welcome to the PeaCe eNCaMPMeNT HeRSToRy PRoJeCT

HeRSToRy 108 Jasmine Laine Kramer

2009-04-19T08:09:00.000-07:00

Interviewed at her home in Tucson, AZ, November 18, 2008. Herstory yet to be transcribed.

HeRSToRy 100 Catherine Allport

2008-12-16T12:47:00.000-08:00

Interviewed at her home in Santa Fe, NM, November 7, 2008.

E: Catherine, could you tell us a little bit about where you were in 1983 and how you heard about the peace camp?

C: I had been living in Provincetown and I had been working on a book project as a photographer and I met someone who started talking to me about the peace camps in Europe and telling me that I needed to go there and photograph. So when my lease was up in June- I was only in Provincetown temporarily – I decided to go to and photograph the peace camp movement in Europe. And that was the era when there were demonstrations of nine hundred thousand, a million people in major cities in Europe to keep the and Cruise (1) and Pershing (2) missiles from coming to Europe under Ronald Reagan. And, so I went and I traveled the length and breadth of Europe hitchhiking. I hitchhiked twice from the top of Scotland to the boot of Italy by myself in that summer, so strong was my resolve to help in any way I could to stop this nuclear missile system from happening. So I went from the top of Scotland to the women’s camp in Comiso (3). I have great pictures of all of that, really beautiful stuff. And when I came back, my friend Andrea Kirsh picked me up at the airport and we drove to Seneca. And I stayed there. And it was an extension of this photography project, that was also very personal, obviously, to photograph what was happening in America as well. I loved it so much I ended up staying until October. So that’s what happened, that’s what I was doing.

E: . And over that summer, did you participate in actions?

C: Oh, totally. Basically I was documenting, photographing. But then I took on the assignment of Food Coordinator for the whole summer which was unbelievable. (laughter) So, I was responsible for and went all over the area, all the counties there, collecting free food, free tofu, free soy milk, free zucchinis. You remember the zucchinis (shared laughter)? Keeping the kitchen marginally together, you know, getting the crew together for dinner every single day. We would go through what was there and we would decide what was going to happen and my thing was that I was actually trying to educate about food at the same time and keep the food simple and, kind of Zen-like. I remember one rule that we had was no more than three ingredients in any particular supper, so that things stayed simple and the idea was that if we nurtured, nourished, ourselves on the highest level, that our activism and our actions would really benefit the harvest that we were trying to reap, which it did in the end, actually. We were trying to infiltrate food combining information into it because you remember how chaotic it could become and I was there all the time trying to get it to be simple and organized and clean-all that stuff. So that was a huge main job that I did for the whole summer. I remember raising my hand in one of those early circles for who would like to be Food Coordinator and I remember my hand going up as if it was a puppet on a string (laughter). Who said that? (laughter) So I kind of stayed out of jail because I always had my camera with me. I did go over the fence and I remember at one point going over the fence and leaving my camera behind and getting arrested and spending a night or something like that in jail. I do remember that and handing my camera off to somebody and just going over the fence once and I was there for every action practically, up and down that road photographing. But I felt more like a support person, for the persons who were actually going over the fence all the time and I did a lot of support stuff food-wise, all that kind thing.

H: When you were doing your Europe tour and photographing, did you get involved with actions or coordinate things?

C: No, I didn’t do actions, I just photographed. I wasn’t coordinating any because I was moving around. I went to all the different women’s peace camps and there were many of them at that time and I traveled to all of them hitchhiking.

H: Prior to the Europe trip did you know that the peace camp at Seneca was in existence?

C: I knew it was being organized. I can’t remember where it first started, New York City? Do you remember?

H: Well the idea of it from what we’ve heard from women who talk about it is that the Pentagon actions were happening in ’80 and ’81 and they were very much germinating the idea.

C: I was involved in the Women’s Pentagon Actions (4). Yeah, definitely - surrounding the Pentagon, [making humming noise] making it disappear, and that kind of thing. [laughter] I was involved in that and I must have had an inkling because I was pretty plugged in at that time to all kinds of things and so I probably knew and I organized this trip to Europe – I think it was six weeks that I went to Europe and did this and then came back and, and had it all planned that I would be there for the opening of the Seneca Women’s Peace Encampment and I was there for the first day.

H: And when you arrived did you have a sense of how long you planned to stay or what would happen next?

C: No idea.

H: The photographs that you took across Europe, how did they become a part of your life or other people’s lives, or what happened with them?

C: Well, I remember, especially after Seneca, I did presentations and slideshows and publishing and all kinds of things. I can’t quite remember all of it now, but it was a very fertile, very active time for me. A lot of attention, a lot of action, with my work. It was a great time. I can’t remember all of that, I have it all upstairs though [laughter].

E: And at what point did you put the book (5) together?

C: I put the book together with Cristina [Biaggi, see Herstory 053] that fall, 1984. The peace camp, ended in October 1983 and then we worked on this. Cristina and I were living together at the time and we worked on this that fall and then we went to Nicaragua in 1984. That was intense. That was incredible, too. So all that came out of Seneca. It just never stopped for me – then I went to South Africa and for 10 years I worked on issues in South Africa. I was living in NYC but back and forth.

E: Were there relationships that you made at the camp that continued over a period of time?

C: Definitely, definitely. I think I met Betsy Bauer at the peace camp and she remains today one of my best friends. Laura Flanders is still a good friend of mine. Can’t remember if I met Satway there or if I knew Satway before. Samoa, I met there. I saw her for a long time until she moved here and then had a child and I’ve talked to her on the phone but I haven’t actually seen her since then. It certainly was very bonding for me and Cristina. Cassandra White - any number of women that I still see, but now because there’ve been so many experiences since then, I’m not quite sure, you know, was it Seneca? Or was it post-Seneca?

E: Is there anything you remember which you had gotten specifically from Seneca? Did anything change as far as your thinking or awareness?

C: I think that I was already in such awareness but I think it really deepened my commitment, my awareness. I’d been an activist for a long time, really since I was 14 years old, through the Vietnam War, through the feminist movement, through the gay movement, through the peace movement, lots of different movements coalescing, but Seneca certainly was very, very special. It was all women. It made a commitment, I think, to maintain, to be an activist and to stay an activist. And it was just so much fun, I mean, where else would you want to be? You know, if you knew about it, where else would you possibly, could you possibly want [laughter] to be.

H: Aside from being women, what about it was special or fun?

C: Everyday it was just a complete malarkey, I mean, every day living in a community like that, and it was an anarchist community, would you say? It was just so much fun. I mean, every day, every minute, it was fun.

E: What made it work? It was such an anarchistic community and yet we managed to do consensus, basically resolve some heavy-duty issues like the flag issue. What do you suppose happened or made that magic?

C: I think it was a wave that had a time and was a moment. Just like right now, we’re having the same kind of experience of how is this possibly happening- the Barack Obama phenomenon. It just has risen in the cultural landscape and that’s what happened back then, too, and it’s hard to remember because it’s not happening on that level now for us. Now, it might be happening for those young people who are involved in the anti-globalization campaigns or the animal rights campaigns or some of the other campaigns that are really happening right now. I think it has partly to do with the time of our lives that it was happening. I was in my early 30’s when that was happening and I can’t imagine doing it now. I really can’t, because it really was quite chaotic [laughter], you know, I’m not sure I could handle it. I would if there was something that had to happen, I would surely be there…, but, it took a certain kind of energy, I think, which is youthful. Which I think is what’s happening in the globalization movement, now. I am completely supportive of the anti-globalization movement, but I have not been able to get actively involved – going to Seattle (6), going to the conferences in Europe and all that. And I probably would have been doing that if I were younger.

E: Do you think that home security has made it much more difficult to have any kind of a gathering and make the kind of difference that was made at Seneca? With the changes, the repression-well, I certainly feel that there’s a lot of repression now that we didn't have at that point.

C: I do, too. The police are much scarier now, however, I think we’ve turned a corner on that. We went down a very dark path where we were at risk of losing our democracy and we did lose pieces of it. I think people have woken up. I don’t think we’re going to let that happen again for a very long time until another generation kind of forgets. But I think this movement that I’ve just seen and have been involved with to elect Barack Obama has been a kind of taking back our country, our democracy, whatever you want to call it. Our freedom – we’ve taken it back - the only way it could have been taken back and that’s by the people. And it wasn’t in the street. It was online. It was in another world, another galaxy in cyberspace where the organizing happened so you didn’t have to go anywhere. It was so amazing. You could be completely involved and you didn’t have to go anywhere to do it. So, it’s another world. We didn’t have the Internet in 1983. Think of what Seneca would have been like had we had the Internet. We probably would have had a million people. Know what I remember? I have a great picture of Bella Abzug (7) in the closet making phone calls to the governor of New York State. I imagine the whole thing would have been so different. Somehow the Internet and our ability to communicate the way we can communicate now has conditioned our activism. Everybody knows this. I mean MoveOn.org can mobilize millions of people in a minute. So, it’s a whole different world but I think also that we’ve been in a real sort of scary fascist-y moment. It’s similar to the Reagan moment, in my opinion. It has been a similar moment with Bush. It’s been pushing in that same direction, you know, covert action but I think we’ve turned a corner, a big corner that goes back to the Reagan era. The work that we were doing in Seneca has led to this moment now. All that work we did in classism and racism and consensus process and talking to your enemy – do you remember talking to those people from Romulus and trying to discuss with them? That was amazing work that we did. I don’t remember the conversations but I remember the people. And I remember the resolve that I had, to be Gandhi. To meet these people, who really wanted to kill us and if they had their druthers, would have and meeting that energy with an open heart, with peace in mind, was huge. It was tremendous for me personally. I think it was for all of us who had to go up against them on a daily basis, which we did. I don’t really know what happened to those people, it would be interesting to interview some of them. There’s this one [looking through book], “Nuke ‘em ‘til they glow and then shoot them in the dark,” that’s what they said about us. Those people were serious. If we hadn’t had the police in between us, it would have been a very different story.

E: And strange that it wasn’t them that were arrested.

C: Well, that’s right, that goes on. The police are a part of the state - not for us. It’s a complicated subject, but, you know, in this case we were basically attacking a military installation…, the police were called out to keep us from doing that. [looking through book] I’m trying to find that incredible picture [man with gun at Waterloo incident]

H: Do you have many more photos that aren’t in there?

C: Oh yes, many, many, many.

E: We’ve collected quite a number of photos and, I don’t know if you know, but we have an online archive that we’re developing. Not only would the stuff be at Schlesinger but also available to all the young people who might be interested in generations to come because I do think that what we did there was like a volcano that erupted and that we took what we learned there back to our communities and cities and home bases and out of that things really changed.

C: I think it’s been part of it, it’s definitely part of it. There’s a piece in the NY Times today and this guy was on Charlie Rose. He’s a Harvard professor who either taught Obama or taught with Obama, and he talks about the linkage of the women’s movement and the civil rights movement going back to abolitionist days and he talks about that connection and he talks about how integral the women’s movement was to the election of Barack Obama.

E: A little piece that I just want to let you know... that things did eventually change in the community surrounding the encampment and that eventually we were called to the school to talk as community resources. And so things did over time change. I would love to hear interviews with lots of people to see what happened for them and what life was like on each side of the fence…Do you remember any discussion around shaking the fence or cutting the fence and what was okay to do or not do?

C: I remember discussions but I don’t remember any thing specific. I wouldn’t remember specifically. I remember there were LOTS of discussions [laughter] and part of being a photographer was sort of being able to stay out of that realm of things. That really wasn’t my realm, getting into all those discussions. It’s still not my realm. It’s not what I like to do. I don’t like to get into long, complicated, difficult discussions. I just like standing outside being a witness and photographing. That’s not how I would be best used and still to this day, it’s just not where I like to spend my energy. Getting attached to my position and then fighting whatever, even building consensus around it. I didn’t spend a lot of time engaged in those discussions. No, I stayed out of that part of it.

E: And aren’t we glad that we have lots of photographs [laughter] of those kinds of things that did go on ’cause there were women…

C: Yeah, and the passion of it all.

H: I’m curious about the time that you spent in Europe before you got to the encampment. Did you remember at the time, some differences between what you saw in Europe or what you brought from your experiences in Europe to Seneca encampment?

C: You know, Seneca was an American encampment, and it was American women, but the structure, the vibrancy, the rough and tumble of it, the commitment, on those levels it was the same. I did go to some peace camps that were mixed – men and women, and those were interesting, but it was the same sort of basic set-up. Seneca was modeled on Greenham Common (8). They all were modeled on Greenham Common because Greenham Common was the first. So all the other peace camps had a flavor that you first felt at Greenham, you know, that you felt at Seneca. The peace camp movement had a kind of identity, a flavor, a spirit.

H: Did you meet women from Europe or Greenham at Seneca?

C: Yeah, the first two women who crossed the line – which is really one of the great pictures, I think in this book [referring to her book], Becky and Cassandra were both from Greenham, and they were very young.

H: Can you describe, just for folks that don’t know what we’re talking about, what the line was and it's significance.

C: The line was crossed you got arrested.

H: And, it was scary to cross that line because you really didn’t know what was going to happen when you got arrested. They were the first and it was right then [referring to photograph on cover of book]. It was just after that moment-

C: …they went across a yellow line on the ground.

H: Was there something significant about the fact that they were Greenham women who did it?

C: I think so. They were brave. They were ready. They’d seen it. They had been there. They had done it already. It’s not as if the women from Seneca waited for them to cross the line. No. They went. It’s not as if there were women clamoring to go first [laughter]. No, they went first. They, took the step which allowed a lot of other steps to be taken. They did it because they were brave, maybe, at that moment. At the moment, they were the bravest, they were the first.

H: What was your personal understanding of non-violence in that time period?

C: I had been a student of non-violence, of Gandhi, since the civil rights movement. I was very young but I was still involved, and wanting more. I was involved in the Vietnam war demonstrations always as a nonviolent activist. When I was in college, there was a lot of activity going on. I started college in 1967 so, I was involved in a lot of activism and a lot of demonstrations, a lot of discussion of how it should go. And I always took the stand of nonviolence. I don’t know where exactly that came from, in me, it’s just where I stood. And during the Vietnam war demonstrations there was a lot of violence. On my college campus there was a lot of violence and a lot of trashing of property. It’s not that I condemned that stand, it just wasn’t my stand, and I remember during the demonstrations at my college, Stanford, there were lines of people throwing Molotov cocktails and screaming at the police and then the police were on the other side and they were beating on people and there was this group of us who would try to put ourselves in between the two and just stand there for nonviolence. For both sides because I believed Martin Luther King. That was my teacher. I felt that the ultimate change would come about through nonviolence, not through violence. And I didn’t want to participate in violence and I never have wanted to and I never have. I never have gone that route. It’s not that I condemned it, I don’t, it’s just people have their different paths, you know, in these kinds of conflicts. I mean, I spent ten years working in South Africa and I knew people who were getting killed and who were killing and I never condemned them for that because obviously in that situation, it would be a hard line to draw. What made the difference was the people who were bombing and sabotaging or the people who were standing in the Gandhian tradition of nonviolence. Mandela was not standing in the Gandhian tradition of nonviolence. He was part of the Spear of the Nation which was the violent wing of the African National Congress. That’s why he was in prison such a long time. You had people in both of those camps in South Africa and simply, my camp has always been the nonviolent camp, which is to say that I would not condemn what those people did. I supported, I supported not with my physical body because that would not work for me. I believe in nonviolence. I actually believe in it. I really believe in it. It might take longer, that’s why I love the Dali Lama, he’s never backed off of that, and he’s gotten a lot of criticism, from, from young people in Tibet, but he’s never backed down off of that. And I, that’s just where I am.

H: And did you find kinship among women that you met at Seneca?

C: Yeah. Sure, I think that was the main emphasis, certainly it was the main emphasis, you know, rabble-rousers, yes, but nonviolent, committed, dedicated to that Gandhian principal of nonviolence.

H: Do you remember any philosophical conflicts in terms of the things women talked about over and over again such as the painting of the water tower, that stands out in women’s minds? Some people thought that property damage was violence.

C: I don’t believe that property damage is violence. I think there’s quite a long way between property damage and hurting people, you know, and my self personally, I’ve never damaged property. I just don’t want to do that kind of damage, but I don’t know, situations sometimes really call for it. What made the difference in some of the things that I remember really making a difference in the Vietnam war movement were the bombing of the Bank of America in Santa Barbara, the burning down of the R.O.T.C. building on my own campus. Those kinds of things made a difference because people respond to that, but I personally just wouldn’t have the guts for it. It just wasn’t my thing, it wasn’t the people that I was surrounded by, we weren’t going there, weren’t doing that.

H: Being a young activist what kind of reaction or support or non-support did your family exhibit?

C: I don’t think they had a clue what I was doing. Not a clue. Well, I used to write long, heartfelt letters to them. My father was certainly an activist in his own right, not to the extent that I have been but he was certainly on my side. My mother, however, grew more and more on my side as things went on but I don’t think they had a clue. When I think about hitchhiking from the top of Scotland to the bottom of Italy, twice, by myself in one summer and the experiences that I had trying to do that, I think, how could I? The fact that I survived it is pretty incredible, but if my mother had had the slightest idea of what I was doing I just don’t have any idea what she would have done. She didn’t know, didn’t have a clue what I was up to. She didn’t approve of me, you know, basically, because I was gay.

E: Are you an only child?

