COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: War Protests: General
No Combat for Grannies Full of Fight
CLYDE HABERMAN, New York Times
October 18, 2005
TO use
a hand-me-down phrase from a more gallant time, they were women of a
certain age. More precisely, they were women of a certain age in an
uncertain age.
They were not kids, that's for sure, these women who went yesterday to the armed forces recruiting station in Times Square.
Ostensibly, they were there to enlist. Send them to Iraq, they said.
They've led long lives, long enough to have grandchildren, even
great-grandchildren. Better, they said, to put them in harm's way than
young people just starting out.
"I'm a double grandmother," said Betty Brassell, who is 75 and lives on
the Lower East Side. "I have a great-grandson. I'm sorry, I forgot to
bring his picture."
It will not shock you to learn that the Army was not interested in
signing them up. Same went for the Navy, Air Force and Marines. The
crisp-looking young men in uniform who staff the Times Square booth had
locked their doors, having been warned that the women would come
knocking.
It will also not shock you to learn that the grannies - their word -
never thought that anyone would take their volunteering seriously. The
military is not in the habit of offering enlistment bonuses to people
on walkers.
They were there to protest the war, having perhaps unconsciously taken
a page out of President Bush's book. If he can use the troops to sell
his war, as he did last week in a scripted Q. and A. session with
soldiers in Iraq, why should the grannies not use a military prop to
sell their opposition?
"One of them asked me, 'What happens if they accept us?' " said Norman
Siegel, the civil liberties lawyer, who was the group's go-between with
the police. "I told her: 'Then you're off to Iraq. I'll have to get a
habeas writ to get you out.' "
That proved unnecessary.
No question, these were serious women with a serious message, agree
with them or not. They understood that if you want the cameras and
microphones to pay you and your cause some attention, a bit of street
theater helps. It doesn't hurt, either, to march under banners like
Raging Grannies, Grandmothers Against the War, and Elders for Peace and
Justice for the Next Seven Generations.
It had been arranged with the police that 15 or so would try to enlist
and then, once that failed, hold a sit-in outside the booth.
First in line was Joan Wile, 74. She carried a bucket of cookies.
Behind her was Marie Runyon, a former state assemblywoman who has
fought more left-wing battles than AARP has members. At 90, Ms. Runyon
can barely see, but that did not stop her from banging on the booth's
door, to the right of the poster of Uncle Sam pointing and saying, "I
Want You."
"You" did not include her. "Are you hard of hearing?" Ms. Runyon
hollered at the young men inside. "Let's get cracking here. We want to
enlist. What's the matter with you?"
After the door-banging went nowhere, it was sit-in time. For some, that
was easier said than done. "I can't sit," Ms. Brassell said, clinging
to a walker. "I'll stoop as much as I can."
As she went into her best crouch, a police lieutenant, Kevin Lee,
approached with a bullhorn and a script of his own. "I'm ordering you
to leave this pedestrian area," he read from a sheet of paper.
No way. "We insist we enlist," the grannies chanted.
MINUTES later, the police moved in to make arrests. In some recent
antiwar protests, they have been accused of unnecessary roughness. Not
this time. This time they were solicitous.
"Is that too tight?" an officer named McMinn asked one woman as he
cuffed her hands behind her back - standard procedure. An officer named
Frias bent to help another protester, the actress Vinie Burrows, get to
her feet. "You all right?" the officer asked.
Watching and chanting "Grannies rock" were about 50 supporters. One of
them was Herb Hecsh, a "partner or companion or whatever you call it
these days" of Ms. Wile. He could not help observing, he said, that
"the cops are the only ones here with their original hips."
In all, 18 women were arrested, some quite familiar with the back of a police van.
As they were taken away, Times Square quickly returned to normal.
Tourists snapped their pictures. The recruiting booth unlocked its
door. A strapping young man walked in, possibly to enlist.
The war was still on.
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