners had met with local and depot authorities, officials remained wary of the peace camp and the women’s insistence that all protest would remain nonviolent and symbolic. As at Greenham, that the camp insisted it had no leadership baffled SAD guards and community police who reacted to news of Seneca by augmenting the depot’s security and installing a fence around its perimeter.31

Upon arriving, women received a few basic guidelines, several of which involved relations with the local community and press. Women were to engage with the nearby community in a respectful manner, and if the media approached them, they were permitted to talk with reporters. The rule was, though, that no singular person spoke for the whole. No one represented the entire camp, and all decisions had to be reached through consensus-driven

Justice, documentary, directed by Joan E. Biren (1984), Joan E. Biren Papers, Series III Professional Activities, Slide Presentations and Video Production, SSC. 30 WEFPJ, “Chronology of Events—Seneca Women’s Encampment,” Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 6, Women’s Encampment Handouts, fliers, pamphlets, and other ephemera 1983-86, nd., SSC. 31 “News Release,” Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 16, Women’s Encampment: Women’s Peace Walk, Durham, NC to Romulus, NY 1983, SSC; “Why We Are Walking,” Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 16, Women’s Encampment: Women’s Peace Walk, Durham, NC to Romulus, NY 1983, SSC; Linda Hirsh, “Women’s Peace Camp Opens in Seneca Falls,” The Sojourner, August 1983, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 3, Women’s Encampment Clippings 1983 May-Sep, SSC. 301

meetings. To ensure that process was respected, these assemblies each had a facilitator, a “vibe watcher,” recorder and time watcher.32 Men were permitted in the front yard and in the reception area during the day but not past 9pm. Those in charge of welcoming new campers provided them with an orientation packet replete with this kind of information and an accompanying list of terms, such as consensus, civil disobedience, process and “herstory,” which with women were to familiarize themselves.33

In addition to the camp’s staunch rules on nonviolence, separatism and the consensus process, work and life revolved around “work webs” that gave women tasks such as communication with the media, helping with newcomers’ orientations, food preparation, maintaining the office, civil disobedience and legal training, childcare, security rotations, community dialogue, workshop and event programming, financing and women’s health.34 Any discussion, debate and decision-making first arose in work web meetings, only later taken to a larger camp-wide afternoon meeting facilitated by a rotating spokeswoman during which women would ideally reach consensus. Evening meals were communal, with food bought in bulk and received through donations.35 Alcohol consumption was restricted to certain areas. Orientation material accustomed women to camp rules about pit toilets, trash disposal and fires and alerted women that any physical and mental health problems could be addressed at the Healing Room

32 “Seneca Women’s Peace Camp: Shapes of Things to Come,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 10, Folder [Writings about Encampment, 1985-87], SL. 33 WEFPJ, “Women’s Peace Encampment Orientation Information,” WEFPJ Papers, Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Box 7 of 26, Folder 7, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice 1983, n.d. (Newsletter), SSC. 34 WEFPJ, “Women’s Peace Encampment Orientation Information,” WEFPJ Papers, Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Box 7 of 26, Folder 7, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice 1983, n.d. (Newsletter), SSC. 35 Joan E. Biren, Look to the Women for Courage: Stories From the Seneca Encampment for Peace and Justice, documentary, directed by Joan E. Biren (1984), Joan E. Biren Papers, Series III Professional Activities, Slide Presentations and Video Production, SSC. 302

located in the back of the farmhouse.36 Likewise, women were encouraged to seek out and engage in community dialogue whenever they were off the land. “We need to show the local community that we are human and reasonable,” their orientation guide instructed.37 As such, public displays of affection and nudity were cautioned against as planners suggested no woman bare too much near the road. Seneca planners hoped that its women-only atmosphere “will provide an environment where women are free to be themselves. For lesbian women, this means a place where lesbians can feel safe and unself-conscious about their sexual choices, a place where lesbianism is appreciated as one of the many life choices that women make.”38 During weekends, the program web organized workshops punctured with episodes of civil disobedience at the depot. Led by any interested woman, workshops delved into a plethora of themes broadly centered on women, militarism and violence but always facilitators were to accentuate these topics’ connections to a variety of other “isms—racism, etc.”39

The women at Seneca credited Greenham as the catalyst for the New York iteration and saw themselves in league with the “European disarmament movement.” As Seneca camp member Joan Durant wrote, “Right now we are just so many threads. Women of Greenham

Common, England, of Comiso in Italy, have set up peace encampments for more than a year to

36 Many of Seneca believed in the power of herbal remedies, which they offered at the Healing Room, and expressed distrust of “the medical establishment.” For more on this, see WEFPJ, “Healing Room Orientation,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 8, Folder Healing Room Information, SL; WEFPJ, “Basic Herbal First Aid,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 8, Folder Healing Room Information, SL; WEFPJ, “Rainbow Medicine,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 8, Folder Healing Room Information, SL. 37 WEFPJ, “Women’s Encampment Orientation Information,” WEFPJ Papers, CDGA, Seneca Falls, NY 1983, Box 1 of 1, Folder 1, General Information, SCPC. 38 WEFPJ, “Introduction” in “Resource Handbook,” WEFPJ Papers, CDGA, Seneca Falls, NY 1983, Box 1 of 1, Folder 1, General Information, SCPC. 39 WEFPJ, “Theme Weeks,” April 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, agendas, etc., 1982-July 1983, SL; The Program Web, “Seneca Women Continue Protest on the ‘First Front,’” June 7, 1984, WEFPJ Papers, CDGA, Seneca Falls, NY 1983, Box 1 of 1, Folder 2, SCPC. Workshops and week themes delved into a range of topics, from nuclear technology and environmentalism to women’s spirituality and peacemaking traditions, tax resistance and civil disobedience, Third World liberation movements, Cold War history and beyond. To plan this, Seneca leaders networked with knowledgeable women’s groups, contacting the Committee for Abortion Rights and Sterilization Abuse (CARASA), for example, as they planned sessions about violence against women, or networking with women’s affinity groups who were involved at Diablo Canyon in order to discuss nuclear energy. 303

protest placing American Pershing II and Cruise missiles in their countries. Before that thousands of us did a Women’s Pentagon Action and twice surrounded the Pentagon to protest their ‘amazing inventions of death.’ Now we are part of the Seneca encampment and are determined that those missiles must not reach Europe. The threads are beginning to weave a web.”40 Durant and others routinely kept in contact with the various gates at Greenham as well as other peace camps in America, Britain and Europe.41

The transition from an anti-cruise protest to a feminist experiment was gradual at

Greenham, its full transformation complete several years after its launch in 1981. For Seneca, however, from the onset, it was both a protest against SAD and a women-only community intent on “developing a new feminist model / of human interaction and relationship,” as one camper wrote.42 Another phrased it as space for “an international separatist wymin’s sub-culture,” that rejected status quo ideas about hierarchy, power, technology and gender.43 Indicative of their interest in ecofeminism and goddess spirituality, some women adopted new names such as

Twilight, Isis, Thundercloud and Coyote.44 That it was a women-only space and an intentionally

40 Joan Durant, “Dear Friends,” WEFPJ Papers, CDGA, Seneca Falls, NY 1983, Box 1 of 1, Folder 2, SCPC. 41 The peace camps saw themselves as a network, and in addition to keeping track of each other through news exchanges, many women with the time and resources visited multiple camps. See, for examples, Green Gate, Women’s Peace Camp, “Zapping at Greenham,” August 5, 1985, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 1, Look to women for courage: research: Women’s Peace Camps: General 1982-84, SSC; “News from Greenham,” Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 1, Look to women for courage: research: Women’s Peace Camps: General 1982-84, SSC; WEFPJ, “Minutes,” May 11, 1985, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 9 Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Regional Meeting Minutes 1983-85, SSC; WEFPJ, “Minutes of Regional Meeting,” April 5, 1986, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 10, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Regional Meeting Minutes 1986-89, n.d., SSC; “More Peace Camp News,” New Women’s Times (Rochester, New York),, July 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 3, Women’s Encampment Clippings 1983 May- Sep, SSC; WEFPJ, “Reweaving the Web: European Disarmament Movement” in “Resource Handbook,” WEFPJ Papers, CDGA, Seneca Falls, NY 1983, Box 1 of 1, Folder 1, General Information, SCPC; WEFPJ, “Camp Journal and Notes,” December 19, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Camp Journal + Notes [1983-85, 1990-91], SL; WEFPJ, “Camp Journal and Notes,” April 23, 1984, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Camp Journal + Notes [1983- 85, 1990-91], SL. 42 “Women are coming,” Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 5, Women’s Encampment Handouts, fliers, pamphlets, and other ephemera 1983-86, nd,, SSC. 43 “January 26, 1986,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 10, Folder [Writings about Encampment, 1985-87], SL. 44 For more on this trend, see Sara Evans, Tidal Wave: How Women Changed America at Century’s End (New York: The Free Press, 2003), 209. 304

feminist one mattered a great deal for the sizable lesbian minority at Seneca. Many lesbians expressly went to the camp to be around other politically-minded gay women, and several later detailed stories of “coming out” there.45 For those women, Seneca promised the chance to be liberated in a way that rarely existed in mainstream society: “Everyone was sleeping with lots of other women that summer,” one woman, Shad Reinstein, recalled.46

Media, mostly local but also some national newspapers, picked up on its dual meaning, labeling Seneca a “permanent feminist ” while still reporting on women’s civil disobedience against nuclear weapons at SAD.47 Media sources referenced the 1960s as the camp evoked images of that decade’s communal living and the widespread protests against the

Vietnam War. As was the case with Greenham, the media proved largely inept in dissecting

Seneca’s inner workings. That no woman came forward as its leader confounded them, as it did local authorities. From smaller feminist and peace publications, though, Seneca received consistent praise.48 Regardless that major press outlets misunderstood them, women at Seneca, like at Greenham, injected meaning into the contrast between living near the depot and disrupting its functions, playfully blurring the lines between feminine and masculine behavior.

45 Michele Kramer and Estelle Coleman, "Herstory 006 Shad Reinstein," PeaceCampHerstory, October 5, 2014, accessed November 21, 2016, http://peacecampherstory.blogspot.com/2008/05/herstory-006-shad-reinstein.html. 46 Ibid. 47 Suzanne Daley, “Women Plan Arms Protest Upstate: Women Preparing Protest at an Upstate Ammunition Depot,” New York Times (New York, New York), June 27, 1983; “Peace Campers Upstate Charged in Disturbance,” New York Times, July 31, 1983; “Protest Camp: From Conflict To Commune,” New York Times, July 10, 1984; “Upstate New York Protest Camp to Be a Feminist Commune,” New York Times, July 10, 1984. For more examples of local press coverage that focused on women’s civil disobedience and arrest, see “Welcome to the Peace Encampment Herstory Project,” PeaceCampHerstory, accessed January 30, 2016, http://peacecampherstory.blogspot.com; Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 4, Women’s Encampment Clippings 1983-1988, n.d., SSC. In her documentary, Look to the Women for Courage, Joan Biren makes the point that national media mostly ignored the camp. See Joan E. Biren, Look to the Women for Courage: Stories From the Seneca Encampment for Peace and Justice, documentary, directed by Joan E. Biren (1984), Joan E. Biren Papers, Series III Professional Activities, Slide Presentations and Video Production, SSC. 48 Margot Hornblower, “Arms and the Women Bring Back The ‘60s in New York,” Washington Post (Washington, D.C),, July 22, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 3, Women’s Encampment Clippings 1983 May-Sep, SSC; Kim Clarke, “Encampment provides milieu of peace, calm,” The Leader (Corning, New York), August 1, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 3, Women’s Encampment Clippings 1983 May-Sep, SSC; Christine Madsen, “Peace is a Women’s Issue,” Equal Times (Boston, Massachusetts) 8/165, July 31, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, CDGA, Seneca Falls, NY 1983, Box 1 of 1, Folder 3, SCPC. 305

Camp participant Cristina explained, “There were these womanly things that were going on such as cooking and doing so-called traditionally women’s things and then there was this other force of resistance and climbing over the fence and being active, being proactive - the more, you might say, masculine sensibility aspect of the whole thing - or the more Athena aspect, Athena defending the city.”49

Their direct actions were as symbolic, dramatic and relentless as those at Greenham.

Through their first month in 1983, campers blockaded or invaded SAD on a daily basis.50 The only rule was nonviolence, and anyone who wished to perform civil disobedience, usually though not exclusively in affinity groups, had to attend workshop training.51 Their very first camp-wide action involved bringing and breaking bread at the depot gate. Offering it to the guards, they keened in a symbolic act of grief. Their protests were always theatrical and at times playful. They released balloons, decorated the fence with flowers, staged a die-in with pillows covered in poems of their fears and created mock missiles with statements of grief inscribed on them. Blockades and nighttime incursions were common affairs. Women trespassed to spray- paint anti-nuclear messages on the roadway and maintain candlelit vigils. One woman climbed the depot tower to cross out “Mission First” and instead paint “People Always.” Any woman at

Seneca who decided to invade the base by scaling the fence was subsequently arrested, detained and given either a ban-and-bar letter or a court date if she was a second-time offender. Actions in solidarity with European women were frequent. In December 1983, as 10,000 women encircled the Greenham Common USAF base, those at Seneca held their own Ten Days of Action Against

49 Michele Kramer and Estelle Coleman, "Herstory 033 Cristina Biaggi," PeaceCampHerstory, accessed July 1, 2014, http://peacecampherstory.blogspot.com/2008/02/herstory-033-cristina-biaggi.html. 50 WEFPJ, “Chronology of Events—Seneca Women’s Encampment,” Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 6, Women’s Encampment Handouts, fliers, pamphlets, and other ephemera 1983-86, nd., SSC. 51 WEFPJ, “Nonviolence Preparation Supplement,” WEFPJ Papers, CDGA, Seneca Falls, NY 1983, Box 1 of 1, Folder 1, General Information, SCPC. 306

European Deployment, with civil disobedience, street theater, leafletting in nearby towns and vigils near SAD.52

On weekends with planned, advertised direct actions, several thousand women traveled to

Seneca, and per action, usually a few hundred were arrested.53 More often than not, SAD guards were fairly patient and gentle with the women, helping them down the fence, for example. Still, as camp participants did not relent in their direct actions and antics, by late 1983, the depot declared that any more incursions would be treated as acts of terrorism.54 Like Greenham campers, women at Seneca likewise contended with hostile local authorities impatient with women’s disruptive protest tactics. Often brutally handled by local police, the bruises women received enlivened the same debate that Greenham women had as they all tried to identify the line between nonviolence and violence.55 At times other local groups joined campers for a weekend for a specific SAD demonstration. The Seneca Depot October Action Coalition, for example, included one hundred fifty groups and the famous pediatrician Dr. who were committed to disrupting “business as usual” at the depot. These coalition efforts permitted men to participate yet still instructed them in expected behavior. Seneca women provided men with literature such as the brochure “Overcoming Masculine Oppression in Mixed

52 WEFPJ, “Dear Friends,” December 14, 1983, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 9 Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Regional Meeting Minutes 1983-85, SSC. 53 Janet Burbank, “A positive demonstration,” source unknown, WEFPJ Papers, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 3, Women’s Encampment Clippings 1983 May-Sep, SSC; “210 arrested in protest at Army base,” USA Today, date unknown, WEFPJ Papers, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 3, Women’s Encampment Clippings 1983 May-Sep, SSC; Kim Clarke, “Encampment provides milieu of peace, calm,” The Leader, August 1, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 3, Women’s Encampment Clippings 1983 May-Sep, SSC; Howard Van Kirk, “Aug. 1: Not So Peaceful, But Bloodless,” The Beveille (Seneca Falls, New York), August 3, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 3, Women’s Encampment Clippings 1983 May-Sep, SSC; WEFPJ, “Chronology of Events—Seneca Women’s Encampment,” Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 6, Women’s Encampment Handouts, fliers, pamphlets, and other ephemera 1983-86, nd., SSC. 54 WEFPJ, “Regional Meeting Lesbian Weekend,” October 1, 1983, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 9 Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Regional Meeting Minutes 1983-85, SSC. 55 WEFPJ, “Hello Wimmin,” August 25, 1983, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 9 Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Regional Meeting Minutes 1983-85, SSC. 307

Groups,” which informed them how to participate in and not dominate group activities with women.56

As fringe as the Seneca camp looked to locals, the campers were not alone in their condemnation of many late-20th-century decisions to escalate the Cold War arms race. In the fall of 1983, over one hundred forty rallies occurred nationwide against the NATO decision to site missiles throughout Britain and Europe.57 Still, from the beginning, relations with the locals suffered. In fact, once the camp opened, Romulus residents began a nightly vigil in the parking lot across from the depot’s main gate to harass campers. Seneca women believed that a sizable number from Romulus actually agreed with their anti-nuclear mission, and many local groups did participate in peace demonstrations at SAD. Campers received food and other donations occasionally, and they heard of local churches giving sermons with an explicit disarmament message. Still, most in neighboring towns expressed preference for more traditional channels of political protest, and especially to veterans the camp’s anti-U.S. military message was offensive and its women-only nature suspicious. While there was a vocal minority of lesbians at Seneca, nearby residents inflated their numbers and saw them as a serious problem. Often during direct actions at SAD, local men and women appeared to shout derogatory comments at the campers.

They held signs and wore t-shirts that read, “Nuke the bitches” and “Pinko dykes should camp

56 Jonathan Bor, “400 Return to Seneca Depot,” Syracuse Post-Standard (Syracuse, New York), October 25, 1983, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 4, Women’s Encampment Clippings 1983-1988, n.d., SSC; Grace Paley, “The Seneca Stories: Tales from the Women’s Peace Encampment,” Ms. Magazine, December 1983, 54, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 4 “Women’s Encampment Clippings 1983-1988, n.d., SSC; “Women are coming,” Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 5, Women’s Encampment Handouts, fliers, pamphlets, and other ephemera 1983-86, nd,, SSC; WEFPJ, “Overcoming Masculine Oppression in Mixed Groups,” WEFPJ Papers, CDGA, Seneca Falls, NY 1983, Box 1 of 1, Folder 1, General Information, SCPC. 57 “Police Arrest 1,000 In U.S. Nuke Protests,” Syracuse Post-Standard, October 25, 1983, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 4, Women’s Encampment Clippings 1983-1988, n.d., SSC; Joan E. Biren, Look to the Women for Courage: Stories From the Seneca Encampment for Peace and Justice, documentary, directed by Joan E. Biren (1984), Joan E. Biren Papers, Series III Professional Activities, Slide Presentations and Video Production, SSC. 308

with their comrades in .”58 These counter-protests sometimes even imitated women’s tactics. The United for a Strong America Committee formed in Seneca Falls created their own mock funeral of America, dead because the country laid down its arms in the Cold War. In another shockingly violent example, locals took a life-sized doll, branded her a Seneca woman and hung her.59

One of the worst episodes of misunderstanding occurred toward the end of the first summer in late July. In the midst of mass civil disobedience at the depot’s gate that resulted in over two hundred arrests, over one hundred other women decided to march from the National

Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls to their camp in a symbolic retracing of what they thought was part of Harriet Tubman’s Underground Railroad. Along the way, they passed through the small town of Waterloo. Greeted by three hundred angry townspeople who blocked their path as they tried to cross the Barge Canal Bridge, fifty-four of the marchers, including

Barbara Deming, reacted by peacefully sitting down in the road. Citing their First Amendment

Right to protest, they refused to budge. Deming later recalled counter-protesters holding a variety of offensive signs, all of which displayed derogatory stereotypes locals had formed of the camp. Some read, “Nuke them till they glow, then shoot them in the dark,” “Nuke the lezzies,”

“GO home commies” and “Kill the .” Even though counter-protesters showed no

58 Joan E. Biren, Look to the Women for Courage: Stories From the Seneca Encampment for Peace and Justice, documentary, directed by Joan E. Biren (1984), Joan E. Biren Papers, Series III Professional Activities, Slide Presentations and Video Production, SSC. 59 Margot Hornblower, “Arms and the Women Bring Back The ‘60s in New York,” Washington Post, July 22, 1983, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 3, Women’s Encampment Clippings 1983 May-Sep, SSC; Lance Howland, “Mock Funeral To Counter Anti-nuke Protesters,” Syracuse Post-Standard, October 22, 1983, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 4, Women’s Encampment Clippings 1983-1988, n.d., SSC; Karen Kohn, “Culture Clash in Seneca County,” Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 4, Women’s Encampment Clippings 1983-1988, n.d., SSC; Joan E. Biren, Look to the Women for Courage: Stories From the Seneca Encampment for Peace and Justice, documentary, directed by Joan E. Biren (1984), Joan E. Biren Papers, Series III Professional Activities, Slide Presentations and Video Production, SSC. Many women at Seneca described violent, hostile confrontations with locals, especially men. One woman recounted an incident in which over 100 intoxicated local men came to Seneca to “pick ass,” which meant throwing firecrackers at them and verbally threatening them. See WEFPJ, “Sept 6,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Ethel Notes 1984, SL; WEFPJ, “The man in the diner” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Ethel Notes 1984, SL. 309

premeditated plan of confronting Seneca women on the bridge, Deming claimed one sign read,

“Throw them off the bridge, let’s see some blood,” perhaps revealing just how isolated and typecast Deming and other Seneca women felt from Romulus citizens. In an interview a few days after the incident, Deming expressed her belief that the angry Waterloo townspeople, some consciously and other unconsciously, perceived the women as a threat to the status quo and patriarchal power: “we [the campers] have almost all of us the feminist vision that we’re never going to end war unless we dissolve patriarchy.”60 This vision unnerved some, Deming concluded, because of its association with altered gender and sexual norms.

Several Vietnam veterans numbered among the Waterloo protestors. The confrontation arose out of an earlier incident involving the American flag. A local man had presented the camp with one to fly at Seneca. Yet, women hesitated and ultimately decided to not hang it as it represented to some patriarchal violence, jingoism and imperialism. Local residents interpreted the move as un-American and labeled the action as communist and an example of women—and in many minds, lesbians—living on welfare and performing lawless, unwomanly actions.

The result of the clash was the arrest of the fifty-four marchers whom the police charged with inciting a riot and disorderly conduct. A handful of local men were arrested as well, one for an unloaded rifle and others for disorderly conduct. While the women had hoped to diffuse the situation through nonviolent civil disobedience which they saw as an American tradition, counter-protesters interpreted the action as offensive and another example of the Seneca women being un-American. On August 3rd, those arrested were brought for arraignment at the exhibit hall of the local Fairgrounds. Believing their protest peaceful and lawful, the majority of women declined to raise bail and give their names, instead identifying as Jane Does. During the trial,

60 “Interview with Barbara Deming at the Seneca Women’s Peace Encampment, August 4, 1983. Boston Women’s Video Collective,” Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 6, Women’s Encampment Handouts, fliers, pamphlets, and other ephemera 1983-86, nd., SSC. 310

they refused to physically move, having to be carried in and out of the yard for trial. Over one hundred campers interrupted the proceedings, along with a small group of local supporters bearing a sign that read, “Waterloo Citizens for 1st Amendment Rights.” Miraculously, all charges were dismissed.61

Importantly, Waterloo provoked Seneca women to improve relations with nearby towns.

Only days after the incident, sixty women from the camp and forty townspeople assembled in the meadow near SAD. Speaking in turns about war and peace, they sat in a circle for two hours and dissipated, to an extent, negative impressions of each other. Meeting with community members often, they sought to dispel further episodes, and many networked with local women’s groups involved in peace, feminism and anti-militarism work. Sometimes they held open houses and would allow school children to visit the site.62 Waterloo also served to strengthen lesbian-straight solidarity at the camp. As organizer and long-term camper Michelle Crone described, “Not one woman, when people were taunting them, ‘Dirty Lezzies, dah dah dah, Kill you dah’ … not one woman said, ‘I’m not a lesbian.’ … So many straight women said, ‘We had no idea. It was so

61 “Marchers Halted in Waterloo As Citizens Protest,” The Beveille, August 3, 1983, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 3, Women’s Encampment Clippings 1983 May-Sep, SSC; “1,250 Women Gather for New York Nuclear Arms Rally,” Washington Post, August 1, 1983, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 3, Women’s Encampment Clippings 1983 May-Sep, SSC; Janice Irvine, “Hundreds Arrested in Seneca Protests,” Gay Community News (Boston, Massachusetts) 11/5, August 13, 1983, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 3, Women’s Encampment Clippings 1983 May-Sep, SSC; “Villagers confront marchers in Waterloo,” Sunday Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, New York), July 31, 1983, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 3, Women’s Encampment Clippings 1983 May-Sep, SSC; Karen Kohn, “Culture Clash in Seneca County,” Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 4, Women’s Encampment Clippings 1983-1988, n.d., SSC; Grace Paley, “The Seneca Stories: Tales from the Women’s Peace Encampment,” Ms. Magazine, December 1983, 54, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 4 “Women’s Encampment Clippings 1983-1988, n.d., SSC; “Women are coming,” Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 5, Women’s Encampment Handouts, fliers, pamphlets, and other ephemera 1983-86, nd,, SSC; “Statement of the Waterloo Fifty-Four,” Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 15, Women’s Encampment Waterloo 54 Criminal trespass charges, SSC. Campers noted that after the first summer, relations improved slowly with local townspeople, aided especially by supportive, local peace groups. 62 WEFPJ, “Hello Sisters,” March 2-3, 1985, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 8, Women’s Encampment Newsletters and Mailings 1986-88, n.d., SSC; WEFPJ, Jane Doe, Winter 1985, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 7, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Newsletters + Mailings 1983-85, SSC; WEFPJ, “Democracy in Action in Romulus,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder [August 1983], SL. Many locals revealed they were under the impression the camp’s funding came from Russia. They also expressed its existence was disruptive to life and that the campers seemed to be unpatriotic and unconventional women. 311

eye-opening to have that kind of hatred focused at us and all we had to do was say a few words and that would have been different and we stayed true to our commitment and we had no idea of what you all go through everyday of your lives.’”63

By this point in early August, only a few weeks remained for the Seneca women’s encampment. With the last month in sight, women began to evaluate their project. Most validated the camp’s mission, but several noted “logistics hard” for the number of women present and that actions seemed unorganized.64 Others revealed that the few women of color there felt excluded and alienated. When, for instance, a group of white women decided to hold a daily workshop on racism facilitated by a black woman, that woman charged that she should not be tasked and tokenized as the only one capable of explaining race. By late August, meetings continued to affirm that Seneca campers appreciated their experiment but wished for more organization and distinct, attainable goals. In an unwinnable combination, they verified their faith in consensus-driven meetings and simultaneously complained of their tedium. Only women with enough time and energy could endure those assemblies. Talk arose of perpetuating the camp’s existence beyond the summer. Such an idea did not agree with those who felt it held no clear long-term political vision. But to others, like at Greenham, they commented Seneca had become their community, even a spiritual base home, and closing it amounted in their minds to the death of a great thing.65

“Is it possible to create a space that truly represents the concerns, or incorporates the politics/issues of all women…?”: The “Survival Summers,” 1984-1990

63 Michele Kramer and Estelle Coleman, "Herstory 004 Michelle Crone," PeaceCampHerstory, October 4, 2014, accessed November 21, 2016, http://peacecampherstory.blogspot.com/2006/12/herstory-004-michelle-crone.html. 64 WEFPJ, “7 Aug. General Encampment,” 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., Aug. 1983, SL. 65 WEFPJ, “Evaluation,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., Aug. 1983, SL; WEFPJ, “Notes from Aug. 21st Mtg,” 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., Aug. 1983, SL. 312

In early September 1983, Seneca campers staged their last civil disobedience for the summer. The camp was set to close on Labor Day. Around three hundred fifty women marched to the main gate of SAD. Dozens climbed over the fence, others digging under and chaining themselves to it. Most of those arrested were first-time offenders, and their punishment extended to ban-and-bar letters that stated their trespass and ordered them not to return to the depot. A handful were arrested and held with trials dates set in October and November.66 From its inception, any premeditated activities and camping at Seneca had been planned to conclude by early September. When that date arrived, however, debate surfaced regarding the future of the camp. Many felt Seneca was not over.67

As one woman wrote to the camp, “I spent two weeks at the camp and found my life changed forever. I also felt you sent me home without enough knowledge on how to deal with these changes.”68 “Peacekeeping gave me a focus,” another shared, and several informed camp organizers that Seneca made them feel a part of something: safe, valued and not alone.69 “A safe, loving, nurturing safe to act & learn,” described yet another fan.70 Seneca taught them “how to live without weapons of destruction” and how to embrace “the feminine, nonviolent stubborn resistance to death,” as one participant, Ethel, communicated her thrill of being around like- minded women.71 She also mentioned the added perk of acquiring skills in carpentry and

66 WEFPJ, “Nonviolence Preparation Supplement,” WEFPJ Papers, CDGA, Seneca Falls, NY 1983, Box 1 of 1, Folder 1, General Information, SCPC. 67 WEFPJ, “Dear Sisters,” August 6, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., Aug. 1983, SL. 68 WEFPJ, “Happy New Years!” 1984, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 7, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Newsletters + Mailings 1983-85, SSC; WEFPJ, “Dear Women,” September 8, 1983, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 7, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Newsletters + Mailings 1983-85, SSC. 69 WEFPJ, “Evaluation,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Evaluations, SL. 70 Ibid. 71 WEFPJ, “My friends one thing is crystal clear to me,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Ethel Notes 1984, SL; WEFPJ, “Seneca Women’s Encampment MUST continue,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Ethel Notes 1984, SL; WEFPJ, “Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Ethel Notes 1984, SL. 313

plumbing attained by living on the farm—“stretch[ing] unused feminine ‘muscle.’”72 Ethel expanded that she better appreciated the environment and women’s place in it after Seneca workshops helped her envision the entire planet as a human “body” with all people and problems intersecting.73 Unwilling to give up these revelations and experiences, women asked for another year with the camp.74

To address its prospects, women involved in Seneca’s operations began to convene every few weeks for regional meetings, alternating the location between the camp and various New

York towns and cities. The first of these gatherings prefigured the structure of those to follow. It attracted around two dozen women from New York and the Northeast. Sometimes upwards of forty women attended, from as far away as from California, Britain and Europe. While the women’s movement and its peace camps nominally functioned without leadership, these attendants were in reality the leaders of Seneca.

