“Raging Grannies”/Les Memes dechainees
Not your mother's grandma
By Andrei Liveanu
The McGill Daily
Monday, January 8th, 2007, Volume 96, Number 26
Maureen Adelman, on the left, and Molly Walsh are part of the next generation of retirees that doesn’t want to be a burden on society.
Josh Chapman / The McGill Daily
On a Saturday afternoon last month, about a dozen elderly women dressed in outrageous costumes stood outside the Future Shop on Ste. Catherine. Wearing big sunglasses, pins, flowery hats, pink, mauve, and yellow dresses, and even more brightly coloured shawls, they sang Christmas carols at the top of their lungs.
The passers-by listening closely noticed that these weren’t regular carols, however. The words were changed to reflect the women’s outrage at stores selling violent toys and games. At the start of the holiday shopping rush, these grandmothers were stretching their voices to encourage people to reconsider the presents they would be giving. Some shoppers took only a cursory look before entering the store, but others watched the theatrics in amusement or admiration, and many picked up the literature they were giving out.
Calling themselves “Raging Grannies,” this group is not alone. Rather it is part of an increasingly vibrant movement of socially aware, politically active elderly women who are out to change the world and show that there’s more to grandmotherhood than baking and knitting.
Grey-haired and against the machine
Several peace activists in Victoria, BC were the first to adopt the “Raging Grannies” moniker. In the winter of 1986 they began dressing up and singing songs to protest nuclear vessels entering Canadian waters. This initial “gig” resulted in media attention and the Granny movement has since expanded to many cities across Canada and more recently to the United States and Europe.
Their activities now include many more issues under the social activism umbrella: they sing about war, escalating military budgets, nuclear pollution, health care, landmines, fair trade, climate change, GMO foods, toxic pollutants, and more. Their main goal is to educate people, though they also often distribute literature suggesting follow-up action after singing about an issue.
The Montreal chapter of the Raging Grannies formed in 1989. They have about eight regular members, plus many others who join activities when they can.
A French counterpart, Les Mémés déchaînées, formed in 2002. They play heavily on the grandmother stereotype, sometimes serving cookies to audiences while also singing a song called “We’re Tired of Baking Cookies.” They use their antics and ridiculous costumes to get attention and they often use their “grandmotherness” to get access to restricted areas that would otherwise be off limits to activists. Molly Walsh is a retired children’s librarian and has been a member of the Montreal Raging Grannies since 1993. She first met the Grannies when she went to a potluck at a church where the group was singing. A social activist for many years and about to become a grandmother herself, Walsh was immediately attracted to the group.
“I like the idea of combining social action with having fun. I like being in a group with women who think and feel the way I do regarding various issues,” she says.
The Montreal Grannies took part in every one of the marches protesting the lead-up to the Iraq war and more recently marched in favour of pulling Canadian troops out of Afghanistan. In November, in one of their more confrontational moves, the group sent 42 dead roses to Prime Minister Stephen Harper to represent the number of Canadian soldiers who had died in Afghanistan.
On December 9, the group performed their annual gig downtown to encourage holiday shoppers to not buy war-themed toys, paying special attention to violent video games this year. The Grannies seemed to have extra energy this year due to the unseasonably warm weather, though cold winds, as in past years, have yet to discourage them. As usual, they got a lot of media attention for the performance – exactly what they aim for.
“I think often people are amused, and sometimes I am afraid that they might not take us very seriously,” says Walsh. “But I think they are impressed that we are willing to dress up, get out on a cold street corner, make fools of ourselves, and call attention to various problems.”
Though the activities of the Montreal chapter have remained fairly tame, the group is not afraid to stir up trouble. One year they did a gig regarding fair trade at Fairview Mall in Pointe-Claire. They stationed themselves in front of Foot Locker and started singing to discourage shoppers from buying Nike and other brands associated with sweatshop labour. Security guards kept a close eye but let them stay for almost an hour before escorting them out of the mall.
“I think there is a time and place for civil disobedience and a lot of Grannies feel very strongly that it’s something we should do more of,” says Walsh. “We as a movement have not tackled this issue seriously yet because there is too much disagreement in the ranks about whether it is acceptable or not.”