C: No. I have a brother who died just last winter in an avalanche. I had a young sister who was quite an activist herself. She was at the Poor Peoples Campaign march (10) whenever that was, 1965 in Washington D.C., and she died when she was 18. And then, I just have me and my sister, both of my parents are dead. So everything is impermanent - the camp, my mother, your mother. It’s fascinating. Violence, I think is important. I think people who can do it, it obviously has a place in our universe because it’s so prevalent. I was the last person to be in Gandhi’s house in South Africa before it was destroyed in 1985 and that was a tremendous experience. That was after Seneca, so, you know, in a way Seneca was a proving ground. Seneca made me keep going in all this stuff. I’m trying to write a piece about this. The story of the Phoenix Settlement has been published, but my story of the Phoenix Settlement and being the last person to be in Gandhi’s house before it was destroyed, that’s a very powerful story of nonviolence, and the power of it. So, Seneca made me the activist, you know. Seneca was very important. Other things were too, and I wanted to go back also, right before Seneca in 1982 to one of the things that I did. I did the World Peace Walk with the Buddhist monks that went to NYC for the 2nd Special Session on Disarmament in 1982. So I walked 900 miles from Montreal to NYC chanting to support the 2nd Special Session on Disarmament. That was the largest gathering in America up until that point – a million people in Central Park. I don’t know if you remember that but there were five walks that converged and I was on one of those walks. So that was very important to me, to be with these Buddhist monks for that extended period of time walking and we did lots of actions, we did lots of things. We sat up one night at Graten overlooking the Trident submarines manufacturing plant. We did all night chanting in the rain and I saw that this was more powerful than those nuclear weapons that they were building. I just saw it as clear as day during that 24-hour, all-night chanting sitting in the rain in banana boxes with garbage bags keeping us dry. I just saw that it was more powerful and I think that confirmed my being a nonviolent activist. It started with 12 people in Montreal in a blizzard and it ended with 80 people in NYC. So we picked up people along the way and it only got bigger. We stopped in all these little towns and spoke and it was an organizing tool…the march itself. I had been a Buddhist, peripherally since the 70s. I began meditation practice in 1971, I took various teachings and various vows, percepts and all that, in the 70s. I took the Bodhisattva vow in 1980. That’s all about nonviolence, too.

E: For people who might not have any background or knowledge, could you speak just about what that vow is?

C: Well, the Bodhisattva vow basically says, I vow to return until all sentient beings are liberated. So, that means, that even if you as an individual become enlightened, in the Buddhist cosmology of reincarnation, that if you don’t really have to come back to this world of birth and death and suffering, that you will come anyway to help others. It’s a huge commitment. So that’s what it’s been about for me ever since then, well, how can I help? And sometimes that, “How can I help?”, is something like Seneca and sometimes that, “How can I help?” is going on a month-long meditation retreat, being as quiet and as silent as you can be, but my experience is that most Buddhists are quite good activists.

H: I’m curious about the time when you were at Seneca during that summer in ’83. Eminent deployment of Cruise of Pershing was going to happen in the fall of that year, give us your sense of what Europe’s sentiment was like. Was there a feeling that they could stop deployment with their protests? Was it something you believed could happen when you were at Seneca?

C: Yes. Absolutely. That’s what we were doing, you know, we were stopping it. We didn’t stop it, unfortunately. We probably stopped some of it, but we had to do what we had to do. We had to try and we did, I mean, Greenham Common is now a Commons again. Seneca is closed. I don’t quite know where everything goes now – the military industrial complex is huge, it’s enormous, but I’m feeling, this is a long-term process. What we did in Seneca is manifesting now and into the future. It wasn’t one summer, it was a trajectory that is still manifesting now in the election of a peace candidate for president of this country. He voted against the Iraq war. We have never had that especially in a time of war, to elect a candidate who is so clearly an anti-war candidate and maybe even more so than we can imagine, but I really feel that he is gonna stop all this nonsense. Not by himself, but I think the time is now. This people's movement is a movement through time. That was a moment of the movement through time but it is continuing in the hearts and minds of the generation that is following us.

H: Any feelings once those missiles were deployed?

C: Europeans were terrified, don’t you remember? We were absolutely terrified. What was how many minutes to midnight? We were on the brink of nuclear war, and I think we felt that and that’s why hundreds of thousands, 900 thousand, a million, 800 thousand in every major city in Europe that summer, hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated. We had to do our part over here.

E: Do you think the European populations were more aware of it?

C: Yes, because they were coming to them. How would you feel if the country of France tried to put one here? I think we wouldn’t allow it. And they tried everything they could to not allow it and it’s still going on. This whole Soviet Union, the Cold War, all of that is still playing itself out. It’s not over. This whole event that just happened in Georgia, it’s the same struggle, the same fight. We’re still involved in the same struggles, the putting of a missile defense in Poland and that whole thing, that whole checkmate thing, it’s still going on but there’s always hope. Hope springs eternal. I’m an eternal optimist. I will not die until we have removed [laughter] the nuclear missiles from our world. I [laughter] can’t go. Think of the women, think of what’s happening with the black people now. People who grew up in the 50s and are seeing what they’re seeing now, that didn’t happen overnight. So, you know, it’s a process. But in my mind, we are all intended to live in peace and we just have to get there and it takes a while. And finding peace in yourself, I mean, you have lifetime, all right, of trying to get there. I have a lifetime of trying to get there, Hershe has a lifetime of trying to get there. Okay, how far have we gotten so far? We still have a ways to go and it’s not easy. Lifetimes and lifetimes. I think that’s why the Dali Lama isn’t really so upset about the whole situation because he knows from such a deep, spiritual place what it takes. Think of Lucretia Mott(9). We were just there at that wonderful museum, with her great, great granddaughter who is still working, it’s, it’s almost as if she is Lucretia, and it’s still going on through her and the work that she’s doing. The issues, they are the same but yet they are different. And it’s incremental, it’s little by little, step by step.

H: Tell us a little bit about that trip.

C: Oh, it was great. I was going to say I went with Lucretia, [laughter]. I went with Eydie and Cristina, an other really great activist and friend, a wonderful, spiritual practitioner from the Bay-area. And we all were just weeping, it was so beautiful, that document that was drafted there in Seneca Falls, in the 1840s or 60s, I can’t remember but, it was just so powerful to think of women, coming together and Susan B. Anthony’s house and drafting this and writing it up, no typewriters, no computers, no nothing, writing it out. It was so poetic and so profound and beautiful and spiritual and so true. So absolutely true!

E: Yeah, one of the things I find amazing is just how the women traveled to be together to do it and the distances between Rochester and Seneca Falls.

C: Yes! horse carts! horse carts! This is fun!

H: This is great. It’s our favorite thing in the world.

C: Yeah, I can imagine.

H: This is our, you’re our 100th, our 100th interview.

C: Woah. That’s great, that’s great!

H: We’ve got a long way to go, Estelle. [Estelle laughter]

C: I’ll never forget when that bus came from Minneapolis, do you remember that one? I think that one of the things that was so great about it is that it was so present a moment, it was so in the now. I mean, there was absolutely no other time or place, it wa a total present, now moment. Every moment of it was.

E: Right. I remember those women getting off the bus just unloading their own stoves and stuff and yet we were cooking on the open fires. But wait, we’ll get to that [laughter], let’s go back and finish seneca Falls.

H: So you were at the museum and you said, let’s do a road trip.

C: Yeah, let’s go on a road trip because Eydie was with us. Being with Eydie is really like being with Lucretia Mott, for me, t’s so powerful to be with her because of the palpable presence. Lucretia Mott was a Quaker and Eydie was raised as a Quaker and she still speaks to her. She’s one of the people who for me, embodies nonviolence in such a profound way. And she still speaks with her family in ‘thee’ and ‘thine.’ She’s a great teacher of mine, Eydie is. I want to acknowledge her. She wasn’t at Seneca but she surely would’ve been. She was on the West coast, so she didn’t really know about it . We left Ithaca that morning by car and we were going for the whole day.

We were going to the museum and to the Seneca peace camp. When we were at the peace camp we never went to the museum and we never went to Seneca Falls, and it was called the Seneca Women’s Peace Camp, even though it was in Romulus. So, I just had never gone to this museum and so the motivation of the museum being there, Eydie being with us, we were just really, high energy wanting to do this. Eydie and I have been kind of on a Lucretia Mott thing because I actually go to Nantucket in the summer, I have a lot of family that convene there in the summer and Eydie has been coming to visit me in Nantucket and so we’ve done the whole Lucretia Mott historical tour of Nantucket together and you look at Lucretia Mott and you look at Eydie and they just look exactly alike. So it’s just something for me to be, it, it’s almost as if I was present then and now I’m present now and some of the same people who were there then are here now and we’re all still doing it together and we’ve been doing it ever since it started. There was this moment at Greenham that I will never forget, one of the powerful moments, really, of my life. This was after thirty thousand women had surrounded the 7-mile perimeter of Greenham Common in December of 1983 - I went to Greenham twice, once before Seneca and once after. And this was in December and it was snowing. Thirty thousand women surrounded the fence and they had pots and pans and they started first with silence for about a half an hour. Utter silence of thirty thousand women and then they started banging the pots and pans, until it just became this cacophony. The police were on the inside of the fence and all, running around. They were just crazy, they were so terrified of what we might do. And then the women started shaking the fence, just taking it down and it was quite a bloody battle. Women were dragged through barbed wire by their hair and arrested and it was awful, but it was incredibly powerful. And late that night, we were camped in the woods all bundled up, the snow falling, and there was a, group of women fire jugglers in a big circle of stones, juggling fire in the middle of this circle, lots of women around having tea, totally exhausted. And there was a woman playing a clarinet, music from the ghetto and I just got this vision, but it was partly just awareness and knowing that we had been doing this forever. Centuries, centuries with the same women, just a new incarnation but that we had been fighting this kind of oppression, this kind of thing for these centuries and we’ve been in the same circles and the same music and the songs …and everything was the same. We’ve been here before, we’ll be here again. It’s us again [laughter], you know.

H: [reciting song lyric] “We are the old women, we are the new women…we are the same women…

H, E and C: “…stronger than before.”

C: I’ve had many, many, many, many experiences of why I’m doing what I’m doing now, how I got here from centuries, millennia, forever.

C: We went to the peace camp, it was, you know, very bedraggled. It was gone but you could still feel the energy but also the reality of impermanence ‘cause it is a strong memory for me. So to go there and have it be completely dissembled, you know, it’s like, there was that little outhouse? That was there and some of the drawings were still on it and there was some graffiti that was still there but it was, it was very pentimento, you know, it was very substrata but it was still kind of hovering there and you could feel it and I thought, well, why didn’t the guy paint the place, why is anything still here? But it’s still there. And then going down to the base, you know, where we walked so many times and the gate being open and we could just drive in and it was just a complete shambles. The water tower still there and everything’s there. And we spent all that time at that gate [laughter], going over it, going under it, going through it, rattling it, doing everything and it’s gone. It was very curious to go back. What it sets off in you.

H: Did you walk on the land at the encampment?

C: Yeah, we did. We walked on the land. I didn’t go all the way back down because it was kind of, it was a little bit spooky. It was a little bit okay, that was then, this is now. But it was interesting. It was fun and I was with some really strong women, really good women, so it was cool, it was great. And the beauty of the area where we were, I mean, the beauty of the lake. I remember so many times of taking off at the end of the day and getting into somebody’s car or truck and going down to the lake and going swimming. That was one of my favorite things. I think I might have done that every day.

H: I had a question about the book. You spoke about you and Cristina working on it. Is that what you envisioned, what the product is? Is that how you wanted it to be. Are you happy with what happened?

C: That’s just the way it ended up, it could have been something more, it could have been something less, but that’s what happened. That’s how it ended up. I was very pleased. And I still look at it and I go, wow, this is great, this is terrific. Really it’s great. It’s a great little piece.

H: Is it something that you thought you would do as you were taking photographs?

C: No, no. It was Cristina who helped me, financially to do that. It wouldn’t have happened without her.

H: And how many copies?

C: A thousand, we made a thousand.

H: And what happened with them?

C: They’re all gone. I have maybe this one, I have maybe a few left. They’ve all been disseminated. They’re all out there somewhere.

C: You know, I felt badly at the time that I didn’t do it more collaboratively, but it just wasn’t what the energy was, you know.

H: Collaboratively, what do you mean?

C: Other people’s pictures, working on it with other people, but it just wasn’t one of my it’s like that thing of, I don’t really to be in the large group discussion thing. I’m not particularly really a collaborative person, you know. I’m more of a solo operator.

H: Were your photographs used during the time or in later years? What about photographs you took in other projects?

C: Oh yeah, tons of stuff. I think it’s gone out far and wide, that photography just last year – well, I’ll get it for you when we’re done. I’ll show you some. Yeah, very, kind of nice. There it is again [laughter].
E: Is there anything else that you remember?

C: I think I’ve said it all. It was a great moment for anyone who got there. It was an initiation, a confirmation, a moment. I’m sure the people who were in Selma feel that way, of course they do. People who were in Seattle, people who were at the moratorium in 1969, Washington, all these moments strung together. Where were you for those kinds of moments? What did you participate in? What are the events, the act, the activisms that we participated in that makes the life, a life? That is one piece of it for me, for sure. It seems really tiny now, in the context of this moment, but at the moment, it was everything. I bet every woman who ever heard about it wanted to be there, wanted to get there. Every person that I know who was there, we still talk about it. Of course, it was a great moment and we have conversations, gatherings of people, dinner parties or whatever where it comes up and people will go," oh, what was that" and then we’ll talk, we’ll talk about what it was. So it still lives, it definitely lives.

H: I have a question. You spoke early on about how race and class and the different things that we tried to address as a community…how do you know that we were addressing, for instance, race? what at the time happened?

C: Weren’t we constantly talking about it? That’s my recollection, that we were constantly engaged in all those –isms, struggles and conversations although, you know, as I said earlier, it wasn’t really my thing to be so involved in the discussions, but I just remember at that period in my life, generally, that was a huge discussion. The class work, the race work, I was doing a lot of that at that time, not just at Seneca but it was part of the mix of the struggle.

H: And do you remember women of color in the time that you were there being a part of what was happening there?

C: Well, the only woman of color I remember is Turtle Bear. Now I’m sure, I don’t. I have that wonderful picture [looking through book], there’s so many pictures that are color pictures that might not have ended up in this.

H: Those were all photographs that you took in black and white?

C: Yeah. But that ended. The digital age was not in place then, so I didn’t start shooting color until I was in South Africa and one of my cameras broke and I had to decide, because I was shooting color and black and white, what’s it going to be, am I going to shoot this story in color or am I going to shoot it in black and white? And I chose to shoot it in color, and that was the first time that I had just dedicated myself to color. Before that I was always shooting with two cameras. black and white and color. So all these are original black and white negatives. One of my favorite pictures is in the slide show that I have. I don’t know if it’s been dissembled or not.

H: Would you be open to us digitizing some of the stuff for the project?

C: Yeah, I’d love it. I’d like to do it, I’m in the process now, which is just completely overwhelming, of digitizing everything. And I haven’t gotten to this yet, I’ve barely gotten anywhere, ‘cause it’s not easy, definitely it’s not easy.

H: Well, it would be incredible to have those photos be part of the web collection, project so folks would be able to see them.
.
C: Yeah. It’s so hard to go back. It’s been a few years now, really, that I’ve been trying to make an effort to digitize old, old bodies of work.

H: That’s what we’re here for! It’s our pride and joy, we’ve done that for folks from peace camp.

C: Well, that would be cool. But it means going in there and finding the work and you know even that is like, god, it’s so overwhelming, I mean, when you think of what I’ve done between then and now it’s a lot, so it’s hard to go back to that.

H: I'll hold your hand one day. Since there’s no time limit, it’s not so bad.

C: Yeah, yeah. Okay. [laughter]

H: So are you up to going back to the story of Gandhi’s house?