From the beginning, several operational issues confronted them in addition to the dilemma of the camp’s future. For one, from its inauguration, Seneca struggled to be financially solvent and meet health and safety regulations established by Romulus authorities. During its first months the summer of 1983, its health permit was denied on the basis of an unsatisfactory water supply.75 To address these lingering issues, throughout the fall of 1983, regional meetings prioritized winterizing the farmhouse, permitting and aiding only a handful of women to stay on

72 Ibid. 73 WEFPJ, “The significance of Central and South America in creating the future world,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Ethel Notes 1984, SL; WEFPJ, “11:30am,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Ethel Notes 1984, SL. 74 In an interview in 2005, organizer Carolyn Mow identified two different groups of women, one of whom wanted to close the camp and the either who wanted to maintain it: “I remember this meeting in Albany in the fall of 1983 in which all the original organizers wanted to close the peace camp and all the people who had moved in, of course, wanted to keep it open. That was a really hard meeting because the people who started it felt responsible for what happened there and yet didn’t want to continue to be responsible for it. And I think there was some lack of trust from the first group toward the second group because essentially it was passed on to this new group of responsible people.” See Michele Kramer and Estelle Coleman, "Herstory 002 Carolyn Mow," PeaceCampHerstory, August 20, 2006, accessed November 21, 2016, http://peacecampherstory.blogspot.com/search?q=carolyn+mow. 75 “Water, Water Everywhere and Not a Drop to Drink,” New Women’s Times, July 1983, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 3, Women’s Encampment Clippings 1983 May-Sep, SSC. 314

at Seneca while the rest of the staff were to finish their work by October. The camp remained open until the end of that month for visits, though no official civil disobedience or workshops were planned. Still, women passed through and continued direct actions at SAD, often in solidarity with British and European women’s protests against missile deployment.76

In late January 1984, leaders invited any interested women to Albany for a major regional meeting to evaluate Seneca’s past successes and upcoming prospects. With thirty present, they reiterated their commitment to stop missile deployment to Europe and to sustain their alternative feminist community. While still ambitious and optimistic, meeting participants delivered their critical observations. As it had been months since many had lived at Seneca, most shared they had spent the time after the summer decompressing; for as much as it empowered them with creative direct actions, lifestyle minimalism and new friendships, it also frustrated and exhausted them. Progress to organize and sustain the camp that past summer had been sluggish and the perceived lack of leadership generated confusion about work roles and clear goals. All confessed that low-income and women of color had been uncomfortable at Seneca. The camp, they conceded, was mostly white and middle-class. Lesbians appreciated the safe space that Seneca offered them, yet other women admitted that nudity in the yard, lesbian visibility and the rule against men at Seneca upset the local community and made straight women feel insufficient and excluded.77

76 WEFPJ, “Dear Women,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., Aug. 1983, SL; WEFPJ, “Notes: Extended Family Meeting of the Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice,” October 29-30, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., Sept.-Dec. 1983, SL; WEFPJ, “Nov. 21 Meeting To Plan Dec. Actions At the Seneca Army Depot,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., Sept.-Dec. 1983, SL. 77 WEFPJ, “Minutes of Seneca Regional Meeting, January 21st, 1984,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., Jan.-May 1984, SL. 315

By February, another regional meeting settled that Seneca would remain open until the following month. Financing for the site eluded them.78 By March, though, women toyed with the idea of reopening for the coming summer. Leaders realized that that action necessitated greater infrastructure, including water and sewage lines at the camp, the creation of a board and by-laws and rigorous accounting of finances. They agreed to shoulder the financial responsibility of converting the camp into a permanent, residential space. With $200,000 raised in 1983, leaving them with a surplus of $35,000, leaders put $10,000 of that toward the stabilization of Seneca, tax payments and new construction projects.79 As exciting as ensuring Seneca’s future was, staff women who remained at the camp extended their already overloaded workloads, and anticipated more of it as the summer approached. One said she was “expecting a community, and I got a workplace.”80 Attempting to assuage the staff’s worries, regional meeting attendants conceived of a solution to overwork in the form of “daily web meetings” for the upcoming summer. The idea stipulated an entire process through which women would discuss and produce proposals for the camp, ideally involving all campers and democratizing tasks. Any individual requests or issues, after stated in daily web gatherings, would be taken to a meeting of spokeswomen, and then, exhaustively, reintroduced at an evening meeting in which all women were encouraged to participate. Such a plan revealed their desperation for more organization yet even so some protested camp use of the words “staff,” “hiring committee” and “job description” as

78 WEFPJ, “Seneca Regional Meeting (Extended Women’s Encampment),” February 18-19, 1984, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., Jan.-May 1984, SL. 79 Suda Meander, “The following article represents the point of view…,” WEFPJ Papers, CDGA, Seneca Falls, NY 1983, Box 1 of 1, Folder 2, SCPC. 80 WEFPJ, “Issues Meeting,” June 13, 1984, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., June-Dec. 1984, SL. 316

“hierarchical, middle-class and patriarchal jargon.”81 The struggle between structure and spontaneity was endless.

Also indicative of this battle and occupying a great deal of time and energy during these winter months was the tentative acceptance of Respected Policies, or “RPs.”82 Introduced the first summer after planning committees had created and reached a consensus on them, these rules monitored alcohol consumption, smoking cigarettes, nudity, work requirements, fires, trash and recycling and, the very first rule, the absence of men and boys over the age of twelve.83 Yet RPs were inherently problematic and contentious at Seneca since, designed to ensure all women felt respected, they asked women to follow certain regulations in a space supposedly defined by anarchic individualism. The issue of nudity was particularly divisive. The rule existed that, given nearby families on other farms, women would not go bare-chested in sight of the road. Some disobeyed this. In particular, many lesbians adamantly felt that, as much as men, women should be allowed to wear—or not wear—what they wanted.84

By April 1st, 1984, the temptation to restart Seneca was too enticing and leaders’ desire to support European women too earnest. Electing to open in the summer for seven weeks, women publicized and programmed in the meantime. With sincerity, they wanted to be more inclusive this time around. The intention of Seneca was always to welcome all women but as planners realized as early as autumn of 1982, “we have to be clear on our vision,” and that vision, as they

81 WEFPJ, “Regional Meeting—Women’s Encampment,” March 17-18, 1984, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., Jan.-May 1984, SL. News of staff burnout had troubled leaders since the summer of 1983. See WEFPJ, “Sunday, July 10, 1983 Minutes of Meeting,” Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 9 Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Regional Meeting Minutes 1983-85, SSC. 82 WEFPJ, “Regional Meeting Lesbian Weekend,” October 1, 1983, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 9 Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Regional Meeting Minutes 1983-85, SSC. 83 WEFPJ, “Women’s Peace Encampment Orientation Information,” WEFPJ Papers, Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Box 7 of 26, Folder 7, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice 1983, n.d. (Newsletter), SSC; “Seneca Women’s Peace Camp: Shapes of Things to Come,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 10, Folder [Writings about Encampment, 1985-87], SL. 84 WEFPJ, “Hello Wimmin,” August 25, 1983, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 9 Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Regional Meeting Minutes 1983-85, SSC. 317

discovered, did not necessarily appeal to all women.85 They craved a diversity of women and politics to be present at Seneca. Yet, that some women sought to use Seneca to protest the singular issue of missile deployment at SAD worried leaders as they did not know how those participants could successfully coexist with others who prioritized building a feminist community. The camp held a very personal place in its participants’ hearts as both a political protest and a space for individual transformation. Both purposes, but especially the latter, were highly subjective and led to meaningful experiences but also inexorably friction over disparate definitions of Seneca. The “world is not getting the way I want it to be; the changes aren’t happening,” one woman remarked, frustrated that Seneca had not recalibrated world priorities.86

Whether or not to continue to exclude men also encumbered Seneca’s planning stages.

Organizers knew that separatism alienated some participants but they remained steadfast in the camp’s original decision to make Seneca women-only. Leaders sidestepped this debate by instead creating and banking on “themes [which] provide structure for people to plug into”— themes which they believed all women could tap into and care about.87 Workshops and actions revolved around eradicating racism, sexism, environmental degradation and nuclear technology, considering their belief that, “[f]eminism is unification of all issues.”88 To ensure more genuine pluralism for the summer of 1984, planners allotted time for additional meetings during which

85 WEFPJ, “Agenda for UFPA WILPF Meeting 10’9 in Ithaca,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, agendas, etc., 1982-July 1983, SL. 86 WEFPJ, “Issues Meeting,” June 13, 1984, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., June-Dec. 1984, SL. 87 WEFPJ, “Minutes of the Third Planning Meeting for the Women’s Peace Encampment,” November 20, 1982, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, agendas, etc., 1982-July 1983, SL; WEFPJ, “Minutes for UFPA Meeting, Nov. 6, Rochester,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, agendas, etc., 1982-July 1983, SL; WEFPJ, “Theme Weeks,” April 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, agendas, etc., 1982-July 1983, SL. 88 WEFPJ, “Seneca Women’s Peace Encampment Regional Meeting Feb. 5-6, Syracuse,” November 20, 1982, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, agendas, etc., 1982-July 1983, SL. 318

women could discuss interpersonal issues.89 As one commented, “[we] don’t have to be in conflict as much as we are.”90

As Seneca anticipated its second summer, numerous heartening letters from supporters in

America, Britain and Western Europe arrived at the camp and indicated its importance to many.

Women, and a surprising number of men, wrote in, grateful for its protest against the Cold War and convinced that it was reprioritizing the world toward non-military needs. Beyond disarmament, letters revealed the camp served as the nexus for a variety of prescient issues, whether that meant as a place of ecological-minded living, a “separatist, self-sufficient community with an artistic bent,” a space for “strong feminist women,” a safe haven for lesbianism or one of the many international sites of the women’s movement.91 Indeed, many

89 WEFPJ, “To: the Extended Family of,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., Jan.-May 1984, SL; WEFPJ, “To: the Extended Family of the Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice, Romulus, New York,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., Jan.-May 1984, SL; WEFPJ, “To: the Extended Family of the Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice, Romulus, New York,” June 2-3, 1984, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., June-Dec. 1984, SL; WEFPJ, “Regional Meeting,” June 16, 1984, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., June-Dec. 1984, SL. 90 WEFPJ, “Issues Meeting,” June 13, 1984, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., June-Dec. 1984, SL. 91 “Greetings!” May 29, 1985, WEFPJ Papers, Folder General Information Requests [1983-85], SL; “Dear WEFPJ,” October 23, 1984, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder Women Who Want to Live Here [1984-85], SL; “For Womankind,” September 6, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 5, Folder [Sept.-Oct. 1983], SL. For examples of letters expressing admiration of Seneca and its importance to them, see “Dear Ladies,” August 2, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder Supportive Letters –Somere: Local Outreach #1 of 2, SL; “Dear Barbara, Kirsten and all the others,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder Supportive Letters –Somere: Local Outreach #1 of 2, SL; “Greetings from an Artist and Objector,” June 2, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder Supportive Letters –Somere: Local Outreach #1 of 2, SL; “Beloved sisters in peace,” July 5, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder Supportive Letters –Somere: Local Outreach #1 of 2, SL; “Dear Sisters of Peace,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder Supportive Letters –Somere: Local Outreach #1 of 2, SL; “Dear Betsy, Denise, Katie, Kim, Barbara, Kris, and all Support Staff,” July 19, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder Supportive Letters –Somere: Local Outreach #1 of 2, SL; “Dear Women,” July 23, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder Supportive Letters –Somere: Local Outreach #1 of 2, SL; “Dear friends in peace,” July 27, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder Supportive Letters –Somere: Local Outreach #1 of 2, SL; “Dear Mrs. Fleming,” July 27, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder Supportive Letters –Somere: Local Outreach #1 of 2, SL; “Dear colleagues,” August 2, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder Supportive Letters –Somere: Local Outreach #1 of 2, SL; “To all the women,” August 2, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder Supportive Letters – Somere: Local Outreach #1 of 2, SL; “To the Women of the Seneca Peace Encampment,” August 9, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder Supportive Letters –Somere: Local Outreach #1 of 2, SL; “Sisters,” August 3, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder Supportive Letters –Somere: Local Outreach #1 of 2, SL; “Dear Sisters,” August 4, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder Supportive Letters –Somere: Local Outreach #1 of 2, SL; “Dear Sisters at the Women’s Encampment,” August 4, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder Supportive Letters –Somere: Local Outreach #1 of 2, SL; “Dear Sisters,” August 9, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder Supportive Letters –Somere: Local Outreach #1 of 2, SL; “Dear Sisters for Peace!” August 12, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder Supportive 319

European women sent admiring words. One woman from West Germany expressed sadness that she had to leave Seneca but was spreading news of it as she traveled to London, Dublin and

Belfast.92 A woman from Sweden likewise expressed a sense of solidarity: “Together we must stop nuclear weapons all over Europe now.”93 With the magnitude of requests for more information, staff women worked hard to respond with answers and resources.94

Letters –Somere: Local Outreach #1 of 2, SL; “Seneca Camp Women,” October 10, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder Supportive Letters –Somere: Local Outreach #1 of 2, SL; “Dear sisters,” November 29, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder Supportive Letters –Somere: Local Outreach #1 of 2, SL; “To the Womyn of the Seneca Peace Camp,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder Supportive Letters –Somere: Local Outreach #1 of 2, SL; “Dear Seneca Peace Camp Wimmin,” February 12, 1984, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder Supportive Letters –Somere: Local Outreach #1 of 2, SL; “Dear friends in the feminist, safe energy and environmental health movements,” January 4, 1984, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder Supportive Letters –Somere: Local Outreach #1 of 2, SL. 92 “Dear Sisters,” May 30, 1985, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder “Letters from Women” [1984-85, n.d.], SL. For more letters from Europe and Britain, see “Dear Ladies,” February 3, 1987, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder [Jan.- March 1987], SL; “A women’s group,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder [Feb.-April 1989], SL; “Dear sisters,” April 13, 1989, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder [Feb.-April 1989], SL. 93 “Dear Sisters,” December 31, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder “Letters from Women We Know” [1983- 85], SL. Greenham women also wrote to Seneca. See “Dear Friends,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder [Letters Answered Sept.-Dec. 1985], SL. Another group of women from Sweden wrote, “We women for peace in Sweden admire your fight to prevent the Euro-missiles to be sent away.” See “Dear sisters!” April 12, 1983, Supportive Letters –Somere: Local Outreach #1 of 2, SL; “dear sisters,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder Supportive Letters – Somere: Local Outreach #1 of 2, SL. For more letters from European women, especially West German women with their own peace camps, see “The Womyn’s Peace Camp in West-Germany,” January 23, 1986, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 5, Folder [Jan.-April 1986], SL; “For the womyn at Seneca Peace Camp,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 5, Folder [Jan.-April 1986], SL; “Dear women!” February 6, 1986, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 5, Folder [Jan.-April 1986], SL; “Dear womyn from the Seneca Peace-Camp,” March 24, 1986, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 5, Folder [Jan.-April 1986], SL. 94 “dear hershi, dear women!” September 20, 1985, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder [Letters Answered Sept.-Dec. 1985], SL; “Dear women of Seneca,” October 3, 1985, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder [Letters Answered Sept.- Dec. 1985], SL; “Dear Women’s Peace Camp,” October 10, 1985, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder [Letters Answered Sept.-Dec. 1985], SL; “Luna,” December 11, 1985, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder [Letters Answered Sept.-Dec. 1985], SL; “Dear Webweaver,” December 31, 1985, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder [Letters Answered Sept.-Dec. 1985], SL; “Dear Seneca Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder [Letters Answered from Jan.-Feb. 1986], SL; “Dear Sisters,” January 13, 1986, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder [Letters Answered from Jan.-Feb. 1986], SL; “Hi There,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder [Letters Answered from Jan.-Feb. 1986], SL; “Dear Women,” January 22, 1986, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder [Letters Answered from Jan.-Feb. 1986], SL; “Dear Women,” WEFPJ Papers, Folder General Information Requests [1983- 85], SL; “To whom it may concern,” January 25, 1984, WEFPJ Papers, Folder General Information Requests [1983- 85], SL; “Women’s Encampment,” February 25, 1984, WEFPJ Papers, Folder General Information Requests [1983- 85], SL; “Dear Lee Ann, Dorothy, Aja,” February 27, 1984, WEFPJ Papers, Folder General Information Requests [1983-85], SL; “Allo,” February 28, 1984, WEFPJ Papers, Folder General Information Requests [1983-85], SL; “To the Womyn at Seneca,” April 1, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Folder General Information Requests [1983-85], SL; “Dear sisters,” March 15, 1985, WEFPJ Papers, Folder General Information Requests [1983-85], SL; “Dear friends,” May 30, 1984, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder Women Who Want to Live Here [1984-85], SL; “To Rochester Peace & Justice Ed. Centre,” January 31, 1984, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 5, Folder [Jan.-Mar. 1984], SL; “Dear Sisters, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 5, Folder [Jan.-Mar. 1984], SL; “Dear Women of Peace,” February 3, 1984, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 5, Folder [Jan.-Mar. 1984], SL; “Dear Friends,” March 4, 1984, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 5, Folder [Jan.-Mar. 1984], SL; “Dear Sisters (and Benjamin),” April 15, 1984, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 5, Folder [April-May 1984], SL; “Dear 320

Yet the camp’s woes emerged in these letters as well. In particular, its gender exclusivity and emphasis on a feminist lifestyle bothered many. One woman from Vermont confessed that her support of Seneca had wavered since she could not bring her adolescent male children with her. Insistent that boys and men were not inevitably violent, she condemned the camp’s separatism, calling it “sexism, not women’s liberation.” 95 A woman from New York was also unhappy that men were not allowed on most of the campgrounds. Explaining that all humans were responsible for the arms race, she insisted that women did not have a monopoly on creative energy nor were all men aggressive. “I consider myself a feminist, a pacifist and a peacemaker,” wrote one man from New York who traveled to Seneca only to find himself barred from entry. 96

“I am a male, and I can no more change that than the Black or Chicano can change skin color.”97

A married woman rejected that her husband was somehow inherently aggressive and felt separatism “othered” men: “Let’s not put more people on the ‘back of the bus.’”98 Another from

New Jersey echoed this sentiment, “My experience tells me that alienating persons, excluding persons, and acts of aggression, are not things that convince others that one if striving for peace

…. The march [on Aug. 1] did much to serve as a vehicle for what appeared to be militant

Leeann,” April 16, 1984, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 5, Folder [April-May 1984], SL; “Peace Women,” May 4, 1984, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 5, Folder [April-May 1984], SL; “Dear wimmin,” October 5, 1985, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder [Letters Answered Sept.-Dec. 1985], SL; “Dear Heather,” November 7, 1985, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder [Letters Answered Sept.-Dec. 1985], SL. 95 “Dear Friends,” June 19, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder “Letters –Constructive Criticism & Concerns” (Especially “Why a Women’s Encampment?”) [1983], SL; “Dear Leaders,” August 9, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder “Letters –Constructive Criticism & Concerns” (Especially “Why a Women’s Encampment?”) [1983], SL. 96 “Epistle to the Peace Encampment,” July 15, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder “Letters –Constructive Criticism & Concerns” (Especially “Why a Women’s Encampment?”) [1983], SL. 97 Ibid. 98 “Dear Sisters,” August 2, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder “Letters –Constructive Criticism & Concerns” (Especially “Why a Women’s Encampment?”) [1983], SL. 321

feminism.”99 “Disarmament is too critical an issue to divide people over it,” yet another invested yet alienated participant conveyed.100

Aside from these critiques, others penned letters detailing that the camp’s negative reputation among nearby residents was in part due to the absence of a clear message and camp identity. Unhappily to some, other things occupied the camp’s time: “inconclusive discussion,” one woman complained, “consumes many hours of camp time.”101 Another woman from

Pennsylvania said as much, admitting that she was sympathetic to the variety of issues Seneca sought to tackle. Yet she advised the camp to focus solely on nuclear disarmament. Its multi- faceted campaign against all “isms” perplexed the public.102 Others observed that individual freedom and expressiveness seemed to be more imperative to the camp than disarmament or unity.103 “Protesting, unfortunately, is seen as a stereotypical holdover from the 1960’s,” one woman wrote, “It is not seen as the most respectful or responsible way to behave.”104 She prodded Seneca to consider that it took the general public several years to critique American

99 “Dear Sisters,” August 11, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder “Letters –Constructive Criticism & Concerns” (Especially “Why a Women’s Encampment?”) [1983], SL. 100 “Dear Barbara, Carolyn, Carrie, Kim, and Chris,” July 25, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder [1981-July 1983], SL. For more on this critique and debate over whether Seneca should be an anti-deployment protest or a woman’s community, see WEFPJ, “Regional Meeting March 1—on land,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., 1986, SL. Organizer and long-term camper Michelle Crone described the debate over male exclusion. “[One woman] made the buttons and she had a little baby boy and there was a woman there, I forgot who it was, who had a little baby girl, I mean babies, toddlers, and we’re having this big debate, ‘No, it’s not inherent within the male gender to be violent.’ ‘No, it’s environment.’ ‘No, if you’re raised by loving people.’ And I’m looking at the two babies and this little baby boy picks up this thing and hits the little baby girl on the head [laughter] and it’s like, well, all right, so … [laughter]. But those meetings went on forever!” See Michele Kramer and Estelle Coleman, "Herstory 004 Michelle Crone," PeaceCampHerstory, October 4, 2014, accessed November 21, 2016, http://peacecampherstory.blogspot.com/2006/12/herstory-004-michelle-crone.html. 101 Dear Friends,” July 13, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder “Letters –Constructive Criticism & Concerns” (Especially “Why a Women’s Encampment?”) [1983], SL. Many others complained of “hours of meetings, wasteful individual responsibility and sometimes constant reinvention of the wheel.” See “January 26, 1986,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 10, Folder [Writings about Encampment, 1985-87], SL. 102 “Dear Encampment Members,” July 21, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder “Letters –Constructive Criticism & Concerns” (Especially “Why a Women’s Encampment?”) [1983], SL. 103 “Dear Friends,” September 2, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder “Letters –Constructive Criticism & Concerns” (Especially “Why a Women’s Encampment?”) [1983], SL. 104 “Dear Patty,” December 29, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder [Letters Answered from Jan.-Feb. 1986], SL. 322

involvement in Vietnam. How long, she asked, given the camp’s current methods of theatric protest, would it would take to convince the public of the gravity of the arms race?

In spite of negative assessments, Seneca reopened for the masses on the weekend of July

4th, 1984. With the theme of “Think Globally, Act Locally” appropriated from the environmental movement, leaders anticipated the second summer would inspire participants to fight militarism first at home, believing the ramifications would register worldwide and eventually halt the Cold

War.105 Mirroring the year prior, women walked twelve miles from the Seneca Falls National

Women’s Hall of Fame to camp where workshops and ceremonies encouraged singing, chanting and symbolic gestures toward the land. Women passed around wildflower seeds, scattering them on the front law. They were, as they saw it, sowing the seeds of peace. An Onondaga Clan

Mother welcomed newcomers.106 At this moment in Seneca’s history, one year old, it boasted a mailing list of several thousand, with many of its contacts including other women in the movement.107 International visitors continued to arrive from England, Germany, Guatemala,

Egypt, France, Canada, Denmark, Holland and the Akwesasne nation.108 “It felt so important all of a sudden to have that international link up,” explained one woman from Manchester, England,

“to be part of the beginning of a worldwide international network of women whose lives are

105 Coined by microbiologist and philosopher Rene DuBos when he was an advisor to the U.N. Conference on the Human Environment in 1972, this phrase was adopted by the environmental movement to encourage social action for environmental protection and alternative living practices at the grassroots, local level. The “act locally” speaks to the decentralized structure of many environmental groups and to environmental ideas of bioregionalism. See Ruth A. Eblen and William A. Eblen, eds. The Encyclopedia of the Environment (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1994), 702. 106 WEFPJ, “For Immediate Release,” July 11, 1984, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 8, Folder Notebook of Childcare Affirmations, 1983, SL; WEFPJ, “Women Organize for Peace,” July 4, 1984, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 7, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Newsletters + Mailings 1983-85, SSC. 107 Jane Doe, Winter 1985, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 7, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Newsletters + Mailings 1983-85, SSC; WEFPJ, Mailing addresses and group contacts, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., Jan.-July 1985, SL. By 1985, 7000 women asked to be on their mailing list. Groups and affiliates such as Women’s Pentagon Action (WPA), Women against Military Madness (WAMM) and other women’s peace camps and organizations kept in contact with Seneca. 108 [Redacted], “Dear Women,” August 30, 1984, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., June- Dec. 1984, SL. 323

dedicated to peace on this planet … women who share the same pain, hurt and sorrow at the violence being perpetrated by the military.”109

From July until September, women arrived to attend workshops and commit acts of civil disobedience. Their protest targeted not only the deployment of missiles but also U.S. military intervention in central America, the costs of domestic abuse, racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, ageism and, as always, how they related to one another. “In planning to confront and address difficult issues it is tempting to isolate themes into single categories,” workshop leaders cautioned and instructed women to always discuss oppressions in tandem with one another.110 In

August, the camp finally received a three-year renewable health permit, making it an officially legal encampment. Yet, since they had installed a sewage system, dug a well, electrified the land, added a kitchen and spent another $12,000 on childcare curriculum, programming and publicity, their debt amounted to $45,000 by late summer.111

Campers and leaders alike still seemed satisfied with their summer. But planners were tired. One of them commented on the exhaustion accompanying “such an enormous, anarchic enterprise” as “[a]rousing a nation is no mean task.”112 More conflicts followed fatigue. Women lodged complaints against each other at meetings, leveling that some women’s pessimism negatively impacted others or that others were “failing to practice feminist principles” and instead making unilateral decisions.113 Some questioned women’s extreme civil disobedience—

109 Colette, “A Global Chain,” Jane Doe, Winter 1985, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 7, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Newsletters + Mailings 1983-85, SSC. 110 WEFPJ, “A Call to Action,” September 8, 1983, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 7, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Newsletters + Mailings 1983-85, SSC. 111 WEFPJ, “Seneca Women are Here to Stay,” August 29, 1984, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 7, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Newsletters + Mailings 1983-85, SSC; Julie Gress, “Dear Friends,” August 9, 1984, WEFPJ Papers, CDGA, Seneca Falls, NY 1983, Box 1 of 1, Folder 2, SCPC. 112 [Redacted], “Dear Women,” August 30, 1984, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., June- Dec. 1984, SL. 113 “[Redacted] complaints about [Redacted],” August 1984, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., June-Dec. 1984, SL. 324

shaking the depot fence so hard it nearly broke—or the efficacy of it all: “Women in jail powerful,” one queried, “is it enough?”114

When the second summer concluded by Labor Day, 1984, regional meetings resumed to appraise the summer and the upcoming months. As always, funding troubled Seneca. With loan payments due and little money to go around, women deliberated yet again if they should close the camp, at least for the coming winter. Very few wanted to take on the financial responsibility of fundraising and managing donations. Despite the financial burden and its time-sensitive nature, women still approached their meetings with the same consensus-driven, feelings-centric intentionality as before. They often sang and prayed to start. From one woman’s hands to the next, they circulated a crystal which allowed each woman holding it to speak her mind. Most meetings ended inconclusively, the woman who volunteered to take minutes scribbling, “No decisions reached,” at the end. The only thing women agreed upon was their “constant confrontation with patriarchy” through civil disobedience and egalitarian, women-only living.115

Yet no amount of bonding and sharing could dispel the magnitude of interpersonal grievances. Women reported and bemoaned serious factionalism and separatism at Seneca, noticeable over the recent summer and lingering thereafter. Differing definitions of work and a lack of coordination and structure concerning chores translated into some women performing more tasks than others, growing bitter in the process. In particular, the staff women who continued to live at Seneca—called “office women/bureaucrats” derisively by many of the campers—felt hopelessly overworked and underappreciated by women passing through, the so- called “fire women/witches.” Tensions between on- and off-land women also brewed. Regional

114 WEFPJ, “Evaluations of Actions at the Depot, 1984—Healing and Destructive aspects,” September 1, 1984, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., June-Dec. 1984, SL. 115 WEFPJ, “Minutes,” September 30, 1984, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 9 Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Regional Meeting Minutes 1983-85, SSC. 325

meeting participants considered transforming Seneca into a peace or feminist institute, or possibly renting or selling some of the land to fix some of their financial woes. Some also suggested women on the land should seek outside employment, at which point meetings devolved into a heated debate between “on-land women” and “off-land women.” The latter vehemently expressed they performed the hard work but felt excluded from major leadership decisions. Still, others saw “overstructure and overhigh expectations” at the root of the problem.116 Such invectives and disparate assessments affirmed that the unity Seneca hoped for did not exist.

The regional meetings also disclosed that a number of campers, drinking and smoking too much, had not taken care of themselves. The land was also in disrepair; some noted it was littered with trash. Several stated the camp felt like it was in constant crisis mode.117 New women, and especially minority ones, had trouble plugging into the camp and its processes over the past two summers. As at Greenham, racial inclusivity preoccupied Seneca campers and planners, namely because there was a conspicuous lack of women of color involved. Numerous instances emerged in which racial tensions were manifest. When a Black woman erected a tent specifically to act as a “women of color space,” and it sat unused for a time, white women then occupied it in a move gravely upsetting to the few minority women there.118 Women of color, along with elderly women, routinely expressed they were given no additional financial or

116 Ibid. 117 WEFPJ, “Minutes,” September 15-16, 1984, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 9 Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Regional Meeting Minutes 1983-85, SSC; WEFPJ, “Minutes,” September 30, 1984, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 9 Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Regional Meeting Minutes 1983-85, SSC; WEFPJ, “Minutes of Regional Meeting January,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., Jan.-July 1985, SL. After the first summer, due to serious fundraising efforts, the camp actually had a surplus of money which they allocated to efforts to winterize Seneca as well as donations to other peace and women’s organizations that had helped make the camp a possibility. After this though, they were perpetually in debt. See WEFPJ, “Happy New Years!” 1984, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 7, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Newsletters + Mailings 1983-85, SSC. 118 WEFPJ, “Minutes,” September 30, 1984, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 9 Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Regional Meeting Minutes 1983-85, SSC. 326

emotional support.119 The location in Upstate New York did not promise much racial or class diversity either; tellingly, the 1980 Federal Census revealed Seneca County’s white population to be 33,240 while its non-white population only amounted to 541.120

Pregnant women and young mothers also encountered similar diffidence toward their needs, notwithstanding the available childcare services. Aside from the physical demands of the camp that burdened their bodies, they confessed that so much attention fell on assuring the acceptance of lesbian women that heterosexual, married women felt ignored and stigmatized.

Annual Mother’s Day actions did not disguise this reality. One young mother explained that

Seneca was not a place to go to “find yourself.” Conversely she argued any woman had better

“know herself” before participating as Seneca had a knack for making straight women feel out of place.121 Lesbians and straight women indeed felt at odds with each other, the former experiencing the camp as the one place they could be themselves, and the latter uncomfortable with overt homosexuality. Some pointed out the troublesome minority at Seneca who identified as anarchist and would disrupt consensus-driven, structured meetings.122 “In short,” one meeting note-taker jotted, “we concentrated on tasks, not community.”123 “The further the camp moves from mainstream society,” participants assessed, “the harder it becomes for outside women to enter.”124 While many of Seneca’s problems derived from dilemmas inherent in the larger women’s movement, it was also an intentional commune like in Upstate New York

119 “Dear [Redacted],” August 4, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder [August 1983], SL; “Dear Sisters,” August 15, 1983, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 4, Folder [August 1983], SL. 120 “Population Estimates: County Characteristics: Intercensal County Estimates by Age, Sex, Race: 1980-1989,” United States Census Bureau, accessed February 1, 2016, https://www.census.gov/popest/data/counties/asrh/1980s/PE-02.html. 121 “Living in the Future,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 10, Folder Writings About Encampment, 1983-85, n.d., SL. 122 WEFPJ, “Minutes,” September 15-16, 1984, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 9 Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Regional Meeting Minutes 1983-85, SSC; WEFPJ, “Minutes,” September 30, 1984, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 9 Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Regional Meeting Minutes 1983-85, SSC. 123 Ibid. 124 Ibid. 327

and the Farm in Tennessee, both of which also suffered from financial constraints and leadership crises. All of these places, then, chronologically and ideologically close to each other, suggest something innately difficult about setting up and maintaining such alternative, rural communities.125

The efficacy of civil disobedience also stumped Seneca women since “the effectiveness of c.d. becomes questionable when the Depot knows how to handle it consistently; the deployment [of missiles] has indeed begun.”126 While the actions continued to bring women together and remained nonviolent, women pondered if its repetitiveness made it superficial.

“Despair impairs our creativity,” they concluded.127 Still, indefatigably optimistic, participants quoted the latest American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) Women’s Newsletter: “Yet virtually nowhere does the decline of the camps themselves signal the demise of the political energy behind them.”128 Several noted that it seemed more women abroad knew they existed, in contrast to more tepid local involvement. Many judged 1984 as a “survival summer” where little progress in their experiment was made. Several observed that the emphasis had been on their feminist lifestyle and less so their anti-nuclear platform.

The writing on the wall indicated a hostile, fractured atmosphere, but leaders were not willing to give up their experiment. To perpetuate the camp, they spent the autumn of 1984 brainstorming ways to raise money and clarify their goals. Beyond the objective of halting and reversing missile deployment out of SAD, they also added to their list more community dialogue,

125 These operational troubles also plagued other communal experiments in late 20th century America. See, for instance, Douglas Stevenson, Out to Change the World: The Evolution of the Farm Community (Summertown, TN: Book Publishing Company, 2014) about the Farm, an intentional, communal community in Tennessee, started in 1971. It is most known for its anti-consumption, anti-materialism and environmentalism alongside ’s spiritual leadership and the midwifery practices popularized by Ina May Gaskin. Like Seneca, it also suffered from “growing pains, or “the Changeover,” as Stephenson refers to it, which included by the early ‘80s a crisis in leadership under Stephen Gaskin, bankruptcy and health problems. 126 Ibid. 127 Ibid. 128 Ibid. 328

the development of a children’s program and the stabilization of the land to ensure the longevity of Seneca. Their belief in the interconnectedness of violence, “how day to day oppressions are linked to larger issues,” remained a priority to communicate to others, as did the goal to be more inclusive of all women and their financial and emotional needs—“aspects which hindered” in the past summers.129

This conversation over the fraught merits and shortcomings of Seneca continued through the winter. In February 1985, women again convened over the viability of the camp. More questions than answers surfaced. Several admitted that they did not advertise broadly for women to come and stay at the camp during the winter; they had expected they would receive too many inquiries. But in fact, now they had the opposite problem. Too few women appeared at Seneca.

