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“Take
Us To Iraq, Not Our Grandchildren”
On June 28, 2006, eleven members of the Philadelphia Granny Peace Brigade walked into the local U.S. Military Recruitment Office to enlist. We said, "Take us to Iraq, not our grandchildren." All eleven grannies were slated to go to trial on December 1, 2006 at 9 a.m. in Community Court, 1401 Arch Street. When Judge Deborah Griffin dismissed all charges, courtroom supporters stood up and cheered. Grannies numbers have grown as have our undaunted spirits and determination to end the war. You will recognize us - wearing our black shirts with the words, “ WE WILL NOT BE SILENT ”! Biographies: Ruth Balter lived her first 32 years in New York City so considers herself a birthright New Yorker. She feels most identified with Brooklyn where she grew up and attended Brooklyn College, awakening to global politics during the Spanish Civil War and the worldwide struggle to defeat fascism. She graduated from the Columbia School of Social Work, got married and raised two toddlers in East Midtown Manhattan, watching the United Nations being built. Her domestic political activities included the tenant's movement, white-collar union organizing, and the movement to prevent the execution of the Rosenbergs. After moving upstate to Rochester with their (then) three children, Ruth and her husband spent twenty years working for school integration and against the war in Vietnam. A founding member of Women Strike for Peace, Ruth continued her social activism in the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and Women in Black after her move to Center City, Philadelphia. An enthusiastic Granny Peace Brigadeer, Ruth sat in at age 84 at the Philadelphia Military Enlistment Center holding a photo of her three young grandchildren. Helen Evelev, 78, has been a peace activist for 53 years. In 1961, she represented Women Strike for Peace at the Geneva Disarmament Conference where she reminded delegates of their responsibility to establish a world in which our children could grow up free of the fear of nuclear annihilation and Strontium 90. She was active in the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy and coordinated the Philadelphia Nuclear Freeze Referendum, which resulted in a three-to-one vote against nuclear weapons in the 1980s. Helen, who lives in Center City, was arrested three times for anti-war and anti-nuclear weapons activities, the most recent occurring with the Philadelphia Granny Peace Brigade. She has a lifetime membership in Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, is a grandmother and retired community organizer. Gloria Hoffman, a resident of Mt. Airy, has three children and 3 grandchildren. She doesn’t want any of them, or any other young people, being “used” by the U.S. military to fight a war over oil. She tried to enlist in the military to set an example for members of the executive and legislative branches of government; they should be offering themselves and their families to fight a war they wrong headedly started. Until recently, Gloria was more of a petition-signer and less of an activist. She taught in public and private schools in New York City before going to work for the federal government as a contracting officer. Now retired, she uses her time and energy to work on tikkun olam (perfecting the world). She sees the Granny Peace Brigade as a concept that is catching on in this country and around the world. Nina Huizinga, a resident of West Philadelphia, has three children and one grandchild. A graduate of Haverford High School, Wilson College and Bryn Mawr College, served the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for 15 years, edited a neighborhood newspaper, participated in the Movement for a New Society, and founded an alternative publishing company. Nina lived in the Netherlands for 10 years and speaks three languages while reading four. A member of the West Philadelphia synagogue Kol Tzedek, she is a trained facilitator, mediator, negotiator, street speaker, demonstrator, writer, poet and defiant trespasser. Sue Ellen Klein is a teacher, administrator, and community activist who lives in Center City. She works on community programming at the White Dog Café, and currently serves as Chair of the White Dog Café Foundation. She is a founder and former board chair of Neighborhood Bike Works, and is a member of the Bread and Roses Community Funding Board. She joined Women Strike for Peace in the 1960s to protest the Vietnam war, and has been involved in a number of peace and justice organizations throughout her adult life. She has served on the boards of the Philadelphia Student Union, the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, Friends of Mural Arts, and The Shefa Fund (now the Jewish Funds for Justice. Sue Ellen holds a doctoral degree in biology with a major in neuroendocrinology. Her two grandsons, ages 2 years, and 5 months, live in Boston. Sylvia Metzler is a grandmother of four -- two of whom are old enough to fight and die in Iraq. As a practicing family nurse practitioner, she cares for many young people. She wants to protect them from trauma as if they were her grandkids. Sylvia has lived in North Philadelphia for fourteen years since returning from Nicaragua where she worked in a health care center for two years. She serves as president of the board of the Norris Square Neighborhood Project; co-chair of Medicines for Nicaragua; and co-chair of the Philadelphia Area Committee to Defend Health Care, which is committed to a universal single-payer health-care system. When she is not working for peace and social justice, she enjoys jogging, gardening, cooking, and hanging out with family and friends. Zandra Moberg is a semi-retired Quaker librarian, mother of two and grandmother of two. Her very first anti-war action was a pre-Vietnam