C: Oh yeah, you want me to go to that? Okay. Well, it’s a little bit of a long story. I can show you pictures of this later, also. I went in 1985 to Nairobi, to the women’s conference in Nairobi and when I was there I met all these incredible South Africans who had come via underground railroad ‘cause they weren’t citizens in South Africa, at that time. So they didn’t have passports. So they had come through this underground network in Africa to Nairobi and they were the most incredible, powerful women I had ever met in my life. So I decided after the conference that I would go to South Africa and put myself in service with these women and their struggle. And I went alone, flew down to Johannesburg. I had one name that these women had given to me that was the first person you should contact. Her name was Helen Joseph. She was a white woman who was known as one of the mothers of liberation in South Africa. It was with her that Nelson and Winnie Mandela left their children when they were on the road or in jail. So, I called her and immediately got in with the underground which at that time was all the banned people of Africa. That was the era when everyone was banned. So through her I got connected really fast and she would tell me where to go and what to do, who to talk with, street corners. I would go to these gatherings where Gandhi’s granddaughter was. She was a good friend of Helen’s. I ended up staying with Helen thereafter, whenever I was in South Africa, I stayed with Helen until she died. She was the first person that Nelson Mandela went to visit when he came out of prison. So, she told me to get in touch with this young man, a white guy, who had been part of the anti-war, anti-conscription campaign in South Africa and had spent two years in prison for refusing to serve in South Africa. So I called him. His name was Richard Steele. And he was in Durban and I called him to arrange an interview and to photograph. So I went down to Durban and when I got there, we went into his office and, and had barely started the interview when a phone call came in and I could see that he was visibly getting extremely upset with the phone call. He put down the phone and said, “I’m sorry, I have to go, there’s a problem where I live.” And I think I knew, I must have known he lived in the Phoenix Settlement which is the community that Gandhi created when he was a lawyer in South Africa in 1904 and this is where he had his first experiences of racism because he was considered a person of color in South Africa whereas in India he was just an Indian, you know. And he was very well educated, but he was thrown off the train for sitting in the white compartment in South Africa. So he attributes his experiences in South Africa with the development of his philosophy of nonviolence civil disobedience. While he was in South Africa he did lots of things but one of the things he did is create the Phoenix Settlement which was an interracial community in South Africa in the 1900s which is really radical, and a newspaper and all kinds of things went on from there and it was just this little community that still existed in 1985 and was still a community dedicated to people of mixed races, living together. So, the Phoenix Settlement was on the verge of being attacked by INKATHA – the black group that the United States and other western countries was trying to support as an antidote to the ANC, the African National Congress, in the struggle in South Africa. It was sort of like the Contras, a puppet type of situation where they were paying them and they were fighting the ANC, it was the internecine divide and conquer tactic. But everyone in South Africa knew this, everyone knew that U.S. money and British money was in INKATHA. So, when we got to Phoenix Settlement, he said, “Would you like to come with me. I have to go, would you like to come?” I said, “Of course I’d like to come,” I knew this was Gandhi’s settlement. So we went and when we got there, the place was in chaos, people loading up trucks, a sense of frantic, intensity. As soon as we got there, he said, “Here are the keys to Gandhi’s house, you can go and hang out there if you like.” His girlfriend was there, they were trying to pack up the house. INKATHA was coming to destroy the place because they were keeping 66 black, refugees in the old printing press and so just picture this chaos. The Phoenix Settlement is on a little hillside - and down below smoke, fire, just everything is in a turmoil, which was often the case in South Africa at that time, a lot of violence, a lot of killing, a lot of scary stuff. So, I had already been there for a while and I sort of knew. So I take the keys and I go down to Gandhi’s little tiny house and I go inside and it’s like a monostary inside, it’s like a meditation home. It’s a completely empty room with just the pictures of Gandhi’s teachers on the altar. The presence of it was just unbelievable, to walk into this room. And then there was one other small room that was the library that had books and papers and stuff like that. So, I, photographer that I am, meditator that I am, nonviolent activist in the spirit of Gandhi that I am, I feel like I have walked into... I can’t even say what it was, it was so powerful. So I opened all the windows and the first thing I did was I meditated and then I asked why, in the meditation I asked the spirit of Gandhi to come to me, enter me, live in me. And all the windows are open and I’m photographing inside the house and then all of a sudden I see three black men with machine guns running past the window and all of a sudden I am in terror, terror, terror in my body. And then I see out of another window one of those big tanks, that were called Hippos, come crashing through with the South African Defense Force and all of them jumping out with all their guns at the ready. And then, I hear Richard screaming my name and I’m just filled with terror. I think that I am going to die, in the crossfire, whatever this is that is going on, it’s real scary. So, I hear him screaming my name and really what I want to do in that moment is go into the library and cover myself with books and hide, but instead, I feel this, this, this surge coming, coming through my body and I grab my camera bag and it’s just like pushing myself through a steel door... that’s what it felt like at the moment and that’s what I remember it as, that I pushed my body through a steel door to go through that fear in me to the voice that was calling me. So, I run, I run toward it and I’m just sure I’m going to be killed. And I run up to it, I run up to where the voice was and as I get there, all the guns come down, everybody puts their guns down because I am a foreign journalist. The whole situation goes... because I am a foreign journalist, that’s the only reason that it didn’t turn into a conflagration at that moment and it just was like the most bizarre sensation of this intense, intense fear, all this potential for violence. Moments before I had been asking the spirit of Gandhi to come through me. That night, that house was completely demolished, completely demolished by hand, to rubble. So, then I went back about a week later with this guy who was just this really, very beautiful tall Danish Dan Rather of Denmark, Peter Jennings of Denmark. We went there together and saw the destruction. It was just completely the whole place was demolished. And we stood, he and I, in the rubble and cried, and as I was weeping, I looked down and in all the rubble was ‘Ohm.’ And I reached down and I pulled up this paper – and I’ll show it to you, I have it still – and as, as we were crying and I look down and ‘Ohm’ is between my feet and I pull it up and on the one side it’s Sanskrit, on the other side it’s typed out in English and my eyes fall upon ‘a true human being is not attached to the things of this world.’ Just like that, it’s gone. So that was the story. And from then on I have had this experience, this feeling of being able to go through any kind of fear, that I know what that is like. That’s what happened. And then I really felt like I knew what Gandhi meant to be a pacifist, the power of it. That’s what I felt, that’s what I remember, because when I went into that situation, all the guns just went down. Not that I walked peacefully into it, I didn’t, I ran into it terrified. And I didn’t really know what was happening, and Richard told me later that the reason that he had called to me was because I was a foreign journalist,, and somehow he felt that that could diffuse the situation of these 68 people who were surrounded, INKATHA and situations like that were happening all the time in South Africa. People were being killed everyday in situations like that.
And that story about the Phoenix Settlement and how it was destroyed has been published but not the story about me but I’ve been just in the last year or so, trying to write the story more for the spiritual community, you know…of what, what it means to go through fear because on a retreat, any kind of a meditation retreat you have, that’s the kind of thing you have to go through. And Richard, he spent two years in jail, for his nonviolent resistance. Before the incident he'd refused to go into the service and was a big hero. At that time, young white men,18-year-olds were grappling with the whole situation.

E: I remember one of your scarves, an early action around on the truck gate side. A group of us had gone to do an action and we got hemmed in by the by the Sheriff. We said we were there to do a Wiccan ritual. We had a candle that he blew it out and it came back on and he blew it out and it came back on, again. And he called into the base and finally we sat down it was very, very scary for a while and then eventually we made a little fire and burned all the lists of the names. I was doing support and I remember very distinctly and at some point that you got up and decided to dance with a large scarf. The two of us playing with it was like testing.

C: I know, that whole thing, believing in our power, believing in our witchy power that was powerful.

E: We really used it and when we saw those trucks come we began to wail and it was so powerful, it just stopped them in their tracks. They must have been 15 feet away and they were standing there with their guns as terrified as we originally were, of what might happen then. But we got braver and braver.

H: Was that witch ritual thing a part of your life prior to coming to the camp? Did you already know you were…

C: Um-huh. I’d been working with a group of women in NY, I mean, many of whom were, were there at Seneca. Shatzi, do you remember her? All these guys [referring to book] We used to do these really intense Native American peyote rituals called The Road of Life [referring to photograph in book] This is the group that sat down that day, [Waterloo] and a lot of them are these women, these women – this one, I can’t remember any of their names now though, this one, this one, that one.

H: So these were all women that you were already circling with in New York City as part of a group?

C: On the cross quarters, on the solstices and equinoxes, we did this incredibly powerful ritual. Unbelievable. But we broke up over the class and race stuff. We could not make it as a group over that stuff. And that’s been my experience with every group I’ve tried to do the class and race stuff with, can’t do it, can’t finish it, can’t complete it. You know, maybe now, but now I don’t do it anymore ’cause it was just too painful. It’s not that I have closed off from the work, it’s just that wasn’t a way to do the work. It didn’t work. I mean, it worked to a degree but then every time, the group broke up.

H: You were all a part of the Pentagon action so that idea of raising energy and the ritual of change and protesting that was happening then, but you don’t have any memories of that kind of stuff happening at Seneca? When Estelle spoke about it, it was familiar to you?

C: I know we did that all the time I just don’t have specific memories of it. I mean, I was totally into it, I still am into it. You know it works. You know it’s part of ,a piece of the power, it’s a piece of how we work or how we work together. As a matter of fact I just heard of something where pots and pans were involved, somewhere in the world. I just read where women and pots and pans were involved, and I went, “ Yeah!” [laughter]

E: Yeah, I was at a place where the altars in the four directions were done with purses, women’s purses in different colors and all these wonderful things were in the purses and hanging out of purses.

C: I think that was one of the most incredible, I mean, the art that came out, all that fence work, the art on the fences. I have tons more photography than is in here [referring to book] of it all. That was just incredible, how that fence got decorated all the time – the weaving and the sewing.... “We are the flow [singing] and we are the ebb, [Estelle and Hershe joining in] we are the weavers, we are the web.” We are the web. And we are the ebb, I mean, all that stuff.

E: Yeah, and that was before there was a web, I mean that was one of the symbols that we had of tying ourselves all together and how everything was connected I mean that we were using that long before…

C: I feel certainly that that is part of the manifesting process that resulted in the World Wide Web. Part of the manifestation process came out of the energetic field and created this physical reality. You know, of the World Wide Web that has enhanced our work enormously. You know, not just us – we, but you know, all over the world this energy, energy, energy you know.

E: I was just thinking how, when we started, how determined we were to make an online archive, that we wanted for people to have access, that it was wonderful to have stuff at the Schlesinger but that we didn’t know then that that was going to happen. But we wanted women credited with the peace work and the energy that they put into the world and that that was a phenomenon that was really noteworthy and we were going to make it so.

C: Oh, extremely important and yes, women are always diminished unfortunately but to hear this guy on Charlie Rose talking about the Women’s Movement, a few nights ago and then the piece, his editorial in the NY Times is very similar to what he was talking about. He really, really, really acknowledges the feminist movement in bringing Barack Obama to where he is now. So.

H: Do you remember coming to NY city in ’85 and being a part of songs for the Peace Camp Sings tape that Sorrell Hays(Hays, see Herstory 061) and Marilyn Ries(Ries, see Herstory 062) made? You were in the group, there were about eight of us - Twilight, you, me, Helen, Becky we sang on that tape – you never saw the Peace Camp Sings tape? [Catherine shakes her head, no] Ever in your life?!? Your voice is definitely on it.

C: I still sing some of those songs.

H: Like what? Prove it!

C: [singing] “We who believe in freedom cannot rest, oh no, [Estelle and Hershe joining in] we who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes. Until the killing of a black man, black mother’s son is as important as the killing of a white man, white mother’s son. We who believe in freedom cannot rest, oh no, we who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes. I am a woman who speaks in a voice and I must be heard, at times I can be quite difficult, I bow to no man’s word. We who believe in freedom cannot rest, oh no, we who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.” I have a vision of Sweet Honey singing it at the inauguration of Barack Obama. Wouldn’t that be great?

Notes

1. Cruise missiles - guided missiles that carries an explosive payload and uses a lifting wing and a propulsion system, usually a jet engine, to allow sustained flight; it is essentially a flying bomb.

2. Pershing missiles - a family of solid-fueled two-stage medium-range ballistic missiles designed and built by Martin Marietta to replace the PGM-11 Redstone missile as the United States Army's primary theater-level weapon. The Pershing systems lasted over 30 years from the first test version in 1960 through final elimination in 1991. It was named for General John J. Pershing. The systems were managed by the U.S. Army Missile Command (MICOM) and deployed by the Field Artillery Branch.

3. Comiso Womens Peace Camp - located at the Comiso Air Base in the Province of Ragusa in Sicily. The United States Air Force deployed ground launched cruise missiles (GLCM) to Comiso Air Base in June 1983. This missiles were eventually dismantled after the Intermediate-Range and Short-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty was signed by the former Soviet Union and the United States on December 8, 1987. The last 16 GLCMs left Comiso Air Base in 1991.

4. Women’s Pentagon Action - a nonviolent, direct action in which 2000 women blocked three entrances to the Pentagon on Nov. 16, 17, 1981 to call an end to the nuclear arms race. 143 were arrested. A second Women’s Pentagon Action took place November 15-16, 1982.

5. We Are the Web: The Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice - a photography book featuring Catherine Allport's photographs of the Seneca Women's Peace Camp in 1983. Published in 1984 by Catherine Allport and Cristina Biaggi.

6. WTO Battle of Seattle- protests surrounding the World Trade Organization's Ministerial Conference in November 1999 at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in Seattle, Washington. The negotiations were quickly overshadowed by massive and controversial street protests in what became the second phase of the anti-globalization movement in the United States. The scale of the demonstrations — even the lowest estimates put the crowd at over 40,000 — dwarfed any previous demonstration in the United States against a world meeting of any of the organizations generally associated with economic globalization (the WTO, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), or the World Bank).

7. Bella Abzug - a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, representing her district in Manhattan, NY from 1971 to 1977. Bella visited the Seneca peace camp in August 1983. An avid and outspoken feminist, she was one of the first members of Congress to support gay rights, introducing the first federal gay rights bill, known as the Equality Act of 1974.

8. Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp – an ongoing nonviolent protest outside the U.S. Air Force base at Greenham Common in England, 1981-2000. On August 28, 1981, 40 women marched 110 miles to the U.S. Air Force base at Greenham Common, the proposed site of 96 U.S. cruise missiles. Eight days later, four women chained themselves to the air base fence. From this direct action a women’s peace camp was born. On March 21, 1982, 10,000 people demonstrated at the base. 250 women engaged in a 24-hour blockade – 34 were arrested. On December 12, 1982, 300,000 women linked hands to embrace the 9-mile fence encircling the base. Although the last of U.S.’s 96 cruise missile were removed in 1991, women stayed on at Greenham until 2000 to ensure that the base was closed down. In March of 1997, the land was purchased by the Greenham Common Trust and returned to a variety of civilian uses.

9. Poor People's March- part of the Poor People's Campaign organized by Martin Luther King, Jr, and the Southern Christina Leadership Conference(SCLC) in 1968 to address issues of economic justice. The march originated in Marks, Mississippi and crisscrossed the country assembling, in Dr. King's words, "a multiracial army of the poor" that would descend on Washington engaging, if need be, in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Capitol — until Congress enacted a poor people's bill of rights. Prior to the completion of the the campaign, Martin Luther King, Jr.(Jan. 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968) was assassinated.

10. Lucretia Mott (Jan. 3 1793 - Nov. 11, 1880) - an American Quaker minister, abolitionist, social reformer and proponent of women's rights credited as the first American "feminist" but was, more accurately, the initiator of women's political advocacy.

HeRSToRy 101 Terri Fredlund

2008-12-16T12:23:00.000-08:00

Interviewed at her home in Berkeley, CA, November 2008. Herstory not yet transcribed.

HeRSToRy 106 Woody Blue

2008-12-16T12:21:00.000-08:00

Interviewed in Oakland, CA, November 2008. Herstory not yet transcribed.

HeRSToRy 097 Phenix Hearns

2008-12-16T12:18:00.000-08:00

Interviewed at her home in WV, October 2008. Herstory not yet transcribed.

HeRSToRy 104 robin earth

2008-12-16T12:16:00.000-08:00

Interviewed in Oakland, CA, November 2008. Herstory yet to be transcribed.

HeRSToRy 097 Louise Krasniewiecz

2008-12-16T12:09:00.000-08:00

Interviewed at the Philiadelphia Museum, October 2008. Herstory not yet transcribed.

HeRSToRy 101 and 102 Bobbie Falls and Jeanne Michele Charbonnet

2008-12-16T12:07:00.000-08:00

Interviewed at their home in Sante Fe, NM, November 2008. Herstory not yet transcribed.

HeRSToRy 093 Alice O'Malley

2008-12-16T12:05:00.000-08:00

Interviewed in Alpine, NY, September 2008. Herstory not yet transcribed.

HeRSToRy 107 Miraisiem Barnes

2008-12-16T11:34:00.000-08:00

Interviewed at her home in Oakland, CA, October 2008. Herstory not yet transcribed.

HeRSToRy 099 Leeann Irwin

2008-12-16T10:50:00.000-08:00

Interviewed at her home in MD, October 2008. Herstory not yet transcribed.

GaLLeRy 1984 - Ruth Putter

2008-10-03T15:28:00.000-07:00

Seneca Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice and Women's Equality Day in Seneca Falls, NY
August 26, 1984
Photographs by Ruth Putter

GaLLeRy 1983 - Ruth Putter

2008-10-03T10:39:00.000-07:00

Seneca Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice
August 1, 1983
Photographs by Ruth Putter

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August 5

August 20

July 4

aRTiCLe - May 30, 1983

2008-09-26T15:01:00.000-07:00

WOMEN-ONLY ANTI-NUCLEAR ENCAMPMENT SET FOR JULY 4
Ithaca Journal, May 30, 1983
ROCHESTER (AP) – Women by the leaderless thousands hope to give a new complexion to America’s anti-nuclear movement when they camp this summer on a farm hard by the barbed-wire fence of Seneca Army Depot. The summerlong watch at the suspected nuclear weapons storehouse, starting July 4, will be the first women-only anti-nuclear encampment in the United States the women say. Their inspiration is the 21-month vigil, often muddy and bedraggled, of British women camped outside the Greenham Common U.S. Air Force base, 50 miles west of London, England.

Women from Greenham Common, Continental Europe and across the United States have pledged support and inquired about joining the 52-acre camp on a scrubby rural flatland between Cayuga and Seneca lakes in upstate New York. The Seneca women hope to use what the call a female style of communal, consensus decision-making by operating without a president, a board of directors, an executive committee or even a designated spokeswoman.“This way of doing it is every bit as important as the event itself,” said Marcia Craig of Rochester, a clinical instructor in psychiatry.

After a year of communicating by what their British counter parts call “bush telegraph,” the women held a news conference Monday to announce the purchase of an abandoned farm in the Seneca County of Varick, 45 miles southwest of Rochester.
The farm, which sold for $37,500, backs onto a 6-foot-high fence topped by there strands of barbed wire – the outer perimeter of the depot.