They batted around a few ideas to raise income, including student interns and grant-writing, but the question remained: do we have the energy to continue? Their tortuous discussion over closing the camp or converting it into something viable emerged from their admittance that women, broadly speaking, did not seem to understand the heart of Seneca. Finding themselves back at square one, meeting participants noted, “These links and issues have been reduced to easy rhetoric. But what does our rhetoric mean? We need new language. What is patriarchy?”130

It did not help that news spread of other peace camps closing, including by spring 1985 those in Minnesota, Comiso, Italy and Puget Sound, Washington.131 Still, Seneca campers

129 WEFPJ, “Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice—Sumer [sic] 1984 Evaluation,” Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 7, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Newsletters + Mailings 1983-85, SSC. 130 WEFPJ, “Minutes,” February 16, 1985, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 7, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Newsletters + Mailings 1983-85, SSC. 131 Peace camps emerged across Britain, Western and Southern Europe, in America and as far away as Australia, all near military or weapons facilities. Those in Europe, like the camp in Comiso, Sicily, began after cruise and Pershing II missiles were expected to arrive in 1983 due to the 1979 NATO decision. Other camps appeared as well: at Puget Sound near the Boeing Aerospace Center—a cruise missile production site—in Kent, Washington, at Bryant Park in Manhattan for its visibility and at the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base near Tuscon where tactical missile squadrons trained for the Air Force. There were others, like the one at Clam Lake, Wisconsin, designed to protest the Navy’s Extra Low Frequency (ELF) radio transmitter project there, at Savannah River Plutonium 329

recorded successes elsewhere: “Women in Australia continue to hold incisive, transformative actions … Stirling Naval Base on Cockburn Sound was the site of a women’s peace camp in

December, 1984. This February, the Spinsters in New Haven entered a local military recruiting office at noon to pace their own ‘peace exercises’ to a Work-out tape, in order to protest Big Pine III maneuvers in Central America. In San Francisco, women danced the

Antinuclear Samba with the Peace Dragon … to protest cruise missiles in their harbor or anywhere. Hundreds of women gathered in NYC last November to say “!” to militarism and international corporate exploitation.”132 Their mailing list also continued to be robust as they sent their newsletters to and coordinated with other women’s organizations, including more traditional ones such as Women’s Action for New Directions (WAND) and

Women Against Military Madness (WAMM).133

In April, campers decided to catalogue the “Issues & Concerns Facing Seneca and Peace

Camps in General.” At stake was, for one, whether or not places like Seneca mattered to women elsewhere, and also, how could their utopia work in the midst of competing personalities, differing definitions of civil disobedience and incompatible life experiences.134 They asked each other, “Can we resolve the conflict between total wimmin’s separatism, spontaneity, fence- cutting, ‘I will never compromise who I am’—type politics … AND ‘community dialogue,’ planned structure, education about ‘the facts,’ NOT being confrontational, adventurist—type politics? Is it possible to create a space that truly represents the concerns, or incorporates the politics/issues of all women—a space that confronts racism, ableism, classism … —on 52 acres

Production Plant in Aiken, South Carolina and at other sites in Virginia, , Montana, San Francisco, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, West Germany, Switzerland and Australia. 132 WEFPJ, “Issues & Concerns Facing Seneca and Peace Camps in General,” April 12, 1985, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 7, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Newsletters + Mailings 1983-85, SSC. 133 Ibid. 134 WEFPJ, “Issues & Concerns Facing Seneca and Peace Camps in General,” April 12, 1985, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 7, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Newsletters + Mailings 1983-85, SSC. 330

of farmland in upstate New York?”135 They also posed to each other how the farm and its finances could operate long-term given its residents were always transitory, and if being both a women’s community and an anti-deployment protest was feasible. “Somehow (the Seneca peace camp) is still here—a total miracle,” one woman remarked.136

Into 1985, the camp remained operable despite that its leaders admitted, “political contradictions, low movement visibility, a $17,000 debt (which has been reduced from $37,000 in September), and a struggle to maintain validity within the mainstream peace and women’s movement as well as within the radical feminist peace movement.”137 Undeterred, they anticipated the camp to open by Memorial Day for another summer, hoping this time to highlight the urgent issues of U.S. intervention in Nicaragua and South Africa apartheid.138 Emulating years prior, a mass direct action characterized their 4th of July celebrations. Calling it “Six

Minutes to Midnight”—the time it took a Pershing II missile based in Europe to reach the Soviet

Union—women walked from the camp to the high-security Q-zone of SAD.139 In imitation of

WPA marches, they transitioned from total silence to singing songs of mourning, then rage and finally empowerment. They then encircled the depot, each emotional plateau helping them to navigate their rage over “the personal violence of rape and battering, the economic violence of hunger and poverty, the depersonalizing social violence of racism, sexism, classism, ableism,

135 Ibid. 136 Ibid. 137 WEFPJ, “Dear Women,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., Jan.-July 1985, SL. 138 WEFPJ, “Minutes—Sun. Jan. 13, 1985,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., Jan.-July 1985, SL; WEFPJ, “Hello Women,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., Jan.-July 1985, SL. 139 This was also a play on the cover of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, published since 1946 by scientists out of Chicago who opposed unilateral research and development of nuclear weapons. Their cover displayed a “doomsday clock” that counted down the minutes to nuclear war; in 1980, Bulletin editors moved the hands of the clock to three minutes to midnight, suggesting the imminence of nuclear warfare. See Lawrence S. Wittner, One World or None: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement Through 1953 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), 59-66; Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition, 63. 331

and homophobia … the ultimate planetary violence of nuclear war.”140 There was, inevitably, some debate if having an action on this day was classist given the historical interpretation that the revolution was a war for the wealthy fought by the poor. In true movement fashion, women aimed to be as considerate of all oppressions and women and thus contemplated every date in

July, listing its positive and negative historical associations to ascertain when to hold certain demonstrations.141

While local animosity was nothing new, campers reported in the summer and fall of 1985 an alarming number of threats and incidents. Water line breaks, tires slashed, windows broken, vandalism and sightings of young men on the camp grounds frightened women.142 Besides these security breaches, many began to claim that they were being “zapped.” Beginning in September of 1985, it was first Greenham women who charged that they had experienced the effects of low- level electromagnetic radiation (EMR) which they complained had produced headaches, menstrual irregularities, dizziness and bouts of memory loss and concentration problems.

Thereafter, Dr. Rosalie Bertell, Kim Besley and the organization Electronics for Peace initiated their own research on the matter. They were concerned that the British and U.S. militaries were testing electronic warfare on the campers through either a secret electronic microwave satellite communications apparatus or through the U.S. military’s intruder detection system which operated at a high frequency to bounce radar waves off a human body. By interviewing and

140 WEFPJ, “Six Minutes to Midnight,” WEFPJ Papers, Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Box 7 of 26, Folder 7, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice 1983, n.d (Newsletter), SSC; WEFPJ, “For Immediate Release,” June 16, 1985, WEFPJ Papers, CDGA, Seneca Falls, NY 1983, Box 1 of 1, Folder 2, SCPC. 141 WEFPJ, “Hello Sisters,” March 2-3, 1985, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 8, Women’s Encampment Newsletters and Mailings 1986-88, n.d., SSC; WEFPJ, “Six Minutes To Midnight at Seneca,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., Jan.-July 1985, SL. 142 WEFPJ, “Regional Meeting June 8 1985 #2,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., Jan.-July 1985, SL; WEFPJ, “Regional Meeting, June 16, 1985 #3,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., Jan.-July 1985, SL; WEFPJ, “Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice,” November 2-3, 1985, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., Oct.-Dec. 1985, SL. Women also reported that a deer hunting arrow hit the house near their propane tank, greatly upsetting them. 332

synthetizing women’s experiential episodes of ill health near military facilities, Bertell and her colleagues, along with the Medical Campaign against Nuclear Weapons, compiled a list of symptoms which they classified as consistent with the effects of low-level radiation. Through other dissenting physicians and scientists, they also began to turn up what they felt were concrete examples of EMR—or what Greenham women soon tagged as “zapping”—elsewhere, such as a case in Moscow. Claiming that since 1953 the U.S. embassy there had been irradiated by EMR, these researchers contended that the deaths of three ambassadors from cancer could be solidly linked to their constant exposure.143

Soon enough, women at Seneca likewise noticed similar symptoms. Alarmed, campers convened “zapping meetings,” assembling women with symptoms similar to those at Greenham to determine if something was indeed occurring, and if so, what the likely health indications were.144 Aware that their findings “sound[ed] like or paranoid ramblings,” they claimed, “It is neither,” though their insistence they were not “paranoid” inadvertently suggested as much.145 Deeply worried about the possibility of cancer, immune system breakdown and altered brain chemistry, Seneca women shared with Greenham campers the fear that EMR weapons were being deployed and tested at various peace camps. Such trepidation speaks to their growing alienation from mainstream society. The insularity of camp living fostered their

143 “Zapping Threatens Women at Camps,” free women’s words (Ann Arbor, Michigan), August 1988, 2,8, WEFPJ Papers, Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, Box 7 of 26, Folder 7, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice 1983, n.d (Newsletter), SSC; Gareth Parry, “Peace women fear electronic zapping at base,” The Guardian, March 10, 1986, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 1, Look to women for courage: research: Women’s Peace Camps: General 1982-84, SSC. 144 WEFPJ, “Zapping Information,” Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 10, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Regional Meeting Minutes 1986-89, n.d., SSC; WEFPJ, “Zapping Information,” Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 8, Women’s Encampment Newsletters and Mailings” 1986-88, n.d., SSC; WEFPJ, “We are women of the Seneca Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice,” WEFPJ Papers, CDGA, Seneca Falls, NY 1983, Box 1 of 1, Folder 2, SCPC; WEFPJ, “Zapping: The New Weapon of Patriarchy,” February 1988, WEFPJ Papers, CDGA, Seneca Falls, NY 1983, Box 1 of 1, Folder 2, SCPC; WEFPJ, “Health Herstory Request – Seneca Women’s Peace Encampment,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 8, Folder Health Forms, SL. 145 WEFPJ, “Zapping: The New Weapon of Patriarchy,” February 1988, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 8, Women’s Encampment Newsletters and Mailings” 1986-88, n.d., SSC. 333

alternative, often utopian ideas, and, like any other closed-off community, always had the potential to cultivate paranoia. That it was only women at Seneca and Greenham who credited these ailments to zapping suggests less of the real nature of EMR testing and more of the totalizing and obsessive mode of living and thinking that characterized the camps.

By the end of the third summer, the fragility of their experiment was undeniable. To sustain a place that was anarchic and structured, democratic and, at its core, about the individual, seemed increasingly unworkable to Seneca’s leaders and participants. Glaring evidence of this surfaced in ongoing debate over Respected Policies. Women met repeatedly throughout that autumn, finally agreeing upon a list and settling that anyone who intentionally broke one would be asked to change the rule through consensus or leave the land.146 That result, though, took hours and days of consensus-driven process which satisfied few and made most feel “completely trampled by all the process—we spent more time talking about how we were going to talk than we did talking about what was real,” as one participant lamented.147 “We are too politically different to work together,” one exacerbated woman stated, and another commented, “There is no way we can act together.”148 “We have reached a rut!” exclaimed another.149 Feminist, democratic process—which they saw as their way to challenge patriarchy—had become muddled. Women pondered what consensus even meant, to the point they had a discussion over what a discussion was, and all wondered why they, a cohort of women who seemed so similar,

146 WEFPJ, “At 1:20pm on Sunday,” November 17, 1985, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 9 Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Regional Meeting Minutes 1983-85, SSC; WEFPJ, “Seneca Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice,” October 12, 1985, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., Oct.-Dec. 1985, SL; WEFPJ, “Regional Meeting 10/13/1985,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., Oct.-Dec. 1985, SL; WEFPJ, “Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice,” November 2-3, 1985, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., Oct.-Dec. 1985, SL. 147 WEFPJ, “Seneca Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice,” October 12, 1985, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., Oct.-Dec. 1985, SL. 148 WEFPJ, “Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice,” November 2-3, 1985, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., Oct.-Dec. 1985, SL. 149 Ibid. 334

who all shared a deep investment in peace, nonviolence and feminism, argued incessantly amongst themselves.150 Being so careful to ensure they were not undemocratic in their decisions, they exhausted each and every subject. Whether or not to donate their growing archive of papers to nearby university libraries necessitated hours of conversation.151 Above all, even after

Respected Policies were agreed upon, most women were still unsatisfied, less so over the specific stipulations and more so because the rules infringed on Seneca’s spontaneity and individualism. There was also the complaint that regional meetings’ attendants did not tend to live at Seneca, and the staff, on-land women felt less committed women should not be prescribing policies. Possessiveness of Seneca through time and energy expended there resembled similar tensions among long-term campers and newcomers at Greenham.

Conflicts between on- and off-land women remained unresolved. When regional meetings were held at the camp, few off-land women attended.152 On-land women still felt drained, unsure of work and personal space boundaries. When one woman began to live in the attic of the farm house, maintaining her own furniture there because of her allergies, other on- land women were uneasy with that amount of personal space in a communal peace camp. The number of staff women could be counted on one hand, and exhaustion prevailed. “You can get to feel like the camps housewife” [sic], one commented.153 Under the impression that the camp was

150 WEFPJ, “Minutes of Regional Meeting, 1-12-86,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., 1986, SL; WEFPJ, “Regional Meeting June 8, 1986,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., 1986, SL. 151 WEFPJ, “February 16th Mini Meeting (official but unannounced) at Nicastro’s,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., 1986, SL; WEFPJ, “Regional Meeting May’3rd, 1986 Boston,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., 1986, SL. 152 WEFPJ, “Notes from Regional Meeting,” August 24, 1986, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 10, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Regional Meeting Minutes 1986-89, n.d., SSC; WEFPJ, “Regional Minutes (May 22, 1988),” Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 10, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Regional Meeting Minutes 1986-89, n.d., SSC. 153 WEFPJ, “Regional Meeting—March 16 Rochester,” Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 10, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Regional Meeting Minutes 1986-89, n.d., SSC. 335

“currently floundering,” those on-site considered giving up the land.154 Others insisted, “This is our place to create reality—‘wymin’s land’—there are no ‘patriarchal constraints’ here when we have chosen to let them go!”155 Offering her optimistic, indefatigable attitude in the midst of overwork and resignation, this camp woman reminded others that, “No one ever said ‘the revolution’ (transforming patriarchal capitalism) would be easy.” She goaded others to see that their purpose was to offer women a patriarchy-free world, even saying that its point was never to be realistic but instead non-compliant with compromises of daily life. To her, despite all of the issues thus far—burnout, lesbian separatism, anarchy, endless meetings, financial hardship—the camp still existed. And despite their fatigue, other on-land women agreed their experiment, while not ideal, somehow worked. They decided to persist. They did insist that household and camp tasks should be better divvied up and off-land support more consistent. All agreed that newcomers needed improved training and orientation to know what to expect at Seneca.156

Minutes from these and other regional meetings throughout the mid-1980s omit mention of geopolitics. Observed by many over the years, the camp prioritized process, to the extent that it took precedence over the actual missiles, environmental toxins, racism and sexism supposedly at the heart of Seneca’s protest. Despite campers’ deviated interests, the Cold War persisted, though it seemed change was on the horizon. Notwithstanding civil disobedience at SAD’s gate, missile deployment from America to Britain and Europe began in late 1983, and continued until the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty required both superpowers to eliminate nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of

154 WEFPJ, “Proposal: To Bring In Wymin to Work Full-Time at the Peace Camp,” Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 10, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Regional Meeting Minutes 1986-89, n.d., SSC. 155 Ibid. 156 Ibid. 336

500 to 5,500 kilometers.157 By 1985, though, the election of new Soviet General Secretary

Mikhail Gorbachev promised “new thinking” which borrowed from the non-aligned peace movement the idea that multilateral disarmament was urgently needed. In July of that year,

Gorbachev announced that the Soviet Union would unilaterally halt its nuclear tests, indefinitely if the U.S. reciprocated. This move rallied many peace organizations in America to the idea of a nuclear freeze and convinced several U.S. state officials that Soviets were genuinely interested in peace. While some governments, notably Britain under Thatcher, continued to insist on nuclear deterrence through arms stockpiling, “the ‘nuclear allergy’ was spreading” amongst most western leaders.158 In November, Reagan and Gorbachev met for a peace summit in Geneva, the latter receiving test ban petitions signed by 1.2 million Americans. Even as the Geneva summit proved less than a total success—Reagan in particular continued to badger Gorbachev for “the long history of Soviet aggression”—the leaders still agreed on the desirability of a fifty percent cut in strategic nuclear arsenals, and they importantly laid the groundwork for the Reykjavik peace summit in October 1986 and the subsequent INF Treaty.159

As Seneca’s leaders geared up for their fourth summer in 1986, the geopolitical situation suggested further arms reductions, in a profound reversal of the camp’s earlier years. Yet, its 4th of July opening came and went like the three preceding it, with a march to the depot followed by

157 Mirror Reporter, “Barricades go up for cruise fury,” Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box 15, Women’s Library (hereafter WL), London School of Economics, London, England. 158 Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition, 381. 159 Quoted in Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition, 390, 339-344, 369-404. For more on the Cold War in the mid-80s, see Robert Service, The End of the Cold War, 1985-1991 (New York: PublicAffairs, 2015), 119-231. At the Geneva Summit, Reagan would not let go of his SDI program, and they could not agree on a cessation to nuclear testing. But, helping to move him close to disarmament, staunchly anti-nuclear legislators like Pat Schroder and Ron Dellums and top Democrat leaders like James Wright and Richard Gephardt helped to slash the MX program, block the development of anti-satellite weapons, restrict Star Wars funding and legislate a halt to nuclear testing. When Reagan announced in May 1986 the U.S. would no longer abide by SALT II, the House reacted angrily as did the public. That his Congress and many of his citizens opposed his administration’s hawkishness convinced him to engage in arms negotiations with Gorbachev at Geneva and Reykjavik. 337

nonviolent civil disobedience and arrests at its gate.160 Summer turnout was not impressive. After one woman questioned if consensus “minus one vote” still counted as unanimity, another bitingly remarked they had “consensus minus thousands. Many wimmin not here.”161 They met low numbers and other challenges with a “brainstorming, heartsearching meeting.”162 Wanting to be a viable part of the worldwide peace movement, they asked if their protest against SAD was transparent and effective. Some worried that their feminist community stifled all other ends. The fear that the camp would close indefinitely lingered at their meeting. Given that only two women lived at Seneca by the fall of 1986, they initiated a recruiting program to find additional tenants for the coming winter.163

Conclusion: “Can feminism be a movement of all women without invalidating the experience and concerns of some women?”

The Seneca Women’s Peace Encampment persisted until 2006. It was undeniably a powerful place for many in its attempt at communal, more egalitarian living and as the catalyst for personal transformation. Indicative of many women’s unwavering optimism in their experiment, in an interview briefly after the 1983 Waterloo incident, participant Barbara Deming responded to the suggestion that the world of Seneca was not applicable on a large scale. The interviewer probed, “Can that work in a larger community, in a city, in New York City, in the

United States? Do you think [a consensus-driven, egalitarian community] can work and how?”

Deming replied, “I have no doubt that it can work, but when you say how, I think it has

160 WEFPJ, “News from the Land 7/24/86,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., 1986, SL. 161 WEFPJ, “Please Copy and Post Flyers in Your Communities,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., 1986, SL. 162 WEFPJ, “Minutes—SAT, Aug 30, and SUN Aug 31, 1986,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., 1986, SL. 163 WEFPJ, “Please Copy and Post Flyers in Your Communities,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., 1986, SL. 338

continually to be invented …. [S]ome people will always say you can’t afford to give everyone a voice and there isn’t time. But I would say all the time spent in doing it faster is wasted time because the decisions you come out with aren’t the right decisions.164

Yet with only a handful involved on and off the campsite by the mid-1980s, it hardly amounted to what it was in 1983, or what it was intended to be. That it shared a similar fate as the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp and was one amongst a myriad of similar projects across the western world mattered. In fact, as the epilogue to this dissertation documents, numerous other peace camps experienced similar zeniths and nadirs, individually impacting women yet unable to sustain themselves over the 1980s. Living primitively with only other women, their tents and benders backed against some kind of military facility, campers painfully discovered that women can be very different people. Their story reflects the larger narrative of the women’s movement of these years: one that futilely sought to unite all women behind a commitment to disarmament, feminism, nonviolence and ecology yet its philosophy of personal liberation proved poor intellectual grounding for a lasting political movement.

Indeed, as early as 1984, some heavily involved in the movement questioned its workability, poignantly pointing to its inability to genuinely account for all women and their different, often incompatible experiences. “It seems to me that feminism as a philosophy and movement is at a crossroad,” wrote Ynestra King, planner of the WLOE conference, in 1984.

“The Seneca peace encampment is located at that crossroad. Every action taken which brings together women to listen, talk, and act, who would not otherwise know each other, is a step in the right direction. Although, because of the location, the peace camp has not been accessible to some women. I am one of those women, who because of my job and disability could spend only

164 “Interview with Barbara Deming at the Seneca Women’s Peace Encampment, August 4, 1983. Boston Women’s Video Collective,” Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 6, Women’s Encampment Handouts, fliers, pamphlets, and other ephemera 1983-86, nd., SSC. 339

four difficult days at the camp. The issues facing us, as a movement, at this crossroad include:

Can feminism be a movement of all women without invalidating the experience and concerns of some women?”165

By the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, then, that feeling that Seneca was at a crossroads had become ever more apparent, and in many ways, it seemed that the camp’s fate had provided King with her answer. As numbers continued to dwindle through the end of the 1980s, the remaining participants convened in late July 1990 for three weekends and over thirty hours of meetings to confront and determine the future of Seneca. This “Transform or Die Workfest” produced a storm of ambitious proposals for Seneca as an idea and a physical place. Yet, no neat conclusion was reached. Through its last years, into the 2000s, Seneca was no longer a sprawling peace camp but rather a place for a handful of women who saw the farmland as home.166

165 Ynestra King, “A Story—Thinking about Seneca,” in WEFPJ, “Happy New Years!” 1984, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 7, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Newsletters + Mailings 1983-85, SSC. Others also noted that for disabled women, Seneca posed a challenge. One woman, for instance, wrote in from Massachusetts, fully supportive and ready to “give her energy with other women toward assuming a political and personal power to combat [nuclear weapons and other issues].” Yet she complained that her obesity disqualified her from living at Seneca. See “Dear Friends,” April 12, 1984, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 5, Folder [April-May 1984], SL. 166 Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Jutsice (hereafter WEFPJ), “Transform or Die,” July 28-August 12, 1990, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice [hereafter WEFPJ] Papers, Series III Organizations, Box 7 of 26, Folder 7, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice 1983, n.d (Newsletter), SSC. 340

Chapter Six:

Peace Has No Boundaries: The Soviet Women’s Peace Seminar,

Leningrad, September 1984

***

Introduction

From its origins in the mid-1970s, the women’s movement prided itself on its internationalism, both of its participants and its perspectives. Members pointed to examples such as the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp as evidence of their desire and ability to connect a variety of women across national boundaries for the sake of peace. As much as conferences and seminars mattered deeply to the movement’s beginnings and prolongation, by the mid-‘80s, American, British and West European movement participants took their investment in these gatherings a step further. In a dramatic move to upset the bipolarity of the Cold War,

Western women began to meet with Soviet women in the U.S.S.R. in the spirit that “[a] woman in Russia is the same as myself, the same emotions, leading the same sort of life.”1

In one key example, forty-six women from the U.S., the Soviet Union, Denmark, Finland,

Norway and Sweden assembled in the Leningrad Friendship Palace in present-day St. Petersburg in the fall of 1984. Hosted by the Soviet Women’s Committee (SWC), the seminar convened under the premise that, as SWC president Valentina Tereshkova explained, “You and us live in different countries; we have different politics and we may hold different ideas about happiness.

But we all live on this one planet, whose future now is under threat … In the year 2000 our children will turn out, provided we are able to work jointly for the good of peace and the well-

1 Barbara Harford and Sarah Hopkins, Greenham Common: Women at the Wire (London, England: The Women’s Press, Ltd., 1984), 43. 341 being of our children.”2 For four days, representatives, including Women’s Action for Nuclear

Disarmament (WAND) president Sayre Sheldon, shouldered the responsibility of “reversing the nuclear arms race” as women and mothers. In doing so, these women participated in one among many cross-cultural encounters by ordinary Eastern and Western citizens in a new wave of grassroots diplomacy in the late 20th century. Superseding the Iron Curtain, individuals and organizations instead relied on concepts of international human rights to exchange ideas and promote transparency between the superpowers.3

Their ability to do so arose out of thawing Cold War relations, especially as Gorbachev rose in the ranks of the Politburo and championed nuclear arms controls. Especially for women, new human rights protocol and attention at the national and supranational level on the

2 “Speech by Valentina Tereshkova,” in E. Serebrovskaya, “International Seminar on ‘The Role and Tasks of Women in the Present Anti-War Movement,’ Leningrad, September 4-9, 1984,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, Sophia Smith Collection (hereafter SSC), Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts. It is important to note that all of the material used in this chapter from the Soviet Women’s Peace Seminar originates from Sayre Sheldon’s personal papers, housed at Smith College. The official language used at the seminar was English, and thus all the records that Sheldon possessed or wrote are also in English. Undoubtedly, though, personal papers from Soviet participants—most likely in Russian and none of which this author could find—would shed additional light on the conference from their perspective. Similarly, all of the material concerning Ann Pettitt’s visit to the Soviet Union come from her memoir. Personal accounts from the Soviet peace activists she met do not factor into this chapter, and the reader should be aware of this bias. Finally, I want to thank Dr. Willard Sunderland for his feedback and guidance on the Soviet history and historiography necessary for this chapter. 3 Xenia Proskurnikova, “Dear Friend,” April 1984, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC; Sayre Sheldon, “I came to this conference,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. For more on cross-cultural encounters among Western and Eastern actors during the Cold War and irrespective of the Iron Curtain, see Paul Rubinson, “‘For Our Soviet Colleagues’: Scientific Internationalism, Human Rights, and the Cold War,” in The Human Rights Revolution: An International History, eds. Akira Iriye, Petra Goedde, and William Hitchcock (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 245-264. As Rubinson explains, scientists—“transformed into amateur diplomats”—comprised one social movement among many during the second half of the Cold War that used expanding human rights ideas and protocols, imbedded in the Helsinki Act of 1975, to open up the Iron Curtain, demand international exchange and human rights protections (252). See also Sari Autio-Sarasmo and Katalin Miklóssy, eds., Reassessing Cold War Europe (London: Routledge, 2011). In her essay in this volume, “Soviet Women, Cultural Exchange and the Women’s International Democratic Federation,” Melanie Ilic investigates how women in the East Bloc, through the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF), in the ‘50s and ‘60s established contacts with women in the West (157-174). See also Dina Fainberg, “Notes from the Rotten West, Reports from the Backward East: Soviet and American Foreign Correspondents in the Cold War, 1945-1985” (PhD dissertation, Rutgers University, 2012). Fainberg explores Soviet and American foreign correspondents that respectively lived in the “other” Bloc; her dissertation offers another example of the Iron Curtain as penetrable, and that ordinary citizens traveled across boundaries of culture, customs and worldviews in the midst of the Cold War. 342 intersections between women and economic development led to unprecedented international interest on their status. Events such as the U.N. World Conferences on Women, the first one occurring in Mexico City in 1975, captured this momentum.4 These trends made available new channels of citizen diplomacy and dialogue between women of different nations, and encouraged women to see themselves as important actors on the international stage.5

The seminar also grew from the specific context and precedents established by the women’s movement. As explained in this dissertation’s introduction, the international dimensions and dialogue inherent in movement began in the mid-1970s at various conferences and workshops. These gatherings fostered inchoate yet powerful transnational networks among

4 See Allida Black, “Are Women ‘Human’? The UN and the Struggle to Recognize Women’s Rights as Human Rights,” in The Human Rights Revolution, 133-155. Black explains the slow development for the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) to make women’s rights understood as human rights; not until 1972 did the UN allow or encourage the CSW to convene the first World Conference on Women, and Black explains that it took the end of the Cold War for women’s rights to be truly seen as human rights, and vice versa. Yet she argues that by the mid-70s, the efforts of CSW and feminist organizations converged in powerful ways, epitomized in events like the 1975 World Conference on Women. For more on the development to make women’s rights seen as human rights, see also Kelly J. Shannon, “The Right to Bodily Integrity: Women’s Rights as Human Rights and the International Movement to End Female Genital Mutilation,” in The Human Rights Revolution, 285-310. 5 See Jan Eckel and Samuel Moyn, eds., The Breakthrough: Human Rights in the 1970s (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). Moyn explains that the world of human rights in 1970s was “a world of delocalized grassroots agents making claims, a global community far larger than that of fifty or so nations that endorsed the Universal Declaration’s principles in an era of reconsolidating empire” (6). He also characterizes the 1970s as an important decade for human rights protocol and transnational exchange in its “polycentrism”—“the significant fact that so many different invocations of international human rights were occurring at the same time, and on a scale that dwarfed the percolations of the concept even in the immediately prior decade” (13). See also Celia Donert, “Whose Utopia? Gender, Ideology, and Human Rights at the 1975 World Congress of Women in East Berlin,” in The Breakthrough: Human Rights in the 1970s, ed. Jan Eckel and Samuel Moyn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 68-87. Donert looks at the efforts of East Bloc and Western feminists in U.N. World Conferences on Women and in the 1975 World Congress of Women in East Berlin, showcasing “the massive increase in grassroots women’s activism in the 1970s” (80). While her chapter mostly shows how state socialist regimes had been using women’s rights for the purpose of gaining international legitimacy since the postwar era and trumpeted themselves as vanguards for women’s (economic) rights, she also shows that the heyday of human rights mobilizations for women’s advocacy groups by the 1990s began in mass in the 1970s in the midst of the Cold War. Through U.N. conferences and women’s rights NGOs, women transnationally gathered and shared feminist ideas by the 1970s. See also Myra Marx Ferree, “Globalization and Feminism: Opportunities and Obstacles for Activism in the Global Arena” in Global Feminism, 3-23. Ferree targets the 1975 U.N. Conference on Women in Mexico City as groundbreaking for helping “women’s policy machinery” be put in place in most countries of the world. She argues this was a key tool to help feminists globally challenge male domination. See also Margaret Snyder, “Unlikely Godmother: The UN and the Global Women’s Movement,” in Global Feminism, 24-50, who explains that throughout the 1960s and 1970s, women received much more attention internationally due to development concerns which helped put them on the map in supranational organizations like the U.N. and encouraged thinking of women’s issues transnationally: “development became a women’s issue, and women became a development issue” (29). 343 female participants. Such an exchange of ideas and resources characterized earlier women’s peace activism, notably around World War I. The late 20th century women’s movement seized opportunities produced through disarmament efforts, greater citizen diplomacy and women’s rights movements to likewise coordinate its projects across borders.

Beginning with the women’s workshop at the 1975 War Resisters’ International (WRI) triennial in Holland and the subsequent Feminism and Nonviolence Study Group in England in

1976, Western European, British and American women slowly extrapolated the feminist critique of violence to include broader examples. Namely, they targeted the military and insisted that national and geopolitical decision-making needed female perspectives and participation. As chapters of Women for Peace emerged throughout Western Europe in the late 1970s, and women convened additional conferences on feminism and nonviolence, participants subscribed to a project of redirecting world values toward conflict resolution, compassion and equality.

