Sparsely, Sage and Timely
The reaction to 50 naked demonstrators
By David V. Mitchell
About an hour before it happened last week, a woman doing business at The Light let it slip that 50 other West Marin women were about to doff their duds at Love Field in Point Reyes Station, lie down on the grass, and with their bodies spell out PEACE. Art Rogers, whose Point Reyes Family Album portraits runs weekly in The Light, had agreed to take a news photo of the demonstration.
I immediately sent writers Ivan Gale and Ana Carolina Monterroso to the ballfield to interview those planning to strip for peace. As Gale and Monterroso learned, the women were preparing to protest what at the time appeared to be an impending attack on Iraq.
The crisis now appears past. Under pressure from a united UN Security Council, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein this week gave UN inspectors full access to all suspected weapons-producing sites in his country.
Last week, however, the Bush Administration was threatening that it might unilaterally attack Iraq. Luckily, various US allies convinced President Bush to shut up about any unilateral attack, making it easier for foreign intermediaries to convince Hussein that UN members weren’t about to drop their demand to search his country for weapons of mass destruction.
Meanwhile back in West Marin, it seemed "unreasonable" to Donna Sheehan of Marshall and what became an ad hoc group of coordinators (Toni Littlejohn, Cynthia Clarkson, Martha Glessing, and Jeanette Pontacq), that President Bush was threatening to kill countless Iraqi citizens, including non-combatant women.
It wasn’t that the demonstrators had any use for Saddam Hussein. I gather most consider him a tyrant; however, they also oppose having the US join Hussein in victimizing his countrymen. You might recall that when the United States invaded Iraq in 1991, President George Bush Sr. could have sent US troops all the way to Baghdad – and he certainly would have had more justification than his son does – but the senior Bush rejected the idea on grounds too many lives would be lost on both sides.
Hoping to draw national and international attention to the fact that Bush the younger was about to do something terribly wrong, the West Marin women decided to shame Bush and his administration. Their form of protest would be one that had succeeded in Nigeria last summer after receiving worldwide attention.
The earlier protest began on July 15 when 600 women occupied ChevronTexaco facilities, taking 1,000 oil workers hostage. The mostly elderly women remained non-violent but threatened to cast shame upon corporate executives by disrobing in front of them.
If the women had actually proceeded to undress en masse (as has happened in several South African demonstrations recently), it would have been a "strong shaming symbol," ABC News reporter Geraldine Sealey confirmed on July 31.
ChevronTexaco had already endured sabotage and kidnappings, but it could not withstand a sit-in by hundreds of non-violent women whom it didn’t dare to forcibly remove. Worse yet, through a tribal shaming ritual, the women were about to diminish ChevronTexaco executives’ authority in their own territory. After 10 days, ChevronTexaco capitulated and gave the women what they were seeking: clinics, schools, farms, work for their sons.
In mocking the Bush Administration, West Marin’s demonstrators intended to shame the president nationwide, and apparently they succeeded. By Sunday morning, a picture of the demonstration was aired on CBS News. Then the story was picked up National Public Radio. Soon organizations were deluging Sheehan with requests for interviews.
Although The Light took no part in organizing the protest and merely covered it, I myself was interviewed by news organizations as diverse as the huge Associated Press Radio Network and a small weekly in Michigan, The Rockford Squire.
As it happened, on Saturday I attended a yearly harvest party at Nan McEvoy’s olive oil-producing ranch along the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road. McEvoy, who once chaired the board of the Chronicle corporation, has friends among journalists, ranchers, and politicians. (Many years ago, it was not uncommon to see her on the arm of Adlai Stevenson.)
Two or three falls ago, I ended up sitting beside our new House minority speaker, Nancy Pelosi, at one of McEvoy’s harvest parties. This year I chatted briefly with Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey. Mostly, however, I talked with members of West Marin’s ranching families, and – a bit to my surprise – none of the ranch women objected to the demonstration. In fact, several women in their 60s, 70s, and 80s said they would have joined in had they only known about it in advance.
In contrast, email messages to The Light were mixed. Because we put our coverage on our website, we received messages from across the country. "Hits" on our website went up by more than 1,000 percent, and at times people couldn’t get to it.
Numerous people requested copies of the photo, and almost as many periodicals asked if they could reprint our coverage. The Feminist Peace Network in Wichita, Kansas, asked permission to use it on its website. The quarterly Buffalo Woman’s Vision asked permission to republish the photo and accompanying news report. So did The Sonoma Valley Voice. I said yes to all. Several people in different parts of the country wrote that they wished they could have taken part in the protest.