The lack of a distinct voice of authority has led to conflicting reports about what exactly is planned for the Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice.
Seneca Army Depot spokesman Robert Zemanek said he had seen newspaper reports that 30,000 women were expected and had heard of a Florida radio report that the women intended to link hands and circle the 11,000-acre base, which has an 18-mile perimeter.

A Women’s Encampment flyer says in capital letters that “August 1st has been chose for a large action, including a non-violent civil disobedience action.”
But a camp delegation that met with Zemanek last week told him they expected no more than a few hundred women at any one time. “There are some obvious discrepancies,” Zemanek said. The base has hired an extra 45 civilian guards and erected a new fence by the east gate so a parking lot and grassy mall can be blocked of it necessary, he said.

According to the Center for Defense Information, a Washington-based organization of retired military officers, the Seneca Army Depot is probable the Army’s East Coast storehouse for neutron warheads and nuclear landmines. The depot might also be a storage site for the Army’s Pershing II missile warheads, which are scheduled for deployment in Europe in December, according to Robert Norris, a senior analyst for the research group. The most likely storage site for the Pershing II warheads is Fort Still, Okla., where the Army is training a Pershing battalion, Norris said.
The Department of Defense refuses to confirm or deny the presence of nuclear weapons at any site.

Marcia Craig of Rochester, a member of the Women’s Encampment, said the camp will be a haven “so that women who did not want to take part in the civil disobedience could have a safe place to stay.” She and others say that they cannot predict what form the civil disobedience might take, only saying that women will be trained in non-violent techniques.

At Greenham Common, 50 miles west of London, 300,000 women surrounded the air base in December in what they called a “celebration of life.” Since then they have danced on top of a missile silo, sat on the roof of a prison where some their members were detained, obstructed construction on the base and blockaded a highway to it. Greenham Common is a major base for the U.S. Air Force and is expected to house the cruise missile beginning in December.

Greenham Common and the Seneca encampment have already spawned a second U.S. women’s peace camp. The newly formed Puget Sound Women’s Peace Camp plans to pitch tents by the fence of a Boeing Aerospace Crop. plant in the Seattle suburb of Kent where, it says, cruise missiles are manufactured. Carl Kiiskila, a member of that group, said the Puget Sound camp was inspired in part by the Seneca women. She said the camp will begin with a major demonstration June 18 and continue indefinitely – “until they stop the cruise missile.”

This weekend the Seneca women began building 200 camp sites, each of which is designed for five or six people. Craig said member hope to keep the number of women staying overnight at not much more than 1,000 people. Women will be expected to take turns staying on the encampment, and those who can’t find room will be informed of nearby state parks and motels where they can stay, she said. Men will be invited to provide child care, medical care, transportation, vegetables and possible fundraising help.

By keeping number down on the encampment, the women say they hope to prevent the soil from being trampled. They plant to grow vegetables this summer and possible turn the farm back to its original purpose when the summer is over, member Patricia Dorland of Rochester said. The camp might also be turned over to the townspeople or made into a permanent center for study of the effects of militarism, members said.
The Women’s Encampment has offices in Geneva, 15 miles to the north, and New York City. About five women are working full-time on the encampment and being supported through donations, according to member Karen Kirchoff.

Established women’s groups, like the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, have helped with publicity. Jobs are handled by ad hoc committees that dissolve when their work is done, the members say. About 40 women have been most actively involved in the organization. Planning meetings with an ever-changing group of participants have been held in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Syracuse, Rochester and Albany, members say.

According to their operating style, one person can block consensus and thwart a decision. “It generates a lot of trust among people,” Dorland said. “The person who blocks consensus is taking a very heavy responsibility on themselves,” Craig said. “That’s why it doesn’t happen very often.”

GaLLeRy 1983 - Nancy Clover

2008-09-26T06:13:00.000-07:00

Pre-peace camp opening - June 1983All photographs by Nancy Clover

GaLLeRy 2008 - GatherSing

2008-09-16T06:00:00.000-07:00

Sept. 12, 13, 2008
Peace Camp GatherSing in Alpine, NY with Alice, Brenda, Chris, Cynthia, Dorothy, Estelle, Hershe, Laura, Lisa, Louise, Max, Otter, Ruth, Sera and Sita.

We sang, we laughed, we processed and it's all on tape! Two days of it. Our purpose was two-fold: to document songs and chants that were sung at the peace camp to create material for creative endeavors - films, CDs, plays, etc. The weekend was a great success on both counts. In addition, we raised $245 at Saturday night's raffle/concert.

Thank you, thank you to Chris and Louise for being the most spectacular human beings, hosts and raffleters ever and to Lisa for opening her studio, home and exceedingly kind and talented spirit to us. Thanks, too, to Renee-Noelle, Helen, Robin, Andrea, Twilight and Alessandra for your phone calls and emails - you are in our hearts.

Our fabulous sound engineer and music producer, Lisa, in her fabulous Ithaca studio.

Estelle, Sita and Lisa smudging DAY ONE.

Dorothy, Chris and Cynthia. "Swift as the wind my sisters are..."

Cynthia, Sita, Estelle and Otter deciding which song to sing next.

Otter doing her thing.

Lisa letting Hershe sample the awesome sound.

Dorothy. "Woman am I. Spirit am I..."

Hershe taking it all in.

Laura taking it all in.

Natalie and Louise - our studio audience.

Otter and Hershe rocking it during a smoke break.

Sita, Chris and Sera. "When every woman in the world has her mind set on freedom..."

"Animal spirits, we're calling to you..."

Sera, Estelle, Hershe and Sita too tired to sing another note.

PSYCHE!

Smudge DAY TWO. Alice, Dorothy, Estelle and Brenda.

Dorothy. "I take delight in the peace of the river..."

Sita and Sera. "Come, come Sisterhood, come dance eternal..."

Dorothy. "Were you there when they bombed Hiroshima..."

Estelle, Otter and Laura. "By the waters of the Amazon..."

Sita, Sera and Dorothy. "I'm so in love with the Seneca Rebel Wimmin..."

Lisa doing her thing.

Alice doing her thing.

Sera. "You talk of revolution..."

Dorothy. "A river of birds in migration..."

Estelle. "We're shameless hussies and we don't give a damn..."

Hershe. "My old mum's a lesbo, she wears a lesbo badge..."

Sita. Back at the ranch aka Alpine Peace Camp.

Sera, Estelle and Louise. Pretty in pink.

Chris. Bless your heart.

Laura, Sita, Sera, Estelle, Hershe and Alice. Children at play.

GaLLeRy 1990s - Black and Whites

2008-08-31T01:38:00.000-07:00

Photographer unknown.
Ann and Estelle

Donna and Laura

Becky

Can anybody identify this woman with Otter?

Elliott

Can anybody identify any of these women?

Cindy and Twilight

aRTiCLe - July 17, 1998

2008-08-31T00:26:00.000-07:00

Legacy Laurie Twilight, left, and Estelle Coleman, two of the nine owners of Women’s Peaceland in Romulus, say they are still committed to the original mission the group set forth in 1983. “This is a place that’s become symbolic for many women,” Twilight said.

Democrat and Chronicle
July 17, 1998

‘Fire still burns’ at peace camp
by Doris Wolf
ROMULUS – In 1983, more than 12,000 women came to a humble white farmhouse on the outskirts of this rural Seneca County village.

The Women’s Peace Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice attracted women from Europe, Canada and across the country. They were housewives and flower children, Buddhist monks and self-proclaimed witches, feminists and families. They came to protest the Seneca Army Depot believed to be the largest storehouse of nuclear weapons in the northeast at the time.

They marched and tied yarn webs on the depot fence. They scaled the barbed-wire-topped chain link that surrounded the 10,600-acre facility. And when they were arrested, they received letters banning them from the site and barring them from protesting there again.

Today, the soldiers and the nuclear weapons have left the depot, which is slated to be closed in 2001. The white farmhouse is a faint echo of its former self.

But that will change today and tomorrow, when female peace activists again gather to recall their glory days. Called “The fire still burns,” the gathering will be an open campfire, at which women will share stories and songs of the peace and feminist movements.

“To retell the old stories is very inspiring, especially to the younger women,” said Estelle Costello [sic], a member of the nine-women collective that owns the former peace encampment. “It’s nice to see their enthusiasm and awe.”

The 52-acre site, with itsprivies, outbuildings, fields and two-story house, is now a land trust called Women’s PeaceLand. Members meet annually on July 4. This year they celbrated their 15th anniversary.

“Not bad for a group with no leader and no income,” said Costello [sic].
Members are struggling to pay $1,700 annual taxes – school taxes have tripled this year.

Ann Herman, the last woman to live in the house full-time, left in February 1996 to protest at the School of the Americas in Georgia against the use of federal money to train government operatives to work in Central and South America. She was arrested for protesting and is in [sic] currently in jail.

Costello [sic] said the group was “thinking and talking, looking for new direction.”
But Laurie Twilight, another collective member, rejects the suggestion that the peace encampment is without a mission.

“This is a place that’s become symbolic for many women, an inspiration to keep going, doing the work, keep hanging in there, and trying to make the world more peaceful.”
Twilight said women throughout the world viewed [sic] Women’s PeaceLand as a special place. “People are inspired by it from afar. They are very happy to hear there are still peace activists,” she said.

The property is used by groups that share the collective’s mission, said Costello [sic]. Recently, a group of radical feminists from Canada and six states in America met to share tactics and information.

“The focus here is not on the land, but on becoming politicized, radicalized here and going back to their community. It’s a place to regenerate, reconnect and network,” Twilight said.

The collective has issued a request for proposals from groups and individuals who want to share the land and buildings – and expenses. “What we need is more people, energy and resources to use this land. We are flexible and open to a wide range of ideas,” she said.

Payment could be in money, or other negotiable resources such as energy, structural improvements and skills, Twilight said. “As far as the depot goes, we feel we’ve accomplished a lot. But there still needs to be peace in so many places. And places for women to gather, a safe place, a woman’s place.”

aRTiCLe - August 6, 1984

2008-08-23T10:28:00.000-07:00

Security guards at the Seneca Army Depot in Seneca County drag some of the 29 women apprehended for trespassing. The women crossed the fence at the depot during a Hiroshima-anniversary anti-nuclear protest.

29 Depot fence-crossers apprehended
Security staff handcuffs, photographs, releases peace camp members.
By Carol Ritter, Laura Meade and Janice Sue Wang

ROMULUS – Security officers apprehended 29 women who climbed over or crawled under a fence to enter Seneca Army Depot yesterday during the largest anti-nuclear demonstration there of the summer.

The 29, including six who authorities said also had previously entered the depot illegally, were among a group of more thatn 100 owmen who gathered outside the depot’s main gate on Route 96 to protest the nuclear arms race and commemorate the atomic-bomb explosion in the Japanese city of Hiroshima 39 years ago.

The demonstration, called a “Day of Focus” by the women, fell almost on the anniversary of a massive demonstration at the depot last Aug. 1 that drew an estimated 1,600 women protesters.

The women taken into custody yesterday were handcuffed and photographed by the depot security staff before they were released. Depot spokesman Robert Zemanek said the six second offenders were given tickets ordering them to appear before a federal magistrate in Rochester, while the others were given letters barring them from further trespass on depot property.

About 20 women were at the gates by 10 a.m., but the gates stood open until guards closed them at 11:15 a.m. when most of the women who demonstrated arrived from the Women’s Encampment for Future of Peace and Justice, a mile north of the gate on Route 96.

The early arrivals, mostly members of the Rochester Women’s Action for Peace, spent more than an hour tying 6,001 short pieces of red yarn onto the fence.
The group claims the American and Soviet arsenals now have weaponry 6,000 times as great as the weaponry used in World War II.

When all the women had gone, by mid-afternoon, a security guard began cutting off the pieces of yarn that covered several large sections of the fence.

The demonstration that lasted more than two hours featured what the women called a “Missile America” contest. Women held aloft cardboard models of American missiles while one woman acting as emcee introduced the missiles as if they were contestants in a beauty pageant.

“Look, it’s a cruise. Isn’t it beautiful?” the emcee shouted, and women in the crowd booed loudly. At the end of the pageant, several women tore the missiles to pieces and piled them on the ground.

About two dozen spectators and a dozen police officers watched from the sidelines as the omen circled, danced, sang, and acted out their concerns over the arms race.
Marion Winkelman, a Geneseo schoool teacher, and Frank Carvers of Trumansburg, Tompkins County, stood at the back of the protesters holding a banner with the words, “Choose Life.”

“I teach about Hiroshima every year and I always teach about the atrocities and deaths,” said Winkelman, who lived in Japan for several years. “The ones who were punished were those unfortunate to get in the way of a nuclear holocaust.”

“That was war. This is now a matter of life and death for the planet,” she later said.
Carver said he came “because I believe strongly in the words of the Lord” ‘I have placed before you death and life. Choose life.’”

Several women strung a huge web of yarn from the fence to a stop sign at the end f the driveway, saying it symbolized the interconnections of all living things on the earth. But almost as soon as they were finished, about a dozen teen-agers who said they live in Romulus began tearing down the yarn web.

Thirteen-year-old Harry Telbock said he was ripping the yarn off the fence “because it’s a bunch of bull. I wish these bums were out of here.”
“This is wrong, what they’re doing, blocking the gate and stuff,” added a blond youth who refused to identify himself. “It’s just childish.”

Several of the protesters argued with Ruth Stanover, a flag-waving Waterloo resident who has repeatedly confronted anti-nuclear protesters. During a demonstration by about 45 women July 16, Stanover crawled under the depot fence shouting that she was trying to call attention to the local residents’ disapproval of the peace camp and its actions.

Stanover said yesterday that there was “no way” would [sic] she illegally enter the depot again, but she said she would continue to argue against the demonstrations. Yesterday, she and her daughter, Debbie Cator, helped Romulus teen-agers tear down the yarn webbing, as several women tried to reattach the brightly-colored strands.

When the demonstration broke up, the women returned to the peace camp. Then nine left to hand out leaflets in two nearby communities, Ovid and Geneva, arriving at both places at 3:30 p.m.

In Ovid, four women were met with mixed response from the few people on the street. About half the people they approached accepted their handouts, but they stopped the distribution at 4:20 p.m. after the mangers of the Big M and Super Duper markets ordered them out of their parking lots.

Where they stopped, the people talked about them and their literature afterward.
At one point, a group of four teenagers walking down the sidewalk were reading the handouts. Customers in Jay’s Soda Bar also discussed the information, but many said the protesters were wasting their time.

Catherine Allport of New York City walked into several of the stores on Main Street in Ovid, drawing mixed reactions. Gordon “Scorch” Jensen, co-owner of Mr. T’s Head to Toe shop, accepted a fistful of anti-nuclear literature, but said the protests wouldn’t do any good. “It’s not going to accomplish anything,” he said. “They’ll (nuclear weapons) always be there.”

But, he said to Allport as she left, “I will read it, dear. Thank you very much.”
In Geneva, five women stopping passerby [sic] on Exchange and Castle streets disposed of their leaflets in about 40 minutes. Some people shrugged off the literature, while others accepted it and began reading as they walked away.

"Doreen Caravita of Seneca Falls, NY you are hereby informed that you are barred from this installation for an indefinite period of time. This debarment is predicated upon your misconduct at 1245 hours, on 6 Aug. 84, when you entered Seneca Army Depot without authority."

Evidence/Property Custody Document. Owner: Caravita, Doreen. Obtained: 1- Set of Keys, 1- Gold in Color Chain, 1- $20, 1- $5, 6- $1, 1- watch, Misc. Paper, 1 Pr. Shoe Strings.

GaLLeRY 2008 - Waterloo 54 Memorial Walk

2008-08-21T12:33:00.000-07:00

Template for the front of the t-shirts designed and produced for us by Becky at WomanMade in Seneca Falls.

The back.

Becky showing us how it's done.

Hot off the press!

Estelle, Carmen, Lucille and Twilight finishing up breakfast at Carman's and raring to get walking!

Christine and Carman sneak in a photo op at Zuzu's Cafe, our pre-walk gathering point in downtown Seneca Falls.

Our fearless leader Max being interviewed at Zuzu's by Amanda Folts of the Finger Lakes Times.

Anita gets an earful from Hershe about the herstory project while she and Doreen wait patiently for others to arrive.

Carman and Patty discuss strategy.

Let the wild rumpus begin! Estelle, Sera and the beautiful banner made by Eugene and friends lead the way.

First stop: The National Women's Hall of Fame. Patty, Sita, Kim, Twilight and Doreen listen to Max tell us about Bessie Coleman (1892-1926), the first licensed black woman aviator who learned to fly in France after being denied the opportunity in the U.S.

Max and Hershe get ready to join in as Estelle begins singing, "Walk, women, walk and we'll catch a glimpse of freedom, women walk, and we'll catch a glimpse of peace."

Second stop: The Wesleyan Chapel, site of the first Women's Rights Convention, July 19-20, 1848. Renee-Noelle breaks it down for us while Sera and Susie look on.

Patty and Lucille taking it all in.

Sita concentrating. Maybe meditating?

Estelle with two young feminists in town for a wedding who came over to see what we were doing. They had never heard of the Waterloo 54 or the peace encampment.

Sita and Estelle on the road between Seneca Falls and Waterloo.

Snack time mid-route. Sera, Max, Susie, Louise, Chris and Twilight.