Anchoring their movement in the idea of international sisterhood, they agreed that women needed to have a greater voice in national and international politics. Their philosophy prescribed no boundaries or hierarchies between women of different countries or backgrounds since their movement scaffolding was that every woman and her oppressions mattered equally. Women lived this idea by exchanging literature, news and other resources, and many traveled to visit each other’s protest sites, organizations and meetings. This philosophical grounding meant the movement lent itself to international dialogue and networking as participants saw their triad of feminist, environmental and disarmament concerns as necessarily transnational.

Launched in 1981, the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, in both its anti- missile message and its role as an alternative women’s community, stands as the ultimate manifestation of the transnational women’s movement. But beyond Greenham, women

344 continued their cross-national exchange of ideas and resources through ongoing meetings and demonstrations. More specifically, several conceived that if their movement aimed to recalibrate world values through a global sisterhood, Western women needed to penetrate the

Iron Curtain and seek out their sisters in the Soviet Union. Out of this realization, women first went abroad to the Soviet Union as independent citizens, as Greenham founder Ann Pettitt did in 1982 to meet fellow peace activists, and later as representatives of organizations such as

WAND for conferences like the Soviet Women’s Peace Seminar in 1984.

Still, these East-West moments displayed noticeable national and ideological tensions that women uneasily navigated. Apparent at the Leningrad seminar, Soviet women remained unconvinced that their American guests appreciated and understood the sacrifices Russians and the Red Army endured during World War II. U.S. representatives like Sheldon cringed that their hosts seemed utterly convinced that Soviet leaders were infallibly righteous and interested in disarmament. More than that, the total lack of political freedom, epitomized in the illegality of non-aligned activism in the Soviet Union, astonished Western women. Also problematic was that Scandinavian, American and Soviet women experienced womanhood quite differently, which contributed to distinct ideas of feminism. Those from the U.S. and

Scandinavian countries expressed that gender roles had grown more equitable since second- wave feminism. Soviet women, told by their state they had received emancipation under the original Bolshevik regime, instead felt overwork, especially given the Soviet idea that women should both work and take care of the home with little spousal help. Western participants tended to define feminism using the concept of “liberation,” seeking to revolutionize both the public and intimately private aspects of women’s lives. Soviet women, conversely, understood feminism as a leveler, as evidence—even if it felt untrue—that the Soviet Union had equalized

345 work between the sexes and encouraged women’s industrial and agricultural labor alongside men’s.

In the end, as was true for the women’s movement at large, Western women who traveled beyond the Iron Curtain like Pettitt and Sheldon did not end the Cold War.

Nonetheless, they still expressed how individually impactful the experience was. Yet for the

Soviet women involved, these personal instances of transformation and revelation did not matter as much. They were in a less privileged position, to be sure, than U.S. women. Despite that MAD implicated the whole world in nuclear war, some Soviet women inferred that, with missiles pointed at them and sited throughout Europe, any nuclear war was likely to occur on their soil, not on American land. While Pettitt, Sheldon and others undoubtedly wanted to end the Cold War, they settled with moments of individual metamorphosis and new friendship.

Soviet women were less satisfied with such a depoliticized endpoint. In many ways, they could not afford to be that individualistic, given the gravity of their situation in the Cold War and that they lived in a state which denied most citizens any personal freedom. As much as race, class, sexuality and ideas over effective political organizing fractured the women’s movement, notably in America and Britain, so too national identity and its accompanying experiences proved to be another roadblock in women’s international unity. It was more evidence signaling the unsustainable, unworkable nature of a movement built on the idea that all women shared a steadfast passion for peace.

Penetrating the Iron Curtain: Greenham Common Women and the Moscow Group for the Establishment of Trust, 1982

In the early summer of 1982, Ann Pettitt, one of the founders of the Greenham

Common Women’s Peace Camp, decided to visit Russia. In a time of heightened citizen

346 diplomacy, especially among women, she revealed the thinking of others involved in the women’s movement who conceived that internationalism was crucial to stem the Cold War arms race, and even more, that it was ordinary women’s duty and right to play a major role in this project. Meeting with the dissident group, the Moscow Group for the Establishment of

Trust, Pettitt encountered a jarringly unfamiliar state, one that was authoritarian and brutally silenced anyone with autonomous, non-aligned opinions. Friendships with these independent

Soviet peace activists, male and female, blossomed from her time behind the Iron Curtain.

What she and other Western women actually accomplished, however, remained ambiguous, and Pettitt’s introduction to total state control was indicative that some differences between women in the movement might be too large to bridge.

Participating in a peace walk from the Greenham camp to Brawdy in South Wales, Pettitt conceived of the idea as a passing motorist disdainfully shouted, “Why don’t you tell that stuff to the Russians?”6 Aware that “the populations of East and West [were] mutually ignorant of each other and so easily manipulated into supporting polices governed by fear and mistrust,” Pettitt along with her friend Karmen Cutler decided to travel behind the Iron Curtain to ascertain

“whether there are people like us,” as she recounted.7 They were particularly encouraged by the efforts of Scandinavian women who, when staying in the Soviet Union, had tried to make contact with the independent Russian group, the Moscow Group for the Establishment of Trust. Soon enough, though, Pettitt and Cuter discovered it was nearly impossible to find more information about the Trust.

Unlike other Soviet organizations committed to disarmament, the Trust was non-aligned

6 David Fairhall, Common Ground: The Story of Greenham (London, England and New York: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd., 2006), 102. 7 Ann Pettitt, Walking to Greenham Common: How the Peace-camp began and the Cold War ended (South Glamorgan, Wales: Honno, 2006), 158; Fairhall, Common Ground, 102. 347 and thus unsympathetic to either the East or West Bloc in the Cold War.8 This struck Pettitt and others as almost unbelievable, given that “political groups truly independent of the [Soviet] state did not exist unless they accepted the role of ‘dissident’, in which case they were swiftly imprisoned, sent to Siberia or else to a psychiatric hospital.”9 Officially, Soviet policy dictated that it had unilaterally pioneered arms controls and reductions, which it starkly contrasted to

American augmentation of weapons. This polarized perspective made a pariah out of any group within Russia that critiqued both superpowers for the Cold War, and in general, characterized how dissent was dealt with under Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. While the difference between the Stalin and Brezhnev regimes were vast, “the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s remained a repressive society.”10 Political dissenters were harassed, intimidated by the secret police (KGB), and sent to prison, labor camps or—the worst—to psychiatric institutions.

Since the mysterious disappearance of its leader , many assumed the dissident peace movement in the Soviet Union had been eliminated by the KGB by the end of the

1970s. Anxious for more news on the matter, Pettitt went to London in February of 1983 for a

“Soviet Women’s Day” of workshops put on by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and the European Nuclear Disarmament (END) movement. There, she disliked that CND seemed to accept that its ‘counterparts’ were to be found in the Soviet state-run Soviet Peace Committee

(SPC). She more positively viewed END leadership which gravitated toward the idea that their true allies were the dissident peace activists in the Eastern Bloc campaigning for human rights.

8 Outside of the Trust, the Soviet state controlled its disarmament movement, having its Soviet Peace Committee (SPC) coordinate peace efforts throughout the Soviet states. As a member of the Communist-aligned (WPC), SPC also valorized Soviet Bloc and other Communist governments for their peace efforts, and denigrated the U.N. and U.S. leaders for causing and perpetuating the Cold War. Lawrence S. Wittner, Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), 26-27, 99, 165, 168. 9 Pettitt, Walking to Greenham Common, 164. 10 Peter Kenez, A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1999, 2006), 227. Kenez explains that dissent would not truly be tolerated until Gorbachev initiated glasnost—constructive criticism of the regime—beginning in 1986 (253-257). 348

From these workshops, Pettitt connected with a young American student, Jean McOllister, who was a Rhodes scholar working on her doctorate in Soviet ecology and apparently the only person in Britain to have recently actually met the Trust.11

Fluent in Russian, McOllister had been to the U.S.S.R. before, on a Soviet fisheries research trip, and through a friend at Helsinki Watch, contacted and spent a week with the Trust in November 1982. That her friend could help her make such an illegal connection in the Soviet

Union signaled the growing power of human rights activists at Helsinki Watch and in other non- governmental organizations toward the end of the Cold War. Discontent with the British mainstream peace movement’s pro-Soviet line which refused to criticize the Soviet state for its human rights and which refused to work with non-aligned organizations, McOllister began to form an alliance with select Trust members. She visited Trust founder Sergei Batovrin who had suffered arrest for “schizophrenia” and incarceration in a psychiatric hospital. It was through these networks that Pettitt became another woman visiting the Soviet Union.12 Inside the

U.S.S.R., the Trust was far from a secret. Conversely, its members had made their meetings openly known, inviting media outlets like Pravda and Izvestia and the Western press to join and document their gatherings. The Trust even notified the Soviet Peace Committee (SPC), the official agency of peace, of their work. Its mission was to remove the Iron Curtain so that a dialogue between East and West, among ordinary individuals and their leaders, had a chance.

Most in the Trust, numbering a dozen or so, were academics in science and medicine. For their activism, they expected a fate similar to that of Batovrin. Consequences of their involvement ranged from harassment and employment demotion to arrest and torture. Several had their car brakes tampered with. One young member, Oleg Radzinski, had proposed a ten-minute

11 Ibid., 157-173. 12 Ibid., 166-177. 349 worldwide silence on January 1st, 1982 to reflect on disarmament and was subsequently arrested and put in Lefortovo Prison.13

Pettitt, Cutler and McOllister raised enough money through local fundraising efforts in

Britain that they arrived in Moscow in May of 1983. In the Russian capital, they quickly discovered that as visitors they could do little on their own. Food was hard to come by, and their

“itinerary, like that of most tourist trips to the USSR, had been created around the need for

Intourist to fill its quotas for train seats on particular days,” Pettitt recalled.14 Before leaving for

Leningrad on one of the final days of their trip, McOllister directed Pettitt and Cutler to the

Moscow flat of Yuri and Olga Medvedkov, both lecturers in human geography at Moscow

University. There, they all talked for hours of ways to coordinate the non-aligned peace movement. The Medvedkovs noted how important it was for the Trust to show proof to

Westerners of the non-aligned movement and “what life was like for them inside a full-blown one-party totalitarian state.”15 Another member, Vladimir Brodsky, joined the party that afternoon. He was a surgeon who had just received notice that he was to be investigated for

“negligence of medical records”—“a sign that the KGB were taking up more serious and systematic methods of intimation” with the Trust, Pettitt assessed.16

After Moscow, Pettitt and the others took a train to Leningrad which proved more challenging than anticipated. Any person who wanted to travel long-distance had to procure an approved ticket from the state. Once they were in present-day St. Petersburg, two Russian women escorted them around Leningrad. It was their guides’ habit to pull out telephone connections when at home to prevent anyone listening to their conservations, which allowed

13 Ibid., 174-177, 202. 14 Ibid., 196. Intourist was the official state travel and tourist agency of the Soviet Union. 15 Ibid., 199. 16 Ibid., 204. 350 them to talk freely and tell one joke critical of the Soviet system after another. Above all, the

Russian hosts devoured what information they could about the West. They referred to this knowledge as defitsitnyi, the scarcest good of all. Pettitt, Cutler and McOllister met with others on the Trust grapevine, some of the “innumerable Soviet academics who talked to each other” as part of the “Free University of Leningrad.”17

Returning to Moscow, the women eventually met with the official Soviet peace movement, including SPC, under its vice-chairman Oleg Kharkhardin, and its affiliate organization, the Soviet Women’s Committee (SWC). Given her distaste for aligned politics and her investment in the Trust, Pettitt found SWC members stiff and superficial, as “people who not only sounded like automata but even moved as if under remote control,” and she noted their disbelief that the Trust even existed.18 “Unlike our committee, which represents millions, they represent no one,” she recalled committee members informing her.19 With such disparate impressions of each other, the meeting turned out to be “one of the most difficult encounters the

[Soviet] Peace Committee ever had to endure,” Guardian correspondent Jonathan Steele reported.20

Pettitt and her friends decided to bring Olga Medvedkova with them, and arriving a good twenty minutes late to the meeting, they effectively stunned everyone by bringing in a dissident member of the peace movement. Sitting in Kharkhardin’s personal office, SPC members along with two men from the U.S.-Canada Institute were speechless that Medvedkova appeared so brazenly in front of officials and television cameras. Everyone reacted nervously: “Feet were

17 Ibid., 220. 18 Pettitt, Walking to Greenham, 230. 19 Ibid. 20 Quoted in Fairhall, Common Ground, 103. 351 shuffled, cigarette packets tapped, fingers drummed on the table ‘like an army of mice.’”21

Kharkhardin eventually composed himself and gave a lengthy welcome speech. Pettitt explained who she and her friends were, yet Medvedkova introduced herself in Russian. “My name is Olga

Medvedkova and I am a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and a geographer,” she began, “I came here with these women because they are my friends and we have similar ideas. I am also a member of the Independent Group to establish Trust.”22

Pettitt recounted that Kharkhardin—a state official, undoubtedly worried about the ramifications of meeting with a dissident—interrupted to silence Medvedkova. Pettitt and the others retorted that “Olga was a woman for peace,” and as such, should be allowed to speak.23

They tried to explain their non-aligned position and women’s important role in disarmament as they insisted the Trust members were their “counterparts because they too have acted on their own initiative.”24 Pettitt reminded SPC participants of Soviet praise for the Greenham Common

Women’s Peace Camp, and explained that just as in Britain where Women for Life on Earth began the camp, “there must be Women for Life on Earth in Moscow as well, or if things carry on the way they’re going, there won’t be any life on earth.”25 Pettitt choked on her own words, and one SPC member snapped, “There’s no need for all this emotion.”26 Yet, reinforcing the goal of the women’s movement to revalue and employ emotion in matters of national security, Cutler replied, “Oh, but it is an emotional issue … If neither side is prepared to back down, we could very well have a nuclear war.”27

The meeting went nowhere until Kharkhardin left the room. Pettitt then sensed everyone

21 Ibid. 22 Ibid., 243. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid., 246. 25 Ibid. 26 Quoted in Ibid., 249. 27 Ibid. 352 visibly relaxed. For two hours, they all chatted, essentially enacting “[a] concept that, five years later, would become a buzz-word of the Gorbachev administration, glasnost—transparency.”28

Indicative that glasnost had not yet happened, SPC members expressed relief and interest in their free-flowing discussion. “That was the most interesting meeting I have ever had,” commented the interpreter.29 Upon returning to Britain, Pettitt and her colleagues exchanged newsy letters with their new Soviet allies. Assessing her visit, Pettitt discerned, “Even the [Soviet] Women’s

Committee was hungry for new ideas.”30

She also noted that, upon her return to Britain, the Trust began to enjoy a more consistent

Western press spotlight which served to protect members to an extent. Tellingly though, Pettitt,

Cutler and McOllister planned another trip for September 1983, and a mere twenty-four hours before their flight, Soviet authorities cancelled their visit. The abrupt revocation of their trip revealed that Pettitt and other women’s visits to the Soviet Union were personally impactful but still struggled to influence state policy. Deeply disappointed, their despair worsened when they heard that Olga Medvedkova was arrested in November on the charge of assaulting a police officer. Tried on March 23rd, 1984, she was sentenced to two years in a corrective hard labor prison camp for her involvement with the Trust. Fortunately, though, seeing she was very pregnant, the judge suspended the sentence.31

Nonetheless, there was still merit in the East-West dialogue for the women’s movement, and the disarmament movement at large. For one, if the goal had been to penetrate the Iron

Curtain and ascertain what, if any, peace activities occurred there, then Pettitt and her friends

28 Ibid., 253. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid., 266. 31 Ibid., 274-288. See also Lawrence S. Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971-Present (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 376-377. Under Gorbachev, by 1986, members of the Trust were officially tolerated and most confined to psychiatric institutions released. 353 succeeded in meeting a variety of Russians who similarly worked for an end to the Cold War.

Such knowledge, transmitted back to Britain and America, was a useful boost to disarmament activism everywhere. It was also worthwhile for members of the Trust that Western activists were reaching out to them and appealing to the Soviet state to better respect human rights.32

Furthermore, that it was women who made such contact reified a major theme of women’s movement—that it was their turn in national and international policy and their predilection toward conflict resolution united them with other like-minded women around the world. Denying any role that men from Britain or America could have played in this diplomacy, women like

Pettitt genuinely wanted to collaborate with their Soviet counterparts. Even when the only concrete result of cross-cultural meetings was friendship, members of the women’s movement interpreted this as a success, for at its core they significantly valued individual transformation brought about by contact with other women.

“What can a meeting of women—none of whom hold major political power—signify?” The Soviet Women’s Peace Seminar, September 1984

By 1984, Helen Caldicott’s Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament (WAND) also began to pay increasing attention to their own impressions about the Soviet Union. In addition to creating new public curriculum that objectively explained Soviet government and society, members also participated in exchange programs with Soviet women. American women traveled to the U.S.S.R., and Soviet women visited the U.S. in their insistence that “peace work has no

32 See again Rubinson, “‘For Our Soviet Colleagues’” in The Human Rights Revolution, 245-264. Like the scientific community that Rubinson traces, Pettitt and her friends were also trying to advocate on the behalf of Soviet citizens’ human rights. While scientists perhaps had more institutional influence than a small group of women and thus were more successful in garnering international attention to the plight of Soviet dissenting scientists, Pettitt and the other women acted in a similar, albeit less impactful, manner. 354 boundaries.”33 Paralleling Pettitt’s priorities, Sayre Sheldon, as WAND’s president from 1982 until 1987 and also a professor of American literature at Boston University, heartily believed in the need to revise Soviet-American relations in order to deescalate the Cold War. “Never have our relations been so bad,” she explained to a joint meeting of the Plymouth Area League of

Women Voters and the American Association of University Women in January of 1984.34 She had joined WAND, then called the Women’s Party for Survival (WPS), in 1981 after “driving to work one perfect May morning … enjoying the river and the trees when the scene abruptly vanished—blotted out, gone forever, no more springs with milky blue skies and pale new leaves—gone only for an instant but I could not forget it.”35 Such a “conversion” experience prompted her involvement in the women’s movement, and as WAND’s leader through the mid-

1980s, Sheldon realized the untapped potential in women’s political power to enact change and fight for nuclear disarmament. She banked on both rising numbers of women in national politics—epitomized in the running of Geraldine Ferrero for vice president in 1984—and the growing gender gap in voting patterns. Sheldon noted “the apparent difference between the way that men think as opposed to how women think,” and in politics, this manifested throughout the

‘80s in women voting for the funding of social services over augmented defense spending.36 As a wife, mother and eventual grandmother herself, Sheldon wrote, “But for once, time may be on our side. The goal of women to raise their families in peace and to use their energies to make the

33 See, for example, Caroline Vaillant, “Memo to Sayre Sheldon,” April 1983, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Accn. #09S- 21, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. Beyond the Soviet Union, WAND members also hosted women from South Pacific islands who were involved in anti-nuclear activism there. See Sayre Sheldon, “Peace Work Has No Boundaries,” WAND Bulletin 2, no. 3, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 3 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder 82, SSC. 34 Patricia Funder, “Women’s role in anti-nuke movement lauded,” Brockton Enterprise (Brockton, Massachusetts), January 31, 1984, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 2 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder 85-84, SSC. 35 Sayre Sheldon, “Organising a National Campaign: Women’s Party for Survival, U.S.A.,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 3 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder 1983, SSC. 36 Ibid; see also Sayre Sheldon, “The Day After Nov. 6,” WAND Bulletin, Winter 1984, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 3 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder 83, SSC. 355 world a safer and more just place for all its citizens is no longer dismissed as utopian.”37

Despite the revived nuclear arms race in the early ‘80s, by Reagan’s second term in office, Sheldon and other women took advantage of warming Soviet-American dialogue. Helpful in this development was Soviet General Secretary . He gained influence in the Politburo in the mid-1980s and championed a unilateral halt to nuclear testing alongside serious proposals of arms reductions.38 In his first years as General Secretary of the Communist

Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), to reinvigorate both the party and the governmental apparatus and to institute reforms to improve the sluggish economy, Gorbachev removed corrupt and aging officials and called for increased discipline, improved quality and decentralization in decision- making. His economic and political reforms only became more sweeping and ambitious toward the end of the Cold War, in the late 1980s periods of glasnost—an opening up of society and constructive criticism of the system—and perestroika—a rebuilding or restructuring of the economy. While Gorbachev’s primary interest was in domestic policy, his priorities necessitated improved East-West relations. A reduction of military expenses would help improve the economy and ameliorated tensions with the West would allow the Soviet Union access to

Western technology and credits. Reactivating nuclear arms limitations by calling for a “new mode of thinking,” Gorbachev met with Reagan in Geneva, Switzerland, in November of 1985 and the following year in Reykjavik to discuss nuclear weapons reductions and eliminations.39

37 Sayre Sheldon, “Gerry Points the Way,” WAND Bulletin, Fall 1984, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 2 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder 85-84, SSC. 38 Sayre Sheldon, “Summit Issue Is Leadership,” WAND Bulletin, Fall 1985, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 2 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder 85-84, SSC; Sayre Sheldon, “Are Talks for Real?” WAND Bulletin, Spring 1985, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 2 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder 85-84, SSC. 39 For more on Gorbachev, see Archie Brown, The Gorbachev Factor (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Archie Brown, Seven Years that Changed the World: Perestroika in Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Kenez, A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End, 243-253. After Leonid Brezhnev’s death in 1982, Yuri Andropov, formerly of the KGB, took over as the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, only to die 15 months later. Konstanin Chernenko, Brezhnev’s closest associate, was elected secretary, and a then-young Gorbachev was made second in command. 356

Out of these developments, Western women like Sheldon became interested in traveling to the Soviet Union to meet with women involved in disarmament there. As Pettitt’s difficulties in finding and helping the Trust revealed, most Westerners met instead with official state organizations, in Sheldon’s case with the Soviet Women’s Committee (SWC). Created after

World War II as an international call to all women who opposed , SWC later transitioned to a public women’s advocacy organization. With contacts in over one hundred twenty countries outside the Soviet Union and a founding member of the Women’s International Democratic

Federation (WIDF), SWC’s main purpose was two-fold. Members, who were “an elite group of women,” sought to domestically initiate and maintain legislation helpful to women’s rights as many Soviet women saw themselves as by-products of the promises guaranteed to them during the 1917 Russian Revolution.40 While safeguarding rights for Soviet women such as employment and educational equality and maternity and child care, SWC was still a state organization and thus consistently argued that communism had already made these into realities, or, in other words, solved “the woman question.”

The Soviet women’s group developed and sustained friendly ties with over three hundred international and regional women’s organizations. In addition to conferences and other formal gatherings, SWC coordinated tours in which visitors could travel to the Soviet Union and

Chernenko, like his predecessors, was ill, thus resulting in Gorbachev chairing many Politburo meetings and quickly rising in prominence. Gorbachev succeeded Chernenko as CPSU general secretary in 1985 and began to institute his now-famous reforms. See also Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition, 369-404. 40 For more context on Soviet women’s history during the Russian Revolution, see Barbara Alpern Engel, Women in Imperial, Soviet, and Post-Soviet Russia (Washington D.C.: American Historical Association, 1999), 20-25; Barbara Engel, Women in Russia, 1700-2000 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 128-165; Wendy Z. Goldman, Women, the State and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917-1936 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Natalia Pushkareva, Women in Russian History: From the Tenth to the Twentieth Century (Armonk, NY and London: M.E. Sharpe, 1997), 255-262; Linda Racioppi and Katherine O'Sullivan See, Women’s Activism in Contemporary Russia (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997), 76, 20- 33; Elizabeth A. Wood, The Baba and the Comrade, Gender and Politics in Revolutionary Russia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997). See also Kenez, A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End, 217. SWC members were probably part of the nomenklatura, or political elite, of the bureaucracy—in many ways, according to Kenez, the de facto rulers of the Soviet Union by the 1970s and into the 1980s who had access to consumer, education and travel options denied to the rest of Soviet citizens. 357 observe women in their daily lives. Its committee included representatives from various professions and trade unions as well as volunteers and many editors-in-chief of women’s magazines. Deeply hierarchical, it reflected Soviet organizational patterns, having conferences to make five-year plans and functioning through a national network of women’s councils and commissions of trade unions.41 Since 1968, Valentina Tereshkova—the first woman in space— served as its chair. Its magazine, Soviet Woman, published in fourteen languages in over one hundred forty countries, showcased ordinary Soviet women’s lives. SWC devoted much of its resources to the cause of disarmament and to an antiwar and anti-imperialist platform more generally. It took an active role in international peace conferences and, since May of 1979, had convened at least once annually with other European women’s organizations for the purpose of peace.42

In June of 1982, Sheldon met with Tereshkova in New York City, and upon spending time together, they “agreed that as women, our major task is to make the future safer for our children.”43 Thereafter, Sheldon corresponded regularly with members of SWC, both sides sending their own promotional and informational materials.44 Always, Sheldon asserted, “It is especially important for women to speak together because women understand the importance of protecting and preserving all life.”45 Beyond this belief, though, Sheldon felt in the dark about

41 Kenez, A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End, 216-218. Kenez explains that in general the Soviet Union had an enormous bureaucracy by these years; ministries proliferated at every level, and the official peace agencies like SWC fit within this large governmental structure. 42 Soviet Women’s Committee (hereafter SWC), “Soviet Women’s Committee,” 1981, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. See also Racioppi and O'Sullivan See, Women’s Activism in Contemporary Russia, 72-78. 43 Sayre Sheldon, “Dear Xenia Proskurnikova,” September 6, 1982, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Accn. #09S-21, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 44 See Sayre Sheldon, “Dear Valentina Tereshkova,” May 6, 1983, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC; Xenia Proskurnikova, “Dear Mrs. Sayre Sheldon,” July 25, 1983, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 45 Sayre Sheldon, “Mrs. Tereshkova,” June 25, 1983, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 358 the exact anti-nuclear activism of Soviet citizens and requested information on “citizen activity for nuclear disarmament.”46 SWC leaders such as vice president Ksenia Proskurnikova responded that, indeed, there was very much a peace movement in the Soviet Union and earnestly expressed their desire to network and collaborate with American women interested in peace as well.47

Much of the rhetoric used by Tereshkova, Proskurnikova and other members smacked of state-sanctioned opinions, as was the case with the SPC that Pettitt encountered. Associated with the World Peace Council and SPC, SWC was also a state-sponsored and controlled organization, and as such, rarely faulted the Soviet government for its role in the Cold War.48 “The Soviet

Union has for years, decades been pressing for international relaxation and pursuing a policy of with states of different social systems,” members wrote to the U.N.

Secretary General J. Perez de Cuellar.49 Still, the group expressed “the anxiety of millions of

Soviet women” and this angle allowed them to cultivate and sustain a relationship with women’s organizations outside of the Soviet Bloc.50

Furthermore, that American women like Sheldon met with members of Soviet-controlled peace agencies pointed to the “growing isolation and decrepitude” and “marginal status” of SPC

46 Ibid. 47 Ksenia Proskurnikova, “Dear Mrs. Sheldon,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. See also Valentina Tereshkova, “Dear Friend,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 48 The World Peace Council was organized in 1950 and claimed more than 75 national peace committees, including the Soviet Peace Committee, and 150,000 local groups. As an aligned organization, many in the non-aligned movement distanced themselves from the WPC and its affiliates due to its Communist control and state-sponsored manner. Wittner, Confronting the Bomb, 26-27, 99, 165, 168. 49 SWC, “Esteemed Mr. Secretary General,” 1982, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. See also “Speech by Valentina Tereshkova,” in E. Serebrovskaya, “International Seminar on ‘The Role and Tasks of Women in the Present Anti-War Movement,’ Leningrad, September 4-9, 1984,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. She very much vindicates the USSR for always pursuing peace and chastises western powers for not doing so. 50 Ibid. See also SWC, “Women of the World,” May 12, 1984, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 359 and SWC within the worldwide disarmament movement; the willingness of SPC and SWC to meet with Westerners also perhaps indicated their desire to remain relevant by working with non-aligned organizations.51 As protest against nuclear weapons swept the world by the early

1980s, campaigns like European Nuclear Disarmament (END) that refused to take a side in the

Cold War managed to attract thousands from both Western and Eastern Europe at its annual conferences. Largely out of pace with such organizing, SPC leader Yuri Zhukov charged END with trying to split the peace movement. His bitterness only pointed to his organization’s ostracism within the last years of the Cold War; greater transparency and openness among peace and human rights activists was becoming the norm, not the state-sanctioned, state-censored way of SPC.52

In July of 1982, indicative of an East-West relationship crystalizing between women, around three hundred women from Scandinavian chapters of Women for Peace joined SWC members for a peace march from Stockholm, through Helsinki, Leningrad and Moscow, to

Minsk. On a campaign to rid Europe of nuclear weapons and ideally the world at large, Women for Peace described, “Women stood up to act, and men joined them in a common endeavor to save the earth from destruction.”53 It was the first officially approved anti-nuclear demonstration by Westerners in the USSR.54 Then, in the spring of 1984, SWC, with the support of

Scandinavian women’s peace groups such as Women for Peace and chapters of the Women’s

International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), invited Sheldon to the Soviet Union to participate in a seminar in September on the role of women in disarmament activism. A similar

51 Wittner, Confronting the Bomb, 165. The aligned peace movement, represented in East Bloc states’ peace councils, grew more marginalized under Gorbachev; he viewed its leaders as party conservatives rather than proponents of his “new mode of thinking.” See Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition, 375. 52 Wittner, Confronting the Bomb, 165. 53 Natalia Berezhnaya, “Dear Mrs. Sheldon,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 54 Carol Stoker, “Peace Talks in Leningrad,” Boston Globe (Boston, Massachusetts), September 27, 1984, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 360 gathering had convened the year prior, in the Aland Islands in Finland, and grew out of relationships cultivated by the 1982 peace march.55 Sheldon eagerly accepted the invite, later explaining, “I came to this conference because I believe that women have the responsibility for reversing the nuclear arms race and that we have very little time to do so.”56 She expressed that war had traditionally made women into impotent victims, yet the late-20th-century women’s movement “has developed and trained women to move into all aspects of life today, taking their place beside men.” Such empowerment, to Sheldon, encouraged women to vote and organize based on their own opinions, which she assumed were peace-oriented. Sheldon also credited the movement for provoking her and others to take advantage of opening borders and new alliances with Soviet women.57

Sheldon arrived first in Moscow where she spent four days in formal meetings with the women’s committee, its larger affiliate, the Soviet Peace Committee, the Soviet Peace Fund and

Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. “Each of these meetings had a degree of formality,” Sheldon later recalled, “we sat around a long table in the high-ceilinged room of some former palace, tea and sweets were served, the activities of the committee were explained through an interpreter.”58 Eager for information on WAND’s activities, the Soviet peace agencies pressed Sheldon for new materials and their latest events. Despite “the obvious differences,”

Sheldon noted the universal commitments each person carried to prevent nuclear war, “the

55 Carol Stoker, “Peace Talks in Leningrad,” Boston Globe, September 27, 1984, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 56 Xenia Proskurnikova, “Dear Friend,” April 1984, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC; Sayre Sheldon, “I came to this conference,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 57 Sayre Sheldon, “I came to this conference,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 58Sayre Sheldon, “Cambridge Citizen Diplomat Travels to Leningrad,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 361 thousands of letters from citizens expressing their fear of nuclear war.”59

She then traveled to Leningrad by railway, “on the crack midnight Red Arrow as the only

American among the Moscow delegation.”60 After a “late-night discussion” replete with

Armenian brandy, apples, chocolate and only “a few hours of sleep,” she arrived on the evening of Tuesday, September 4th. Staying at the Hotel Evropeyskaya, Sheldon and the others were treated to an opera at the Kirov Theater that night. The following morning, participants traveled to the Leningrad Friendship Palace where “the Roles and Tasks of Women in the Present Peace

Movement” seminar began. Under the auspices of SWC, forty-five representatives from women’s organizations from Finland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, America and the Soviet

Union crowded around a long table, a chandelier above their heads and long windows brightening the room. With pen and paper in hand and four days ahead of them, they set forth to shift world policy toward conflict resolution and internationalism.61 Soviet participants included many city and party officials alongside a teacher, graduate students, a factory worker, a physician, Soviet Woman magazine editors and a researcher at the Institute of U.S.A. and Canada

Studies at the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences. Scandinavian and American women represented

WAND, Women for Peace and WILPF.62 Unlike the preceding meetings of state-based formalities, these women-only sessions sought to be more relaxed in their discussion-based nature.