vigil at Fort Detrick with four other people, one being Lillian Willoughby who is now a Grannies co-defendant. Moberg has been involved in anti-war, anti-nuclear, and anti-death penalty movements ever since, including a Soviet-American peace walk in 1988. She was arrested just once before and spent two days in a DC jail with a diverse population of Maryknoll nuns and DC prostitutes. Her volunteer stints have included adult literacy tutoring, helping out in a homeless shelter, at the American Friends Service Committee, and as tour guide at the Arch Street Quaker meetinghouse. She has exchanged letters with a death row prisoner for 17 years which may turn into a book someday. After a dozen years in Philadelphia's Powelton Village as an activist housewife and stay-at-home mom, Moberg finished college and then earned a Master's librarian degree which led ultimately to her favorite job, working for 18 years at the Free Library on the Parkway. She can often be seen jogging on Kelly Drive and participates every year in Philly's annual half-marathon, the Distance Run. Sonia Sanchez is an African American poet most often associated with the Black Arts Movement. She has authored over a dozen books of poetry, as well as plays and children's books. She was a very influential part of the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Arts Movement. Sanchez was an advocate for the people. She was a member of CORE (Congress for Racial Equality), where she met Malcolm X. She wrote many plays and books that had to do with the struggles and lives of Black America. Sanchez has edited two anthologies on Black literature, We Be Word Sorcerers: 25 Stories by Black Americans and 360° of Blackness Coming at You. She is also known for her innovative melding of musical formats - like the blues - and traditional poetic formats like haiku and tanka. She was awarded the P.E.N. Writing Award in 1969 and the National Education Association Award 1977-1988. She also won the National Academy and Arts Award and the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Award in 1978-1979. In 1985, she was awarded the American Book Award for Homegirls and Handgrenades. She has also been awarded the Community Service Award from the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, the Lucretia Mott Award, the Governor's Award for Excellence in the Humanities, and the Peace and Freedom Award from the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. Sonia is a member of the Plowshares, the Brandywine Peace Community and MADRE. She also supports MOMS in Alabama and the National Black United Front. Marlena Santoyo was first arrested and imprisoned (along with 179 protestors) on March 20, 2003, when the Bush Administration declared war on Iraq. Saying "No Business As Usual," they locked arms and closed down the Federal Court House. She is a Jewish Quaker and retired teacher of English as a Second Language (ESL) in the public schools and on the university level. She clerked the Public Education Working Group of The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (Quakers). Marlena has been an organizer and board member of Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), the National Organization of Women (NOW, Philadelphia chapter) and the Philadelphia Regional Anti-War Network (PRAWN). When George W. Bush and the Republican Convention came to Philadelphia in 2000, Marlena founded and became editor of MOMS for Justice, which evolved to become the Political Allies Newsletter, a calendar and action list serve for progressives which can be subscribed to at: political_allies_i-subscribe@list.afsc.org for those in Philadelphia, and political_allies_ii-subscribe@list.afsc.org for those who live elsewhere. Marlena is active with Jewish Voice for Peace, supporting Jews, Palestinians and others striving for peace with justice in the Middle East. In October of 2005, Marlena was the Green Party candidate for Pennsylvania State Representative in the 200th district. Last but not least, she has two grandchildren who live two blocks away in the wonderful Mt Airy community. Kaki Sjogren, a resident of North Philadelphia, took up the banner of nonviolence 16 years ago when she discovered the Quaker-founded Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP). Kaki has organized her life around running AVP workshops for prisoners, persons in recovery, and persons on probation as well as advocating for the Philadelphia Affordable Housing Coalition, and the Resister Sisters. She is a proud foster grandmother of triplets -- Amear, Ahmad, and Jamarr -- boys who were born to their 15-year-old mother while in Kaki's care. She wants to improve the life prospects of her grandchildren so that they do not consider joining the military for want of better job opportunities. Kaki would rather the military recruit her and use her skills in advocating for trauma victims, teaching anger management and the virtues of nonviolence! Lillian Willoughby was born on a farm in Iowa in 1915, the eldest child of a family in the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). Educated in a Friends' school near West Chester, Pennsylvania, and at the University of Iowa, she married and raised a family of four children in South Jersey. She now has three granddaughters. Lillian helped develop leadership training for parent education meetings, started two volunteer libraries, and helped integrate a new housing development and a South Jersey Peace Center. She lived in a Social Change Community in West Philadelphia, and led workshops on nonviolence and conflict resolution in India, Thailand, Sri Lanka and the U.S.A. On March 20, 2003, she helped close down the Federal Building in protest of the war against Iraq and spent six days in jail. She was also arrested with other Granny Peace Brigade members at the Center City military recruitment office. |