Doreen and Estelle at stop number three, the Hunt House. Jane Hunt hosted a gathering here in honor of Lucretia Mott and those assembled decided to organize the first Women's Rights Convention.

Leaders of the pack, Doreen (photographed under duress - something about loyalty to the Seneca Falls' football team?) and Dee entering Waterloo.

The next contingent to pass by, led by Sera and Estelle, employs the fine art of sign enhancement...

...while the paparazzi Twilight, Susie and Christine, capture the moment in film.

Lucille and Renee-Noelle, first on the scene at our final rendezvous point before the bridge, the McClintock House. It was here that Mary Ann McClintock, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and perhaps others drafted the Declaration of Sentiments.

The McClintok House ranger joins Dee and Doreen as they listen to Renee-Noelle share information about our founding mothers.

Middle contingent, Sera, Christine, Susie and Max arrive at the McClintock House...

...followed by our vehicle support contingent, Louise, Estelle and Chris.

Christine and Sera chilling on the steps of the McClintock House.

Christine, Hershe, Sera and Patty and the fine art of bomb enhancement at the American Legion.

Patty seizing the day (and the banner).

With all walkers collected, Doreen, Patty, Max, Dee, Lucile, Christine, Twilight, Louise and Sita are ready for the final three blocks of the walk.

Approaching the first bridge.

Taking the street!

Long live the Waterloo 4!

Talking the street (again), this time on the bridge. Long live the Waterloo 10!

Good job, team!

Renee-Noelle singing the incredible song, "I will not raise my sons to kill your sons."

What a day!

Peace camp!

Sure, there's enough room for everyone!

Mmmm, cramped quarters make me hungry!

The farmhouse.

The original outhouse.

Sky light.

Sky shower.

Love Yourself.

World Serenity.

Pavillion pose. Back row: Twilight, Hershe, Sita, Max, Sera, Doreen, Louise and Chris. Middle: Susie, Estelle, Renee-Noelle, Patty, Lucille. Kneeling: Christine. Taking the picture: Dee.

On to the former Seneca Army Depot.

Those women did whaaatt?!?! And it was dark?!? And it was raining?!? And they were carrying paint cans, rollers and roller extensions?!?!?

Still life #1 - Striations.

Still life #2 - Three and Half Hours.

Basking in the afterglow of a walk well-taken. Estelle, Louise and Chris with Carman on her back porch.

In Carman's front room, Sita, Patrice, Patty and Doreen watch archive footage of the original 1983 walk.

During the next video, this one of the Waterloo 54 trial, Estelle explains to Sera how hundreds of women disrupted the makeshift courtroom.

The next day at Carman's, Estelle reads Amanda Folts' article from the Finger Lakes Times to Twilight.

aRTiCLe August 16, 2008

2008-08-20T06:42:00.000-07:00

Caption top: A group of 18 women walked from Seneca Falls to the Washington Street bridge in Waterloo Saturday in honor of the 25th anniversary of a march by Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice to protest the alleged storage of nuclear weapons at the Seneca Army Depot.Caption bottom right: Christine Cummings, 10, of Portland, Ore., represents the sixth generation of her family to march in Seneca Falls.

MARCHING WITH ‘HERSTORY’
Women celebrate anniversary of 1983 protest
by Amanda Folts
SENECA FALLS — On July 30, 1983, about 130 women set out to march from Seneca Falls to the Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice in Varick to protest the rumored storage of nuclear weapons at the Seneca Army Depot.

At the Washington Street bridge in Waterloo, the group met about 100 angry, flag-waving counter-protesters who were blocking their path. A two-hour stand-off ensued, with the crowd of counter-protesters doubling.
Law enforcement officers tried to get the crowd under control so the march could continue, but to no avail. In the end, police arrested 53 of the marching women for disorderly conduct.

On Saturday, a group of 18 women — some of whom were there — walked from Seneca Falls to the Washington Street bridge without opposition. They carried a purple cloth banner with white, yellow, orange and red lettering reading: “25th Anniversary of the Seneca Women’s Peace Encampment, No War For Oil.” Many of the women also wore T-shirts noting the anniversary.

They stopped at the National Women’s Hall of Fame and the Women’s Rights National Historical Park, to discuss some of the history behind them, and then left in song.

“We are the old women, we are the new women, we are the same women, stronger than before,” they sang.

Estelle Coleman, Cambridge, Mass., was one of the last two women to leave the peace encampment when it closed in 2002. She said she originally went for her grandchildren.

“I didn’t want ... a blinding flash of light to be happening and have them say, ‘why didn’t you stop this?” she said.

Coleman said she lived at the camp off and on for more than 23 years, living in tents, a house, a bus and a barn.

She is working on the Peace Encampment Herstory Project, which is a volunteer effort to collect pictures, videos, newspaper clippings and oral histories from people who participated at the camp.

Christine Cummings, 10, of Portland, Ore., marched Saturday carrying a sign that read, “I am proud to be the 6th generation of strong women who have walked here. No more wars.”

“Lots of my relatives are in the Army, and my uncle is in the war right now ... and I want him to get out,” she said.

Christine’s grandmother, Louise Cummings, of Alpine, Schuyler County, did not participate in the march 25 years ago. However, she was charged with trespassing when she climbed over the depot fence on her son’s 10th birthday — something she said she did “for all children of the world.”

Regarding her granddaughter’s sign, Louise Cummings explained that six generations of women in her family have marched through Seneca Falls for reasons ranging from women’s suffrage to equal rights.

“This is a history that’s been passed down to me, so I guess you could say it’s in our blood, right baby girl?” she said, high-fiving her granddaughter.

Renee-Noelle Felice of Syracuse said she visited the encampment when it first opened and came back Saturday to honor all the women who have marched through the village.

“... we’re walking in the footsteps of the women who started the process of getting us the right to vote,” she said, noting that Monday is the 88th anniversary of the passage of the 19th amendment, which granted suffrage to women.

Lucille Povero, of Seneca Falls, founder of the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Foundation, went to the bridge 25 years ago because she knew some of her board members were marching and was afraid they had been arrested.

She said she went to the encampment each weekend for about three months when it opened, and her only regret is not climbing the fence with the others.

Povero said her initial reason for going to the camp, however, had nothing to do with missiles. She just felt something spiritual and feminine about the land.

“It really was women’s land,” she said.

Pat Lockwood, of Seneca Falls, said she had been working in her bath and body store when she heard that women were being arrested. She quickly closed its doors and went to the Waterloo bridge, and when she arrived the women had already been taken into custody and were sitting on buses.

Lockwood said she visited the camp often and decided to march Saturday because she had so much fun being a part of the original movement.

“It just brings out a lot of good memories and a lot of good things came out of this,” she said.

The march was organized by Jessica Max Stein of Brooklyn, who said she not only wanted to honor the history of the women’s encampment but encourage alternate modes of transportation.

Stein said she wants to see the car become outdated and thinks people should learn more about walking, biking, canals and other ways to get around.

She has walked 45 miles of the Erie Canal, from Lockport to Brockport and was searching for another route to walk when she found the 25th anniversary of the women’s peace camp was approaching. She decided to do a re-enactment, and with the encouragement of a friend, invited others to join her.

“It seemed relevant today. It’s not nukes but we’re still in a war, and we’re still siphoning off people’s money to go elsewhere and we’re not paying attention to these local places,” she said.

SoNG 037 "Gentle, Angry Women"

2008-08-11T14:48:00.000-07:00

Gentle, Angry Women
AKA: Singing for Our Lives
Written by: Holly Near

We are a gentle, angry women
And we are singing, singing for our lives.
We are a gentle, angry women,
And we are singing, singing for our lives.

We are the dreamers of new visions
We are dreaming for our lives.
We are the dreamers of new visions
We are dreaming for our lives.

We are the ones who cares for our children
and we're caring, caring for their lives.
We are the ones who cares for our children
and we're caring, caring for their lives.

Alternative verses:
We are missile-stopping women...
We are anti-nuclear women...
We are many-coloured women...
We are straight and lesbian women...
We are brave and frightened women...

~ WiND WaLKeR ~ Gail Walker

2008-08-05T10:29:00.000-07:00

Gail Walker
Born: March 24, 1952
Died: June 7, 2005
Photographed sign-language interpreting at the Women’s Equality Day celebration in Seneca Falls, NY, August 1984.

From Alfred University website, June 8, 2005:
'Most beloved' AU faculty member, Dr. Gail Walker, dies

Dr. Gail C. Walker, professor of psychology at Alfred University for the past 24 years, died Tuesday, June 7, 2005, after a nearly four-year struggle with ovarian cancer.

Even though she learned mid-way through the spring semester that her treatment options were exhausted, “Doc Walker,” as she was known to her students, continued teaching her courses and was on hand at graduation just three weeks ago.

Born March 24, 1952, in Antlers, OK, the daughter of Forrest and Melba (Hair) Walker, she attended Clayton High School, where she graduated as valedictorian. In her essay “Sunset and Moonrise: Reflections on living with terminal illness,” which Gail wrote and posted on Thanatolinks
(http://www.lsds.com/death), she said that she “went to school with people from 137 different Native American tribes, which changed my world view and my dance steps forever.”

She earned a B.S. in psychology with a minor in political science in 1974; a master’s in psychology in 1976 and a Ph.D. in psychology in 1978, all from Oklahoma State University, where she was named a member of Phi Kappa Phi honor scholastic fraternity and Phi Delta Kappa, the honor education fraternity.

She began her teaching career in 1978 at Marian College in Fond-du-Lac, WI; spent a year at the Cook County Office of Special Education in Chicago, IL, before answering an ad placed by Alfred University for a visiting assistant professor of psychology, a one-year appointment, in 1981.

Twenty-four years later, Doc Walker was still at AU. “Students regarded her as the single most-beloved professor among the current faculty members,” said AU President Charles M. Edmondson. “Her colleagues join her students in mourning her death. Gail brought a unique warmth and quality of friendship to her relationship with students. She is truly irreplaceable.”

During her tenure at AU, Dr. Walker earned the University’s most-coveted Excellence-in-Teaching Award a record 12 times, with the most recent award bestowed at Honors Convocation in April, but she was quick to point out that two other current faculty members – Dr. Wes Bentz in chemistry and Frank Duserick in business – are what she referred to as “double-digit winners.” They each have received the award 10 times.

“I have always loved Alfred University,” Dr. Walker wrote, but what she really meant was that she loved the students with whom she came in contact. Her curriculum vitae proudly lists, “Career total of students taught: 12,064 by Spring Semester 2005.” She knew each of their names, and expected them to know the names of all the other students in the classes they took with her.

“I always remember that I’m teaching students, as well as teaching the content area,” Dr. Walker said. Getting to know her students on a personal level and having conversations with them ¬– not just lecturing to them in class – “made it much more personal and interesting, and much more fun for me and them.” She said that the years students spent with her were “exciting times in their lives,” and she was privileged to be able to “help shape the grown ups they’ll become.”

While she taught many different courses over the time she spent at AU, most often she taught “Introduction to Psychology,” “Human Sexuality,” and “Death and Dying.” To her, the spectrum represented “the Alpha and the Omega,” from conception (Human Sexuality), through life (Introduction to Psychology) and then to the end of life (Death and Dying.).

A recognized expert in thanatology and dealing with grief, Dr. Walker worked with pioneers in the field, including Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. She drew her scholarly pursuits and her volunteer work as an emergency medical technician together to become an expert in grief therapy, crisis intervention and crisis debriefing, helping emergency personnel deal with psychological trauma and stress associated with their jobs. That expertise led to her being named to a delegation to the U.S.S.R. in 1988.

Widely published, Dr. Walker continued her research and writing, as well as her teaching, even after learning in fall 2001 that she had ovarian cancer. She wrote a chapter on medical euthanasia published in Handbook of Death and Dying; Vol. One: The Presence of Death (Sage Publications, 2003), and had two works in process, “Double Jeopardy: Sexual behavior, substance abuse, and dishonesty in young adults,” scheduled to be published by The Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, and “Medical Euthanasia: A comparison of the attitudes of health care workers and university students,” in process for Omega: The Journal of Death and Dying.

She was a member of the Foundation of Thanatology, the National Crisis Prevention Institute, the Association for Death Education and Counseling, the International Critical Incident Stress Foundation, and the International Association of Nonviolent Crisis Intervention Certified Instructors.

Dr. Walker is survived by her domestic partner and companion, Yvonne Squadrilli; her parents; two sisters, Judy Walker of Joplin, MO, and Barbara Erwin of Lindley, OK, and several nieces and nephews.

Her final words for her students, colleagues, family and friends, dictated to Yvonne just prior to her death were “Tell everyone good bye and God bless. Love, Doc Walker.”

Following a private service for family and close friends, Dr. Walker will be buried in Oklahoma. A memorial service to be conducted by the Rev. Laurie DeMott at the Union University Church in Alfred will be held in the fall after students return to the University.

Condolences may be sent to Yvonne Squadrilli, PO Box 3, Alfred Station, NY 14803.

In response to several inquiries about how to make a contribution in memory of Dr. Gail Walker, the University has established a memorial fund in her name. Those wishing to contribute to the fund should make their checks payable to Alfred University, and send them to Alfred University, University Relations, 1 Saxon Drive, Alfred, NY 14802. In the memo line on the check, please make sure you indicate that the money is to be used for Dr. Walker’s memorial.

We will consult with the family to determine how the funds are to be used. Should you have questions about the Gail Walker Memorial Fund, please contact University Relations at 607.871.2144 or e-mail the Alumni and Community Relations office.

GaLLeRy 1984 - Renee-Noelle Felice

2008-08-03T19:56:00.000-07:00

Message from Jessica Max Stein

2008-07-25T11:57:00.001-07:00

Dear Friends,

Please join me on Saturday, August 16, 2008 in Seneca Falls, NY to
celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Women's Peace Encampment. We will reenact the women's walk from Seneca Falls to Waterloo, about four miles.

From July 4th to Fall 1983, hundreds of women camped outside of the
Seneca Army Depot in Romulus, NY, to protest its nuclear weapons and "to challenge the nuclear threat to life itself". Nearly 2000 women joined a weekend of actions in late July, including writer/activists Grace Paley and Barbara Deming.

Join me on August 16th to reenact their walk of July 30, 1983, when about 200 women set out from Seneca Falls to the encampment in Romulus, 15 miles south. In Waterloo, about 300 angry locals blocked their path across a footbridge, where a three-hour standoff ended with over 50 civil disobedience arrests.

Saturday, August 16, 2008 Itinerary

11 am: Meetup at Zuzu's Café, 107 Fall Street, Seneca Falls.
Noon: The walk begins. 12-5 pm (or thereabouts): We trace the women's route, stopping at the site of the 1848 women's rights convention and the homes of some of its organizers. We end the walk in our own collective triumph, by walking all the way over the bridge.

This is not a tour or lecture but a collaborative project — this day will be whatever we make it. Bring songs, stories, thoughts, pictures, and memories, along with snacks, sunscreen, water bottle and comfortable shoes.

About me: I grew up 200 miles east of Seneca Falls, in Schenectady, NY. I am a peacewalker; this commemoration is part of a longer 50+ mile walk along the Erie Canal. My first trek spanned 50 miles along the Hudson, chronicled in my zine "The Long Walk Back to Myself" (Microcosm Publishing, 2006). I make my home in Brooklyn, NY.

Walking for peace is all the more relevant today as we wage a war to hang onto our country's gasoline habit. Walking itself is peaceful, a kind of meditation. As Deming writes, "Yes, this is the way to walk — with the concentrated attention which is prayer."

Email senecawalk@yahoo.com with any questions. I'll be traveling, so expect a reply within a few days.

All are welcome.

See you in Seneca Falls,
Jessica Max Stein

SNaPSHoT - 1983

2008-07-08T10:57:00.000-07:00

Miriasiem, Carolyn and Karen in the living room, ca. Summer 1983

GaLLeRy 2008 - Peace camp land today

2008-06-09T06:24:00.000-07:00

The land that housed the peace camp was sold for back taxes in 2006. The front porch and back of the house has since been torn down, the garage, which collapsed of its own accord, has been hauled away and the barn has been re-slatted. The pavilion is still standing while the summer kitchen and boardwalk are steadily returning to the earth. Some of the peace camp graffiti on the house, garden shed and original outhouse is still visible.
Photographs by Jesse Doe

NEWSPAPER 2008 - Soldiers to practice at depot

2008-06-07T08:54:00.000-07:00

SOLDIERS TO PRACTICE AT DEPOT
Government to lease training space
By John Stith

Syracuse Post Standard
Saturday, June 07, 2008
Newsclipping provided by Nancy Keefe Rhodes

The U.S. Army, which eight years ago pulled out of the former Seneca Army Depot in Romulus, is back. In the most recent proposal for new activity at the depot, the Army will bring in groups of 400 to 1,500 soldiers - roughly company-size to brigade-size units - to the depot two to six times a year for training.

Fort Drum, with 107,265 acres, uses about 50,000 acres for training and needed more space, said Col. John Penree, senior planning and operations officer at Fort Drum. Penree said the base is used not only by members of the 10th Mountain Division, based at Fort Drum, but also by National Guard units from across the Northeast."It gets very busy here in the summer," he said.

Penree said state officials contacted the Army in October 2004 about using the depot for training. Fort Drum officials and the Seneca County Economic Development Corp., which oversees redevelopment of the depot, are finalizing a lease agreement. County development officials did not respond to requests for comment.