That first morning of the seminar, Tereshkova welcomed her guests over breakfast.

Speaking in English—as all chose to do at the conference—she explained to her visitors the

59 Ibid. 60 Sayre Sheldon, “The Myth of the Enemy,” 1984, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 61 Ibid. 62 “LIST,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 362 popularity of SWC and its anti-war activities among Soviet women, mentioning that the group continually received thousands of support letters.63 Underscoring the major theme of the gathering, Tereshkova stated, “You and us live in different countries; we have different politics and we may hold different ideas about happiness. But we all live on this one planet, whose future now is under threat … In the year 2000 our children will turn out, provided we are able to work jointly for the good of peace and the well-being of our children.”64 Mira Petrovskaya, a Ph.D. researcher at the Institute of U.S.A. and Canada Studies at the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, followed Tereshkova with her own oration about women’s abilities to impede nuclear war.

Calling for unilateral disarmament and an end to , she agreed with many others in the women’s movement that nuclear technology rendered “traditional notions and conceptions” of war obsolete.65 Petrovskaya explained that women, already a powerful force in the international peace movement, needed to persist in their public awareness campaigns regarding the perilous implications of the arms race. She was stalwartly convinced that, when well-informed of nuclear technology, all women would want to join their movement. She went on to proudly state that in the Soviet Union, during the U.N. week of action for disarmament in October of 1983, more than eighty million women joined rallies and demonstrations across the country. One of women’s biggest roles and tasks, she argued, was to continue to convince others of the gravity of the geopolitical situation. Though Soviet and Western women lived in states with profoundly divergent political systems, she insisted that “only the living can afford the luxury of having

63 “Speech by Valentina Tereshkova,” in E. Serebrovskaya, “International Seminar on ‘The Role and Tasks of Women in the Present Anti-War Movement,’ Leningrad, September 4-9, 1984,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 64 Ibid. 65 Mira Petrovskaya, “International seminar on “The Role and Tasks of Women in the Present Anti-War Movement,’ Leningrad, September 4-8, 1984,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 363

[politics].”66 In other words, the importance of being alive trumped these differences.

As articulated at these opening talks, women very much conceived that they were part of a budding movement that was intentionally non-hierarchical, international and separatist. Like others in the women’s movement, those at the conference delved into essentialist ideas about women, anticipating that their belief in women as the more empathetic half of the species would unite them. As one woman from Finland noted, they were critical of the world built by men.

“[N]ot because we don’t like them,” she explained, but men historically waged war as a means to organize society and, in the process, victimized women and children.67 Another woman, Mira, agreed and noted that male-driven ideas of “security” meant “obsolete methods” of arms stockpiling.68 Greeted with a round of applause as she made the point that male-on-female violence was intimately connected to violence between nations, women at this seminar echoed the ideas of their movement at large.

Even as Soviet participants tended to defend their country’s innocence and villainize the

U.S. in the prolongation of Cold War, all seminar members clearly sympathized with the non- aligned peace movement. They agreed that the U.N. should be strengthened to enforce conflict resolution since they hoped all governments, regardless of bloc, would pursue peace. Homespun solutions for international peace materialized, illustrating like others in the women’s movement their skepticism of the efficacy of conventional politics like voting. Renate from Sweden suggested that, in each country, five women with a question in mind concerning disarmament could approach their prime minister or president and force a dialogue between subject and leader. She also believed that busses of women could travel throughout Europe to collect

66 Ibid. 67 Sayre Sheldon, Notes from the seminar, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 68 Ibid. 364 signatures of support for arms reductions. These were bold, grassroots ideas. As potential actions, they revealed the importance of non-traditional politics that eschewed state protocols and hierarchies embedded in the geopolitical world order. Seminar members also harmonized on the need to revise children’s educational curriculum so that peace movements would receive more coverage.69 Others proposed specific campaigns: a comprehensive test ban treaty, mass demonstrations across the globe in support of the non-proliferation treaty or a peace walk through all U.N. countries.70

Many present at the conference were mothers. They had children on their minds and they assumed many others did as well. A Finnish participant imparted, “Whatever women do is a peace movement, is peace work, is ,” and another stated, “No woman gives birth to an enemy.”71 Grethe Kujack from Denmark commented, “A mother’s heart will even melt ice

(the Cold War).”72 Sheldon agreed, saying, “Women know something is already wrong with their children. Mothers, teachers, and doctors are finding that many of our children do not believe they have a future.”73 Furthermore, they revalued the role of emotion in activism as they sought to apply “family values to the world.”74 Sheldon explained, “When women speak up to oppose the militarization of our societies, we are told that we are too emotional and that we do not understand the facts. We have two answers: first, how can any human being not feel emotion when contemplating the deaths and suffering of millions—or of even one person? Second, we do understand the facts: millions of women like us have examined and understood the policies and

69 Ibid. 70 Sayre Sheldon, “Specific Actions Proposed by Participants,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 71 Sayre Sheldon, Notes from the seminar, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 72 Ibid. 73 Sayre Sheldon, “Soviet Women’s Committee, Aug 31,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 74 Ibid. 365 realities of the nuclear arms race.”75 Assigning women a heightened morality, Sheldon compared herself and others in the movement to Nora in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House in that women everywhere were leaving their “doll houses” to seek truth: “Ibsen knew the awakened consciousness of a woman was capable of forging a new morality.”76 Concluding, she insisted,

“We have to convince men that it is not weak to negotiate.”77 A factory worker and deputy of the

Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation, Tatyana Zakharova, also displayed a maternal concern for the world: “Our ideal is a world without wars, plunder and violence. I myself have three children and four grandchildren. But I feel responsible not only for my own children. It is intolerable to think that we may be the last generation on earth.”78

Discussions ensued in the afternoon of the first day, interspersed with meal breaks and visits to the Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery. “Friendly talks” were scheduled for the late evening. Workshops for the following day focused on the role of education in deterring war.

Polina Bolsheva, a resident of Leningrad and the secretary of the Leningrad Regional Trade

Union Council, opened the morning session by urging “[e]veryday propaganda measures to acquaint people with other countries of the world” as a main deterrent for any kind of nuclear conflict.79 Admittedly not a school instructor but rather “a Trade Union functionary,” Bolsheva imparted the importance of educating children, adolescents and even adults in lessons of conflict resolution and examples of nonviolence. She applauded the Soviet initiative, particularly among women, for traveling abroad to communicate the Soviet desire for a cessation to the Cold War

75 Sayre Sheldon, “I came to this conference,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 76 Ibid. 77 Ibid. 78 “Peace is Everyone’s Concern,” Soviet Woman, February 1985, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 79 Sayre Sheldon, Notes from the seminar, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 366 arms race.80 Helvi Saariren from Finland concurred and cited education as a powerful preventive for nuclear war in its ability “to destroy myths.”81 “As long as your children are taught that the

U.S.A. is solely responsible for the arms race & we are described as aggressors, then there is no chance of peace education,” she concluded.82 Women brainstormed other ways to promote disarmament. Some like Meta Ditzel, from Denmark’s Women for Peace chapter, offered brief histories of the U.N. and the , banking that such supranational institutions would offer some recourse to the Cold War. Other plans emerged. Rosemary Matson from the

U.S. urged a boycott of war toys and military terms.

All harmonized that transnational communication, knowledge of history and fluency in multiple languages were key tools of the women’s movement. One participant, Natasha

Alexandranova, shared that only by traveling to five different American cities did she understand

U.S. women’s perspectives on peace. All participants connected violence and competition, bred by the Cold War, to domestic issues of social service deprivation and poverty—“poor getting poorer,” as Hikka Pietila from Finland quipped.83 “[S]o much violence available to our children,” she lamented.84 The afternoon was again filled with visits to World War II memorials including the Monument to the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad.

On Friday morning, women attended an anti-war rally and later reconvened at the palace to consider the media’s role in perpetuating either positive or negative impressions of national peace movements. Facilitated by Valentina Fedotova, the editor-in-chief of Soviet Woman, workshop participants agreed the Western media was “mostly in the hands of hawks,” as

80 Polina Bolsheva, “Dear Friends,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 81 Sayre Sheldon, Notes from the seminar, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 82 Ibid. 83 Ibid. 84 Ibid. 367

Fedotova expressed.85 In an example to demonstrate Russians’ greater drive for peace, Fedotova was quick to point out that, unlike many Western nations, the Soviet Union published the

Helsinki Papers in full in every major newspaper and periodical, and that “in our country the propaganda of war is forbidden by law.”86 No one disagreed that rarely did examples of effective diplomacy make the Western news. They tasked themselves as women with the difficult project of keeping viewers, especially younger generations, interested in how vital a de-escalation of the

Cold War was. They brainstormed of “symbolic actions, using ‘stars,’ newspaper, buses, billboards,” and felt that leafletting supermarkets and other traditionally female spaces could be fruitful. In spite of their essentializing, they hoped to “re-educate men, who in a male-dominated system are systematically educated to suppress their feelings of compassion, of empathy, of caring—for how else can they dominated?” as Riane Eisler, one of the American participants, explained.87 She clarified that, “the causes of war are not rooted in man’s so-called aggressive nature, in something genetic, but rather in the exploitative nature of social relations characteristic of a male-dominated system.”88

Characteristic of the women’s movement, conference participants agreed that social priorities had been displaced by military ones. Shifting resources to technologies that sustained life, as opposed to jeopardizing it, was the next step in “a fundamental transformation in values and social priorities in a more ‘feminine’ or peaceful and compassionate direction,” Eisler concluded at the session.89 The media workshop also revealed their preconceptions of each other as women. Sheldon happily commented that Westerners’ negative impressions of Soviet women

85 Ibid. 86 Valentina Fedotova, “Subject of the Report: The role of the mass media in the formation of public opinion on the problems of war and peace, and averting the threat of a nuclear catastrophe,” September 1984, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 87 “Women’s International News Network,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC 88 Ibid. 89 Ibid. 368 were quickly vanishing as they spent time with the Leningraders and experienced their hospitality and friendliness.90

On the final day of the conference, Saturday, September 8th, all involved toured the city in the morning, visiting the Head Architectural and Planning Office, various residential neighborhoods and schools. In the afternoon, women returned to the palace to draft their final statement—their communique, similar to the Women’s Pentagon Action (WPA) Unity

Statement—before enjoying a dinner with around another fifty Leningrad women during which they held hands and sang “We Shall Overcome.”91 Unlike WPA’s statement, the communique was short and succinct. It was two typed pages with the first citing the seminar’s origins in “the sharp deterioration of the international situation which has had an adverse effect on the resolution of social problems in the majority of countries.”92 Drafters carefully noted that the seminar was not a incidence of women assembling for peace, but rather part of an

“ongoing dialogue.”93

The document reaffirmed participants’ desire to dismantle the Iron Curtain that Winston

Churchill declared had descended on Eastern Europe in 1946. Calling for a freeze on nuclear arsenals, including first-strike weapons, a universal prohibition of nuclear tests and, significantly, any “party-line” language, it also demanded the implementation of all articles of the existing non-proliferation treaty and investigations into the conversion of military production into civilian

90 Sayre Sheldon, “The Other Side of the Mirror,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 91 E. Serebrovskaya, “International Seminar on ‘The Role and Tasks of Women in the Present Anti-War Movement,’ Leningrad, September 4-9, 1984,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC; SWC, “Joint Communique of the Participants of the International Seminar on the Subject ‘The Role and Tasks of Women in the Present Peace Movement,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC; Mary Zepernick, “Women’s Peace Seminar in Leningrad,” Peace and Freedom, November 1984, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 92 SWC, “Joint Communique of the Participants of the International Seminar on the Subject ‘The Role and Tasks of Women in the Present Peace Movement,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 93 Ibid. 369 in all countries. It was a no-nonsense manuscript that, at once, showcased Sheldon and others’ delegitimization of the Cold War through their own technical demands, and also rooted their ability to be this bold in their womanhood. “For the sake of all humanity women must increase their activities in the peace movements of the world, especially in the urgent task of preventing nuclear war and ending the arms race,” they wrote.94 By “increas[ing] connections and communications with each other … [w]omen can make a significant contribution” to end the

Cold War.”95 Their mandates showed they possessed knowledge of the military jargon and concepts, usually thought to be in men’s hands and above women’s heads. The communique also demonstrated that they had no qualms about asserting their prowess of this subject as women.

Ditzel, from Denmark’s Women for Peace chapter, elaborated, “Yes, we must work to bring home to people what a nuclear war would really be like. But that is not enough to prevent it; our action should be as strong as the threat itself. Some people think that where diplomats and politicians have failed, politically inexperienced women, housewives, are not likely to succeed.

But such an attitude is not about to be tolerated … Our strength lies in unity.”96 Indeed, their communique concluded with this point of unity, and affirmed their movement’s reliance on seminars and other gatherings to bond “women around the world in their struggle to prevent a nuclear holocaust destroying all life in our planet.”97 It was further evidence of their movement’s desire to enlist each woman’s abilities worldwide for the sake of disarmament, ideologically

94 Zinaida Smirnova, “Participants in the seminar…,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 95 SWC, “Joint Communique of the Participants of the International Seminar on the Subject ‘The Role and Tasks of Women in the Present Peace Movement,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 96 “Peace is Everyone’s Concern,” Soviet Woman, February 1985, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 97 SWC, “Joint Communique of the Participants of the International Seminar on the Subject ‘The Role and Tasks of Women in the Present Peace Movement,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 370 inviting all to join and essentializing that all women shared a passion for peace.98

Still, as much as women “have understood each other better and become good friends,” as Tereshkova remarked, their adage “peace has no boundaries” belied conflicts between women of different nationalities. Tensions reinforced that disparate experiences created by divergent state structures made some lives incompatible. In a simple yet telling example, in America and

Britain, news of the Cold War routinely made the headlines. Yet, in the Soviet Union, indicative of how meanings of “freedom of press” powerfully deviated, Valentina Fedotova explained, “the propaganda of war is forbidden by law.”99 Similar to Greenham women’s critique of America,

Scandinavian and Soviet seminar participants discerned and disliked a perceived haughtiness and hubris on the behalf of U.S. foreign policy. In a veiled commentary on America’s proclivity for invasion, one Finnish woman stated, “Every country should be prohibited from going outside their own borders.”100

Yet more so than anything else, painful memories of World War II drove a wedge between Soviet and American representatives, the former insisting that Americans had not experienced war on their own soil in living memory and they should not go making war on others’ land. Valentina Fedotova bitterly noted that, “On June 6, 1984 the radio and television

98 Resembling the communique, SWC’s appeal to “Women of the World” likewise conceived that all women, of a variety of identities, could unite behind disarmament. The appeal singled out those “who keep the fire of your homes going, you who work in cities and villages. Let’s prevent our children from dying in nuclear disaster!” They also called on women as “parliamentarians” and voting citizens to pass legislation for an end to nuclear weapons research and development, and women as “cultural workers” to educate the youth about peace and affect the mass media. “Women—scientists, physicians, medical workers,” they wrote, “Contribute to the establishment of an authoritative international committee, which will explain the dangers of nuclear arms.” See SWC, “Appeal of the Soviet Women’s Committee to women of the world,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 99 Sayre Sheldon, “The Other Side of the Mirror,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC; Valentina Fedotova, “Subject of the Report: The role of the mass media in the formation of public opinion on the problems of war and peace, and averting the threat of a nuclear catastrophe,” September 1984, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 100 Sayre Sheldon, Notes from the seminar, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 371 network of the NATO countries put on a vast propaganda show timed for the 40th anniversary of the opening of the second front during the Second World War. The political spectacle included a host of things; the only thing lacking was historical truth: its organizers made no mention whatsoever of the Soviet Army’s and the Soviet people’s tremendous contribution to the victory over Hitlerlite fascism.”101 Indicative of the war’s living memory, Soviet conference participants took their visitors to lay wreaths at two World War II memorials and at other commemorated sites under which mass graves of Leningrad civilians dead from the siege were interred. Offhand comments throughout the conference about which Nazi criminals were “still hiding from justice” and that “fascism’s trial is continuing” likewise alluded to the war’s lingering impact on

Soviets.102 In the education workshop, Polina Bolsheva disclosed her own experiences during the

“Great Patriotic War,” and in particular the siege of Leningrad, as she communicated that memories like hers remained vivid in many Russians’ minds. The blockade and bombardment of

Leningrad by German and Finnish armies during World War II, along with fighting in the

Leningrad area from the summer of 1941 to the summer of 1944, took the lives of approximately

1.6 to two million Soviet citizens. Within the siege itself, it is estimated that no fewer than one million civilians died, mainly during the cold winter of 1941-1942.103 In total, World War II caused the deaths of twenty-six to twenty-seven million Soviet citizens.104

101 Valentina Fedotova, “Subject of the Report: The role of the mass media in the formation of public opinion on the problems of war and peace, and averting the threat of a nuclear catastrophe,” September 1984, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. See also Mira Petrovskaya, “International seminar on “The Role and Tasks of Women in the Present Anti-War Movement,’ Leningrad, September 4-8, 1984,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. Petrovskaya expresses a profound Soviet desire for peace which she contrasts to actions by American leadership. 102 Valentina Fedotova, “Subject of the Report: The role of the mass media in the formation of public opinion on the problems of war and peace, and averting the threat of a nuclear catastrophe,” September 1984, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 103 Cynthia Simmons and Nina Perlina, Writing the Siege of Leningrad: Women’s Diaries, Memoirs, and Documentary Prose (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002), ix. 104 Kenez, A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End, 166. See also 132-183 for the Soviet Union during and immediately after the war. 372

Beyond these high death tolls, victory and its memorialization became an integral part of

Soviet culture and state propaganda; “state-led commemoration coexisted with the people’s own imaginings,” as Soviet historian Catherine Merridale writes.105 Approximately one book per day on the war was published in the USSR between 1945 and 1991. This kept alive personal memories of the war, but such state literature used wartime glory to distract many from comprehending the numerous, unnecessary Soviet war deaths as well as atrocities committed by

Soviet troops.106 Bolsheva, who lost all of her family during Leningrad’s bombardment, exemplified national dedication to the war’s remembrance. She recalled, “I had to start working in a factory in 1941, when I was 15. After work, we went into the streets to gather the bodies of those who had starved to death and put the corpses into piles. So how can we bury in oblivion the memory of the dead?”107 She like other Soviet women at the seminar used these recollections to showcase her ongoing respect for Soviet troops and the war and to explain her country’s insistence on having a standing army: “the defense of our country is a sacred duty of everyone.”108 Well aware of the critical successes and sacrifices of the Red Army during World

War II, Bolsheva made a special distinction between the importance of having a conventional army for territorial protection—something that still mattered to the Soviets—and nuclear militarization. Even as they essentialized women as the gentler and more compassionate sex,

Soviet women revered the wartime efforts of their men.

Sheldon and other Americans detected this defensiveness and pride and saw that it was

105 See also Catherine Merridale, Night of Stone: Death and Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia (New York: Viking, 2000), 213. 106 Simmons and Perlina, Writing the Siege of Leningrad, x. See also Merridale, Night of Stone, 211-240; Nina Tumarkin, The Living & The Dead: The Rise and Fall of the Cult of World War II in Russia (New York: BasicBooks, 1994). 107 “Peace is Everyone’s Concern,” Soviet Woman 2, February 1985, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 108 Polina Bolsheva, “Dear Friends,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 373 communicated through generations: “I was impressed with the awareness of nuclear war from school children on up,” Sheldon noted.109 Yet, these American guests still struggled to comprehend Soviet women’s veneration of the war. From the U.S. women’s more privileged perspective, immune from much of the domestic destruction of World War II, all militaries were harmful. Scandinavian attendants also criticized their hosts’ memorialization of any war, seeing it as dangerous idolization, particularly from the gendered perspective of concerned mothers.

“Your daughters are all going to fall in love with soldiers because you idolize soldiers,” one

Danish woman warned.110 Another from Denmark, Ruth Gunnarson, likewise fretted, “How can we keep our girls from running after soldiers?”111 Conceding the appeal of military glory, they still refused to grant that some troops—namely, the Red Army—perhaps deserved some honor and regard. The American and Scandinavian women were much more comfortable with, though skeptical of, Soviet women’s insistence that the U.S.S.R. was founded on principles of equality and on the dream of peace between peoples. They were told that the goal of every Soviet person was “The very seed of war / to kill,” as the Marsove Polye (Field of Mars) monument read.112

Seminar members’ disparate memories and experiences of the war some four decades earlier imprinted them with incompatible ideas of militarism. Indeed, Renata Schaffer, who vice- chaired the Swedish section of WILPF, remembered World War II not as a time to idolize but as

109 Sayre Sheldon, “The Myth of the Enemy,” 1984, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. See also Sayre Sheldon, “Preparing for World War II,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 110 Carol Stoker, “Peace Talks in Leningrad,” Boston Globe, September 27, 1984, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 111 Ibid. 112 Valentina Fedotova, “Subject of the Report: The role of the mass media in the formation of public opinion on the problems of war and peace, and averting the threat of a nuclear catastrophe,” September 1984, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. The original “Field of Mars” (Champs de Mars) was located in Paris and served as a military parade ground in the city. The Russians copied this and established a similar “Field of Mars” in St. Petersburg. During the revolution, the area was transformed into a kind of revolutionary necropolis housing the mass graves of Petrograders killed during the uprisings of 1917. After the Bolshevik takeover, prominent Communists were buried there as well. The Bolshevik- era monument still stands there today. 374 an era to let go of when she shared that some of her family perished at the Auschwitz concentration camp. After the conference, Sheldon jotted down her impression of those “4 days of dialogue and often disagreements” and noted that participants left unanswered the question:

“How can we remember and honor past wars without preparing for our next?”113 The quandary of bridging national differences prevented seminar members from imagining a way to both empathize with past wartime sacrifices and still envision a world free of war. Their shared womanhood did not offer the way out.

Made obvious by the state-sanctioned rhetoric, both American and Scandinavian participants observed that their Soviet hosts refused to be critical of their government’s diplomatic polices, much to their consternation. Tereshkova repeatedly called for peaceful co- existence between the two superpowers, saying that “socialism needs no war,” and chastised “the more aggressive imperialist groups,” namely “the present American administration” for preventing East-West cooperation.114 As state protocol dictated, Tereshkova insisted on her country’s repute in pursuing peace and juxtaposed it with American belligerence: “There has been widespread and positive response around the world to the Soviet government’s offer to the

United States government to open talks on preventing the militarisation of space … Our country has continually been undertaking practical steps and using all the operating international forums to reach positive agreements.”115 Whereas American and Scandinavian attendants of the seminar saw little value in assigning culpability to one nation for the start and perpetuation of the Cold

War, women like Tereshkova lived within an authoritarian state that upheld the Party’s moral

113 Sayre Sheldon, “Achievements,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 114 “Speech by Valentina Tereshkova,” in E. Serebrovskaya, “International Seminar on ‘The Role and Tasks of Women in the Present Anti-War Movement,’ Leningrad, September 4-9, 1984,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 115 Ibid. 375 and political rectitude and denied citizens the right to .116 Only when conference members could discuss governmental politics from a removed vantage point— generalizing that all national leaders were “beggaring” their societies for arms stockpiles—did they reach a “common women’s point of view.”117

Feminism too emerged as a sticking point at the seminar, and it was only Western women who felt comfortable broaching the topic in the first place. The four American representatives and their Scandinavian counterparts easily expressed feminist sentiments along the lines of

“women’s liberation,” exposing and politicizing intimate matters like sexuality, reproductive rights and domestic violence. Soviet participants cowered from what they considered to be radical topics and the militant manner in which they were discussed. Instead, to most Soviet women there, feminism meant an empowerment to demand from their partners more balanced gender roles. One woman described that only recently had her husband assisted with household chores. She had refused to make dinner until he pitched in. Another offered that upon returning home from a business trip, her husband expressed profound discontent with having to mind the children. Undoubtedly, there were many women in America in a similar state with their spouses.

But still, Sheldon viewed herself and others in the U.S. as “liberated,” and Soviet women as trapped, which saddened and confounded her, especially given that Tereshkova was the first woman in space.

The Bolshevik Revolution had guaranteed to Soviet women liberation and equality. Early leaders and theorists hypothesized that by eliminating household work—by removing it from the home and socializing it—and by helping women enter the world of waged labor, women would become emancipated from burdens placed on them by capitalism. Following a flurry of feminist

116 Kenez, A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End, 223-229. 117 Carol Stoker, “Peace Talks in Leningrad,” Boston Globe, September 27, 1984, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 376 activity beginning in 1918 for Soviet women, the Bolshevik Party elevated their women’s commission to the status of a women’s bureau called the Zhenotdel. Through a new family code, constraints around marriage and property rights eased, and abortion was made freely available at

Soviet hospitals by 1920. Yet contemporaries and historians assessed that Bolshevik interest in women’s emancipation was less about women’s rights and rather was a part of their larger goal of eliminating the family and other products of capitalism. It was the Bolshevik belief that

“…only socialism could resolve the contradiction between work and family.”118 Even as leaders rhetorically insisted on the fundamental sameness of goals for Soviet men and women— productive labor—official language appealed to and uniquely constructed women as the

“mothers” of the . Regardless of these state interests and ideas, the reality was that material conditions due to World War I, the subsequent civil war, World War II and massive collectivization and industrialization made women’s lives not propitious for emancipation.

Leaders did little to mitigate that male workers, especially after many returned from the wars, fought against women’s employment. Indeed, historians have argued that regardless of Soviet efforts to eliminate the family, emancipation for women remained limited due to chronic un- or under-employment, low wages, lack of daycare and continued dependence on the family. In many ways, as Soviet women’s historian Barbara Alpern Engel assesses, “the Bolshevik

Revolution reconfigured rather than abolished gender hierarchies, providing men with privileged access to public space.”119

Furthermore, Stalin eliminated the Zhenotdel in 1930, declaring the “woman question”

118 Goldman, Women, the State and Revolution, 3. 119 Engel, Women in Imperial, Soviet, and Post-Soviet Russia, 24. See also Engel, Women in Russia, 1700-2000 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 128-165; Goldman, Women, the State and Revolution; Pushkareva, Women in Russian History, 255-262; Racioppi and See, Women’s Activism in Contemporary Russia (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997), 76, 20-33; Richard Stites, “The Russian Revolution and Women,” in Connecting Spheres: European Women in a Globalizing World, 1500 to the Present, Second Edition, eds. Marilyn J. Boxer and Jean H. Quataert (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 295-313; Wood, The Baba and the Comrade, Gender and Politics in Revolutionary Russia. 377 solved, and in 1936, in an effort to ensure a rising birthrate, abortion was once again illegal.

Though it was restored in 1955, state pronatalist polices encouraged women to have as many children as possible, especially after the high death tolls of World War II. The unresolvable issue was that of the Soviet “,” that women were at once supposed to be efficient workers and and efficient mothers. Indicative that this was a widespread issue for women, in the late 20th century the U.S.S.R. had a female labor participation rate of almost ninety percent. Despite state efforts, especially after the death of Stalin in 1953, to provide subsidized child care, extended paid maternity leave, restrictions on female labor and contraception, abortion and liberal family laws, women’s lives were notably arduous. They continued to be less politically involved than men in state policy. No woman served on the Politburo. Soviet time-budget studies in the 1960s and early ‘70s indicated that women, on average, spent nearly two and a half times as many hours as men on housework and had only two-thirds as much free time. They also estimated that women’s domestic responsibilities consumed nearly thirty hours of their week.120 Women in

SWC sought to assuage the effects of the “superwoman” status yet they remained members of a state organization. To the bewilderment of Sheldon and others unacquainted with life in such a regime, Soviet women could push the state only so far on behalf of “women’s rights.”

