Women Strike for Peace

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For other uses, see Women's strike (disambiguation).
Women Strike for Peace
AbbreviationWSP
Formation1961
FounderBella Abzug, Dagmar Wilson
TypeAnti-nuclear
Anti-war
AffiliationsWomen's International League for Peace and Freedom
Women's Peace Society
Women's Peace Union
National Committee of the Causes and Cure of War Canadian Voice of Women for Peace

Women Strike for Peace (WSP, also known as Women for Peace) was a women's peace activist group in the

nuclear test-ban treaty two years later".[1][2] Reflecting the era in which the group's leaders had been raised, between the First-wave feminism and the Second-wave feminism movements, their actions and pleas leaned towards female self-sacrifice rather than towards their own self-interests.[3] However, they pushed the power of a concerned mother to the forefront of American politics, transforming the mother from a "passive victim of war to active fighter for peace".[3]

History

Formation

Women Strike for Peace was founded by

sit-ins in congressional offices, and statements of complicity with draft resisters aimed at tying up the courts.[6]

Actions

On November 1, 1961, at the height of the

Kremlin to save their children and the planet, helped to legitimize a radical critique of the Cold War and U.S militarism.[6]

In 1962, the members of the advance party of Women Strike for Peace met with Gertrude Baer, who at the time was the secretary for the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) in Geneva at the Seventeen-Nation Disarmament Conference. With their sights set on anti-militarism, they allied themselves with four other peace women's organizations: WILPF, Women's Peace Society (WPS, which was founded in 1919 by Fanny Garrison Villard, daughter of the nineteenth century abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison), the Women's Peace Union (WPU), and the National Committee of the Causes and Cure of War (NCCCW).[8]

House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)

Women Strike for Peace played a crucial role in bringing down the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).[8] From the beginning of the Women Strikes for Peace in 1961 the FBI had the group under surveillance due to fear that communism had spread to the mothers of America.[9] Women Strikes for Peace approached the committee hearings differently than those summoned before them. In November 1962 the leaders of the group were subpoenaed by the HUAC. After the subpoenas were distributed to the women, Women Strikes for Peace released the information to the media before the HUAC could issue a press release, as the committee usually used the news media to discredit the organizations subpoenaed.[6] When under question the women used their status as mothers to argue their moral high ground, as mothers arguing for peace were the most loyal Americans.[3] Another strategy that differed from those before them was the use of a large quantity of WSP members to volunteer to testify at the hearings, effectively showing that the group had nothing to hide.[10] Political theorist Jean Bethke Elshtain determined that the Women Strikes for Peace's performance at the HUAC was a success due to the "deconstructive power of a politics of humor, irony, evasion, and ridicule".[3] The use of motherhood and family as a tool for the attack on the congressional hearings showed the "familial-cold war consensus" would soon crumble.[9]

Post-1960s

In Los Angeles, in 1965 and 1970, the Women Strike for Peace Movement, headed by Mary Clarke, published a cookbook that Clarke inspired. The cookbooks, Peace de Resistance, were printed by the noted Ward Ritchie at the Anderson, Ritchie & Simon Press. Author Esther Lewin had lived in France for a period of time and was well-versed in French cooking. Lewin included simple recipes for those days when WSP required their efforts and more complicated recipes for the more relaxed days.[11][12]

WSP remained a significant voice in the peace movement throughout the 1980s and 1990s, speaking out against U.S. intervention in Latin America and the Persian Gulf states. On June 12, 1982, Women Strike for Peace helped organize one million people who demanded an end to the arms race. In 1988, they supported Carolyna Marks in the creation of the Unique Berkeley Peace Wall, as well as similar walls in Oakland, Moscow, Hiroshima, and Israel (a joint Jewish and Palestinian children's Peace Wall). In 1991, they protested the Iraq-Persian Gulf War; afterwards, they urged the American government to lift sanctions on Iraq. In the late 1990s, Women Strike for Peace mainly focused on nuclear disarmament.[6]

Structure

The Women Strike for Peace's structure is characterized by a nonhierarchical, loosely structured "unorganizational" format that gives nearly total autonomy to its local chapters, and uses consensus methods. Some of the local chapters rapidly became very strong groups in their own right. This structure was created due to the red-baiting other peace organizations, such as SANE and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom had experienced[13]

Notable members

See also

Citations

  1. ^
    ISSN 0458-3035
    . Retrieved 2017-11-03.
  2. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved 2017-11-03.
  3. ^
    ISBN 978-0815309130.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link
    )
  4. ^ a b c d "Archives West: Results". archiveswest.orbiscascade.org. Retrieved 2017-11-03.
  5. ^ Safstrom, Sarah V. (2003). "A Proud History of Women Advocating for Peace". National NOW Times.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g Swerdlow, Amy (1993). Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  7. ISBN 978-0-8203-4731-8
    .
  8. ^
    ISBN 1-56025-368-1
    .
  9. ^
    ISBN 0-465-03055-6
    .
  10. JSTOR 3177709
    .
  11. ^ Esther & Rivkin, Jay (1965). Peace de Resistance - Volume 1. Los Angeles: Anderson, Ritchie & Simon Press.
  12. ^ Esther & Rivkin, Jay (1970). Peace de Resistance - Volume 2. Los Angeles: Anderson, Ritchie & Simon Press.
  13. ^ Alonso, Harriet Hyman (1993). Peace as a Women's Issue: a History of the U.S. Movement for World Peace and Women's Rights. Syracuse University Press.
  14. ISBN 978-0-226-78635-3
    .

Further reading

External links
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