An environmental assessment prepared by the Army calls for a five-year lease, renewable for five years, to use 3,000 acres of the 10,600-acre depot. The areas include the airfield, a large portion of the bunker area and warehouse space. Penree said there is no cost to the Army to lease the land, but the Army will share maintenance costs and will repair any damage caused by the training operations. Only wheeled vehicles will be used at the depot. No heavy equipment or tracked vehicles will be used, he said.

Seneca's 25th Anniversary Celebration!

2008-06-03T14:30:00.000-07:00

What better way to mark the 25th anniversary of the Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice than by joining thousands of women in a 4-day gathering for peace at the White House?

We urge all feminists, activists and artists to heed this call from Eli Painted Crow, a 22-year Army Veteran who served in Iraq in 2004. She is a Native American from the Yaqui Nation. This is her vision:

"A gathering of women, the grandmothers, mothers and the daughters of all. To see our sisters, our friends and lovers who are ready to start something great. It is about you; it is about me, together it is "we." Imagine how powerful this can be, listening to our heartbeats growing strong. A heartbeat that is a stand for peace. We, the Turtle Women are rising, rising to help our mother, rising to witness her cries for the loss of lives. We, the Turtle Women are rising, rising to speak through our hearts, through the beat of the drum that connects all life for all time. We are Turtle Women rising, rising for peace."

Check out her web page: turtlewomenrising.org and make plans to join your peace camp sisters, October 10-13, 2008 in D.C. We're organizing rides. Let us know you're coming.

"We're gonna rise with the fires of freedom.
Truth is the fire that will break our chains.
We're gonna stop the fires of destruction.
Healing is the fire running through our veins."

GaLLeRy 1983 - Hazel Brampton

2008-06-03T10:36:00.000-07:00

OPENING DAY, July 4, 1983
Photographs by Hazel Brampton

NAGASAKI DAY August 6, 1984

NEWSPAPER 1985 - Seneca Makes N.Y. No. 2 in Nukes

2008-06-03T10:01:00.000-07:00

SENECA MAKES N.Y. NO. 2 IN NUKES
by Jack Anderson

Syracuse Post-Standard June 14, 1985
Newsclipping provided by Jane Begley

In the 40 years since the first atomic bomb exploded, the world has rushed headlong down the path of nuclear proliferation. So far, the possession of nuclear weapons by five major powers has acted as a successful deterrent.

But the possibility is growing that the nuclear arsenal is getting out of control. Familiarity seems to have bred contempt for the consequences of a nuclear exchange; officials in Washington – and presumably in the other nuclear-power capitals – are thinking what was once called the unthinkable.

Consider the testimony of a top Strategic Air Command general at a closed session of the Senate Armed Services Committee. According to the transcript, he made the obligatory bow to “the complex interaction of many elements” that add up to deterrence, but then said ominously; “However, should deterrence fail between strategic nuclear powers, all but one of these factors become irrelevant, and we must then look to the ultimate measure of merit: raw military power.”

The general proceeded to plead the case for deploying more nuclear warheads in this country and abroad.

We doubt that even the experts of the Strategic Air Command, let alone President Reagan and his advisors have a clear idea of just how extensive the nuclear arsenal has become. A fresh picture is presented in a new book, “Nuclear Battlefields: Global Links in the Arms Race,” by William Arkin and Richard Fieldhouse.

With a minimum of rhetoric and a maximum of mind-numbing facts and figures, the book lists every nuclear warhead in every facility related to the production and deployment of nuclear weapons.

The greatest shock for most Americans will be the discovery that there are nuclear warheads practically in their back yards. Only 22 states and the District of Columbia have no nuclear warheads within their borders. The greatest contiguous warhead-free zone is a roughly Y-shaped, 15-state cordon sanitaire stretching from the Atlantic Ocean (Deleware and Maryland) to the Mississippi River, north to the Canadian border (Minnesota) and south to the Gulf of Mexico (Alabama and Mississippi).

There also is a chart that ranks the states by the number of warheads and also by nuclear facilities. Surprisingly, the two states with the most nuclear weapons are on the eastern seaboard, not the Great Plains where the intercontinental ballistic missiles are deployed.

South Carolina heads the list with 1,962 warheads. The Navy weapons stations at Charleston stores 1,482 warheads, mostly as spares for submarines being overhauled. Three subs berthed there account for the remaining 480.

Second is New York, with 1,900 warheads, most of which are at Seneca Army Depot in the Finger Lakes region. A secret Pentagon report we have obtained discloses that the Army has been stockpiling warheads for neutron bombs there since 1981. These and other warheads were made from nuclear material recovered from 1,200 “retired” 8-inch artillery shells, which yielded about 78 tons of highly enriched uranium or alloys.

The rest of the Top 10 and the number of nuclear warheads in each are North Dakota (1,510); California (1,437); Washington state (1,172); Michigan and Texas (630 each); Virginia (542); Louisiana (530); and Arkansas (430).

Seneca Army Depot Fact Sheet

2008-06-03T09:15:00.000-07:00

Pamphlet distributed by the Finger Lakes Peace Alliance - Geneva, NY ca. 1983

What is the Seneca Army Depot?

The Seneca Army Depot (SEAD) is one of several facilities used to store nuclear weapons for the Department of Defense. It is located on 11,000 acres of rural land in upstate New York and is operated by the U.S. Army. The earliest known use of SEAD for nuclear weapons-related work was in 1944 when uranium was stored at the depot for the Manhattan Project (the government project which developed the first atomic bomb). Eleven of the storage bunkers used were found to be radioactive n 1980. These bunkers have since been sealed off.

In 1957 the Seneca Army Depot began storing tactical (short range) nuclear weapons and in 1961 began distributing “special weapons” items and repair parts both here and overseas. Nuclear weapons are routinely referred to as “special weapons” in Department of Defense documents.

Evidence that SEAD is a Nuclear Storage Facility

It is the policy of the Department of Defense (DOD) neither to confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons at a particular location. However, evidence shows that SEAD is a major nuclear weapons facility and is the on East Coast “transshipment point” receiving nuclear weapons from the Department of Energy (DOE), the manufacturer of the weapons, for eventual deployment in Europe.
Evidence includes:

Seneca Army Depot has a storage area essential for the housing on nuclear weapons. It consists of 60 to 70 reinforced earth-covered bunkers as well as a 28,000 square foot earth-covered, temperature controlled building essential for plutonium maintenance. (Plutonium is the explosive element common to most nuclear weapons.)

This nuclear storage area is guarded by 200 to 250 military police who are authorized to use deadly force in order to prevent intruders from approaching the bunkers. These police officers have received anti-terrorist training. The 1982 military construction hearing included a request to increase the number of military police at SEAD.

Included in a 1967 SEAD employees’ handbook is a list of four “occupational skills”: “nuclear weapons officer,” “nuclear weapons assembly technician,” “nuclear weapons maintenance technician,” and “nuclear weapons electronics specialist.”

A 1975 technical manual includes SEAD in a list of “military first destinations” for the receipt of nuclear weapons and ‘limited life components” (this refers to tritium, an element used to trigger nuclear warheads).

A July 1980 DOD/DOE planning document identifies SEAD as the East Coast transshipment point for nuclear munitions.

Economic Impact of SEAD and Jobs

The Seneca Army Depot’s 1982-1983 operating budget exceeds 30 million dollars. Over 80 percent goes to pay the wages of civilian and military personnel.

The depot provides nearly 1,400 jobs; 800 of the jobs are held by civilians while the remaining 600 jobs require a high level of skill or security clearance and are filled by persons who are brought to the depot form outside the Finger Lakes region. Many of the low skills jobs are filled by family members of military personnel stationed at the depot. The end result of this employment situation is that only a small percentage of all the jobs at the depot are open to local people.

The Tax Impact of SEAD

SEAD is a federal facility and therefore pays no sales or property-related taxes. The depot occupies about 4% of Seneca County’s land area. The depot’s land and buildings are reported to have an assessed value of $250 million and could be paying over $8,000,000 per year in property-related taxes in Seneca County. A private enterprise would also be paying millions of dollars in sales taxes on the material it would be buying for its operations. The depot has within its boundaries a department store, restaurant, two bars, a luncheonette, a grocery store, liquor store, bowling alley and gas station. These nine enterprises are included in the depot’s property tax assessment of over $250 million and are for the use of military personnel and their families. Sales made in these businesses are not subject to sales taxes.

Less than 1% of the military personnel at the depot own homes in the community and pay any property-related taxes. 67% of the military personnel and their families live on the depot in military housing. These person do not contribute rent or sales tax revenues from utility bills to the local economy.

SoNG 035 "Down by Seneca"

2008-05-25T15:54:00.000-07:00

Video: Seneca Army Depot main gate, August 17, 1983 - Women's Video Collective

DOWN BY SENECA
aka I ain't Gonna Study War No More

Gonna lay down my burden
Down by Seneca, down by Seneca, down by Seneca
Gonna lay down my burden
Down by Seneca, down by Seneca.

Chorus:
We ain't gonna study war no more, we ain't gonna study war no more,
We ain't gonna study war no, study war no more.
We ain't gonna study war no more, we ain't gonna study war no more,
We ain't gonna study war no more.

Gonna get rid of those nuclear bombs
Down by Seneca, down by Seneca, down by Seneca
Gonna get rid of those nuclear bombs
Down by Seneca, down by Seneca.

Chorus

Gonna sing like a snow white dove
Down by Seneca, down by Seneca, down by Seneca
Gonna sing like a snow white dove
Down by Seneca, down by Seneca.

Chorus

We're all gonna live in peace
Down by Seneca, down by Seneca, down by Seneca
We're all gonna live in peace
Down by Seneca, down by Seneca.

SoNG 034 "Here is My Hand"

2008-05-25T15:37:00.000-07:00

Video: Mary Lou at the Seneca Army Depot, August 17, 1983 - Women's Video Collective

HERE IS MY HAND

Here is my hand, here is the other
Here is a smile, here is another
You are my friends, my sisters, my brothers
May happiness and peace be with you

SoNG 030 "Were you there on that bridge at Waterloo?"

2008-05-23T13:56:00.000-07:00

WERE YOU THERE ON THAT BRIDGE AT WATERLOO?
Words by Barbara Deming, to the tune of "Were you there at Hiroshima"

Were you there on that bridge at Waterloo?
Were you there on that bridge at Waterloo?
Oh-oh-oh sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there on that bridge at Waterloo?

Were you there when we sat to prove our rights?
Were you there when we sat to prove our rights?
Oh-oh-oh sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when we sat to prove our rights?

Were you there when they yanked us off to jail?
Were you there when they yanked us off to jail?
Oh-oh-oh sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they yanked us off to jail?

Were you there when we made that jail our school?
Were you there when we made that jail our school?
Oh-oh-oh sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when we made that jail our school?

Were you there when wouldn’t pay their bail?
Were you there when wouldn’t pay their bail?
Oh-oh-oh sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when wouldn’t pay their bail?

Were you there when they had to set us free?
Were you there when they had to set us free?
Oh-oh-oh sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they had to set us free?

Were you there when we sang “I’ll not forget”?
Were you there when we sang “I’ll not forget”?
Oh-oh-oh sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when we sang “I’ll not forget”?

HeRSToRy 026 Lucinda Sangree

2008-05-23T12:12:00.000-07:00

PeHP Oral Herstory 026: Lucinda Sangree
Date: August 26, 2007
Location: Ithaca, NY
Present: Estelle Coleman, Hershe Michele Kramer, Laura Boswell Thornton, Alice O'Malley, Andrea Doremus

Status: Transcription completed. Editing for blog underway.

Do you like to hear interesting women talk about interesting things? Would you like to help make herstory? How about volunteering to transcribe some of the oral herstories we've been recording? We have the equipment and supplies, we just need someone to listen and type who lives in Upstate New York. Want to know more? Email us!

HeRSToRy 011 Claire Beach

2008-05-23T12:08:00.000-07:00

PeHP Oral Herstory 011: Claire Beach
Date: October 22, 2006
Location: Seattle, WA
Present: Estelle Coleman, Hershe Michele Kramer

Claire was a member of the Women’s Video Collective

C: My name is Claire Beach and we are in Seattle, Washington and it is October 22, 2006.

H: Tell us some reflections when you found out we were doing this project?

C: Well, I had a couple of emails from you, Hershe, and it was real exciting. It’s a long time ago but it’s one of my proudest moments in my life. It was really important personally, in many ways. It’s great that people are still thinking about it and doing it. I was pleased it’s still out there in the world.

H: And your mom’s reaction?

C: Well, my mom, is pretty conservative and I tell her things even when she doesn’t want to hear ‘em. When I told her I was real excited about going to this interview to talk about what happened at the peace encampment, she said, “Oh, I was trying to forget that part of your life!” I said, “Mom! You know, I’m really proud of it! What are you talking about?!?” And she goes, “Well but didn’t you get arrested?” [laughter] And I said, “Well, yes, but we were very gentle. We climbed over the fence, we sat down, we were friendly. We didn’t cause any trouble.” Then I said, “ Mom, Dr. Benjamin Spock also went over the fence." [ laughter] She goes, “Oh, he did?!?” It was very interesting. She’s a pretty loving Mom, so even though it bothered her, I think she was still proud in her own little way. The interesting thing too, that she liked and didn’t like at the same time, was when I was arrested I gave my name as my grandmother’s first name and her best friend’s last name. ‘Cause even though they’d been gone for a while, they would’ve been right there with me. So I, Antippi Givens, can never go to the federal army depot again(1). [shared laughter].

H: Okay, so let’s back up a little bit. Where were you and how did you come to know about the camp?

C: Well, I was living in Somerville, Massachussetts and I was in a group called the Somerville Producers group. We put out a live show every other week called Dead Air Live on Somerville Public Access, one of the oldest public access facilities /organizations in the country, which started in ’72. This Somerville Producers group had men and women in it and one of the women I really connected with was Martha Molleson [Molleson, see Herstory 045], and she said, “You know what? There is this really cool thing I just heard about. Women have bought land and it’s near the army depot and they’re protesting the Cruise and Pershing missiles. Let’s make a documentary! We can start a group, get women all together and do that.” And so it just came in this spontaneous way and we invited women that we knew in the Producers group and put out a call in the community. At the first meeting, 15 or 20 women really wanted to make it happen, too. The Women's Video Collective (2) was basically just a group of women that joined together to accomplish doing this documentary,

We didn’t know how. We had no money. Public access let us take equipment to New York [laughter] and you’re not supposed to take it out of the state. There's a lot of logistics. I don't remember all the details-who could lend us stuff, and how would we make it happen? I remember though, this incredible passion about why it was so important to document something like this. Then the history of the area started unfolding and it became even more important. It was where Harriet Tubman had worked with the underground railroad, where the women of the Iroquois nation had refused to have sex with the men until they stopped fighting, and where Susan B. Anthony and Cady Stanton came together. There’s something not just special, but very powerful there. So ultimately, I quit my job, took whatever savings I had, and borrowed a tent from a friend of mine. She actually had to help me set it up because I’d never camped before. I went down there and lived for six weeks doing the primary field camera work. It’s hard to put into words. It was just an amazing experience, to own this land and have all women there. I was thinking on the way down here, one of the first images that came to mind was sleeping in this tent at night and having the helicopters hovering over to keep us agitated and feeling amazing, palatable, energy fields. Positive versus negative. Women there all talked about it in different ways. You really could feel it. Especially at one point toward the end of August - I stayed there through Labor Day – there was a lot of tension happening. It was really palatable, It really felt like evil versus good, our being next to this place that had albino deer and rabbits and nuclear waste dumped in it-- and people around with leukemia and cancer. We wanted to make a story about that but it was just too much. Our focus was on the peace encampment and the efforts there by the women. That other story really needs to be told about how dangerous that area has become for people. I’m not sure what's happened in the last 20 years, but it was a pretty nasty place to grow up around.

H: Did you have skills in what you set out to do at Seneca before you did it?

C: Yes and no. I came to Boston and got my master’s degree in feminist therapy at Goddard's program in Cambridge , I wanted to do work in the community rather than just in the women’s community where I was involved. I wanted to work especially with kids, to help them open up their minds and shed some of their their stuff. So I got a job directing the Somerville Youth Program. I had to be responsible for what everyone was doing and these kids wanted to do a video show. I took a class in it to learn and I got completely hooked. Reagan was cutting all the programs at that point. With shrinking programs and layoffs I made a decision to go and do something that allowed me to do social change but also be creative. In '81 I left the the youth program and in ’82 I started doing music documentaries. I had just started doing video-- I was a real newbie. I’d worked on live studio settings and had that down pretty well, had edited a little bit and started doing some producing, so it was like jumping in the fire and just doing it. For most of us women it was on-the-job training.

H: Did the other people of the collective decide when you came for six weeks?

C: Well, We tried to take turns. We set up a schedule – who could go down what weekend-- for longer than that? Who’s got vacation coming? So we worked up a grid to try to see who could cover. At some point we felt like we needed more coverage and I really wanted to do it. The group really supported me and helped with some money, food and the tent. For six weeks I was the anchor. People came and stayed in the tent or they brought their own tents and sort of rotated. Most of the women came for a weekend, a long weekend, a couple days or a week. I think I was there the most in terms of one, long period of time.

Really cool things happened. Women from the New York group gave us some equipment to use. We filmed on, 3/4” Sonya Portapacks. But our footage, when we finally took it to the editor, had all different colors because we had equipment from New York and Somerville and stuff people lent us. Basically, it was pretty amazing.

H: In the edited version of Stronger Than Before(3), are we looking at one camera or did you have several cameras out for opening day or different actions?