Chapters in other cities have been more aggressive, however. The newer American groups, especially, are generally combative in their activities. In 2005, some members were even arrested after anti-war demonstrations in Tucson, Arizona, and New York.
For now, however, Walsh is happy with the activities the Montreal Grannies are doing. She says they sometimes have 90-year olds join them in marches, and she certainly plans to continue participating for as long as can.
In a society that is seeing an increasing number of people remain in relative good health throughout their later years, it seems older women are finding ways to be active in the community in creative and engaged ways. Some have found their voice on sidewalks. Others still, have found theirs in a radio studio.
Birds of wisdom
This Wednesday, another group of older Montreal women will take the mic on CKUT Radio McGill to share their wisdom over the airwaves. OWL (Older Women Live), a monthly show, started in March 2004 when the radio station approached Rose Marie Whalley and Barbara Seifred to do a show by older women.
Each of these socially conscious elderly women – or owls, as they call themselves – has her own role on the show: one does the introduction at the beginning of the show, another does the announcements at the end, and another is working the dials and computers. Keeping the show moving throughout is Whalley, a natural on the mic who instinctively keeps guests talking and transitions smoothly between segments.
Various topics are discussed on the show and they are not necessarily related to seniors’ issues. The owls in fact consciously resist talking about stereotypical Grandma topics like knitting, bridge, or cooking.
“The mandate of the show is to break the stereotype of older women as being useless, sexless, or a burden on society,” says Whalley in our interview.
One recent show discussed Muslim women’s integration into Canadian society. Some of the most memorable guests have been Madeleine Parent, the eminent Canadian union activist, and André Ruffo, the former Quebec youth court judge and outspoken defender of children’s rights.
In November, the show was dedicated to the Grandmother-to-Grandmother campaign. Jan McConnell and Nina Minde, two senior women from the Montreal area, came on the show to talk about their founding work with this movement, which aims to mobilize support for Africa’s Grandmothers.
The campaign was initiated after Minde’s work in South Africa made her realize the increasing importance of older women in keeping communities alive in the face of the AIDS epidemic. Children orphaned as a consequence of the disease are most often taken care of by their grandparents, who find themselves in a new role without a support system. The Grandmother-to-Grandmother campaign aims to get Canadian women to help their vulnerable African counterparts.
The owls want their show to let people know that the elderly still have a voice. They hope to have an impact on society as much through the topics discussed as through their actual involvement in creating the show.
“If we continue to sit in silence at home and not use the available technology, we’re just going to get more and more illiterate and more and more forgotten,” says Whalley.
As many will attest, seniors today feel alienated from society, even from their own families as generations increasingly live apart. When their grandchildren lived across the street, grandmothers could easily share her pearls of wisdom. But now with wider distances, radio and technology may prove to be the only means to keep older people on the younger generations’ radar.
Although she realizes that the show currently doesn’t have a very wide audience, Whalley hopes that the owls are creating a space for baby boomers and she dreams of a network of elder radio shows across Canada.
I’m old and I’m proud
While the Grannies and owls have focused on issues that are not limited to the concerns of seniors, other older women have focused their efforts on problems affecting their peers more directly.
At RECAA (Resources ethnoculturelles contre l’abus envers les ainé(e)s), a dedicated group of elderly women volunteers teach fellow seniors about the plague of elder abuse. They believe that the physical, psychological, or financial exploitation of an elder person is the most hidden form of family violence. It occurs in all communities, within all cultural groups and all social classes.
According to the Federal Department of Justice, seven per cent of adults over 65 years old have reported that they had experienced some form of emotional or financial abuse by an adult child, spouse, or caregiver in the past five years. Many more cases of abuse likely remain unreported.
Volunteers at RECAA lead workshops that typically start with a five-minute mime skit on some topic, such as neglect or verbal abuse. Then they ask the audience for suggestions on how the characters in the skit could act differently to better treat elderly people. The skit is replayed, this time with words, and with audience members encouraged to replace the actors, usually in the role of the abused person. Through these workshops, RECAA aims to crack open the doors of secrecy, and give seniors a safe place to communicate and share their personal experiences.
