INTRODUCTION
As the crowd loudly cheered, "Go Grannies Go," a group of older women stepped into the British Columbia Legislature Building and onto the public scene: the briefs they wanted to present at the hearing on uranium mining were contained in a laundry basket, a clothesline of female underwear. This humorous action at the end of February 1987 marks the entry on the BC political scene of a unique grassroots phenomenon. The Raging Grannies have since become a Canadian institution of protest. They challenge stereotypes and authorities with disarming smiles, an arsenal of witty satirical songs, and a dynamic imagination for theatrical actions that put their concerns front and centre. The creation of a new cultural figure across a country as vast and diverse as Canada and the claiming of public space by older women in a society that accords little value to women or age, are among their achievements. Feminist theoreticians and historians Adrienne Rich, Gerda Lerner, Joan Scott, and Sheila Rowbotham, among others, have demonstrated the usefulness of 'woman' as an analytical category of investigation yet also warned us against the crippling effect of seeing women only as victims. Although feminists have started reclaiming women's accomplishments from the past, including collective resistance in different places and times, Dale Spender cautions us:
While we are prepared to put much energy into reclaiming women from the distant past, our record is not so good when it comes to preserving our more recent heritage. In fact, we have sometimes been careless about the way we have discarded that very heritage.1
While there is a plethora of articles about the Raging Grannies, since their colourful, humorous and, at times, daring actions attract media attention, no comprehensive work, recording their vibrant activism, exists. This book is an attempt to preserve the recent heritage of this group of creative and daring protesters. The Raging Grannies and their creation of a new, resistant, and seemingly enduring popular figure for the purpose of political education deserve attention.
Women's Courage, Invisibility, and Resistance
Women's courage is ancient: women fought against slavery and offered shelter to hunted runaways, demanded economic justice for the starving or working poor (McAllister 1991), raised their voices when rights were trampled, raised their fists when their children were murdered. Women's collective acts of resistance have played, and continue to play, a vital but often unacknowledged role in humanising social, political, and economic policies. To death, danger, and oppression, women have frequently responded in life-affirming ways, contributions concealed in invisibility and silence for too long. Invisibility and the absence of women as a force to be reckoned with are conditions necessary for the preservation of patriarchy (Spender). There is a subtly denigrating myth that women have done little worthy of inclusion in the historical record (Anderson and Zinsser). "Lying is done with words, and also with silence," wrote Adrienne Rich (1979); kings and popes populate history books but of women, little is said. "Not having a history truly matters," says Gerda Lerner: without stories of resistance and opposition we internalise patriarchy's ideology and pass its rules to the following generation.2The semblance of superiority of patriarchal thought comes not from any superiority in content, form or achievement over all other thought but is "built on the systematic silencing of other voices."3 Those silenced voices have been women's voices and in this silence the "unnatural nature of patriarchy and the challenges against it are lost as are the topics of a woman-centered history."4 The silence extends to adult education as Shauna Butterwick points out:
Marginalization and invisibility of women--their contributions and experiences as organisers, leaders, educators and learners/participants--has unfortunately been evident in the foundational literature of adult education.5
Other adult educators also suggest that women's contributions are overlooked or undervalued.
Yet, in the "dangerous nooks and crannies of women's lives" we find a creativity that seeks all possible crevices for its expression (Davis in Cameron 11). In spite of women's various experiences of oppression, feminism celebrates women's strengths and resistance strategies. In fact:
Feminist scholarship has uncovered the repetitive quality of women's resistance down through the years. We are beginning to recognise that rejection of knowledge about the lives of the preceding generation of women is part of the problem.6
Focussing on stories of women's resistance and agency dispels notions of passivity and quiet acceptance. These stories are what Sharon Welch calls dangerous memories, powerful because made of suffering, defiance, and hope. Stories empower us, stimulate our imaginations, lift us out of isolation, and incite us to action (McAllister 1988). Reclaiming women's stories of courageous and creative protest offers recognition for their efforts, but also serves to inspire others with practical examples. This heritage of courage and creativity is a necessary inheritance in a world desperate for notions of political action that require both defiance of oppression and respect for life. Resistance is a blend of confrontation and caring, fiercely opposing oppression while intensely working for social and political justice. Sheila Rowbotham asserts that there is no beginning to women's defiance, that women resisted all along but their resistance took different shapes, which have been ignored in the historical record.