C: That’s a good question. For the most part we were filming on a single camera. When I was there I just had the one. When people came in then they would bring cameras. So when there was more than one of us, there were probably a couple cameras. We also had people doing photography. Nancy's Clover's [Clover, see Herstory 035] photography is awesome. She just gave it life, There’s a picture that Nancy took of us in my Volkswagen convertible with cameras and photography stuff at a big protest march when a lot of women got arrested. The pictures she took were just amazing. We also had some people doing audio and radio-- so audio, video, and film. The video was great of course.

H: Did you have a goal in terms of product or length of video?

C: No, I don’t think we had. Again, it’s sort of reaching back into the cobwebs, I need more hard drive space in my mind. We wanted to make a documentary, tell the story and we wanted a finished product, so, that’s what we tried to do. And one of the things I remember, that was really important, because I’m a process person and I come from social work rather than just film and video, was for me to show the women that wanted to see, what we’d filmed. So I set up the camera, not in the main house, but in the barn building, and would play back for women who wanted to come what the action was that day, what happened when people went over the fence. It was really empowering to have women be able to sit there and see what was going on. I do remember wanting people to see the process so they would give feedback on what we did and then maybe we could do something different the next day, or more, or whatever. To watch the footage was something that was really important, but I couldn’t always get people to come ‘cause there was so much to do at the peace encampment,

And I remember we had a great interview with Barbara Deming(4). I know she’s in the video and I hope we have the raw footage of that ‘cause it was so powerful. I remember her sitting on the couch in the barn watching it and she had never seen herself on video, but I remember her saying, “I look like my brother". We also felt like we were "legal observers" with the camera, ‘cause the camera is objective. You can choose where you’re pointing it, but the truth is, in raw footage, that is your legal observer, and it was really important. I don’t know what an impact it had but I think when you've got cameras out people are a little more hesitant to be total jerks. I hope that’s the case, that we contributed a little bit on that. So no, we didn’t have an exact idea for the product but we knew we wanted to tell the story.

H: Was being at protests or demonstrations something that you were familiar with already?

C: Yeah, I had been a part of a lot of demonstrations and protests. I’m trying to think had I ever filmed before that,? Yes, I had filmed before that, during apartheid. There were several huge protests in Boston and we filmed those. Then, after the peace encampment, I went on to do more things, especially with children, toys, and violence. We did a show called ‘Why G.I. Joe’s Got to Go'. Vietnam vets came and were doing this wonderful protest downtown, handing out little tiny stretchers and body bags the size of G.I. Joes as people were coming in and out of toy stores with G.I. Joe boxes-– it was so powerful. Part of the legacy from the peace encampment, was doing media work that we felt was a political statement. People that carried that inspired me in 1988 to do that kind of work as well, to continue doing that kind of work on some level.

H: Talk a little bit about the distance or the objectivity that happens if you’re behind a camera versus being as one with it.

C: That’s a great question, a really good question. And you do have a distance and sometimes it’s a safe distance emotionally. There was so much going on. And since you were there longer, it was emotionally hard because you got more connected to the women that you got to know and to what was happening. Seeing them either get bruised or just treated so badly was sometimes really hard, It was the shyness in me. Sometimes I liked being behind the camera, but it became a tug-of-war and, at the end, I had to put the camera away. On Labor Day weekend I felt I had to contribute what I wanted to do which was to be able to do civil disobedience at the gates. I put the camera away and I don’t think anyone filmed it.

H: Tell us a little bit about the action and your climbing over.

C: I remember that it was getting really cold, I remember that as we went to the gate I don’t know if I knew exactly that I was going to do it. I wasn’t positive at the time, but just, it was the right thing to do. It was what I had to do. We climbed over and sat down. And they, of course, were more than happy to put those really tight little plastic things around our our hands and took us to the jail. We had to say who we were and I said, Antippi Givens. By that time I think we had given them a great history lesson ‘cause women were using all these wonderful women in history. I remember this one story where someone said, ”I’m Susan B. Anthony.” And they said, “No you’re not. We know who that is.” So, if nothing else the guards got a great lesson in famous women. It was just a really very special strength and I was really, really proud of it. It was empowering. I don’t know how else to say it. I felt like I had at least contributed a part that was personal. I knew the camera work and the documentary was important, but to feel I had stepped over the line, finally, made that personal. I'd detached myself from the camera to actually attach myself to the action, and the protest.

H: Did you have to discuss that as a group?

C: That’s a really good question. I know we talked about it. I think it was always if people wanted to do that, fine. We were very politically driven, We knew from the beginning, we were not coming there to be totally objective. Documentary now is like the new narrative and it’s so exciting that it has finally found its place in our society in this great way. If you’re documentary maker, you are objective and you have to show both sides ... we weren’t. At the time, we did get some interviews with people from the town. It’s been a long time since I saw it, I'm really frustrated. I gotta find my copy or call Judi Keleman [Kelemen, see Herstory 012] to say “I need a DVD.” I’m so glad she kept the tapes She was our archivist. Anyway, I’m getting off track. But I just think it was a personal decision if we could or not. I ‘member that it was just the question of when you’re behind the camera, you become detached automatically. I remember wanting to sing the songs and the chants and knowing that I really couldn’t because then all you would hear was my bad voice. But anyway, there was time when we had to set the camera aside and be a part of it, so, we worked in both those worlds.

H: Did the townspeople respond to cameras or you being there?

C: They didn’t like cameras. It was really hard. I ‘member everyone shared some level of wanting to be kind to people, really trying to help educate them or at least explain why we were there in a way that they could hear. I ‘member being really impressed by that. I know I don’t remember any specific conversations. I just remember a lot of hostility and sometimes there was a lot of fear. I felt a lot of fear especially around the gate when people came in the trucks. Men were really angry at us, not only because we were protesting but ‘cause we were all women. There was a lot of anger at our owning that land. They had homophobia and fears about something they couldn’t understand, the unknown or whatever, That was when I was the most scared, when the townspeople were near us and we were doing protests or I was filming it.

H: Were you one of the people to film the march that happened when the women ended up being surrounded and they sat down.

E: In Waterloo, just before the August 1st Action(5).

C: No. I wish I had had kept a diary now it would be great. I had left for a weekend .I don’t know how we knew, but I remember we heard about it when we got close to the peace encampment. No one had cell phones back then, wow! [laughter] But wouldn’t it have been great if we would’ve had cell phones and internet, I remember arriving right after it happened. It was late, like 10 o’clock at night and there was the real media all over the place and I ‘member grabbing the camera really fast as we got out of the car. NBC, I don’t know who it was, had their lights and they were interviewing Bella Abzug(6) and I remember I just bumped my way right in there and used their lights and we got some of that interview. It was intense and really scary. Women were in jail. We started hearing the stories, it was so frightening. I remember the energy was so intense. Going to the jail house and singing to the women really moved me. It was scary and also incredibly emotional. Emotional, in a way that there was so much love. Hearing people singing to the women in the jail was powerful and also frightening.

E: Was that evening when you went?

C: When we got there it was. Most everything had happened, they were arrested.

E: We went to the school in Interlaken where they’d been been taken and we were singing to them. And a large crowd had gathered and Janis Milton [Milton, see Herstory 012] was there that night.

C: Oh yes! God, you have a good memory [laughter].

E: Well, actually she recorded some stuff and things happened that night when I thought I was going to lose my eye to the American flag. Janice was holding up a tape recorder- this guy was pushing me and she was saying, “I’m getting it all on tape.” And the cop was saying, “I can’t help.” I mean that was a big night.

C: That had happened before I even arrived, I think, and we heard these stories and the stories were so powerful even secondhand. But I’m glad there was film, have you seen the footage of that?

E: No, as far as I know there was no footage-she was just doing audio.

C: We were really really upset that we missed that. Upset that it happened, period, but as filmmakers, we were like, oh man, we needed to get that!

H: You were there before and then you left?

C: Yeah, I left and came back. I don’t know where we went.

H: So you were getting back in time for the big action.

C: Right, exactly.

H: When you watch Stronger Than Before it is an interesting thing ‘cause it mentions Waterloo but then there’s no footage and I thought did they miss that?

C: We weren’t there and we missed that. We didn’t know, obviously, it was going to happen. We weren’t there and that was one of the things, when we were trying to schedule, we wanted to see if we had someone there all the time but it just was impossible, that summer to have everyone there. We were very regretful that we came in so late that night. God, how long were women kept there?

E: Six days or something, five days in that particular school gym in Interlaken.

C: The energy there was so? I think we drove there. Didn’t we go there and film? There wasn’t anything there to film, huh? Didn’t we didn’t we have pictures of it?

H: I think you have stuff later. But it’s quite clear that you missed the preceding because it’s not on the film, but you have shots. You have them talking right when they got out. I think it was four or five days later and you have them at the fairgrounds.

E: Stuff up at the trial, right?

C: Oh, right! Yeah, right, exactly. I remember, I remember being there. I need to see that film again!

C: I know that I’d come down for different long weekends and then, it might have even been August 1st that I actually went there to stay the next six weeks, that might have been when I came back to stay longer, so.

E: Because you’re saying something about it being very cold.

C: Labor Day. Labor Day weekend it was cold I remember it feeling cold.

E: Well, at the August 1st action it was really hot and and we got held up because there were so many people at the truck gate where the main actions were gonna happen… and I remember the tar in the road started to melt...

C: Yeah!

E: It had started out raining and then there was a rainbow just before we left the camp. There was a double rainbow through the sky when we came back. It’s so long ago!

C: But it was Labor Day weekend I remember it being cold. It rained a lot. I remember it being wet. We used lots of garbage bags for our equipment and we were putting them over the cameras. Wow. Cool.

H: So tell us then about the process, you had the footage. What did you guys do as a group after that?

C: Well, you can imagine editing by collective, by consensus. Now that I edit all the time, I sort of laugh. It was a struggle. We had at some point, 10 women in the edit room at one time trying to help make decisions together and it was really an interesting process. I laugh about it, now, but it was really hard. We had so much footage. We had hours and hours of stuff and I remember we signed out different tapes to people who would log and make notes of where in the time frame it was on the tapes. We finally realized we needed to have a professional editor come in, This great woman, Linda Rubin, from the Somerville Producers group knew a lot of us women, did the final editing. She now edits for Fox News in L.A. I remember her saying, “I can not [laughter] do this with 10 of you back there, trying to decide what to pick. So at one point we had to finally turnover and just let go, but it was hard We struggled, like a lot of groups struggle, and I remember there was a lot of pain at the end around credits. That was one of the biggest issues and I’ll never forget that. How do we as a collective... some women could go a lot, some of them couldn’t, some of us could actually stay there longer, some of us couldn’t, but everyone participated, everyone supported in different ways and we really wanted to acknowledge that, but then do you not acknowledge any specific work done? So we ended up doing it alphabetized, literally, and that was really hard and we struggled with that. It was hard I admit, to let go of, ‘cause some of us really found our lives, our careers doing that. So I remember it just was a lot of tears and a lot of anger and a lot of joy, too, but it went into a lot of pain at the end to pull it all together. I think a lot of women you interview will probably remember those meetings that went on and on. But things turned out well in the end. In fact one of the women I struggled with the most about how you acknowledge people’s contributions specifically and not lose the group thing, came at odds with each other. Later on, actually, I was running a distance learning TV studio in Cambridge and hired her and we just made a great connection and sort of reinvented our friendship. So everything turned out wonderful. But it was hard, working in a collective, working with consensus. Really, you have to do a lot of work to make that happen and we were new at it, but we were really happy with how it came out and I don’t want to paint it as all being bad because it wasn’t. But I remember those painful meetings that we left crying. We all put so much into it, there’s so much that you pour into this thing, this project, this statement and some of it was a let-down, too.

I’m trying to remember when we knew that the Pershing and Cruise missiles were going over - was it October, November, that they ended up going over? That was really hard. I know it was hard for all of us there, anyone who was there, and people that lived there a lot or stayed there a longer time, but for me personally, what I remember is just feeling really devastated because we felt like this was a chance to make it different and really, and I know we did make a difference, but we weren’t able to stop that action and I remember thinking, feeling like I could work globally and change things around the world, and then had this cathartic moment and said, I may not be able to do that but I can do it locally. I remember it sort of really changed my political perspective at the time and felt like I had to start doing things in my hometown and that’s when I started working more with teens and doing video and working with them to help them have voices. So, for me, I remember the outcome was really disappointing and yet it turned into something that was really powerful.

C: Well, I’ll tell my flag story. I remember a lot of us were there Memorial Day weekend, to film. One of those towns nearby actually invented Memorial Day. [laughter] Women who had been at the peace camp longer said, "it’s pretty intense here, there’s flags everywhere". I remember going though town and seeing all those flags and they put more up because we were there. For every one of us I think they wanted to put up three flags or something. It felt like that and it felt so oppressive. The symbol of the flag was just so negative at that point because they were using it to sort of bludgeon us symbolically. like we had no right to protest anything. I remember feeling so oppressed by the flag, the image. We’re still doing that aren’t we, in this country? Isn’t it sad? Unbelievable. But I remember the flags, I remember there was a march Memorial Day and the women walked through the town that day and I’m pretty sure we walked with them and used the car. It was one of the days that we had the video mobile. Anyway, the flags were everywhere! That whole summer it seemed to be they were waving, and folks waving them at us and trying to use them to hurt, yes!

E: Yes, jabbing us.

C: Boy, what a metaphor! Oh my god, what a metaphor!

C: Anyway, it was hard.

E: It caused us to become stronger than we had been and that title is so apt.

C: Yeah.

E: How did you arrive at the title?

C: I don’t know if I remember exactly. It may have come from a quote that someone had said in one of the interviews, I have a sort of, that’s my memory jog. I think someone talked and said somethig very similar to what you just said around this has made us stronger, that we’ve changed. It changed everybody. I know how deeply it changed those of us who got a chance to go there, but I think it must have come from a quote from someone saying something similar to what you just said. So. Yeah, we loved the title - we thought of it as a good title and we were happy with it. You've interviewed Judi [Kelemen, see Herstory 012], right?

H: No, we haven’t.

C: Oh, you gotta interview Judi if you get a chance.

H: Yeah, we’re planning to get over there.

C: ‘Cause Judi-- we submitted it to this big contest. A JVC video and equipment company did a national contest and we entered and we won first place nationally in documentary and that’s one reason it got aired nationally on PBS. We were just so proud ‘cause we didn’t know where we were going to distribute it. We knew we could play it on local access and places and people would get tapes and copies, but that was really huge. I remember going in to make the 1 inch copy back then-it was talking Big-Time! It was really big fat tape and we had to do the $300 an hour studio and it was the couches and you got brought coffee. It was very bizarre because it was totally different than what we had been working with and were really proud to have done. We won equipment, that was really cool! And we did some other things in the women’s video collective afterwards like filming the first all women composers conference in Cambridge, I think it was held in Cambridge, or Newton, but it was women composers from across the country and that was so cool. I didn’t know how many women composers we had. So we did different things with the equipment. We wish we had that equipment when we went to Seneca, it would have been helpful, but we won it afterwards for that documentary.

H: Right before we got on the plane to come here, when we stopped in and saw Nancy [Clover, see Herstory: 035] she gave us this big thing and we were quick, let’s look before we have to get on the plane, [Claire laughter] but I saw that there was some-

C: The award.

H: She had flyers and everything, you had won the equipment and I wondered if you’d had it beforehand. I was curious because there was a sheet that was something that you all had put out that said Stronger Than Before. Then there seemed like a list of other things. Did anything ever come out or get produced from that whole footage besides Stronger Than Before?

C: I don’t think so.

H: I didn’t either, so I wonder if maybe it was a vision that you all had that didn’t materialize.

C: I wish I could remember, I’m getting really old, yeah, I don’t remember. I remember it was so big coming back with the footage and going through that. There was so many things to do with it. We wanted to archive it. In fact I know Judi [Kelemen, see Herstory 012] may have a lot of the archives. I don’t know if you asked her but she may have kept a lot of them, I know that we really wanted to and we felt that it was really important. I don’t even know if we may have given some of the video somewhere. We went and talked at one of the New York State colleges, SUNY, I think it is. And there was a conference there about women in video and things and I don’t know where, but I remember something about wanting to make sure this footage got archived and it really should be and if it’s not, digital copies should be made. Otherwise it’s gonna be lost. Videotape just does not last anywhere near as long as what film lasts and of course, digitally, would last for a longer time. I’ll look again ‘cause I think hopefully, I have some of the field tapes.

H: Did you all have agreements about what would happen with the footage? How to make decisions if you wanted to use it in a film?

C: Um.

H: You don’t have individual rights?

C: Well, there was no money exchanged. There was never any money. We got the equipment, that’s what we won. And I think we may have won some money but it went into our checking account. And for a while people paid dues so we could make copies of things or, send some of us to go to talk about the experience. We basically felt that, once Women Make Movies(7) picked it up and distributed it for quite a while, if money came in it went into that fund, but it wasn’t much. None of us had any claim on it personally, which was good.

One of the stories I actually wanted to share is that a couple of us had kids before but most of us hadn’t had children and we started getting pregnant different times because we’re all in our early 30s or whatever and we all had boys. We laughed and we said, you know god said, she just said, we got to give these boys to feminists to raise [laughter] ‘cause maybe that will help change and we just loved that, that we ended up sort of like, no girls?!?! This is so weird, but anyway. But I’ve got a great son who’s got a great heart, he’s definitely a feminist, so, it’s a good thing. We thought that was interesting.