“We want to give people a sense of their reality,” says coordinator Anne Caines. “We don’t preach; we initiate a discussion.”
The organization is especially interested in working with different cultural groups because although abuse may come in different forms, many senior citizens share similar experiences.
In many ethnic communities, elders are brought to Canada by their children to help in babysitting or home care. Though not necessarily intentionally, people force their elderly parents to give up their environment, their friends, and their quality of life.
“Seniors may come from a background where the children are supposed to take care of their parents, but they arrive here, are not taken care of, and are used instead as cooks and maids,” says volunteer Mariella Lubelsky.
Seniors might not speak English or French and could not go to a doctor’s appointment by themselves and are often not aware of the resources available to them. RECAA points them to such help as legal aids and their local community centres.
“We are elders working with elders,” says Lubelsky. “Because of our age and experience, we understand abuse more because we can empathize with the issues.”
For Caines, helping the elderly has a profound impact on the health of society. In the same way that the consequences of crises (like loss of a job or divorce) are not confined to any particular generation, elder abuse has larger repercussions – a happier Grandma could lead to happier grandkids.
Flower Power (Revisited)
While RECAA wants to improve the current situation of seniors and indirectly the children they affect, the Raging Grannies look at the bigger picture. One of their mottos is to make the future world safe for their grandchildren. Particularly when discussing environmental issues, Walsh tells people: “I might not be around when the world falls apart, but what about you?”
With two-career families the norm today, it is increasingly up to elder people to take on volunteer work.
“Now that we’ve finished raising our families and finished our career, we have time to become more involved in the community,” says owl Barbara Jarnes.
Walsh has given a few lectures at Concordia talking about ageism and she often stresses the fact that elder women also feel that they have something unique to share with the younger generation. It should not only be the unfortunate orphan children of societies devastated by AIDS that appreciate their grandparents.
“We’re old women, we’ve lived a long time, we have a certain amount of wisdom, we’ve seen a lot of war,” says Walsh.
“Young people certainly need a guidance that people have in other countries and that people formally had here,” adds owl Whalley. “Grandchildren would go to Grannie or Grandpa [for advice], but this has been lost with the dehumanization of older people.”
Though Whalley believes that there have always been socially-conscious older people, she sees an increase of such seniors working in the community today. This may be due to the longer life-span of people today or to the current state of the world, but she largely attributes this trend to the character of the generation that is now retiring.
“Many of us come out of the sixties generation, we were politically and socially active in our youth and we’re continuing to do more of the same,” says Whalley. “Even if you didn’t go out and march, you still sang along to Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. Idealism was a shared value of that generation and it continues to be.”
Both Whalley and Walsh moved to Canada from the United Sates in the seventies partly because of their opposition to the Vietnam War.
“I think people do deplore the fact that the peace movement which was so strong in the 60s and 70s seems to have bottomed out,” says Walsh. “Despite everything that is going on today it doesn’t seem to gain any momentum. We feel disheartened sometimes.”
But most of the time they don’t lose their natural optimism.
Headlines today often describe our aging population as a mounting problem – one that brings along more spending on healthcare and nursing homes instead of schools and daycare. An older population, the argument goes, means that we focus less on the future.
At least some older women, however, have decided to make the most out of their retirement years, demonstrating that it’s not just young people who take to the streets to try to make the world a better place.
http://www.mcgilldaily.com/view.php?aid=5728
Post on other posts:
http://intellectualize.org/archives/008987.html
Montreal Raging Grannies
http://www.raginggranniesmontreal.ca/
Granny gaggles
http://www.geocities.com/raginggrannies/GrannyGaggles.html
Les MÉMÉES DÉCHAÎNÉES
http://cf.geocities.com/memeesdechainees/
Bienvenue à Notre Histoire Orale!
Welcome to Our Oral Herstory!
http://projets.studioxx.org/projets/histoiresOrales_vsn1/Vequipe/theres_chris/projet_index.html