A contemporary face of this resistance is the activism of some older women who, sadly, have been invisible not only to society in general but until recently to feminists as well. Phyllis Cunningham reports bell hooks' challenge to feminism to "widen its analysis to explicate the diversity and complexity of the female experience" (1996: 143). A look at wise meddlesome Crones who make the world their business and confront abuse of power, greed, and thoughtlessness is part of that broadening project:
The Crone does not participate in the politics of reform…She is distinguished by her ability to dream dreams and conjure up visions for the survival of the Web, weaving into the fabric a lively wit that refuses to take seriously the small mind, loaded with the self-righteous hyperbole, or conversely, the professional academic drowning in self-analysis. Her instinct for survival is at gut level, she has solved the problems of want by wanting little, possessions have little value to the true Crone. She lives to live, to speculate and to risk, she will not be found in the nest of privileged security or at the table of greed or envy, she has pared her life down to the minimum. She will speak for peace but not expect it, speak for love, but not bet on it, speak for harmony among women knowing how far off is the reality, but she will speak, for she is a spinner of possibilities, a teller of truths too long avoided.7
Raging Grannies: Canadian Crones in Action
A Canadian example of Crones is the Raging Grannies. Warren Magnusson, professor of political science at the University of Victoria, called the Raging Grannies a "brilliant example of a group acting out their protests" and using their credibility as grandmothers to "undercut the legitimacy of military violence, corporate greed, and governmental insensitivity" (1996: 93-94). Consistently using wit and humour, they created a new cultural figure that challenges various authorities as well as stereotypes of older women, and engages in the education of authorities and the public on various issues. The voice of wisdom wants to be heard. The Grannies' distinctive approach is surprisingly popular and effective: in sixteen years, more than fifty groups of Raging Grannies exist across Canada, in the United States, and as far away as Australia and Greece, where Greek Grannies appropriately call themselves the Furies. Their popularity reveals the desire of older women, and of the younger women who join them, to claim their space on the political scene, a noteworthy achievement given the invisibility elder women face in our society. While the Raging Granny figure does play on the idea of older women and while many Raging Grannies are elderly and deserve recognition for their example of enduring activism, some Raging Grannies are young women who find the Granny an attractive and powerful symbol to identify with.This is an occasion to record the active participation and vibrant engagement of the Raging Grannies with the issues of their time. It is also an opportunity to strengthen the documentation of an existing knowledge creating process which, according to Budd Hall (2001), provides a context of continuity for women, for activists, and for adult educators; our transformative struggles deserve more attention. This, then, is an attempt to offer recognition to the Raging Grannies for the inspiration they provide and allow future generations to know that at a time when environmental destruction and war threatened, when the growing chasm between poor and rich endangered justice, these women stood up with wit, humour, daring, courageous irreverence, and songs to denounce government lies, corporate greed and short-sightedness, and sought to inspire hope, compassion, solidarity, and action. There are many threads in the tale of the Raging Grannies: their beginning and growth, the creation of their identity, the educational and daring potential of their activism, the values expressed in their actions and songs, and their impact on issues, stereotypes, media and people.
A Note on the Making of this Book
I interviewed thirty-six women from twelve groups in five regions of Canada, namely Maritimes, Quebec, Ontario, Prairies, British Columbia. Ten women were interviewed twice. While most of the interviews were done with single individuals, I also interviewed eleven women in five small groups of two or three (their choice). Interviews with six original Grannies were done in 1998 while interviews with thirty others were done between August 2001 and November 2003. All but three (whose interviews were not tape-recorded) received the transcript of their interview and had the opportunity to make corrections. All Grannies interviewed will be introduced individually at some point in the following pages. It has been such a pleasure!The telling of, listening to, affirmation of, reflecting on, and analysis of personal stories and experiences 'from the ground up' are potentially empowering action research strategies drawn from women's organising. --Patricia Maguire
Notes
1. Cited in Reinharz, Feminist Methods in Social Research, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992: 215.
2. Gerda Lerner, Why History Matters: Life and Thought, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997: 207, 208.
3. Gerda. Lerner, The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From Middle-ages to Eighteen-seventy, New York: Oxford University Press, 1993: 281.
4. Joyce Stalker, "Women and Adult Education: Rethinking Androcentric Research." Adult Education Quarterly: A Journal of Research and Theory in Adult Education 46(2) (1996): 103, 104.
5. Shawna Butterwick, "Lest we forget: Uncovering women's leadership in adult education," in Sue M. Scott, Bruce Spencer and Allan M. Thomas (Eds.), The Foundations of Adult Education in Canada: Second Edition (103-116). Toronto: Thompson Educational Publishing, 1998: 104, 105.
6. Baba Copper, Over the Hill: Reflections on Ageism Between Women, Freedom, California: The Crossing Press, 1988: 55.
7. Gert Beadle, "The nature of Crones," in Marilyn J. Bell (Ed.), Women as Elders: The Feminist Politics of Aging, New York: Harrington Park Press, 1986: xiii.