Having seen the wheel go around a few times, I advise we don’t re-invent it. Almost 200 years ago Thomas Dorr and his supporters occupied Providence and despite many failures ultimately achieved their goal of expanding the right to vote.
30 years ago we watched our leaders play nuclear games and wondered if the end of life as we know it was imminent. The threat remains, but we have pulled back from the brink of mutual assured destruction. The worldwide protests over decades included mass occupations…
The women of Greenham Common, in England, occupied the site of a US nuclear weapons base from 1981 to 2000. During those years tens of thousands of women participated in protest and thousands were arrested.
On the 5th September 1981, the Welsh group “Women for Life on Earth” arrived on Greenham Common, Berkshire, England. They marched from Cardiff with the intention of challenging, by debate, the decision to site 96 Cruise nuclear missiles there. On arrival they delivered a letter to the Base Commander which among other things stated ‘We fear for the future of all our children and for the future of the living world which is the basis of all life’.
When their request for a debate was ignored they set up a Peace Camp just outside the fence surrounding RAF Greenham Common Airbase. They took the authorities by surprise and set the tone for a most audacious and lengthy protest that lasted 19years. Within 6 months the camp became known as the Women’s Peace Camp and gained recognition both nationally and internationally by drawing attention to the base with well publicised imaginitive gatherings.This unique initiative threw a spotlight on ‘Cruise’ making it a national and international political issue throughout the 80s and early 90s.
The conduct and integrity of the protest mounted by the Women’s Peace Camp was instrumental in the decision to remove the Cruise Missiles from Greenham Common. Under the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, the missiles were flown back to the USA along with the USAF personnel in 91/92. The Treaty signed by the USA and the USSR in 1987, is in accord with the stated position held by women, in defence of their actions on arrest, when it states :
“Conscious that nuclear weapons would have devastating consequences for all mankind”
The presence of women living outside an operational nuclear base 24 hours a day, brought a new perspective to the peace movement – giving it leadership and a continuous focus. At a time when the USA and the USSR were competing for nuclear superiority in Europe, the Women’s Peace Camp on Greenham Common was seen as an edifying influence. The commitment to non-violence and non-alignment gave the protest an authority that was difficult to dismiss – journalists from almost every corner of the globe found their way to the camp and reported on the happenings and events taking place there.
The Greenham Common action helped to inspire a women’s occupation in upstate New York, The Seneca Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice.
The camp took place mainly during the summer of 1983, from July 4 through Labor Day, concluding with a Labor Day Action honoring workers and highlighting the inflation and job loss that militarism brings. The Encampment continued through till 1994 when it “transitioned” into a “Women’s Peace Land.” Through its entire existence it continued to make the same principled philosophical connections between militarism, high rates of inflation, unemployment and global poverty, personal violence, addiction, abuse in all its forms and global environmental destruction. The Encampment continued as an active political presence in the Finger Lakes area for at least 5 more years, supporting anti-nuclear education and the connections between eco-feminism, non-violence, the need for civil disobedience and the new ideas of…perma-culture, sustainability….etc.
The camp was located in Romulus, in Seneca County, New York, adjacent to the Seneca Army Depot. Thousands of women came to participate and rally against nuclear weapons and the “patriarchal society” that created and used those weapons. The purpose of the Encampment was to stop the scheduled deployment of Cruise and Pershing II missiles before their suspected shipment from the Seneca Army Depot to Europe that fall.
Vision Statement (From the Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice Resource Handbook which was distributed between 1983 and 1986.):
Women have played an important role throughout our history in opposing violence and oppression.
We have been the operators of the Underground Railroad, the spirit of the equal rights movement and the strength of the peace movement. In 1590, the women of the Iroquois Nation met in Seneca to demand an end to war among the tribes. In 1848 the first Women’s Rights Convention met at Seneca Falls giving shape and voice to the 19th century feminist movement.
Once again women are gathering at Seneca–this time to challenge the nuclear threat at its doorstep. The Seneca Army Depot, a Native American homeland once nurtured and protected by the Iroquois, is now the storage site for the neutron bomb and most likely the Pershing II missile and is the departure point for weapons to be deployed in Europe. Women from New York State, from the United States and Canada, from Europe, and, indeed, from all over the world, are committed to nonviolent action to stop the deployment of these weapons.
I was there for this demonstration in NYC…
The biggest demonstration on earth (until the global anti-Iraq war march of Feb 15 2003) took place in New York on June 12, 1982, when one million people gathered in support of the second UN Special Session on Disarmament and to protest nuclear weapons.
Labor unions joined peace groups, other organizations and concerned individuals from across the country in the largest demonstration ever held in the nation’s largest city, in protest against the Reagan administration’s nuclear weapons buildup.
I remember people leaning out of windows cheering us on, and flying banners high on the buildings. I remember it was a beautiful day.