Others writers, however, denounced the demonstration. Most of the letters from out-of-towners pro or con didn’t qualify for publication because: 1) the writers declined to state their hometowns; 2) they would never see their letters because we don’t put letters to the editor on our website; 3) we don’t allow letters from non-subscribers elsewhere to crowd out West Marin news and commentary. But here’s the tenor of some critics’ comments:
Jennie Riddle of McKinney, Texas, wrote that "nudity stirs onlookers to lust [and] lewdness." Perhaps it does, for Henry Ratz of <hyrax@cdepot.net> wrote to say the "broads" who protested are "assholes." Jim Krieger at <jkrieger@targetvision.com> simply acknowledged that "while I do not agree with the naked women’s political opinions, I would like some closeups."
A number of writers said that for West Marin women to take off their clothes to protest the possible killing of thousands Iraqi women ignored Islamic morality. "Iraq is an Islamic country, yes?" asked Murray Melander of Seattle. "And nudity is forbidden, yes? So how do these women show support for Iraq? With nudity. I don’t get it."
Scott Whitney of San Rafael wrote, "In stripping naked and spelling PEACE, those women would be stoned to death by those they express solidarity for…Middle Eastern Islamists."
In fact, it became clear that many Americans have a mighty low opinion of Islam. George Moore of Short Hills, New Jersey, wrote that the demonstration was really intended "to preserve the rights of dictators and theocrats who run countries where women are beaten (or worse) for showing their faces in public." How old George came to this conclusion is not quite clear. No demonstrator expressed support for any "theocrat," and news photos indicate that at least in Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, women do not routinely cover their faces with burkas.
Apparently missing the irony of his own rhetoric being crude, Carlos Gurr of Cedar Falls, Utah, accused the demonstrators of being "insensitive" to Muslim feelings and then asked, "What do they plan for their next stunt of solidarity, battering lesbians on a float in the Gay Freedom Parade?" Unfortunately, Gurr and like-minded critics failed to realize that Nigeria, which inspired the nude demonstration here, is itself 50 percent Muslim.
Some critics were able to articulate what they didn’t like about the demonstration. For others, however, it was only part of a jumble of people, places, and events they don’t like: Iraq, Afghanistan, Marin County, Osama bin Laden, John Walker Lindh, al Qaeda, the attack on the World Trade Center, the Holocaust, Minority Leader Pelosi, Senator Hillary Clinton, and (for no apparent reason) even Point Reyes Station’s round-the-world trekker John Francis.
Glen Christian at <glenc@mn.astound.net> was not only under the misimpression that Iraqi women must "either be covered from head to toe or be beheaded," he also presumed that the protest could be discounted because Marin was once the home of the "American Taliban" Lindh. Richard Aylward of San Rafael denounced the demonstrators as "over-medicated soccer moms" and inexplicably claimed that "their kind of peace protest resulted in six million dead Jews."
Although there is no reason to believe that Iraq had anything to do with the attack on the World Trade Center, several letter writers lumped the two together anyway. Tim Triplett of Moorpark, Ventura County, wrote, "I am appalled by these women [because of] their complete disregard for those men, women, and children who died violent deaths on Sept. 11, 2001." Bonnie Dudley of New York likewise assumed Iraq must have had something to do with the World Trade Center attack. "I hope the next attack is on Marin," she wrote sarcastically. "Maybe then [the demonstrators] will understand."
In a stream-of-consciousness letter, Stephanie Cothern of Nashville wrote that Hussein is a "horrible dictator…Do these women know that we are talking about biological and chemical warfare. What do we do if small pox is brought into this country? What will these women do then? It seems to me that this is just a blatant show of exhibitionism that is not going to accomplish anything. President Bush is concerned about what state Osama bin Laden is going to blow up next. This is a waste of government time."
Also associating Iraq with the attack on the World Trade Center was Dan Thompson of San Diego. He wrote that because he has friends in the New York City police and fire departments, he was angered by the demonstration.
"Only a San Francisco liberal could come up with something so stupid," he sneered. "I think that’s Nancy Pelosi and Hillary in the "P." In the same vein, Earle Conklin at <econklin@att.net> parroted conservative Republicans in Congress by calling Pelosi a "latte" liberal and without explanation associated her with the demonstration. I’m sure Congresswoman Pelosi would be as surprised as the demonstrators by the association.
Nor do I understand why Thompson in San Diego thinks New York Senator Hillary Clinton is "a San Francisco liberal." Surely he realizes that New York has its own tradition of liberalism. And probably drinks more lattes. But whatever the case, the "Unreasonable Women’s" spur-of-the-moment demonstration managed to rattle cages nationwide.
It got thousands of people discussing the fact that the administration officials had been shamed with a Nigerian tribal ritual – the mere threat of which had been enough to make oil executives in Africa change their ways. To my mind, all the commotion means the demonstration was a success. Congratulations, ladies.