Fortunately for Soviet women, various conferences and gatherings since the mid-1970s, such as the U.N. World Conferences on Women and the 1975 World Congress of Women in East

Berlin, connected women from both sides of the Iron Curtain, “[which] allowed new ideas about gender and sexual rights in Eastern and Western Europe to circulate across the Iron Curtain.”121

Particularly important for women from the East Bloc, Western women articulated that women’s rights should never be secondary to other battles, which many Soviet women took to mean their

120 Engel, Women in Imperial, Soviet, and Post-Soviet Russia, 25-30; Engel, Women in Russia, 148-249; Pushkareva, Women in Russian History, 258-266. 121 Donert, “Whose Utopia?” in The Breakthrough, ed. Eckel and Moyn, 80. 378 liberation mattered as much as their state’s fight against “imperialism.” Conversations at the

Leningrad seminar suggested these ideas were still embryonic in the Soviet Union in the mid-

80s, and in many ways, it would not be until the end of the Cold War that widespread feminist mobilization could and would occur in the former Soviet Bloc states.122

Though muted, environmentalism emerged as a point of agreement at the seminar. This suggested a growing awareness and agreement among governments, non-governmental organizations and grassroots activists that environmental issues affected everyone.123 Bolsheva recalled from the conference, “In her opening address Valentina Tereshkova said that our Earth is not a very large planet in space. She is a cosmonaut, she knows better. So let us take good care of this small planet, it is our home, we own this home and we must not let flames of war break out on the planet. Let’s keep our home clean and maintain a blue, clear and cloudless sky over it.”124 Despite Soviet scientists, zoologists, botanists and geographers’ conservation and preservation efforts, much of Soviet leadership since and including Stalin turned a blind eye toward the massive amounts of pollution and ecological upheaval its military-industrial complex had produced, not only in the air and waterways but also through devastating nuclear waste

122 See Donert, “Whose Utopia?” 68-87. See also Engel, Women in Imperial, Soviet, and Post-Soviet Russia, 29-32; Engel, Women in Russia, 250-268; Pushkareva, Women in Russian History, 265-266. Engel explains the “woman question” arose again in the late 1960s and debate surrounding women’s roles continued into the 1980s. She cites efforts by SWC and specifically Tereshkova in the late ‘80s to encourage the state to reconsider the place of women—at home and at work. She and Pushkareva argue that Gorbachev’s reorganization of the economy hit women workers very hard. The collapse of the U.S.S.R. resulted in profound disruptions to the family, including heightened divorce and abortion rates and loss of childcare services, as well as initially reduced women’s political involvement. A conservative, “back to the home” movement also gained steam, declaring that women should either work or be in the home, with more encouragement on the latter duty. Nonetheless, Gorbachev’s reforms and the collapse of the Soviet Union allowed for independent women’s movements and activism, outside of SWC, to form. 123 See Richard P. Tucker, “The International Environmental Movement and the Cold War,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Cold War, eds., Richard H. Immerman and Petra Goode (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 565-583. For Western European environmentalism, see Russell J. Dalton, The Green Rainbow: Environmental Groups in Western Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994). He argues that environmentalism since the 1970s was a considerable force in Western Europe, representing, for one, that many Western Europeans were interested in quality of life issues in their postindustrial societies, and indicating the emergence of new citizen politics through which green parties and groups called for governments to open the political process to more diverse, citizen-oriented interests. 124 Polina Bolsheva, “Dear Friends,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 379 explosions and leaks at production sites like the Mayak Chemical Combine in Chelyabinsk in western Siberia. As a result, especially by the 1960s and 1970s with the inclusion of student activism, or druzhiny, Soviet environmentalism emerged as one of the most effective social movements of the late Soviet years; “[t]he movement mobilized thousands of citizens, forced state officials to close or cancel construction of numerous power plants and hydroelectric projects, and offered a broad critique of the Soviet regime.”125 It was also “one of the few zones of relatively free speech,” and proof that as much as the state could police non-aligned disarmament groups like the Trust, Stalin and his successors did not root out all autonomous social groups nor did state leadership control all activism.126 None of this is to say that Soviet environmental efforts were immune from Cold War and state politicking. By the 1970s, Soviet academics writing on environmental issues proliferated as many were “regime-approved and regime-sponsored” to show the state’s “good intentions.”127 That Tereshkova mentioned “a blue, clear and cloudless sky” suggested an awareness of the issue of air quality. Yet, that this was the

125 Laura A. Henry, Red to Green: Environmental Activism in Post-Soviet Russia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010), 4. See also Douglas R. Weiner, A Little Corner of Freedom: Russian Nature Protection from Stalin to Gorbachev (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). Weiner examines “a succession of independent social movements for nature protection that predated and survived Stalin and all of his Soviet successors,” showing environmental activism as one of the longest-standing critiques of the Soviet system, first among professional scientists and later, by the 1960s, among university students. For earlier coverage of Soviet environmentalism, see Weiner’s earlier work, Models of Nature: Ecology, Conservation and Cultural Revolution in Soviet Russia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), in which he examines the Soviet in the 1920s and 1930s in which a segment of educated society who, using the language of ecology, tried to moderate the environmental effects of Stalinist industrialization and collectivization. For more on the deleterious environmental effects of Soviet policy, see Paul Josephson, Nicolai Dronin, Ruben Mnatsakanian, Aleh Cherp, Dmitry Efremenko and Vladislav Larin, editors, An Environmental History of Russia (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2013). This newer work compliments older histories such as Marshall I. Goldman’s The Spoils of Progress: Environmental Pollution in the Soviet Union (1972), Philip R. Pryde’s Conservation in the Soviet Union (1972), Murray Feshbach and Alfred Friendly, Jr.’s Ecocide in the USSR: Health and Nature under Siege (1992) and D. J. Peterson’s Troubled Lands: The Legacy of Soviet Environmental Destruction (1993), all of which highlight environmental degradation in the U.S.S.R. Josephson, et al. show that, finally, the opening up of Soviet society during the late 1980s fostered environmentalism as it led to a growing public response to the country’s environmental situation. 126 Weiner, A Little Corner of Freedom, 375. Weiner describes that for much of the 20th century, environmental critique was allowed because it was seen by the state as marginal commentary from a marginalized group of . By the mid-20th century, academics sanctioned by the state also encouraged environmentalism, making it “safe” for the state, to the point that Brezhnev wanted to be known as the “environmental general secretary” as he mandated water and air pollution controls (402). 127 Ibid., 374-375. 380 only reference to the physical earth at the seminar could also suggest that Soviet organizers saw peace and environmentalism as distinct movements, and perhaps would not connect them until the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station disaster of April 1986 when environmental, nuclear and state dissent intersected.128

Participants agreed to reconvene the following year in Norway, and until then, concentrate on large-scale actions involving women in different countries.129 All were excited about the upcoming Third World Conference on Women to be hosted in Nairobi in 1985 which would conclude the U.N. Decade for Women. Sheldon flew back home the day after the conference ended, “with the rough draft of our joint statement,” she described, “—somewhat naively thinking that it was a message of extraordinary importance: a proof that women could

128 On April 26, 1986, a series of explosions destroyed the reactor in the building that housed Energy Block #4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station in what is now Belarus. Massive amounts of radioactive material were released, contaminating as much as three quarters of Europe and causing widespread and annually rising rates of cancer, mental retardation, neurological disorders and genetic mutations. The area near the plant remains the world’s most radioactive ecosystem, classified as an “Exclusion Zone,” accessible only with an official escort. See Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster (New York: Picador, 1997, 2006); Andrew Blackwell, Visit Sunny Chernobyl: And Other Adventures in the World’s Most Polluted Places (New York: Rodale, 2012), xi-39. See Kenez, A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End, 254; Dalton, The Green Rainbow, 44, 89; Weiner, A Little Corner of Freedom, 21, 425; Kate Brown, Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). Kenez credits Chernobyl as a major catalyst for Gorbachev’s glasnost reforms after state officials had tried to cover up so much of the disaster and scientists insisted on transparency of the medical and environmental consequences. Dalton credits Chernobyl as the event that catalyzed much environmental activism across Europe as fallout spread far beyond the Soviet Union. He writes, “This nuclear accident thus created widespread public recognition that acid rain, dying forests, a decimated ozone layer, or nuclear fallout are threats comparable to the economic problems facing advanced industrial societies … In short, Chernobyl and its by-products convinced many Europeans that the environmentalists’ claims were not mere political rhetoric, and this forced political leaders to respond to public demands for environmental reform” (Dalton, 44). Weiner agrees, saying, “Certainly, the April 1986 played a large role [in galvanizing Soviet environmentalism], graphically demonstrating the consequences of the system’s wanton and decades-old disregard for the health and environmental safety of the population, and moving people to notice and speak out about environmental threats in their local localities” (Weiner, 21). Likewise, Brown, who tracks plutonium production in Richland, Washington and Ozersk, Russia during the Cold War, argues that Chernobyl was a huge catalyst—unlike other previous nuclear disasters—for environmental health activism and “biological rights” in the Soviet Union (Brown, 7). Brown shows that these plutonium-producing towns were planned communities in which subsidized affluence distracted residents from the reality that they, along with others like migrants, soldiers and prisoners working and living nearby, were being consistently exposed to radioactivity. She reveals the human and ecological consequences from fission by-products and reactor waste. She shows that as bad and catalyzing as Chernobyl was, the “slow-motion” pollution of other production sites was just as bad. 129 Participants in the international seminar, “Women and Peace Work,” “Statement to the World Conference and Non-Governmental Organizations Forum in Nairobi,” June 1985, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 2 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder 85-84, SSC. Women convened another similar conference the following year in Lillehammer, Norway, hosted by the Norwegian section of WILPF. 381 negotiate successfully and produce a clear vision of what needs to happen if any progress in arms control is going to be made.”130 She asked herself, “What can a meeting of women—none of whom hold major political power—signify?”131

That meeting of women signified, for one, yet another episode in a women’s movement invested in rerouting the world toward a de-escalation of the Cold War. It also suggested that some women had begun to conceive that they too belonged in the realm of national and supranational politics. The early Cold War use of women’s status as a measure of national progress—embodied in the 1959 Nixon-Khrushchev kitchen debate in which each leader claimed his female citizens were more content in their domesticity or their work, respectively—belittled women’s importance to that of a national marker of which superpower was winning.132 However, toward the end of the 20th century, some women in America, Britain, Western Europe and the

Soviet Union rejected that gendered Cold War battlefield and instead insisted on access to military policy decisions. Thanks to the resurgence of feminism across Western nations in the

1960s and 1970s, other arenas of previous exclusion, in education, sports and employment, for example, were starting to shift to include women on an equal pay or opportunity basis. These years were witness to many “firsts” for women. In 1981, President Reagan named Sandra Day

O’Connor to the U.S. Supreme Court; in 1984, the Democratic Party nominated Congresswoman

Geraldine Ferraro for vice president; and even as devotedly anti-feminist as she was, Margaret

Thatcher’s election as prime minister in 1979 indicated that the world was moving to place women in prominent positions of power. Additionally, that feminists in the U.S. had renewed the

130 Sayre Sheldon, “The Myth of the Enemy,” 1984, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 131 Sayre Sheldon, “The Other Side of the Mirror,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 132 For more, see Helen Laville, “Gender and Women’s Rights in the Cold War,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Cold War, 523-539. 382 battle for the (ERA) by the early 1970s meant that, until its defeat in

1982, American women contended with the reality that, though unlikely, they too could be required to serve in combat roles in the military.133

Indicative of these developments, Ms. Magazine featured several articles throughout the

1980s to better acquaint its female readership with military jargon, budgets and decisions. Shelia

Tobias and Shelah Leader’s serialized “An Intelligent Woman’s Guide” appeared over 1982 and

1983, and offered women pages and graphics replete with information on B-1 bombers, the MX missile, the Cold War concept of deterrence, R&D on nuclear weapons and other military subject matter. The information served to dispel women’s anxiety and unfamiliarity with these traditionally male topics.134 Much of it appeared as a board game entitled “the procurement game,” in which the player’s goal was to procure and receive funding and deployment for a weapons system through the Pentagon and Congress. Such a display distilled concepts for uninformed readers, yet it also playfully lampooned the importance and mystery that surrounded

American military policy by turning the topic into a child’s game.

In its special edition on the future of global feminism in the spring of 1985—marking the end of the U.N. Decade for Women—Ms. featured interviews with six prominent feminists and female leaders, including Bella Abzug, and .135 The interviewer

133 See Sara Evans, Tidal Wave: How Women Changed America at Century’s End (New York: Free Press, 2003), 128-139, 190-191; Jane J. Mansbridge, Why We Lost the ERA (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 60-66. Mansbridge explains that, “Taken at face value, [ERA] language seems to require the military to assign male and female draftees to jobs on a sex-blind basis. But appearances can be deceptive. Had the ERA been ratified, the Supreme Court could still have decided that these words did not require the sex-blind assignment of draftees to combat” (61). Mansbridge makes clear that Congress expected the ERA to make women subject to the draft but the legislative history made the issue of combat ambiguous. Thus, while some American women may have thought ratification of the ERA could stipulate combat roles from them, such a reality was unlikely. 134 Shelia Tobias and Shelah Leader, “An Intelligent Woman’s Guide to the Military Mind: What kinds of guns are they buying with your butter?” Ms. Magazine, July/August 1982, 118-122, 252-257; Shelah Leader, Sheila Tobias, Stefan Leader and Peter Goudinoff, “An Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Defense,” Ms. Magazine, March 1983, 58- 63. See also Sheila Tobias and Peter Goudinoff, “Working Toward Peace: Understanding Star Wars,” Ms. Magazine, February 1986, 54-58, 83. 135 “Women: A New Superpower?” Ms. Magazine, March 1985, 41-42, 44-49, 108. 383 hypothetically asked each of them to describe the state of the world if women controlled foreign policy. All articulated female-driven diplomacy would prioritize disarmament, yet to be able to have this kind of influence, Abzug and the others commented that women had to have access to jobs in governmental agencies directing foreign affairs. Morgan mentioned the only women in powerful positions remained in “soft areas” like health care, education and welfare. Echoing sentiments of the women’s movement, she did not seek to devalue these “soft” matters like poverty but rather connected them to broader national and international problems and insisted that they affected women more acutely across the globe. Such interest in geopolitics illuminated that many women targeted this as the next site for feminist improvement by the 1980s and would seek to increase the number of women in places like the State Department, for instance.

Women’s in-roads into traditional politics, like that of O’Connor and even Thatcher, mattered. They were concrete evidence of more inclusive societies for women by the late 20th century. The travels of Pettitt, Sheldon and others to the Soviet Union were symptomatic of this development. But the fact remained that while escalated citizen diplomacy and interest in disarmament probably did help to push Gorbachev, Reagan and others toward arms limits and ultimately the end of the Cold War, the Soviet Women’s Peace Seminar itself did not convince world leaders to de-arm and rid itself of partisan language. It did, however, impact many individual women. It gave women concrete, even if limited, goals of influencing domestic understandings of nuclear weapons. The seminar also provided participants with a “transnational identity group” “anchored in shared experiences”—or perhaps, shared values, in the women’s case.136

136 Christopher J. Lee, “The Rise of Third World Diplomacy Success and Its Meanings at the 1955 Asian-African Conference in Bandung, Indonesia,” in Foreign Policy Breakthroughs: Cases in Successful Diplomacy, ed. Robert Hutchings and Jeremi Suri (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 54. Lee examines this 1955 international conference that drew many Third World countries. Delegates similarly produced an ambitious, lofty communique, 384

After the seminar in Leningrad, good relations continued between East and West Bloc women. SWC held additional meetings that fall and winter with American and British women, and organizations like WAND continued to send members like Sheldon abroad.137 In 1985, Wini

Ganshaw and Janet Anderson of WAND traveled to various republics within the Soviet Union,

Ganashaw as part of a women’s exchange sponsored by Bridges for Peace, and Anderson as one of twenty-four women touring as arranged by Earth Stewards Network. Upon returning, both imparted to Sheldon their positive impressions and experiences. They communicated that Soviet women did not hesitate to point out America’s guilt in the longevity of the arms race, but all parties eventually warmed to each other. Such experiences affirmed, like the other transnational dialogues, that “women have to speak out” and “Soviet women’s desire for a future is just as strong as mine,” as Ganashaw assessed.138

Both WAND members expressed that upon returning, their immediate desire was to

“[l]earn Russian, go back for longer, take American women there, invite Soviet women here,” all of which would assist “[c]itizen diplomacy” and “its warming effect.”139 They planned to write and exchange resources, and more ambitiously Anderson began to brainstorm ways to explain

as did the seminar covered in this chapter, centered on national self-determination and peace in the midst of the Cold War. Yet even if the Bandung conference “accomplished little,” as some detractors claimed, Lee argues that, “Nevertheless, the Bandung conference succeeded in initiating this set of political possibilities [sustaining a Third World bloc]—the building of social and political capital through intercontinental networking—even if it proved to be a one-time diplomatic moment, rather than establishing an enduring diplomatic routine” (66). Seeing the conference as one important moment among many that helped build Third World solidarity, Lee urges historians to revalue how we think of diplomatic success or failure. Like Bandung, then, the Soviet Women’s Seminar was a success in that women there came to assert their participation in world peace, and they so asserted it and networked with each other. Yet at Bandung, Third World leaders used their common statuses—decolonizing, developing—to discuss joint problems. The seminar women’s commonality was their gender, which was less robust and sustainable scaffolding to secure solidarity on. 137 Xenia Proskurnikova, “Dear Sayre Sheldon,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC; Sayre Sheldon, “Listening to Their Stories: Citizen Diplomacy at Work,” 1985, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 138 Sayre Sheldon, “Listening to Their Stories: Citizen Diplomacy at Work,” 1985, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 139 Ibid. 385 and initiate feminist consciousness-raising sessions in the Soviet Union. Such inertia undergirded the women’s movement of the late 20th century. The profound desire to organize with gender as their separating and galvanizing power drove tens of thousands of women together throughout the end of the Cold War. Even as many involved truly believed they could alter the course of the world, namely by highlighting and eradicating endemic violence across the planet, many involved also believed that if such an end was never accomplished, the means of getting there— uniting and bonding with other women—was just as worthwhile.

Conclusion: “women all over Europe are leaving home for peace”

The Soviet Women’s Peace Seminar was one among many opportunities in which women chose to organize around gender and across nationality to rid the world of violence.

Throughout the 1980s, disarmament actions which linked women across America, Britain and

Western Europe proliferated. After the Women and Militarism conference in Scotland in 1981, as the introduction to this dissertation describes, its participants planned an International Action

Week in the first week of March in which women across Europe, Britain and America coordinated localized demonstrations against the effects of war on women.140 This idea morphed into annual International Women’s Days for Disarmament, the first held on May 24th, 1982.

Spearheaded by a group of women from several European nations, these demonstrations synchronized women worldwide to strike from their usual paid or unpaid work for the day and nonviolently express their fears over the nuclear threat. In Britain alone, six hundred actions took place in the first year. Temporary peace camps emerged, and women staged a mass die-in in

140 Margot Miller and Lynne Jones, “Notes on Organising a Decentralised International Action—A Women’s Day for Disarmament,” in Keeping the Peace: A Women’s Peace Handbook, ed. Lynne Jones (London: The Women’s Press, 1983), 108-119. 386

Oxford.141 Every year thereafter in the 1980s, including at Greenham, May 24th became a day in which women paused and protested, a day in which “the spirit of Greenham Common will be everywhere.”142

Women organizing by themselves and for the sake of peace was not a new phenomenon; but, given the multiple impulses of women’s liberation and greater opportunities for citizen diplomacy toward the end of the Cold War, those interested in disarmament and improving the quality of life on earth realized what a million women could do. In the spring of 1983, in a worldwide effort, the Stop the Arms Race (STAR) campaign collected over from women across twenty-five nations. Delegates presented the petition to NATO headquarters in in an attempt to halt the deployment of cruise and Pershing II missiles to Europe and Britain. While “there was little more than a polite reception” and the U.S.

Ambassador failed to appear for the meeting, thousands of women rallied in the streets of

Belgium, boasting speakers such as actress Julie Christie and physician and Greenham-supporter

Dr. Lynne Jones. This all occurred within the context of a three-day conference organized by the

Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) in which women from Western

Europe, Britain, America and even Asia met in workshops to discuss how best to convince their respective governments to reject NATO missile deployment.143

141 “Nationwide Protest by Women,” Daily Telegraph (London, England), May 25, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box15, Women’s Library [hereafter W], London School of Economics, London, England. 142 “Dear Sisters,” flyer, 1983, Greenham Common Collection, Pamphlets (5GCC/B), WL; “NALGO Supports Women All Out for Peace,” flyer, Greenham Common Collection, Pamphlets (5GCC/B), WL; “May 24 Women’s Day for Disarmament,” flyer, Greenham Common Collection, Pamphlets (5GCC/B), WL; Paul Brown, “Peace women’s high hopes,” The Guardian (London, England), April 23, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box15, WL. 143 Ian Murray, “Women of peace fail to sway NATO,” The Times (London, England), March 9, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box15, WL; Leonard Doyle, “Women lobby NATO,” The Guardian, March 9, 1983, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cuttings (5GCW/E/1), Box15, WL. 387

Later that year, women organized yet another conference, the Disarmament Conference of European Women in Geneva, Switzerland, in which 2,500 women gathered to mount more concerted opposition to missile deployment and the absence of serious disarmament talks.144

Greenham women attended along with a majority of German women, several of whom had marched from Berlin in yet another women’s peace walk. In the Swiss city, German, Dutch,

British, Italian, Swiss and other European women formed a human chain stretching from the

Soviet to the American embassy. “The spectacular human chain, the trademark ‘peace camp’ erected in Geneva for the following nights, and the well-attended conferences each attest to the fact that women all over Europe are leaving home for peace,” one observant journalist remarked.145

These demonstrations divulged how much the women’s movement saw itself as international, and Pettitt and Sheldon’s travels fit within its ideology that disregarded Cold War borders. This philosophy—that all women could appreciate oppressions as ecologically related and equally important—lent itself to these transatlantic and cross-European dialogues, conferences and direct actions. That the movement chose to hold meetings on global diplomacy and engage in highly visible protests, intended to force world leaders to listen, further showed women’s rising place in politics. In yet another example, in November 1985, thirty-five female delegates descended upon Geneva, Switzerland, with the goal of meeting with Reagan and

Gorbachev during their Geneva Summit peace talks.146 Prominent peace activists such as Cora

Weiss and Bella Abzug attended alongside Cheryl Craig, the attorney and president for Women

144 Jamin Raskin, “Autumn of Protest: Notes on Europe’s Growing Disarmament Movement,” City Paper (Baltimore, Maryland), November 4-10, 1983, Joan Biren Papers, Series V. Subject Files, Judasism (cont’d)-Peace, Box 84, Folder 10 Subjects: Peace, Peace Encampments, Greenham Women Against Cruise Missiles 1982-87, n.d, SSC. 145 Ibid. 146 Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition, 374-375. Gorbachev met with activists from the Nuclear Freeze campaign and America’s largest peace organization, National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE), as they pressed him on extending the Soviet moratorium on nuclear testing indefinitely and protecting human rights for Soviet Jews. 388 for Racial and Economic Equality, television screenwriter Lila Garrett and actress Jane

Alexander from Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament (WAND) for what they dubbed

“Women for a Meaningful Summit” (WMS). Over one million people—a majority of them women—had signed their petition for a weapons test ban, and they intended to discuss this with world leaders. Ultimately, WMS participants left discouraged, feeling as though leaders ignored them. Such treatment indicated the limits of citizen diplomacy and ordinary women’s ability to coerce superpowers to pay attention to their demands.

Yet the summit was like other episodes in the women’s movement. It, like all its preceding events, provided an opportunity for women to meet and envision themselves as a legitimate, cohesive force to change the world. Such moments were certainly powerful on a personal level but inevitably provoked the question of whether or not gender could actually organize and bind women together. On her plane ride home from the summit, participant Joanne

Edgar was reading suffragette Lois Waisbrooker’s A Sex Revolution (1893). The book fanaticized a world run by women for fifty years, one in which war and poverty disappeared with female leadership. Engrossed in the plot, Edgar, who was also the editor and co-founder of Ms.

Magazine, was saddened to find that someone stole the book before she could finish it. The lack of a conclusion left her pondering if a world free of conflict was a possibility, and if women’s grand experiment of the late 20th century—organizing by and for women to bring the world closer to peace—was even feasible.147 This question of feasibility animated and ricocheted throughout the numerous sites and moments of the movement given its inability to accommodate all women through their differences. While race, class, sexuality, motherhood and organizing preferences splintered hoped-for unity, so too did national differences stump women. Women

147 Joanne Edgar, “Working Toward Peace: Women Who Went to the Summit,” Ms. Magazine, February 1986, 60- 63, 84. 389 from both superpowers still met, and as the Leningrad seminar displayed, collaborated. But that

Pettitt, Sheldon and other Western women did not live in an authoritarian state that policed all aspects of society meant that, in important ways, they could not truly understand the lives of their

“Soviet sisters.”

390

Epilogue

***

From the years 1985 to 1988, nuclear policies of Western nations shifted increasingly toward arms control and disarmament efforts. The rise to power of Mikhail Gorbachev, elected general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1985, the gradual end of the Cold War that occurred with the collapse of the U.S.S.R. further solidified these developments toward peace. Gorbachev, more so than President Ronald Reagan and his successor George Bush, allied himself with the growing worldwide peace movement; his efforts to dramatically reduce, and in some cases eliminate, nuclear weapons convinced Reagan and grudgingly Bush to break from their more hardline positions and to instead pursue a new, unprecedented round of détente. The increasing prominence of human rights ideas and monitoring after the Helsinki Accords of 1975 likewise contributed to more transparency and an easing of tensions between the superpowers, as did Eastern European resistance to Soviet authority. Growing solidarity movements in the East Bloc helped to slowly dismantled the bipolar world.1

1 Lawrence S. Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the Present (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 369-377. For more on Gorbachev, see Archie Brown, The Gorbachev Factor (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Archie Brown, Seven Years that Changed the World: Perestroika in Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). In successive waves since it started, Cold War historians have debated the origins and more recently the end of the Cold War, shifting lines of blame and motivation as new archival material and thus interpretations become available. The most recent interpretations tend to argue that neither side can be completely blamed for its start nor credited with its end. For a few major works, see John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History, Reprint (London: Penguin Books, 2006); Melvyn P. Leffler, For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War (New York: Hill and Wang, 2008). Gaddis offers a synthetical explanation of the Cold War, supported by his and others’ thesis that the Cold War started and lasted so long because of incompatible ideologies between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. To this end, Gaddis argues the U.S. in a sense “won” the Cold War because its vision for the future was ultimately more attractive than that offered by Soviet communism. He thus credits Reagan, along with individuals who encouraged human rights, democracy and capitalism such as Pope John Paul II, Deng Ziaoping, Lech Walesa and Margaret Thatcher. Leffler argues that Gorbachev and Reagan finally ended the Cold War even though many of their predecessors had wanted to do so—many felt the war was counterproductive, costly and dangerous. Yet, as Gaddis also asserts, disparate ideologies and hard-lined stances made peace unsuccessful. With the sputtering of the Soviet state and with

391 Beginning in the spring of 1985, Gorbachev along with his newly appointed foreign and military advisors unilaterally initiated major changes in Soviet policy, beginning with the cessation and reduction of SS-20 missile deployments in Europe. He declared a unilateral moratorium on Soviet nuclear testing, which extended to 1987, alongside calls for new negotiations for a comprehensive test ban. In early 1986, Gorbachev premiered a three-stage program to free the world of nuclear weapons by 2000. Other nations like Sweden, Holland,

Denmark, Spain, Greece, Norway, New Zealand and Canada likewise embraced the anti-nuclear , insisting on new arms controls, nuclear-free zones and the removal of U.S. military bases from Europe. Not all followed suit. Governments of the Warsaw Pact countries did not share his anti-nuclear enthusiasm and continued to persecute and arrest independent peace, environmental and human rights advocates. In Britain, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher used the 1987 parliamentary elections to continue her defamation of the Labour Party’s anti-nuclear stance, declaring, “We believe in nuclear deterrence, and we do not consider the elimination of nuclear weapons practicable.”2 The French continued their nuclear testing program in the South Pacific.

Even as the Reagan administration warmed to the idea of nuclear arms controls, Reagan kept his

Reagan’s Congress interested in defunding much military spending, the Cold War finally ended, more to Gorbachev’s credit in Leffler’s opinion. Gorbachev did not agree with capitalism, Leffler says, but he did not villainize it as he needed friendly governments and foreign aid to buttress his attempts at socialist renewal, democratizing socialism. In his new work, The End of the Cold War, 1985-1991 (New York: PublicAffairs, 2015), Robert Service utilizes newly available archival material to argue that the Cold War ended because of both Gorbachev and Reagan’s ability and willingness to end the Cold War. Service argues that Reagan was less of a hawk than usually depicted, and that careerist Gorbachev was well-aware that the U.S.S.R. had to concede more than the U.S. in disarmament. More recently, historians have paid attention to other forces in the Cold War’s end, beyond leaders’ actions, the demise of the Soviet system and regional Soviet states’ dissidence. For instance, scholars have been reconsidering the role of human rights advocates, activities and norms since the 1975 Helsinki Accords, all of which had an impact on perestroika and glasnost in the Soviet Union, helped to convince Soviet leaders that human rights were in their country’s best interests and thus encouraged East-West cooperation and transparency. See Jeremi Suri explains, “Explaining the End of the Cold War: A New Historical Consensus?” Journal of Cold War Studies 4, no. 4 (Fall 2002), 60-92, Odd Arne Westad, ed. Reviewing the Cold War: Approaches, Interpretations, Theory (London: Frank Cass, 2000); Richard H. Immerman and Petra Goedde, eds., The Oxford Handbook of the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); Sarah B. Snyder, Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War: A Transnational History of the Helsinki Network (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Daniel C. Thomas, The Helsinki Effect: International Norms, Human Rights, and the Demise of Communism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). 2 Quoted in Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition, 380.

392 distance from meeting with and working with prominent peace activists and ignored how much of his Congress, especially the Democratic half which achieved majority in 1986, urged the U.S. to join the Soviet moratorium on nuclear testing.3

Nonetheless, major disarmament was on the horizon. After major peace summits in

Geneva and Reykjavik, both superpowers signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF)

Treaty in December of 1987 by which they agreed to eliminate and forswear intermediate-range nuclear weapons from Europe. This meant that nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles had to be gradually removed from several military bases, a process which began in 1989 at Greenham Common. The decision was met with criticism from conservatives in the U.S., U.S.S.R., Britain and Europe, yet worldwide peace activists were delighted. Furthermore, Congress thereafter slashed Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) program budget, indefinitely blocking its development. The two world leaders continued to meet, and in December 1988, Gorbachev announced unilateral cutbacks in Soviet conventional forces.4

While the election of George Bush in the fall of 1988 momentarily halted nuclear disarmament, Bush—goaded by Congress and the peace movement—soon followed in Reagan’s footsteps. Together with Gorbachev, “the two leaders implemented the farthest-reaching nuclear arms reductions in world history.”5 Efforts led to the Strategic Arms Reductions (START) I

Treaty which reduced strategic nuclear forces, additional U.S. unilateral disarmament, the closing down of nuclear weapons production facilities and eventually anti-testing legislation in the U.S. By mid-1992, U.S. production and development of nuclear weapons had stopped.6

3 Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition, 377-388. 4 Ibid., 388-404. 5 Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition, 424. 6 Ibid., 424-446.

393 Superpower cooperation over nuclear disarmament occurred within the context of the final years of the Soviet Union. With Gorbachev’s election to general secretary in 1985 and growing pressure from Eastern and Western human rights activists, he initiated sweeping reforms of the political system and economy. With newly-appointed upper and middle-level leadership, Gorbachev tried to restructure bureaucracy and the sluggish, technologically- backward economy through perestroika. This “restructuring” of society entailed democratization, in the form of a new elected national legislature and allowing new, reform- oriented leaders to govern in the Eastern Bloc countries. It also an attempt to introduce “a half- way house between an administered economy and with its central plans and a market economy governed by the law of supply and demand.”7 Beginning in 1987, glasnost—Gorbachev’s efforts to allow citizens to voice constructive criticism—permitted new freedoms in speech, leading to dissent literature, art and even histories being printed or republished. Organizations independent of the state emerged.8

All of these reforms were met with strong opposition from conservatives, and exposed the futility of trying to reform or include the Party in a democratic system. With rising unemployment and inflation, falling standards of living and a thriving black market, perestroika exacerbated the Soviet economic crisis. Furthermore, reforms opened up the national question for its many ethno-national groups within the U.S.S.R. and, as Gorbachev devolved power to liberalizing Soviet satellites, many Eastern European states exited the Union, epitomized in the destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Ultimately, Russia itself left the U.S.S.R. In the fall of

’91, Russian Republic president Boris Yelstin attempted a coup to overthrow Gorbachev, thus

7 Brown, The Gorbachev Factor, 130-131. 8 Peter Kenez, A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End, Second Edition (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1999, 2006), 245-277; Snyder, Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War; Thomas, The Helsinki Effect.

394 accelerating the end of the Soviet Union and its one-party system. Republic after republic left, leaving Gorbachev the leader of a nonexistent state and Yeltsin in charge of Russia.9

With the end of the Soviet Union and the Cold War, the women’s movement began to lose numbers given that so much of its focus was on nuclear disarmament. While its values of peace, ecology and feminism united many regardless of the great U.S.-Soviet rivalry and in some cases, its organizations persisted, the movement indisputably went into decline by the late 1980s.

It was because, for one, the imminent threat of a nuclear war had vanished, leading many to conclude their activism was less important or perhaps needed elsewhere. It was more, though, that the women’s movement itself was constructed on unstable scaffolding, as this dissertation has traced. The shared vision of a world, led by women, governed by egalitarian, consensus- driven living, drew in tens of thousands of participants beginning in the late 1970s. A decade later, though, the promise that these values and ideas could unite all women and bridge powerful differences between them proved elusive, and as the demise of the Greenham Common

Women’s Peace Camp and the Seneca Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice elucidate, the movement’s inability to accommodate all women led to only a handful of supporters remaining at either of these camps.

“Transform or Die”: The Ends of the Greenham and Seneca Peace Encampments, 1985-2006

9 Ibid. See also Brown, The Gorbachev Factor; Brown, Seven Years that Changed the World. Brown argues that Gorbachev, ambitious in how much he wanted to reform the Soviet system, gradually abandoned most of his Leninist visions for those of a Western European-style social democrat, though he was never fully able to detach himself from the state’s Leninist model. He asserts that Gorbachev, along with a key group of party intellectuals, advisors and associates, denounced Stalinism, Lenin’s partocratic system and tried to give socialism a human face. Brown—the foremost biographer of Gorbachev—credits him for these visions but argues that his major failings were his inability to champion economic reforms in the direction of a market economy, to anticipate nationalist sentiments in the U.S.S.R. and to gauge the ability of bureaucracy (or the nomenklatura) to retrench itself. Yet above all, Brown argues that without Gorbachev, the democratization of the Soviet Union, however fraught, and the end of the Cold War would not have occurred.

395 At its zenith in the early 1980s, the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp easily attracted tens of thousands of women for its days of direct action. By the late 1980s, attendance at its various gates had dwindled. “It is still cold at Greenham,” Greenham camper Jill Truman commented in March 1985. “Often boring and always stressful. The complete lack of privacy and constant discomfort make it hard to bear for long stretches of time. On my last visit there were no camps at red, indigo or turquoise gates.”10 While Greenham initially served as both a literal and symbolic meeting point for thousands of women in their quest for disarmament, that it gradually transitioned into an alternative community for exclusively women and their experiment in feminist, egalitarian living spelled its demise. Without the more focused campaign of halting the deployment of cruise missiles, differences between women, along the fault lines of race, class, sexuality and political traditions, surfaced. No matter how many agreed on the shared values of feminism, peace and ecology, the experiment of Greenham slowly unraveled. Still, some held on.