H: When Nancy mentions your name she just lights up and you have the same thing, so is there a particular quality about sharing and working passionately in that way that creates something lasting for you?

C: Oh, yeah, the bonding was beyond when we left. You all were there. There’s no way you don’t make these amazing connections being, sleeping outside, and bathing together in the big sink area, or trying to figure out where we could take a shower again. I can’t remember, there was one place we would go to take showers.

E: Sampson?

C: Yeah! Anyway, even if we were just living there and not protesting, there’s something that you always have in common, it’s something that you just, the bond, a bond comes, for sure. Doing that and going through all that together, our friendships got very much more deepened. Linda Rubin and I had been friends a little before this, too, but really good friends since then, and Martha Molleson, [Molleson, see Herstory 045] an unbelievable woman. I wish you could interview her. She became a major professor at the Australian School of Film and Video. She wrote two major textbooks that have been used in the schools, was teaching Aboriginee women video and she came back and interviewed myself and some other women and men who had worked with Public Access TV. Judi stayed in Public Access and she’s been working as a Public Access director for a long time. I know Glynnis Lomon [Lomon, see Herstory 013] who’s still probably in Watertown, went on to continue to do a lot of video stuff. We’ve all sort of gone off into our own places, but I know that we were ever changed by that time in our lives.

H: Can you take us back a little bit when you said that you guys finally had to give up on editing yourself and take it to someone?

C: [laughter] Well, we finally realized it’s really hard to edit by consensus and it’s hard to edit by committee because if every person that edited had the same footage and we sat down separately at the same computer and the same program, we might make three different choices and that’s what it’s all about. When you get to edit this if you have to, you will find this out. In the editing process you really tell the story. You have to have the footage to tell the story with, but that’s when manipulation comes in, that’s where the magic happens, the good stuff and the bad stuff can happen in terms of taking and putting it somewhere. You see that in advertisements all the time. but I think we finally got it that we can’t do it that way, We knew what we wanted, we had a script, I know we worked on what we wanted to have first and second and third and all that, and talked about it a lot but finally we just got to the point, if this is going to be made, if this is going to happen, we’re going to have to trust someone else to take what we want and make it. And a couple of us were always with Linda, but it got to where we just couldn’t do the 10 to 12 people in the group. But it would be like, no, I think you should cut it there, no, I think you should have the audio there. Those were tiny decisions that you just have to at some point make singularly.

H: And Linda had been at the camp?

C: She had not been there. She had always supported us and wanted to work with us, but she wasn’t at a place where she exactly joined, but she was always there to help support us and we paid her. I remember that was an issue that came up, too. We had some money. We were paying dues. I think we were trying to put money into an account that supported us and we paid her, not a lot, but she needed that because that was what she did, that was her livelihood. We did that and so, to stop and go, okay, we’re going to have to pay a woman to do this, that was a big issue because none of us got paid. But it was what had to happen. It just finally wasn’t going to get made if we didn’t say, okay, we need to let go a little bit, here’s what we want this story to look like, and of course, we were in there approving or not, I mean, at the end, you know.

H: Yeah.

C: We’d see the rough cuts and say can we have more of maybe, Barbara Deming and less of this or whatever but you get to a place that the baby’s just got to get born. And there’s a terrible- there’s a director that came to my dance video class not long ago and he said something that I think we felt at the time but didn’t have a way to say it but that in editing you have to be able to kill our favorite child and it’s a really harsh thing to say but it’s so true, because you become so a part of it and some of us that were there said, you have to have that footage! And that was the most important thing. Someone else said, no, no, no, the week I was there, that was the most important thing so at some point someone else has to step in and go, okay, you’re too involved in it, you’re to subjective, you gotta. So Linda was perfect because she supported us, she knew what we wanted and yet she hadn’t been there and had more of the objectivity to say, this is how you need to tell the story if you want your audience to be able to get it and want it to be shown and all that. So, we had to make some concessions to stuff that we wanted to be longer or different things, but, you have to do that, you have to be able to kill your favorite kid. It just happens.

H: Do you remember looking at the final version? Did you guys come together as a group? Do you remember what that felt like?

C: Yeah, it was really cool. We had a big screening of it, I’m trying to remember where, seemed like an old church and, was maybe the old Baptist Church in Cambridge or maybe somewhere else?

E: Before the, the group itself got to see it?

C: No, I know the group got to see it at some point probably in a home or somewhere and it’s like having a child, it really is. We were doing it for over nine months at least, [laughter] maybe even longer. You have this idea. it’s an overdue child, and all of a sudden it, it comes together. This idea, this emotion, this love, all this stuff comes together and it’s there. We were really proud of it, It was really important and I remember the first time we screened it we all felt obviously, really excited.

H: Can you remember the audiences’ reaction?

C: Oh, people really liked it. They applauded. I wish I could remember. It's terrible I don’t remember all the details! If you interview more of us, you’ll get more of the story but I just remember being really proud of it and people really liked it and we got good feedback, I’m pretty sure.

Anyway, there were other people videotaping, have you come across any other people that made videos about it or films?

H: I think it’s going to be a really fun process of discovering, uncovering and recovering . At first we thought there wasn’t a lot out there but just in the last couple of months someone writes us and says, " I was doing a film about my mother and I shot some at the camp" and Kate Donnelly said, " I was shooting a lot of Super 8 I have a bunch of stuff from the camp, I hope that it will be useful in telling the story…

C: Oh wow! , it would be so nice to have some of that other footage ‘Cause I know there were other people with cameras there, and again, people were coming in and out and there just was a lot of movement and coverage.

E: The possibility of a lot being out there… uncovering it, it’s kind of an anthropological probe, you know.

C: Yeah, a psychological dig: different levels of…

E: This may be a very long process trying to develop this online archive, meanwhile, I hope that there’ll be a bunch of stuff to share by 2008. We are planning to get together after 25 years. I think there needs to be some kind of coming together and sharing of what does exist. What women did, and how we grew because of that work has got to be valued and seen as absolutely worthwhile. Our lives mattered. What we weren’t able to stop, can not stop of us from continuing to raise those male children in ways that make the world better. There are some ways in which what we were able to do then can not be done now because of the repression that’s happening out there. What we were able to do made way for women today to live their lives not having to worry about being lesbian in some of the same ways we maybe did.

C: Oh, god, I know, right.

E: I think we need to come together because there will be discoveries in these things that we need to say to each other or work through… to see how much that sharing of our lives mattered. Well, [laughter] this is an interview and I’m not supposed to talk.

C: Oh, no, this is great! You’re putting words to a lot of what we felt in different ways and it was disappointing for it not to stop the deployment. You’re right, it was a life changing experience and everyone experienced it maybe in a different way, but a lot of it was the common sharing of what we were trying to do, and standing up.

I work with kids and I try to show them things. I talk a lot about the power of the camera and usually, in a first class pass around a camera and have them hold it as I show them some footage of some kids in Somerville, MA., who were 12 and made a documentary that actually changed the town. I’ve been wanting Stronger Than Before. and I tell my students about it. I’ve never shown it because I didn’t have a copy of it. Anyway, I see young women who sometimes don't understand where those roots are from as if they’ve sort of popped up from nowhere. Life, and the backlash of feminism has been so painful in the past few years, unbelievable and just really frustrating. I know as a teacher, there’s just been this big thing going because all of the sudden boys are not succeeding. But the truth is girls are succeeding more and that has been something that has been so troubling to me as a teacher, as a parent, as a woman, because nowhere did I ever hear, wow! the girls are, doing good in science! They’re doing good in math! But as soon as you start getting statistics about the boys doing badly, they're freaking out. And I have a boy. I love boys and I work with them all the time, but that to me was a perfect example of this societal amnesia and also, oh my god, the truth is, it’s not white boys that are failing, it’s children of color that are failing and they’re not talking about it, anyway, a huge huge deal I digress, but, it is connected.

E: It's all connected was one of the big things I think that we learned at the peace camp. It is all connected and we have to keep making those connections and putting those connections out there until they’re heard by the widest number of people ’til it becomes belief.

C: Right, becomes fact and becomes part of the history.

E: Right because we're dreaming it into reality. I have not given up on what women came together to do. It was huge. One of the things we're hearing as we do some of the interviews is the strangeness of a leader not coming out it, and so now, the more we do, the more questions we have. And, I was thinking earlier today, what happened was that a lot of us became, at least leaders of ourselves and we began to lead ourselves in specific directions. I think we began to see direction for ourselves, directions that are not just kind of willy-nilly or namby-pamby [laughter] or whatever following somebody else. I want the information not to be lost. I want the stories to be told.

C: You guys doing this is so important. This is amazing.

E: And, guess who we have to thank? The women. The Boston Women’s Video Collective was truly impressive. Newspaper and media people weren’t sending women so you opened up some doors for a lot of women. I remember being so impressed to see all those red shirts . [laughter].

C: [laughter] Oh, that’s right! I wish I would’ve worn mine. Oh my god! We made these shirts. I forget what they said, but they had a woman and a camera on them and they were bright red and we wore them as our Women’s Video Collective shirts and they were very cool [laugher].

H: So that’s how you signified-

C: Yeah, that’s right, yeah, my god.

E: I wonder if any of them still exist anywhere?

C: I will look, I betcha- I don’t throw away anything! [laughter]

E: Well, yeah, the museum. And then, if there’s one that somebody doesn’t have a use for, we’re going to need to raise money and I’m starting to think now, we need to be collecting things, so I’m just passing on we’re going to have to do some kind of an auction [Claire laughter] or something.

C: That would be fun. Sure, I’ll go look and see. I bet we have some around.

E: It’s going to take all of us to do something in the future and the peace encampment is those of us walking around remembering and living what we learned and it’s just gonna be what happens in the future.

C: Yeah, well, you’re sparking some, some memories, but also all the ripples that come from it. Were all so different and I think sometimes I haven’t connected the dots. I know the dots when we sit and start talking, I’m thinking that a group of us in the city of Somerville started a whole thing on group voices of women and children. We started to look at people running for office and to really stand up on the issues that affect women and children. That was something that came from several of us that had been part of the peace encampment and I remember things like, 13 hugs a day, remember those signs? I tell my students that all the time, make sure you get those hugs. These things become a part of your own mind and culture and you sort of forget where you got them from. Another thing is webs and spirals, those are things that I know I’ve carried on. Women weaving webs and all that stuff.

E: And I think that something about the diversity of the women who came together caused some kind of evolution, some cultural ingraining that 13 hugs are healing. Those bits and pieces, the spirals and the webs, how do they become mainstream? I remember feeling that way about some of the clothing. There was a way of dressing - we just heard the term 'Lesbian dress'.

C: [laughter] I like, ‘dress like lesbians,’ I like that. What does that mean? Who ever thought of ripped shirts, remember when people ripped theirs, because it was so hot.

E: Right, it was kind of an evolution thing people did; created their own kind of style and then one day I open a magazine and suddenly there were pictures with women in long underwear [laughter]. In the morning you’d get up and it’d be cold so you needed long underwear and skirts, and boots but it had spread-

C: Oh, the boot look, we started that I’m sure [laughter].

E: Right, and then there it was in a magazine. But I was having a proprietary sense of that was started here! and I’m curious about that culturally. Who creates culture? Because we’re carrying and living something that has been not only close to our hearts but big in our heads.

C: Yeah. Well, talking about the historical. The history of that whole area from the Iroquois Nation to Harriet Tubman and the early feminists, and then what the peace encampment was, all in this one place. Those are huge, historical connections that go way back. So we’re a part of that and we created another step in the ladder of that whole cultural experience that can’t be forgotton.

E: Did Sojourner Truth's " Ain't I a woman" speech happen right there, too, Well, that’s the thing. Ain’t I a woman and we have not been recognized for the work that women do for peace and in the demand to not have children who have to go and kill other children.

C: Well, you know the other thing you just reminded me of too, is that it’s just like when the mother, Cindy Sheehan went down and sat across from Bush’s house. That to me, reminded me that that was natural, and coming from this really strong place of being a woman and a mother and a nurturer. To me it was just grassroot, from her heart. Just sitting there and how that grew and was the closest thing.

E: Did you want to go?

C: Oh, god yes! [Estelle laughter] You get caught up in your life. I didn’t become a teacher until I was 49, then I found out what I wanted to do when I grew up. You have a kid, it’s just hard to do those things. So I’m so grateful I was able to do that back in the 80s. My son went with me to several of the protests of the war in 2003 and that was really powerful. Recently, he,wanted to go with me to see Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Neil Young’s Living with War tour album is unbelievable. It was all very political. I remember sitting next to him and realizing that he’s 19 and they were playing Ohio and I was 19 when Kent State happened and politicized me. It just made me cry that we’re still dealing with the the same stuff. Anyway, it was the connection. But the other connection was the women in Britain who had the peace encampment there?

E: At Greenham Common(9)

C: Right, ‘cause the peace encampment here was inspired by them, am I right?

E: Yeah.

C: ‘cause they were first.

H: Yeah, and that’s where the Cruise and the Pershing were gonna-

C: Were going there. They stayed together a lot longer, didn’t they? Didn’t they stay with the peace encampment, I mean?

H: Well. Greenham stopped in about 2000. The base closed and the women finally left but they actually have a memorial.

C: I don’t know the camp history much after.

H: Well, the peace camp, Seneca has been around past ’83, ’84, ’85. It transformed into Women’s PeaceLand in 1994. So it’s been going in some incarnation of itself, the land being taken this year.

C: What happened?

E: We just lost the land this last year.: For taxes.

H: You know, no monies. Estelle was a part of it, Seneca got set up for base realignment and closure in ’95 and it closed down officially in 2000.

C: Wow! I’d forgot, oh, my god!

C: Do we, can we say that we had a part of that?

H: We do, we do. I mean there’s so much. The military has changed. We didn’t stop the Cruise but I really like what some of the women have spoken about the amount of attention and education that happened. Bringing awareness of what was going on there brought an incredible focus because a lot of folks in the area weren’t aware and the military never confirmed or denied it. So, it makes a difference

C: You know it did and I think that whole thing about the guards learning more about women’s history. I just love those stories when women would come back and say, yeah, they don’t believe me anymore that I’m Susan B. Anthony.

E: And women were so cagey how they did it [Claire laughter].

1. Seneca Army Depot (SEAD) – a former U.S. military base, pre-1941–2000. Located on 11,000 acres in Romulus, New York, the depot was one of several facilities used to store nuclear weapons for the Department of Defense. The earliest known use of SEAD for nuclear weapons related work was in the 1940’s when uranium was stored at the depot for the Manhattan Project (the project that developed the atomic bomb). SEAD was approved for Base Realignment and Closure in 1995 and closed in 2000.

2. Women's Video Collective - (WVC) was formed by a small group of women from the Boston area in May 1983. Their purpose was to document the Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice in upstate New York. From this experience, the collective developed their mission: to produce media works promoting feminism and peace.

3. Stronger Than Before - WVC documentary about the Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice.

4. Barbara Deming - Barbara Deming (July, 23 1917 – August 2, 1984) - writer and activist who was one of 54 Seneca peace camp women arrested at the Waterloo Bridge, August 1, 1983. Her essay about this protest—which was her last—is included with the reprinted Prison Notes under the title Prisons That Could Not Hold (1985). Deming’s passionate and practical articulation of nonviolent struggle presented in the articles, essays, letters and books she wrote, most notably, Prison Notes (1966) Revolution and Equilibrium (1971), We Cannot Live Without Our Lives(1974) and Remembering Who We Are (1981), affirm her as one of the most significant nonviolent theorists in U.S. history. She stands alone among nonviolence theorists not only because her ideology was secular, but because she was a woman, a lesbian, a feminist.

5. August 1, 1983 – a mass civil disobedience action organized by the Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice. Up to 4000 protestors marched from Sampson State Park to the main gate of the Seneca Army Depot where 250 women arrested after climbing over or under the military fence.

6. Bella Abzug - Served the state of New York in the United States House of Representatives, representing her district in Manhattan from 1971 to 1977. For part of her term, she also represented part of The Bronx as well. She was one of the first members of Congress to support gay rights introducing the first federal gay rights bill, known as the Equality Act of 1974.8. Sonia Johnson - is an American feminist activist and writer. She was an outspoken supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and in the late 1970s. She ran for President in 1984, as the presidential candidate of the U.S. Citizen's Party.

7. Women Make Movies - is a multicultural, multiracial, non-profit media arts organization which facilitates the production, promotion, distribution, and exhibition of independent films and videotapes by and about women.

8. Sonia Johnson - is an American feminist activist and writer. She was an outspoken supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). she ran for president in 1984 as a candidate of the U.S. Citizen's Party.

9. Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp –an ongoing nonviolent protest outside the U.S. Air Force base at Greenham Common in England, 1981-2000. On August 28, 1981, 40 women marched 110 miles to the U.S. Air Force base at Greenham Common, the proposed site of 96 U.S. cruise missiles. Eight days later, four women chained themselves to the air base fence. From this direct action a women’s peace camp was born. On March 21, 1982, 10,000 people demonstrated at the base. 250 women engaged in a 24-hour blockade – 34 were arrested. On December 12, 1982, 300,000 women linked hands to embrace the 9-mile fence encircling the base. Although the last of U.S.’s 96 cruise missile were removed in 1991, women stayed on at Greenham until 2000 to ensure that the base was closed down. In March of 1997, the land was purchased by the Greenham Common Trust and returned to a variety of civilian uses.