As the Occupiers in Burnside Park face the forces of cold, entropy, human nature and legal action from the City of Providence, they walk in the steps of others who gathered peacefully for a cause. They use group process refined by Quakers and anti-nuclear protesters, feminists and civil rights marchers. They do us all a service by maintaining a center for free speech and keeping the issue of economic inequality visible.
This is not new or even so radical. This is what Democracy looks like.
Kmareka.com 
While you apt yourself and other peaceful protesters on your collective backs over your victories,such as they were,remember who you were facing.
Democratic governments and societies whatever their faults were your oposition.
Now,try to imagine Gandhi in Nazi Germany,or actually remember Tianamen(sp?)Square.
Or any other juggernaut dictatorship like the USSR.
They’d just roll oaver you with tanks or gun you down,or at least take you off for “re-education”at hard labor in some wastelend.
You people only got anything done because you were in free societes to begin with.
So please stop the constatnt whining about how terrible things are here.
Just traipse a little south to Havana and try protesting,althugh you probably don’t have a probem with the Castro regime even though they drafted their citizens to fight in African conflicts they had no business in.
Observer, thats an unfair post, first ninjanurse did NOT say things were so terrible here, only that public pressure has made it better. I think you are one doing the whining here. Second, there ARE protests in Cuba (for example from the gay community) and when people in Eastern Europe protested they were not always gunned down but actually overthrew dictatorships (as in Romania) , or even if initially supressed it led to reduced oppression (e.g. emigration finally allowed from Russian, Hungarian reforms, Polish Solidarity, even Tianamen Square led the China rulers to eventually allow a lot more freedom, especially economic freedom, than was previously permitted. Also consider Tunisia, Egypt. Despite pushback from the forces of the status quo, don’t underestimate the power of people to change and improve conditions anywhere in the world.
I have never whined in my life.You don’t know me at all,buddy.I just know that you can’t deal with the general failure of nonviolent protest against forces willing to do anything to suppress that protest.It can work,but please don’t try to sell me Romania as an example.
The uprising there was a bloodbath from beginning to end.Were we watching the same events?I’d love to discuss some of this with you over steaming plates of boiled cabbage.(I won’t reveal the reference,but if you don’t get it-I’ll explain).
The fall of the Commusnist Soviet empire, as I think history will recall, was the result of the perfect storm of President Reagan’s determination against the “Evil Empire,” the collapse of a miserable Soviet economy and the corrupt political/economic structure in all the satellite nations, as well as a heroic Pope named Paul, backed up by astounding American military might, again a Reagan product. Such was not the case in 1956 in Hungary when the Soviet tanks rolled in with Siberian troops, killed Imre Nage, and blasted the Hungarian revolt to heck, including some of my relatives. Eisenhower promised help but did nothing. The U.S. military had been decimated by cutbacks and tired after a Korean war that ended in 1953. The same collapse ended the early Czech spring (really democratic unlike the bizarre Arab spring); the early Polish uprisings and East Germany rebellions. We forget how many East Germans died trying to climb that wall thet Kennedy did nothing about except a speech where he intoned he was “Ein Berliner.” Unfortunately Mr. Kennedy was ill advised because “Ein Berliner” is apparently a jelly filled donut or somesuch. Mr. Carter had much the same problem in a speech in Poland, in which attempting to state his solidarity with the Polish people in Polish, actually proclaimed that he “lusted after your women.” All the early rebellions against the Soviets were crushed by the tanks and KGB, until Reagen and the surrender to history of Gorbachev prevailed.
Barry likes his history as he’d have wished it to be,not as it was.
The Chinese Army killed thousands in the Beijing protests.
I will gladly debate 20th century history with anyone here.
Just for anyone still following this thread, according to Wikipedia, the actual number killed in the “Tianneman square massacre cannot be known for sure, but here are the (highly varying) estimates which shows history is written, and believed, with ideological biases
NATO: 7000 deaths, China Army defector: 3700, Amnesty international 1000, NY Times’ Kristof 400 to 800, NSA estimate: 180 to 500, China’s offical count 241, actually named victims 186.
While I do not know the correct figure, and any are too high, I still believe that china’s rulers got scared by the protests and made reforms to help prevent recurrences. The point being, protest sometimes helps, even under dictatorial regimes!
Barry-sometimes past performance is an indicator of current practice-the Chinese government killed millions in the Cultural Revolution-that’s not even debatable-a few thousand more isn’t a roadblock for them.
I guess the Hungarian uprising passed your notice-maybe you weren’t old enough to remember.
Communist depradations have been apologized for by fellow travelers in the US since the 1920’s.
And the non-communist massacres haven’t been any different.
When people are unarmed and vulnerable it’s easy to have a free fire zone.
Rwanda,Cambodia,Sudan,Tibet,we can go on and on.
Peaceful protest works with civilized regimes,not with absolutist ones.
Barry-you did point out one indisputably true fact-the Chinese regime loosened up a great deal on economic freedom and the accumulation of personal wealth because it suits thier needs.
Get as rich as you want,but don’t get political is the watchword there.