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Women Strike for Peace (WSP, also known as Women for Peace) is a United States women's peace activist group. It was founded by Bella Abzug and Dagmar Wilson,1 and was initially part of the movement for a ban on nuclear testing2
They played a crucial role, perhaps the crucial role (according to Eric Bentley), in bringing down the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), were acknowledged by both U Thant and John F. Kennedy as a factor in the adoption of the Limited Test Ban Treaty (signed August 5, 1963), and (in early 1964), were among the first Americans to oppose the Vietnam War.34
The organization grew out of a November 1, 1961 day of protest by women against nuclear testing by the United States and the USSR, under the slogan "End the Arms Race-Not the Human Race".4 The demonstration that day in Washington, D.C. drew 1,500 people;1 demonstrations across the U.S. drew tens of thousands, an estimated fifty thousand women.3 The group consisted mainly of married-with-children middle-class white women. Its early tactics—including marches and street demonstrations of a sort very uncommon in the U.S. at that time—in many ways prefigured those of the anti-Vietnam War movement and of Second-wave feminism, but its rhetoric in those years drew heavily on traditional images of motherhood. In particular, in protesting atmospheric nuclear testing, they emphasized that Strontium 90 from nuclear fallout was being found in mother's milk and commercially sold cow's milk, presenting their opposition to testing as a motherhood issue,3 what Katha Pollitt has called "a maternity-based logic for organizing against nuclear testing."5
As middle-class mothers, they were less vulnerable to the redbaiting that had held in check much radical activity in the United States since the McCarthy Era.3
The organization gave nearly total autonomy to its local affiliates and chapters, and used consensus methods. Some of the local chapters rapidly became very strong groups in their own right. In January 1962, Berkeley Women for Peace had a thousand women attend the California legislative session to oppose civil defense legislation.4 Affiliate Seattle Women Act for Peace (SWAP) played a significant role in the protests against the Trident submarine base at Bangor, Washington. 1
Notes and references
- ^ a b c Seattle Women Act for Peace (SWAP) archives on the site of the University of Washington. Accessed April 9, 2006.
- ^ Sarah V. Safstrom, A Proud History of Women Advocating for Peace, National NOW Times, Spring 2003. Accessed April 9, 2006.
- ^ a b c d Rebecca Solnit, Three Who Made a Revolution, The Nation, posted March 16, 2006 (April 3, 2006 issue). Accessed April 9, 2006.
- ^ a b c Women Strike for Peace on the site of san.beck.org. Accessed April 9, 2006.
- ^ Katha Pollitt, Phallic Balloons Against the War, The Nation, posted March 6, 2003 (March 24, 2003 issue). Accessed April 9, 2006.
Further reading
- Swerdlow, Amy, Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s. University of Chicago Press (1993). ISBN 0-226-78635-8.
External links
- Women for Peace, official site.
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- This page was last modified on 18 November 2008, at 04:36.
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