Even after the INF Treaty was signed in 1987, those who remained at the camp declared,

“We are not moving an inch from that place till the missiles are gone.”11 Women at the Yellow

Gate further insisted that Greenham’s fight against militarism was far from over. “The INF

Treaty is a con. The world is no safer,” they maintained.12 In fact, even after all missies had been

10 Jill Truman, “News from Greenham,” March 1985, Jill Truman Papers, Writings about Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, News from Greenham (7JTR/2/1), Box 1, Women’s Library (hereafter WL), London School of Economics, London, England. 11 Mel Goertz, “Beacons of Hope,” Vanguard Press (New York, New York), December 31, 1987-January 7, 1988, Joan E. Biren Papers, Series V. Subject Files, Judaism (cont’d)-Peace, Box 84, Folder 10 Subjects: Peace, Peace Encampments, Greenham Women Against Cruise Missiles 1982-87, n.d., Sophia Smith Collection (hereafter SSC) Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts. See the camp’s newsletter for this point as well, “Dear Friends,” December 9, 1988, Joan E. Biren Papers, Series V. Subject Files, Judaism (cont’d)-Peace, Box 84, Folder 10 Subjects: Peace, Peace Encampments, Greenham Women Against Cruise Missiles 1982-87, n.d., SSC. In it, the remaining Greenham women assert that even though the INF Treaty happened, air- and sea-launched missiles would replace the ground-launched cruise missiles forbidden by the treaty. They felt the need to continue their opposition to militarism by fighting these newly-sanctioned weapons. 12 Yellow Gate, “Statement on 16 cruise missiles leaving Greenham Common Today,” August 1, 1989, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Publicity (5GCW/D/7), Box 11, WL.

396 removed—the first in 1989 and the last on March 5th, 1991—and Greenham transitioned to a

“standby base” for approximately five hundred U.S. servicemen, the peace camp persisted.13

Convinced that Greenham was “an alternative that we have created and learnt” and “a way of life,” the lingering campers were not willing to depart. Most expressed that Greenham was the only home they knew, and many argued that simply because the INF Treaty stipulated the removal of cruise missiles, the threat of nuclear weaponry nevertheless stalked the world.14 In some regard, the camp still managed to attract impressive numbers for its big events. Its annual

December 14th action to recall the 1979 NATO decision to site missiles through Europe drew eight thousand women in 1986. even visited in February of 1987. Cruisewatch continued until all cruise missiles had been removed by 1991. Research on zapping, by surveying more women who felt their health problems were linked to electromagnetic radiation, likewise persisted. Greenham campers worked hard to publicize the varied manifestations of male-driven violence, from racism to sexual abuse, from the dangers of nuclear technology to the human horrors of uranium mining. The war in and the plight of Kurdish refugees spurred them to new protests and further civil disobedience in the name of peace, leading one woman to

13 Jean Stead, “Greenham Common: 25 Years On,” September 2006, Jayne and Juliet Nelson Papers (Ref Np. 7JAN), Box 1, WL; Rebecca Johnson, “A view of INF from the fence at Greenham,” The Guardian (London, England), December 7, 1987, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cutting (5GCW/E/03), Box 17, WL; Lynne Jones, “Why the women of Greenham still wait,” The Independent (London, England), October 28, 1989, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cutting (5GCW/E/03), Box 17, WL; Madeleine Bunting, “Farewell to cruise leaves peace women unmoved,” The Guardian, February 6, 1991, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cutting (5GCW/E/03), Box 17, WL; “Peace women plan to stay,” Newbury Weekly News (Newbury, England), December 19, 1991, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cutting (5GCW/E/03), Box 17, WL; Helena de Bertodano, “Bombs away but the Greenham women stay on,” Sunday Telegraph (London, UK), February 21, 1993, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cutting (5GCW/E/04), Box 18, WL; Tim Barlass, “At last barriers are to come down at Greenham Common,” Evening Standard (London, England), March 20, 1995, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cutting (5GCW/E/03), Box 17, WL. 14 Edward Vulliamy, “Greenham women shall not be moved,” The Guardian, July 23, 1987, Joan E. Biren Papers, Series V. Subject Files, Judaism (cont’d)-Peace, Box 84, Folder 10 Subjects: Peace, Peace Encampments, Greenham Women Against Cruise Missiles 1982-87, n.d., SSC; Helen Nowicka, “Greenham women keep the faith,” Independent on Sunday (London, England), July 11, 1993, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cutting (5GCW/E/04), Box 18, WL.

397 comment, “Is the Peace Movement in decline? Not among women it ain’t!”15 New women’s peace camps emerged. The Sellafield Wimmin’s Peace Camp protested nuclear technology and waste management as it was situated outside the Sellafield nuclear plant near Seascale on the west coast of Cumbria; women set up another near the atomic weapons establishment (AWE) at

Aldermaston.16

Beyond the fact that the cruise missiles were no longer a threat and thus, in the minds of most of the British public, dissolved the need for a peace demonstration at Greenham, internal problems additionally rattled the camp and assisted in the dismantling of several gates.

Beginning in 1985, women at the Yellow Gate grew close to anti-racism advocate Wilemette

Brown and her organization, the King’s Cross Women’s Centre. Yellow Gate campers received volunteers and financial support from Brown, and they saw their friendship with her as fruitful and necessary. They expressed they wanted to get more involved in issues of Black equality and autonomy. An American, Brown had been involved civil rights, Black Power and anti-Vietnam protests, later working with the English Collective of Prostitutes, Women Against Rape and the

“Black Women for Housework” and “Pay Women Not the Military” campaigns that spotlighted how military budgets drained resources from social services. Unfortunately, other gates perceived Brown as a dividing force, especially when charges surfaced that, in their lack of involvement with Brown, those other gates were racist. The women at whom these accusations were leveled saw anti-racism as important yet not a crucial part of their protest. Yellow Gate

15 “Dear Friends,” newsletter, March 1, 1987, Joan E. Biren Papers, Series V. Subject Files, Judaism (cont’d)-Peace, Box 84, Folder 10 Subjects: Peace, Peace Encampments, Greenham Women Against Cruise Missiles 1982-87, n.d., SSC. See also Yellow Gate, “Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp Newsletter,” Spring 1991, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Publicity (5GCW/D/01), Box 11, 1 of 2, WL. Women from Europe and Britain continued to write to Greenham into the 1990s, thanking them for their ongoing protest. For these postcards and letters, see Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Correspondence (5GCW/B/01), 1 of 2, WL; Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Correspondence (5GCW/B/07), 2 of 2, WL; Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers (5GCW/B/03), WL. 16 Yellow Gate, “Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp Newsletter,” Spring 1991, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Publicity (5GCW/D/01), Box 11, 1 of 2, WL.

398 subsequently advertised itself as “the only 24-hour-a-day, truly non-aligned, anti-racist, women- only verification of the removal of cruise missiles.”17 Women there routinely expressed feelings that the rest of the peace movement, including the other gates at Greenham, had abandoned them.

Analyzing each other’s civil disobedience and involvement with mainstream peace organizations and local authorities, the remaining women at the camp obsessively bickered over which gate represented “the true Greenham.” Outside of the camp, some organizations, namely Greenham

Women Everywhere and Camden Greenham Women, opposed the influence of Brown, and continually revived this conflict at various peace conferences and seminars in London and elsewhere. The role of the non-aligned peace movement likewise divided Greenham supporters as did the Irish struggle, in particular the campaigns of the IRA, given Greenham’s foundation of nonviolence.18

It did not help camp unity that the media spoke of a “black mafia takeover” at Yellow

Gate. Also deleterious was the suggestion that the influential British anti-nuclear organization, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), was selecting certain—only white, well- educated—Greenham women to be camp spokeswomen. Press also sensationally reported that

Yellow Gate women had discarded their Christianity and instead worshipped Brown. Other

17 Yellow Gate, “Take Action on Racism,” newsletter, 1987-88, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Publicity (5GCW/D/01), Box 11, 1 of 2, WL. See also Yellow Gate, “Yellow Gate Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp,” newsletter, April 1989, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Publicity (5GCW/D/01), Box 11, 2 of 2, WL. 18 Greenham women felt divided over whether or not to support more aligned organizations like the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) or more non-aligned groups like European Nuclear Disarmament (END). Those non- aligned generally refused to work with Soviet state peace organizations, and blamed both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. for the Cold War. The other issue was whether or not—or how—to support the Irish resistance against Britain without compromising Greenham’s stance on nonviolence. See Yellow Gate, “Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp,” newsletter, September 1988, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Publicity (5GCW/D/01), Box 11, 1 of 2, WL; Yellow Gate, “Yellow Gate Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp,” newsletter, April 1989, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Publicity (5GCW/D/01), Box 11, 2 of 2, WL. See also Kate Ironside, “Split in ranks at peace camp,” Weekend Post, September 27, 1987, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cutting (5GCW/E/03), Box 17, WL; Sarah Baxter, “Centre of the storm,” Time Out (London, England), October 14-21, 1987, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cutting (5GCW/E/03), Box 17, WL.

399 stories rumored that only a handful of women remained at Greenham, all of them mystics.

Tensions mounted. Long-time camper at the Yellow Gate, Sarah Hipperson, charged women at

Woad Gate with withholding her mail, and in particular letters that had to do with her anti-racism activism.19 Ongoing financial and physical hardships, along with the fact that the Cold War was ending, pushed many to abandon Greenham. The personal schisms—Greenham’s “gateism”— were no different. The disputes convinced most of the remaining Greenham women at the

Orange, Blue, Woad and Green Gates to leave.

After women had vacated all gates except Yellow by 1994, a handful of dedicated participants, including Hipperson, Katrina Howse and Jean Hutchinson, continued their vigil thereafter. Reifying that Greenham’s biggest impact was at the personal level, these women remained because Greenham had become their home. Hipperson—a middle-class CND supporter when she came to Greenham—was also a wife, mother to five, nurse and midwife. Horrified by

Greenham when she first came in the early 1980s, she stayed because she felt she had to do something to stop nuclear weapons. While at Greenham, her marriage ended. Yet, she never blamed its failure on her time spent at the camp, instead seeing those years as a special time in her life during which she learned who she was. In her thirties, Howse had been an art student at

Sheffield University, but after working as a community rural artist and setting up her own peace camp outside of RAF Waddington to protest the Falklands War, she moved to Yellow Gate in

1982. There she remained into the ‘90s, convinced of the beauty and worth of the Greenham experiment.20 At Greenham from its beginning, Hutchinson arrived in the first three weeks of its

19 Ibid; Yellow Gate, “Yellow Gate Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp,” newsletter, April 1988, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Publicity (5GCW/D/01), Box 11, 1 of 2, WL; “Waves of protest at nuclear threat,” Socialist Worker, August 5, 1995, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cutting (5GCW/E/03), Box 17, WL. 20 Royal Air Force (RAF) Waddington is a Royal Air Force station south of Lincoln, Lincolnshire and northeast of Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire, England. It was opened in 1916 and hosted a variety of squadrons of airplanes

400 protest and, thereafter, with the support of her husband and sons, could not conceive of leaving.

Great-grandmother Peggy Walford, arrested countless times at Greenham, also refused to leave—until 2000, in fact.21

For Hipperson and the remaining others, diary entries of these years revealed that mundane chores occupied their days. Evictions still occurred, with local authorities occasionally removing the campers, to little effect though as the women simply returned. No cruise-carrying convoys left the base anymore, so Greenham women—relentless in their civil disobedience— tracked and harassed other convoys, like those entering and exiting the nearby atomic weapons establishments at Aldermaston and Burghfield.22 Campers noted excitedly when visitors arrived.

A few still trickled in from as far away as the U.S., Australia and Western Europe. Inevitably, they also noted when visitors left.23 Still, for those hanging on at Greenham, the companionship of other women made the cold and primitive lifestyle worthwhile.24 The Yellow Gate women continued to write letters and editorials to the media, hoping to keep the British public informed

until the end of the Falklands War between Britain and Argentina (April-June 1982). See “RAF Waddington History,” Royal Air Force, accessed January 16, 2016, http://www.raf.mod.uk/rafwaddington/aboutus/history.cfm. 21 These were some of the last women at Greenham, though not exclusively all of them. Cole Moreton, “Carry on Camping,” Independent on Sunday, July 28, 1996, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cutting (5GCW/E/03), Box 17, WL; Anne Treneman, “The missiles have gone. The bombers have gone. So why haven’t the women of Greenham Common gone with them?” The Independent, August 1, 1998, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cutting (5GCW/E/03), Box 17, WL; Paul Donovan, “Non-nuclear dreams,” The (Manchester, England), September 21, 1997, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cutting (5GCW/E/03), Box 17, WL. 22 Cruisewatch—the informal network of Greenham campers and supporters who tracked the movements of convoys carrying or practicing to carry cruise missiles in and out of Greenham—ended with the INF Treaty, so Greenham campers began to pay attention to other military bases or AWEs (atomic weapons establishments). In particular, they focused on the Trident nuclear submarine program, which was originally a part of the Reagan administration’s nuclear weapons buildup of the early 1980s. Britain purchased these submarines from the U.S., and based them out of Scotland. Greenham women worked to disrupt Trident submarine warheads from traveling from the nearby Burghfield AWE to the Faslane naval base in Scotland. See Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition, 3, 113, 121, 132. Yellow Gate, “Yellow Gate Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp,” newsletter, June 1993, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Publicity (5GCW/D/01), Box 11, 2 of 2, WL; “D-day dawns for Greenham women,” The Guardian, November 27, 1993, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cutting (5GCW/E/03), Box 17, WL. 23 See Diary entries, October 2, 4 and 9, 1994, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Diaries (5GCW/C/01), Box 09, WL. 24 Diary entry, January 6, 1994, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Diaries (5GCW/C/01), Box 09, WL.

401 of the lingering reality of nuclear weapons. They still held workshops at Greenham for those interested in its history, nonviolent tactics and anti-militarism. New conflicts concerned them, especially the and cleansing in Yugoslavia.25 In 1991, they protested the U.S. war in Iraq, the same year that one Yellow Gate woman journaled, “March 5, 1991: LAST CRUISE

MISSILES LEAVE THE BASE TODAY.”26

Their investment in public education was far more fraught in these post-Cold War Years.

The feeling was, as one diarist wrote, that people no longer cared about nuclear issues; no one wanted to be “anti-nuclear” anymore.27 While worldwide interest in nuclear disarmament had subsided as the great geopolitical conflict of the 20th century ended, Greenham’s slow demise— measured by its decreasing numbers and mentions in the press—signaled the end of the Cold

War but also, more personally, campers’ irrelevance to other women.28 In the spring of 1991, one woman wrote, “Gathering at Red Gate organized by Redditch women for peace group. No one came.”29 In September of that year, for the camp’s tenth anniversary, twenty in total attended.

That number excited the campers.30 Questions of “why are we still here?” plagued them.

Throughout these years of the mid- to late ‘90s, media commonly misprinted that the

Greenham camp had ended. Campers tried to correct this misassumption through op-ed pieces in local and national newspapers, citing that they believed their effectiveness was not in numbers but in the strength of the women maintaining the camp. Nonetheless, the impression that

25 Yellow Gate, “Yellow Gate Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp,” newsletter, September 1994, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Publicity (5GCW/D/01), Box 11, 2 of 2, WL. 26 Diary entry, March 5, 1991, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Diaries (5GCW/C/01), Box 09, WL. 27 Diary entry, March 23, 1994, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Diaries (5GCW/C/01), Box 09, WL. 28 Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition, 405-423. 29 Diary entry, April 21, 1991, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Diaries (5GCW/C/01), Box 09, WL. 30 Diary entry, September 5, 1991, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Diaries (5GCW/C/01), Box 09, WL.

402 Greenham was over remained. Frustrated, one vented in the camp journal, “Why are the British public so spineless? Why don’t they get up off their knees and become more publically

OUTRAGED and take ACTION. AND LISTEN!!!”31 Another noted that it was maddening that

Greenham needed to justify, even to its supporters, why it continued to exist.32 The press that did acknowledge Greenham’s faint existence focused on evictions and arrests.33 Still, Greenham women grasped that, regardless of their irrelevancy in the public’s mind, time spent at the camp continued to impact individuals. In the fall of 1993, one visiting woman left a note describing how important camp women were to her. She explained that they listened to her and that they inspired her to deal with the personal dilemmas in her life. In short, Greenham was her support system.34

Evidenced by its mixed press coverage, the legacy of Greenham was especially disputed.

Most recognized that it was one of the most popular protests in Britain with its “self-styled peace women.”35 Its impact—positive and negative—on many British women was undeniable. One

Observer reporter wrote, “For a generation of women, it was the focal point of the women’s

31 Diary entry, May 5, 1994, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Diaries (5GCW/C/01), Box 09, WL. See also Diary entry, July 7, 1994, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Diaries (5GCW/C/01), Box 09, WL; Diary entry, August 8, 1994, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Diaries (5GCW/C/01), Box 09, WL. 32 Diary entry, November 5, 1993, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Diaries (5GCW/C/01), Box 09, WL. See also Diary entry, October 7, 1993, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Diaries (5GCW/C/01), Box 09, WL. In this entry, this diarist compares Greenham women to Nelson Mandela in their refusal to “give up.” For more examples of their frustration with the British public, see Yellow Gate, “Yellow Gate Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp,” newsletter, September 5, 1997, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Publicity (5GCW/D/01), Box 11, 2 of 2, WL. 33 Helen Nowicka, “Greenham women keep the faith,” The Independent, July 11, 1993, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Diaries (5GCW/C/01), Box 09, WL; “Peace women are sent to prison,” Reading Chronicle (Reading, England), December 11, 1993, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Diaries (5GCW/C/01), Box 09, WL. 34 Diary entry, September 17, 1993, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Diaries (5GCW/C/01), Box 09, WL. 35 “Greenham’s place in world history,” Newbury Weekly News, January 16, 1992, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cutting (5GCW/E/03), Box 17, WL.

403 movement.”36 She explained that it represented feminism at the time, which was empowering and also alienating because so much of it was about lifestyle. It was, she elaborated, about being the “holier-than-thou, lipstick-shunning feminist” which inevitably put off many women.37 “It became equated with feminism in the popular mind, so that any young woman who didn’t identify with Greenham, felt that she couldn’t identify with the women’s movement.”38 But press also reported that the camp empowered ordinary women in that it tapped into their dissatisfaction with political and private life. Greenham, in this way, filled a void in which conventional politics failed for most women, and many of its most famous participants went on to careers in peace activism. Still, regardless of the camp’s individual impact, media also continued to point to local animosity toward the camp, and more generally, to its irrelevance.39 The slow demise of the camp—its “final ragged retreat”—and the last women to leave—with “their squalid brand of radical feminism”—showed women out of touch with the world and its realities.40 Above all, media suggested that the peace camp did nothing to end the Cold War.41

In September of 2000, the remaining women at Greenham left. Hipperson had only positive remarks to give: “Our time at Greenham is an experience I’d never want to have missed.

36 Louisa Saunders, “Fanfare for Common women,” The Observer (London, England), November 7, 1993, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cutting (5GCW/E/03), Box 17, WL 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid. 39 “Greenham cash aid considered,” The Guardian, February 22, 1986, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cutting (5GCW/E/03), Box 17, WL; “Keeping the peace,” The Guardian, September 4, 1997, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cutting (5GCW/E/03), Box 17, WL; Stephen Rouse, “Women go quietly after all these years,” Newbury Weekly News, January 27, 1994, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cutting (5GCW/E/03), Box 17, WL. 40 John Coles, “Greenham Peace Wimmin beat a final ragged retreat,” Daily Express (London, England), January 28, 1994, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cutting (5GCW/E/03), Box 17, WL. 41 “Greenham served its purpose,” Newbury Weekly News, September 18, 1997, Greenham Common Peace Camp Yellow Gate Papers, Press Cutting (5GCW/E/03), Box 17, WL. This point was especially apparent in Newbury Weekly News. One article was even titled “Peace women merely a laughable irrelevancy” (Newbury Weekly News, August 20, 1998).

404 I feel very privileged. I don’t think I could have spent this part of my life in a better way.”42 The military also left. Beginning in 1993, after a long struggle between the Ministry of Defense

(MOD) and the people of Newbury, the MOD finally put Greenham on the market. Four years later, Greenham Common Trust bought the airbase, and Newbury District Court acquired the commons after the House of Lords returned their rights to the common land. Official public access resumed in 2001. All that physically remains of the Greenham Common Women’s Peace

Camp is a memorial garden, established there in 2000.43

The remaining women involved at the Seneca Women’s Peace Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice experienced a similar slow demise. Beginning in late July 1990, for three weekends and over thirty hours of meetings, women involved in the encampment gathered in

Romulus, New York—under the not-so-blithe designation “Transform or Die Workfest”—to confront the future of Seneca.44 They spent the first weekend expressing what they felt had been accomplished, and the practical question of whether or not the camp should, or could, remain open. Like every other gathering, their meeting process meant all ideas and feelings mattered equally, and all problems and fears had to be voiced and taken into account. Participants affirmed their uncompromising faith in Seneca as both a place away from patriarchy and also an anti-nuclear protest that named the depot as a “death dealing entity.”45 Inclined to a fixation on self, women saw the need for improvements. They wanted to nurture a better relationship with the nearby Native American community and other locals, and as always, admitted their work

42 “Moving On: Greenham Women Call It a Day After 19 Years,” The Guardian, September 6, 2000, Jayne and Juliet Nelson Papers (Ref Np. 7JAN), Box 1, WL. 43 Jean Stead, “Greenham Common: 25 Years On,” September 2006, Jayne and Juliet Nelson Papers (Ref Np. 7JAN), Box 1, WL. For more on this story of how Greenham Common was returned to being a commons, see David Fairhall, Common Ground: The Story of Greenham (London, UK and New York: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd., 2006). 44 Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Jutsice (hereafter WEFPJ), “Transform or Die,” July 28-August 12, 1990, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice [hereafter WEFPJ] Papers, Series III Organizations, Box 7 of 26, Folder 7, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice 1983, n.d (Newsletter), SSC. 45 Ibid.

405 against racism and “other isms” was not satisfactory. Consensus was reached that until August

31st, 1991, the camp would remain open; as what exactly was undetermined. Women brainstormed Seneca could become a wildlife preserve, a farm, a school for feminism and nonviolence, some kind of laboratory to study zapping, perhaps a lesbian archives or a peace center. One even suggested the camp should revert to Native American ownership. During the last weekend of their workfest, in mid-August, participants broke into small groups, each charged with creating a proposal for what to do with the camp. The first group suggested both transforming the camp into a crisis center for women. Members also thought it worthwhile to transcribe the resources and networks of Seneca into legible material that future women could use. Another group simply recommended that the camp remain open indefinitely. The third small group proposed to use the camp as a test center for research on zapping. Additionally, it wanted to archive and digitize their resources—via computers, women excitedly imagined. The fourth proposal recognized that “we have came [sic] as far as we can with our present mode of operating” and suggested “we divest ourselves of the land.”46 The group mentioned contacting the women of the Cayuga Nation as well as local and international women’s groups for advice on the matter.

Such varied proposals and that they reached no neat conclusion spoke to the legacy of

Seneca and the movement in general. Its strength—that it sought to include so many women and perspectives—was also its biggest drawback. In the last years of the camp, fewer and fewer women stayed. While it attracted thousands in its early years, by the late 1980s, only a few dozen materialized at advertised direct actions and fewer attended regional meetings.47 Only a handful

46 Ibid. 47 WEFPJ, “Regional Minute Meetings April 10, 1988,” Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 10 Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Regional Meeting Minutes 1986-89, n.d., SSC; WEFPJ, “Camp Journal and Notes,” June 22, 1990, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Camp Journal + Notes [1983-85, 1990-91], SL;

406 of letters trickled in each year.48 One visitor in 1986 admitted to the camp that, although she learned a great deal about herself during her time at Seneca, “My impression is that the peace camp is barely surviving.”49 Feelings of marginalization persisted among the campers. “No one ever mentions us,” one journaled, and others asked how they could “assert ourselves as legitimate actors” and “entice the movement press” to legitimize Seneca and attract newcomers.50 Along with heightened vandalism, the threat of zapping continued to scare them.

One camper recorded in the summer of 1990, “Last night something was happening. All of us had nightmares and woke up in panic and tears. Zapping?”51 Money perpetually burdened them.

They credited miracles, namely kind and large donations, for allowing them to be able to pay their camp mortgage and insurance.52 Still, a few visitors arrived, and those who remained kept abreast of military decisions and planned events at SAD well into the early 1990s. When the INF

Treaty passed on December 10th, 1987, they celebrated in solidarity with the handful of

WEFPJ, “Camp Journal and Notes,” December 26, 1990, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Camp Journal + Notes [1983-85, 1990-91], SL; WEFPJ, “Regional Meeting—February 13 and 14, 1988,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., 1988-89, SL; WEFPJ, “Regional Meeting—Jan. 17, 1988,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., 1988-89, SL; WEFPJ, “Regional Meeting Minutes March 19, 1988,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., 1988-89, SL; WEFPJ, “Regional Minute Meetings,” April 30, 1988, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., 1988-89, SL; WEFPJ, “Regional Meeting—June 18, 1988,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., 1988-89, SL; WEFPJ, “Women’s Peace Encampment Regional Meeting August 21, 1988,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., 1988-89, SL. 48 “Dear Women of the Encampment,” March 2, 1987, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 5, Folder [Jan.-March 1987], SL; “To whom it may concern,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 5, Folder [Feb.-April 1989], SL; Sue Spinster, “Dear women,” April 13, 1989, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 5, Folder [Feb.-April 1989], SL. 49 “Dear Seneca Women,” May 20, 1986, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 10, Folder [Writings about Encampment, 1985- 87], SL. 50 See the notes in WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Handwritten Notes on A Various Topics, SL. These handwritten notes reveal that women worried that a lesbian subculture dominated Seneca and pushed away other women. They pondered how disparate visions and women could work together, what unity through difference actually meant, and they also worried about consensus decision-making stymieing the camp indefinitely as they debated the merits of their lack of leadership. 51 WEFPJ, “Camp Journal and Notes,” June 1, 1990, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Camp Journal + Notes [1983- 85, 1990-91], SL. See also WEFPJ, “Regional Meeting 14 March, 1987 Minutes,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., 1987, SL; WEFPJ, “Regional Meeting May 9, 1987,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., 1987, SL. 52 See WEFPJ, “Regional Meeting,” July 16, 1989, WEFPJ Papers, Series III Organizations, Box 7 of 26, Folder 7, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice 1983, n.d (Newsletter), SSC; WEFPJ, “Regional Meeting,” August 26, 1989, WEFPJ Papers, Series III Organizations, Box 7 of 26, Folder 7, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice 1983, n.d (Newsletter), SSC.

407 Greenham campers. Even as the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union disintegrated, clearly signaling the impending conclusion of the Cold War, Seneca campers persisted.53 They incorporated new, prescient issues into their protest, raising awareness for issues like single parenting and AIDs.54 By 1994, the camp had transitioned to “Women’s PeaceLand,” which participants defined as “an whose purpose was to promote and implement the principles of peace, nonviolence and anti-oppression.”55 However, in March of 2006, Seneca

County reclaimed the camp’s farmhouse and land due to back taxes, officially signaling the end of the Seneca’s Women Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice.56

Even in the late 1980s—and as the Cold War was concluding—Seneca galvanized more women’s peace camps, including one established near the University of Illinois-Urbana

Champagne (UI-UC).57 Yet unlike Seneca, the UI-UC installation did not protest nuclear weapons. Rather it focused on the then-more pertinent issue of sexual violence, illustrating how these women-only spaces, dogged in their determination to change the world one person at a time, mutated over time and reflected the women’s movement. The movement arose in the context of late ‘70s and ‘80s disarmament, environmentalism and feminist activism, yet at its

53 WEFPJ, “Regional Meeting—December 20, 1987,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., 1987, SL. 54 WEFPJ, “Dear Sisters,” March 22, 1988, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 8 “Women’s Encampment Newsletters and Mailings” 1986-88, n.d., SSC; WEFPJ, “Mothers and Others Connecting All, May 6-8, 1988,” Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 8 “Women’s Encampment Newsletters and Mailings” 1986-88, n.d., SSC; WEFPJ, “Camp Journal and Notes,” May 20, 1990, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Camp Journal + Notes [1983-85, 1990- 91], SL; WEFPJ, “Camp Journal and Notes,” June 1, 1990, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Camp Journal + Notes [1983-85, 1990-91], SL; WEFPJ, “Camp Journal and Notes,” December 30-31, 1990, WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Camp Journal + Notes [1983-85, 1990-91], SL; WEFPJ, “Regional Meeting 5 April, 1987 Minutes,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., 1987, SL; WEFPJ, “Radical Spirit Gathering 12-18 July,” WEFPJ Papers, Carton 1, Folder Minutes, Agendas, etc., 1987, SL. 55 “Welcome to the Peace Encampment Herstory Project,” PeaceCampHerstory, accessed January 30, 2016, http://peacecampherstory.blogspot.com/. 56 Ibid. The Seneca Army Depot (SAD) was approved for base realignment and closure in 1995 and closed in 2000. 57 Susan Hills, “Encampment to End Sexual Violence,” free women’s words (Ann Arbor, Michigan) 2/2, August 1988, WEFPJ Papers, Series III Organizations, Box 7 of 26, Folder 7, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice 1983, n.d (Newsletter), SSC. See also Andrea Walsh, “A2 Women Resist,” free women’s words (Ann Arbor, Michigan), August 1988, WEFPJ Papers, SSC.

408 core, it provided a personally transformative experience for women. The call to action, whether it be nuclear weapons, environmental toxins or sexual violence, mattered less over time. Peace was only a pretext for women’s mobilization. It was their grand experiment of living feminism that proved the most meaningful—and problematic—for women. That the Seneca encampment officially lasted until 2006, long after the Cold War had ended and SAD served as a transshipment point, speaks to this point.58

The appeal and fate of Greenham and Seneca were not unique to these places but rather were shared by numerous other women’s peace camps, indicating the common promises, attraction and unworkability of the varied sites of the women’s movement. In May of 1983, Ms.

Magazine ran an article entitled “Peace Camps: A New Tactic for the ‘80s,” in which author Sue

Woodman explained that, “Since the Greenham Common protest began, a dozen or so peace camps have sprung up outside British military installations, another has been established outside the proposed Comiso cruise base in Sicily, and a U.S. peace camp is planned for this summer.”59

That August and again in December, additional Ms. articles reported women’s peace camps emerging in Europe and around America, suggesting an entire world of women mobilizing for peace.60 Most occurred near military or weapons facilities, and those in Europe, like the camp in

Comiso, Sicily, began after cruise and Pershing II missiles were expected to arrive in 1983 due to the 1979 NATO decision. Other camps appeared as well: at Puget Sound near the Boeing

Aerospace Center—a cruise missile production site—in Kent, Washington, at Bryant Park in

Manhattan for its visibility and at the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base near Tucson where tactical

58 “Welcome to the Peace Encampment Herstory Project,” PeaceCampHerstory, accessed January 30, 2016, http://peacecampherstory.blogspot.com/. 59 Sue Woodman, “Peace Camps: A New Tactic for the ‘80s,” Ms. Magazine, May 1983, 27. 60 Martha Nelson, “This Month: The Nation Mobilizes for Peace,” Ms. Magazine, August 1983, 83; Linda Bullard, “Who’s Mobilizing?” Ms. Magazine, August 1983, 86; Anne-Christine D’Adesky, “Peace Camps: A Worldwide Phenomenon,” Ms. Magazine, December 1983, 108.

409 missile squadrons trained for the Air Force. There was one at Clam Lake, Wisconsin, designed to protest the Navy’s Extra Low Frequency (ELF) radio transmitter project there. Another emerged at Savannah River Plutonium Production Plant in Aiken, South Carolina. Additional sites existed in Virginia, Arizona, Montana, San Francisco, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, West Germany,

Switzerland and Australia. The camps, the Ms. articles stressed, witnessed against missiles and concurrently acted as women’s communities committed to living philosophies of feminism and nonviolence: “[f]or each woman, the camp represents her concerns and lifestyle,” writer Anne-

Christine D’Adesky observed.61

Given their proliferation and popularity in the women’s movement, Saralee Hamilton, a longtime peace and feminist advocate, began to interview women active at these camps in the mid-1980s.62 What she uncovered reified D’Adesky’s point and universalized the experiences of

Greenham and Seneca to other encampments. Hamilton revealed that many women in America,

Britain and Europe left home, either temporarily or for a considerable period of time, to seek an alternative world established and managed exclusively by women.63 The pretext was the Cold

War, but women abstracted places like Greenham into something more significant for their sex.64

Linci Zee, for example, explained to Hamilton that Seneca permitted her to experience life

“within a living feminist entity,” in that “there is a real relationship between theory and

61 Anne-Christine D’Adesky, “Peace Camps: A Worldwide Phenomenon,” Ms. Magazine, December 1983, 108; WEFPJ, “Issues & Concerns Facing Seneca and Peace Camps in General,” April 12, 1985, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 7, Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Newsletters + Mailings 1983-85, SSC. 62 She was collecting research for an article in the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) Women’s Newsletter. 63 This interest in women-only, alternative, back-to-the-land living had been a trend in the U.S. since the mid-1970s with the rise of “culture feminism. The women’s movement of the late 1970s and 1980s inherited and adopted many of its philosophical tenets, namely a celebration of women’s difference, a stronger incorporation of lesbians and an interest in female-exclusive environments. See Evans, Tidal Wave, 143-158. 64 Saralee Hamilton, “Linda Buillard,” Saralee Hamilton Papers, Box 1 of 6, Folder Peace Camps Article Interviews 1, SSC; Saralee Hamilton, “Jean Larson—Stop Project ELF,” Saralee Hamilton Papers, Box 1 of 6, Folder Peace Camps Article Interviews 2, SSC; Saralee Hamilton, “Gail Derita,” Saralee Hamilton Papers, Box 1 of 6, Folder Peace Camps Article Interviews 1, SSC; Saralee Hamilton, “Roxanne Elder + Janice Heine,” Saralee Hamilton Papers, Box 1 of 6, Folder Peace Camps Article Interviews 2, SSC; Saralee Hamilton, “Kali Rose/Savannah River Camp,” Saralee Hamilton Papers, Box 1 of 6, Folder Peace Camps Article Interviews 2, SSC.

410 practice.”65 “It’s incredibly exciting—I haven’t been able to leave,” she confessed. “I mean, it’s like, I can’t think of any other place I’d rather be, and it really comes from a feeling that this is really a different culture here. This is a really different society.”66 Admissions to Hamilton revealed the absence of men and ostensible leadership appealed to this demographic of women that saw such an atmosphere as galvanizing and fruitful.67 Even as women at times wished for a more internationally coordinated movement, that the camps never institutionalized mattered deeply to the women interviewed.68 All harmonized that peace camps provided a safe space for lesbians to come out and stay out in the 1980s.69

Still, Hamilton heard of many problems, as the narratives of Greenham and Seneca have also revealed. Implicit homophobia, questions of anarchy over structure and debates on creative actions emerged at and divided most camps.70 One woman assessed that the movement’s camps and actions were inaccessible, “partly because it was so symbolic and esoteric. It was very dramatic with all these puppets, but what the fuck is weaving a web going to do for anybody?”71

The movement’s civil disobedience and “managed-anarchy” signaled its distain for hierarchical

65 Saralee Hamilton, “Linci Zee,” Saralee Hamilton Papers, Box 1 of 6, Folder Peace Camps Article Interviews 3, SSC. 66 Ibid. 67 Saralee Hamilton, “Felice Yeskel,” Saralee Hamilton Papers, Box 1 of 6, Folder Peace Camps Article Interviews 3, SSC. 68 Saralee Hamilton, “Linda Buillard,” Saralee Hamilton Papers, Box 1 of 6, Folder Peace Camps Article Interviews 1, SSC. 69 Atlanta Lesbian Feminist Alliance, “Atatlanta: Weaving Our Lives,” November 1983, Joan E. Biren Papers, Box 39, Folder 1, Look to women for courage: research: Women’s Peace Camps: General 1982-84, SSC; Saralee Hamilton, “Pam Costain/ Minneapolis WAMM,” Saralee Hamilton Papers, Box 1 of 6, Folder Peace Camps Article Interviews 1, SSC. 70 Saralee Hamilton, “Zoe Nicholai/Minnesota Women’s Peace Camp,” Saralee Hamilton Papers, Box 1 of 6, Folder Peace Camps Article Interviews 2, SSC; Saralee Hamilton, “Pam Costain/ Minneapolis WAMM,” Saralee Hamilton Papers, Box 1 of 6, Folder Peace Camps Article Interviews 1, SSC; Saralee Hamilton, “Gail Derita,” Saralee Hamilton Papers, Box 1 of 6, Folder Peace Camps Article Interviews 1, SSC. See also Saralee Hamilton, “Roxanne Elder + Janice Heine,” Saralee Hamilton Papers, Box 1 of 6, Folder Peace Camps Article Interviews 2, SSC; Saralee Hamilton, “Kali Rose/Savannah River Camp,” Saralee Hamilton Papers, Box 1 of 6, Folder Peace Camps Article Interviews 2, SSC. 71 Saralee Hamilton, “Felice Yeskel,” Saralee Hamilton Papers, Box 1 of 6, Folder Peace Camps Article Interviews 3, SSC.

411 leadership which, again, agreed with some women and disagreed with others who found it insensitive and unproductive.72

Monetarily and physically, the camps were limited, as women told Hamilton. Only so many women could fit physically on the parcels of land dedicated for peace—and only so many could afford it. As interviewees detailed, most long-term campers lacked familial and financial obligations outside of their peace protest, and everyone interviewed agreed that white, middle- class women comprised the bulk of permanent residents. From Greenham to Seneca, all struggled to genuinely incorporate and understand the needs of minority, low-income or rural women.73 Others noted how difficult it was to maintain the camp over years of existence. They wondered about the durability of a social movement contingent on building and maintaining primitive, outdoor settlements.74 Their remarks on racial and class exclusivity encompass the interminable discussions at the camps throughout the 1980s over their lack of diversity. Before scholars had coined and cataloged “,” the women’s movement, primarily run by more privileged and educated white women, failed to understand and instead tokenized minority women.

From these problems with plurality, a few interviewees astutely extrapolated the major flaw inherent in their movement—that it could not realistically unite women by values of feminism, nonviolence and egalitarianism through their differences. Involved with the Wisconsin

72 Saralee Hamilton, “Zoe Nicholai/Minnesota Women’s Peace Camp,” Saralee Hamilton Papers, Box 1 of 6, Folder Peace Camps Article Interviews 2, SSC. 73 Saralee Hamilton, “Roxanne Elder + Janice Heine,” Saralee Hamilton Papers, Box 1 of 6, Folder Peace Camps Article Interviews 2, SSC; Saralee Hamilton, “Linda Buillard,” Saralee Hamilton Papers, Box 1 of 6, Folder Peace Camps Article Interviews 1, SSC; Saralee Hamilton, “Your Name is Colette,” Saralee Hamilton Papers, Box 1 of 6, Folder Peace Camps Article Interviews 2, SSC; Saralee Hamilton, “Jean Larson—Stop Project ELF,” Saralee Hamilton Papers, Box 1 of 6, Folder Peace Camps Article Interviews 2, SSC; Saralee Hamilton, “Linci Zee,” Saralee Hamilton Papers, Box 1 of 6, Folder Peace Camps Article Interviews 3, SSC; Saralee Hamilton, “Felice Yeskel,” Saralee Hamilton Papers, Box 1 of 6, Folder Peace Camps Article Interviews 3, SSC; Saralee Hamilton, “Sheri Scott/Women’s Peace Presence to Stop Project ELF,” Saralee Hamilton Papers, Box 1 of 6, Folder Peace Camps Article Interviews 2, SSC. 74 Saralee Hamilton, “Zoe Nicholai/Minnesota Women’s Peace Camp,” Saralee Hamilton Papers, Box 1 of 6, Folder Peace Camps Article Interviews 2, SSC.

412 peace camp, Jean Larson suggested as much. “We were really defeating ourselves by trying to force ourselves into one model, one style, and that in fact what we needed is … to see beyond our differences.”75 So did Sherri Scott, another participant at the Wisconsin site, when she realized that “…we’re not all just going to fly right into this wonderful unity because we are women.”76 Kali Rose, who stayed at the Savannah River Peace Encampment near the nuclear power plant not far from Augusta, Georgia, also noted the futility of trying to fit all women into one box. Disappointed with the reductive stereotyping that accompanied women’s peace camps, she quipped, “We’re either jumping over fences or we’re mothers nurturing the world.”77

Notably, most women, as Hamilton interviewed them, had moved on from peace camp life, yet they remained politically active.78 Participation in the movement had empowered and motivated them.79 Jill Smith, from the Philadelphia Women’s Peace Encampment, explained that

“…[the movement] been a vehicle for me to explore my feminism and then act upon it.”80 Yet beyond her personal transformation, she pondered how many women they had genuinely impacted. Andrea Doremus too, one of the leaders and maintainers of Seneca, noted fewer and fewer campers as the years passed. By the mid-1980s, she counted only thirty or so women

75 Saralee Hamilton, “Jean Larson—Stop Project ELF,” Saralee Hamilton Papers, Box 1 of 6, Folder Peace Camps Article Interviews 2, SSC. 76 Saralee Hamilton, “Sheri Scott/Women’s Peace Presence to Stop Project ELF,” Saralee Hamilton Papers, Box 1 of 6, Folder Peace Camps Article Interviews 2, SSC. 77 Saralee Hamilton, “Kali Rose/Savannah River Camp,” Saralee Hamilton Papers, Box 1 of 6, Folder Peace Camps Article Interviews 2, SSC. 78 Saralee Hamilton, “Zoe Nicholai/Minnesota Women’s Peace Camp,” Saralee Hamilton Papers, Box 1 of 6, Folder Peace Camps Article Interviews 2, SSC. 79 Saralee Hamilton, “Pam Costain/ Minneapolis WAMM,” Saralee Hamilton Papers, Box 1 of 6, Folder Peace Camps Article Interviews 1, SSC. 80 Saralee Hamilton, “Jill Smith/ Phila Women’s Peace Encampment,” Saralee Hamilton Papers, Box 1 of 6, Folder Peace Camps Article Interviews 3, SSC. The Philadelphia Women’s Peace Encampment was not a physical camp like the others; rather, after some women from Philadelphia had been to and were inspired by Seneca, they started an organization in their hometown centered on street theater, direct action and public education about nuclear weapons and other violence- or military-based issues.

413 present during the week, in contrast to the 10,000 Seneca attracted during its first summer. “I feel like the Peace Movement has forgotten about us, to be honest,” she confessed.81

Conclusions

The quandaries and fates of the peace camps and many organizations of the women’s movement signaled its slow end. Yet it would be erroneous to assume that its decline meant a total lack of impact. While undoubtedly the movement itself did not end the Cold War, many of its participants felt organizing, especially with other women, was personally transformative. As individualized as this outcome was, it still mattered for those women, as meaningful friendships do, and additionally spurred some on to future activism. Indeed, several conferences, seminars and summits toward the end of the Cold War indicated women’s growing activism on the international stage and the continuation of the movement’s ethos of international dialogue.

On the invitation of the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF), the

World Congress of Women convened in June of 1987 in Moscow. Female delegates from around the world met in this time of nuclear disarmament. The congress—intended to foster cooperation and understanding among women—discussed how to implement the strategies set forward by

World Conference of the U.N. Decade for Women in Nairobi which had convened two years prior. With the tag line, “Toward 2000: without nuclear weapons! For Peace, Equality,

Development,” the meeting drew over one hundred fifty women, many from organizations like the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), Women’s Action for New

81 Saralee Hamilton, “Seneca—Andrew Doremus,” Saralee Hamilton Papers, Box 1 of 6, Folder Peace Camps Article Interviews 1, SSC.

414 Directions (WAND) and Women Against Military Madness (WAMM), who were already involved in peace, anti-racism, labor, education, and feminism.82

In late spring of 1988, around two hundred fifty peace activists met Gorbachev for the 2nd

International Dnieper Peace Cruise. Beginning in Moscow and moving to Kiev and then Odessa in the Ukraine, the cruise was hosted by the Soviet Peace Committee (SPC) and attracted representatives of peace organizations from twenty-six countries, including nine women from the non-profit Women for a Meaningful Summit (WMS). Growing from the momentum and presence it had established at the 1985 peace talks in Geneva, WMS resurfaced again in the late

‘80s to support the INF Treaty and to urge the conclusion and observation of the Strategic Arms

Reductions (START) and Anti-Ballistics Missile (ABM) Treaties. Sayre Sheldon, president emeritus of Women’s Action for New Directions, along with notable women such as the First

Lady of Greece Margarita Papandreou and , read a petition written by WMS during the week-long peace meeting. It articulated the importance of including women’s special skills in negotiation and conflict resolution. The statement also echoed the women’s movement stance on militarism, arguing military resources should be redirected to global social, environmental and human rights needs. WMS called for additional “détente from below”—for everyday citizen initiatives in the end of the Cold War, writing, “Women’s common experiences provide a valuable model for international cooperation and understanding.”83

82 “World Congress of Women,” Peace Collection, Series III Organizations, World Congress of Women, Box 26 of 26, Folder World Congress of Women—Moscow June 19, SSC. 83 “Statement by Women Participating in the 2nd International Dnieper River Peace Cruise in the USSR, Hosted by the Soviet Peace Committee,” May 30, 1988, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Folder Int’l Dreiper River Cruise, 1988, SSC. For more on this peace summit, see “Professor Sheldon at the Summit,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Folder Int’l Dreiper River Cruise, 1988, SSC; Sayre Sheldon, “A Second Revolution?” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Folder Int’l Dreiper River Cruise, 1988, SSC; “International Dnieper Peace Cruise,” booklet, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Folder Int’l Dreiper River Cruise, 1988, SSC; Sayre Sheldon, “Dear Editor,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Folder Int’l Dreiper River Cruise, 1988, SSC; “WMS To Present Peace Platform to Superpower Leaders in Moscow,”

415 Additional women’s conferences grew from preceding events like the Soviet Women’s

Peace Seminar in Leningrad in 1984. In late summer of 1989, the Soviet Women’s Committee

(SWC) organized the “First International Conference on Women, Peace, and the Environment” in Moscow in which over one hundred representatives from women’s organizations in Europe and America gathered to articulate—in rhetoric that echoed the Women and Life on Earth

(WLOE) conference almost a decade earlier—women’s role for a more peaceful, ecological world. Their call to action included natural preservation, the cessation of all nuclear testing and the need for global environmentalism, in the ethos that nations needed to siphon money away from militaries and towards “ecological security programs.”84

Some organizations persisted too, notably Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament

(WAND) which later became Women’s Action for New Directions (WAND) upon the Cold

War’s end. Broadening their focus beyond the U.S.-U.S.S.R. arms race, WAND still exists,

“committed to empowering women to affect legislation on nuclear weapons, the military budget and war.”85 Moreover and obviously, women’s efforts in peace, environmentalism and feminism

Sayre Sheldon Papers, Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Folder Int’l Dreiper River Cruise, 1988, SSC; “Women’s Peace Platform for the Summit,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Folder Int’l Dreiper River Cruise, 1988, SSC; “Programme,” Sayre Sheldon Papers, Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Folder Int’l Dreiper River Cruise, 1988, SSC. 84 Vera Soboleva, “Dear Friends,” August 28, 1989, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 1 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder Soviet Women’s Chee Conference (Leningrad), 1984, SSC. 85 “History of WAND,” WAND Education Fund RSS, accessed January 10, 2016, http://www.wand.org/about/brief- history-of-wand/. According to WAND’s Bulletin in the Winter/Spring of 1986, they switched names to Women’s Action for New Directions, stressing the variety of directions that women’s activism needed to take to truly achieve peace in the world (meaning they argued that women’s political activism needed to target a variety of peace- and development-related topics). For more on WAND’s continual activism—especially in getting elected representatives who prioritized peace and in empowering women to be grassroots and elected activists—through and after the end of the Cold War, see Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament (hereafter WAND), “The Work of WAND,” Summer 1988, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 2 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder July Board Meetings, SSC; WAND, “WAND Brochure,” Summer 1988, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 2 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder July Board Meetings, SSC; Beverly Droz, “Dear Ms. Brooke,” November 28, 1986, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 2 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder July Board Meetings, SSC; WAND, “WAND Affiliate Update,” March and April 1988, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 2 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder July Board Meetings, SSC; Sayre Sheldon, “The Lessons of 1986,” WAND Bulletin, Summer 1986, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 2 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder 86-87, SSC; “National Polices, Global Connections,” WAND Bulletin, Winter/Spring 1986, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 2 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder 86-87, SSC; “Getting the Message,” WAND Bulletin, Fall 1986, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 2 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder

416 did not die with the fall of the Berlin Wall or the end of this particular women’s movement. Dr.

Helen Caldicott still advocates for environmental and nuclear issues; her latest book, Crisis without End: The Medical and Ecological Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear Catastrophe, came out in 2014. But there no longer exists a cohesive or identifiable “feminist peace movement” or “women’s ecology movement,” as participants tagged their actions throughout the late 1970s and the 1980s. The years during which the movement for “women and life on earth” thrived—bookended and marked by the four U.N. Conferences on Women in 1975, 1980, 1985 and 1995—provided the perfect storm of a revived Cold War, several pressing environmental disasters and heightened international attention on the status of women. These developments encouraged tens of thousands of women to organize for what they saw as the inseparable issues of peace, ecology and feminism.

This story is an account of one social movement. As described, it had endemic problems with racial and class inclusivity, homophobia, ideological dogmatism and structureless organization. For sure, though, these kinds of organizational issues were problems that other social movements had as well. Contemporaneous anti-nuclear energy groups, countercultural environmentalists and radical pacifists, for instance, also advanced a certain lifestyle, very specific ideas on nonhierarchical structure and saw themselves on moral high ground above conventional political channels and the state. They too suffered from utopian expectations, allergies to long-lasting strategy and disagreements over ideas at the heart of their protest. Other social movements, like this women’s movement, also tried to unite a variety of people under some kind of umbrella or coalition. For the New Left, it was students. For the American civil rights movement, it was Blacks alongside liberal whites who argued separate but equal was not

86-87, SSC; “Getting the Message,” WAND Bulletin, Fall 1986, Sayre Sheldon Papers, Box 2 of 4, Unprocessed, Folder 86-87, SSC.

417 equal. For the modern environmental movement, it was anyone concerned about the untold human impact on the world around them. And in many of these movements, unity around certain ideas and goals did not prevent disagreement, or even the ultimate disintegration of these campaigns.

Yet this story of women “for life on earth” stands differently. Unlike any of the other aforementioned mobilizations of people, this women’s movement required the participation of all women and stipulated the exclusion of the other half of the human species. During and immediately after the second wave of feminism, from the ‘60s to the ‘90s, many Western women believed that unity based on their sex was a solid platform and program for advancing and empowering women’s lives. What other social movement and political philosophy, other than feminism, has prescribed such an extreme, almost unfathomable plan of action? Has there ever been a movement of all men?

To an extent, we must sympathize with these women who tried to build a movement that united them all. Their efforts suggest that such a project of gender solidarity resonated with an extraordinary number of women then. It indicated, as Fay Weldon commented in 2000 in the

Independent, the power of gender and the entrenched sexism of these years, which prompted women to want to organize on their own.86 For the years that this dissertation covers, women powerfully expanded the feminist critique of violence to include military implications and drew heavily from the burgeoning environmental movement. Claiming it was women’s turn to reroute the world toward a sustainable and ecological way of life, these anchors to disarmament and environmentalism promised feminists a new, potentially successful way to unify women, and also signaled women’s rising place in national and geopolitics as they demanded that major

86 Fay Weldon, “Goodbye and thank you, Greenham women. We owe you,” The Independent, January 2, 2000, Jayne and Juliet Nelson Papers (Ref Np. 7JAN), Box 1, WL.

418 world decisions should include their voices.

Yet, now decades removed from this movement and now of a different generation of women, we must also critique the movement’s ambitions and failures, for they speak loudly of problems with recent feminism. For one, the women that advocated essentialist ideas about their sex—their nurturance, their conflict resolution, their empathy—reinforced reductive, and frankly untrue, ideas about what it is to be female. Historiography over the past three decades has revealed the myriad ways in which, yes, women have been oppressed throughout time but also the instances in which women have been complicit in imperialism, racism, nation-building, war and other projects of violence. We better understand in what ways women were implicated in oppressing and ‘othering,’ just as much as men. But, at the end of the Cold War, the women’s movement did not have access to this literature. It had not yet been written. History available to them instead only showed women as victims of power structures or intrepid agents of change.

We know more now, to the point that very few women today would agree with the idea that women have been and are ‘the moral’ sex. That movement that arose among women in the mid-

70s could not have arisen today; we do not believe the same things anymore. There is little if any felt unity between women on the basis of shared values, biology or experiences just because they are women. Now 2016, with a presidential election looming, there is the very real possibility that we could see our first female president. Yet, unlike in the ‘70s and ‘80s, women today do not rally behind a powerful woman merely because of her sex. Women do not assume or feel some kind of instant solidarity and comfort by the presence of another woman, even one that leads a nation.

Differences between men and women are forever debatable, and arguing over them tirelessly recycles old arguments. The women’s movement of the late ‘70s and ‘80s alienated

419 many women, and undoubtedly men who were interested in disarmament and ecology, by its intransigent belief in women’s moral superiority and difference to men. Women’s insistence on these ideas in the late 20th century has not helped future generations to move beyond constraining notions of traditional womanhood and manhood. Women still feel the pressure that their sex is supposed to be nurturing, mature and oriented towards peace at home and in the state. In the midst of heightened awareness of sexual violence on campuses and ongoing police brutality towards ‘aggressive’ Black men, men still deal with the label of ‘aggressor’—its employment sometimes horribly true and, for Black men, usually horribly stereotypical and racialized.

Despite the persistence of these ideas and how they pressure women and men, most women today reject the assumption of a ‘moral, civilized’ female as old-fashioned, and many men have little recourse or knowledge of how to fight and change their gender stereotype in meaningful ways. These constructions of men and women, and that feminism has for several decades been a movement for women only, means that feminism continues to forget about men and its impact on them.

Importantly, the second wave of feminism critiqued repressive family and gender structures and entrenched sexism. Women live in a better world today than they did half a century ago. And when comparing feminism to other social movements like environmentalism or even civil rights, it seems that women’s equality has had a lot more to unpack. We have to accept that not all women are alike and not all are feminists either. After all, what do we make of a

“pro-life feminist?” Confusing contradictions aside, feminists—as this dissertation describes— have tried to disrupt repressive power structures in which personal, intimate topics and experiences are at stake. Feminists have also attached a lot of individual meaning to their activism, in ways that environmentalists, for instance, do not. Women of different generations

420 are nostalgic for and defensive of the gains or losses they made, and these feelings hinder solidarity between women. Clear ideas of where women have been and where we are going are hard to come by in the midst of such emotional attachment. Other social movements and philosophies avoid this.

The second wave of feminism left us with the inadequate notion that the shared identity of “woman” would advance women’s liberation and cause effective change. It also failed to genuinely include a variety of women’s experiences in the category “woman,” and castigated men as unworthy to be feminists. That the women’s movement of the late Cold War years continued these problematic traditions suggests a longer trajectory of the second wave than just the ‘60s and ‘70s. Feminism’s dogmatism, proselytizing and exclusivity from the late 20th century also lingers and disaffects many today. It is a time when young women declare, “I’m a feminist, but…” and young men feel upset and alienated at the very mention of the word. As

Wendy Kline describes in her epilogue to Bodies of Knowledge, there is no robust feminist movement today. What we have instead are individual women constantly looking to improve themselves, unable to imagine some kind of collective strategy of revolt with other women.87

Criticism aside, the story of this movement is an important narrative to add to our existing knowledge and interpretations of recent history. For one, the movement’s existence helps to dislodge the assumption that nothing radical or politically left occurred in the West in the late ‘70s and ‘80s. It also suggests a longer, temporal trajectory for second-wave feminism in

America but also in Britain and Western Europe, regardless of the very real national differences between these women. It shows that problematic ideas and attitudes associated with women’s liberation of the ‘60s and ‘70s lasted longer and are more endemic than we might have thought.

87 Wendy Kline, Bodies of Knowledge: Sexuality, Reproduction, and Women's Health in the Second Wave (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).

421 Knowledge of women’s disarmament activism additionally contributes to Cold War history by showing the permeability of the Iron Curtain and women as a vocal minority of citizen diplomats actively traversing it. Indeed, the story moved from America to Britain and Europe because

American voices in the movement constantly referred to “their sisters” at Greenham Common and elsewhere across .

Women’s history has evolved greatly over the past four decades. Thinking about social constructions of gender, sexuality, the body and the family have helped historians move beyond the essentialism of early scholarship on women and even question the category “woman.”

Women have become relevant to and included in a variety of historical fields. These new categories like gender have allowed us to track different kinds of women, power relations and cultural norms across a variety of borders in important political, cultural and social developments. For example, we now understand feminism and suffragism as transnational movements that often intersected with liberal projects of state-building. This has prompted us to better notice the contradictions and intricacies at play with feminist and women’s history—like that many Western feminists might have expressed solidarity with all women but also exhibited racist, paternalistic behavior. Indeed, the issue of Western white women misunderstanding feminists of color is nothing new to the late 20th century. Historical knowledge of women of color and their perspectives continues to grow, largely thanks to these categories of gender, sexuality—and especially the body, one of the most powerful paradigms for women’s history to deal with. Analyzing gender has better revealed women’s place in the modern state, given that a white, male, bourgeois political culture and normal gender order were at the heart of many liberal democracies. This excluded women, set their citizenship with different obligations and incentivized them to politically organize along the lines of gender. Similarly, these categories

422 have illuminated that many oppressions like racism and imperialism were maintained through hierarchies that feminized, racialized, sexualized and ‘othered’ nonwhite populations, especially women.

In all of these ways, then, women’s history has been enriched through new perspectives.

It is thus important to continue to consider, like this dissertation has, the transnational networks and movements among women and the—often contradictory—power dynamics inherent in these relationships. We need to continue to interrogate Western feminism within liberal democracies and developing countries, especially analyzing how the category of “woman” was deployed. We should ask where and how women, their bodies, ideas and feminisms traveled in the last days of the Cold War and the new global order thereafter. Recent women’s history like “Women and

Life on Earth” can help challenge certain assumptions—that nothing radically left happened in the late 20th century—and help us see how something very political like the Cold War also had very personal, intimate consequences and meaning for many women.

There is much nostalgia, memory and legacy from past women and feminists that needs to be untangled and dealt with. Today, feminism’s successes and failures are apparent, as is the influence of past feminists and the high stakes they placed on having their stories told in a certain way. It is hard to write about the recent past. But women’s history has an exciting opportunity to intersect with modern-day feminism. The individuals that this dissertation covers were part of a different generation of women, one with a limited understanding of women’s history and one in which ideas of gender solidarity still seemed like a good idea. Today, women and women’s historians have access to a more robust scholarship on feminism—including knowledge of its past trappings and limitations described in this dissertation. My hope is that this recent history helps us craft an improved feminism that better navigates difference between women and

423 includes men.

424

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Bailey, Beth. “She ‘Can Bring Home the Bacon’: Negotiating Gender in Seventies America.” In America in the Seventies, edited by Beth Bailey and David Farber, 107-128. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004.

Black, Allida. “Are Women ‘Human’? The UN and the Struggle to Recognize Women’s Rights as Human Rights.” In The Human Rights Revolution: An International History, edited by Akira Iriye, Petra Goedde, and William Hitchcock, 133-155. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Capozzola, Christopher. “‘It Makes You Want to Believe in the Country’: Celebrating the Bicentennial in an Age of Limits.” In America in the Seventies, edited by Beth Bailey and David Farber, 29-49. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004.

Cornell, Andrew. “The Movement for a New Society: Consensus, Prefiguration, and Direct Action.” In The Hidden 1970s: Histories of Radicalism, edited by Dan Berger, 231-249. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2010.

Cowie, Jefferson. “‘Vigorously Left, Right, and Center:’ The Cross-Currents of Working-Class America in the 1970s.” In America in the Seventies, edited by Beth Bailey and David Farber, 75-106. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004

Donert, Celia. “Whose Utopia? Gender, Ideology, and Human Rights at the 1975 World Congress of Women in East Berlin.” In The Breakthrough: Human Rights in the 1970s, edited by Jan Eckel and Samuel Moyn, 68-87. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.

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Farber, David. “The Torch Had Fallen.” In America in the Seventies, edited by Beth Bailey and David Farber, 9-28. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004.

Farrell, Amy. “Attentive to Difference: Ms. Magazine, Coalition Building, and Sisterhood.” In Feminist Coalitions: Historical Perspectives on Second-Wave Feminism in the United States, edited by Stephanie Gilmore, 48-62. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.

Ferree, Myra Marx. “Globalization and Feminism: Opportunities and Obstacles for Activism in the Global Arena.” In Global Feminism: Transnational Women’s Activism, Organizing and Human Rights, edited by Myra Marx Ferree and Aili Mari Tripp, 3-23. New York and London: New York University Press, 2006.

Gettleman, Marvin. “We Didn’t Know It Would Be So Hard: The Short Instructive History of the US New Left.” In New Left, New Right and Beyond: Taking the Sixties Seriously, edited by Geoff Andrews, Richard Cockett, Alan Hooper and Michael Williams, 51-65. New York: St. Martin’s Press, Inc., 1999.

Gibbs, Lois. “Citizen Activism for Environmental Health: The Growth of a Powerful New Grassroots Health Movement.” In Echoes from the Poisoned Well: Global Memories of Environmental Injustice, edited by Sylvia Hood Washington, Paul C. Roiser and Heather Goodall, 3-16. Lanham, Boulder, New York, Toronto and Oxford: Lexington Books, 2006.

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La Ware, Margaret L. “Circling the Missiles and Staining Them Red: Feminist Rhetorical Invention and Strategies of Resistance at the Women’s Peace Camp at Greenham Common.” National Women’s Studies Association Journal 16, no. 3 (Fall 2004): 18-41.

Lee, Christopher J. “The Rise of Third World Diplomacy Success and Its Meanings at the 1955 Asian-African Conference in Bandung, Indonesia.” In Foreign Policy Breakthroughs: Cases in Successful Diplomacy, edited by Robert Hutchings and Jeremi Suri, 47-71. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Leistyna, Pepi. “Horton Hears a Who: Lessons from the Highlander Folk School in the Era of Globalization.” In Grappling with Diversity: Readings on Civil Rights Pedagogy and Critical Multiculturalism, edited by Susan Schramm-Pate and Rhonda B. Jeffries, 57-74. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008.

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Rubinson, Paul. “‘For Our Soviet Colleagues’: Scientific Internationalism, Human Rights, and the Cold War.” In The Human Rights Revolution: An International History, edited by Akira Iriye, Petra Goedde, and William Hitchcock, 245-264. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Shannon, Kelly J. “The Right to Bodily Integrity: Women’s Rights as Human Rights and the International Movement to End Female Genital Mutilation.” In The Human Rights Revolution: An International History, edited by Akira Iriye, Petra Goedde, and William Hitchcock, 285-310. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Snyder, Margaret. “Unlikely Godmother: The UN and the Global Women’s Movement.” In Global Feminism: Transnational Women’s Activism, Organizing and Human Rights, edited by Myra Marx Ferree and Aili Mari Tripp, 24-50. New York and London: New York University Press, 2006. 441

Stites, Richard. “The Russian Revolution and Women.” In Connecting Spheres: European Women in a Globalizing World, 1500 to the Present, Second Edition, edited by Marilyn J. Boxer and Jean H. Quataert, 295-313. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

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Tripp, Aili Mari. “The Evolution of Transnational Feminisms: Consensus, Conflict, and New Dynamics.” In Global Feminism: Transnational Women’s Activism, Organizing and Human Rights, edited by Myra Marx Ferree and Aili Mari Tripp, 51-75. New York and London: New York University Press, 2006.

Tucker, Richard P. “The International Environmental Movement and the Cold War.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Cold War, edited by Richard H. Immerman and Petra Goode, 565-583. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Welch, Christina. “The Spirituality of, and at, Greenham Common Peace Camp.” 18, no. 2 (January 2010): 230-248.

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