Changing the definition of ‘Granny’ one song at a time

Armed with sarcasm and satire, Raging Grannies dress up as stereotypical cartoon grannies with aprons, shawls and clashing colors, and perform silly yet witty songs to fight for their beliefs.
“I often feel old and invisible and it’s not a nice feeling,” says Molly. “But when I’m a Raging Granny, I can get beyond that.”

Though age limits how long Molly can stand in the Montreal cold, it hasn’t affected her courage or sense of importance.
“When I’m a Raging Granny, I’m not afraid to go out in public and dress in outrageous outfits and carry placards,” she says. “When you’re doing these gigs, it makes you feel like a celebrity; it’s very affirming to get your brief moment in the spotlight.”

Remembering a Raging Grannies’ song called ‘Don’t Want to Make Cookies,’ she bursts into giggles. After shuffling between a large stack of papers in her Raging Grannies Paper Bin, she finds the words, which go to the tune of ‘Yellow Rose of Texas.’ The first verse goes like this:
‘We are sick of baking cookies
Don’t want to bake a cake
Don’t want to wash the dishes
Go jump into the lake.’

“People think of moms and grandmoms as nurturing and putting good food on the table,” she says with a big smile.
Molly would rather spend her time working for peace, social justice and the environment. The song explains it like this:
‘We’ll tell you what we want to do
It’s just blockade the road
Or write a book, a poem or song
We’re ready to explode.’

Since joining the Raging Grannies, she’s given song-writing workshops, been kicked out of shopping malls for singing songs about sweatshop labor and violent video games, and helped raise $3000 for grandmothers in Africa by selling shiny plastic bead necklaces for a dollar a piece.
“It’s a good way to keep young in spirit and feel you’re changing the world while having fun.”
Her children and grandchildren are intrigued and proud to have a Raging Granny in their family, says Molly.
They’re not the only ones.

Seventy-two year old Ellen Robinson’s granddaughter brags to her friends about the time she saw her grandma perform the “Geriatric Can-Can” with the Raging Grannies of Albuquerque, New Mexico at the Center for Peace and Justice.

Ellen’s Raging Grannies group performs the Can-Can only after the following warning: “Those in power don’t think we CAN do it, don’t think we CAN get together, young and old, and change the system for the better. So to show them that we CAN, the Raging Grannies will close with the Geriatric Can-Can,” explains Ellen.

Ellen, who can be seen online sporting a red bandana and a shirt reading “Outrageous Older Woman,” has also been an activist since the sixties. She became a peacenik after witnessing her father, until his deathbed, suffer for decades from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Her father had been in the military for 22 years and then retired because “they put him into recruiting, and he couldn't stand to tell the lies they wanted him to tell,” recounts Ellen.

After years working in Ohio at the grassroots peace organization Peace Action, Ellen retired and moved to New Mexico, “the home to the U.S. nuclear industrial complex,” as she calls it.
She heard about the Raging Grannies on the news and in 2001 started recruiting Raging Grannies in Albuquerque.

“We have sung at Los Alamos National Lab. in New Mexico, the place that is making new plutonium warheads. We have sung in rallies outside Kirtland AFB, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the home of about 2,500 stored nuclear missiles and of Sandia Lab, another lab that has been deeply involved in nuclear production,” says Ellen.

An explosive start

Ragging grannies in San Francisco

This same concern about nuclear war is what led to the creation of the first Raging Grannies group, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, about 20 years ago.

A group of middle-class, educated, white women between the age of 52 and 67 were worried about the health and environmental impact of U.S. nuclear warships and submarines in the waters surrounding Victoria, British Columbia. According to Carole Roy’s PhD paper, these women also had common experiences of sexism and ageism.

The first Raging Grannies was born on Valentine’s Day in 1987, when that group of women offered an “Un-Valentine” broken heart to the Chairman of the Defence Committee for his lack of action on nuclear issues.
Two weeks later they went to the B.C. legislature with a clothesline of women’s underwear to symbolize the “briefs” they wanted to present at the hearings. The positive reception they got there reaffirmed the potential of the Raging Grannies’ light-hearted tactics.

Fran Thoburn, one of the 11 original founders of the Raging Grannies, says their motive was “to make sure there is a planet for all the world’s grandchildren to be able to live and grow in good health. We have a long way to go on that,” she says.
Fifteen years after it was founded, there were more than 60 Raging Grannies groups across Canada, writes Roy.
“The way it has caught on so widely tells me that ordinary people are ready to take personal risks to change the world,” says Fran.

New war, old activism

Since the nineties, another batch of Raging Grannies groups has sprouted across the United States, from Seattle to Florida.
In 2002 the threat of war, combined with local county budget cuts to libraries, schools, parks in Rochester, New York, inspired Vicki Ryder to call some friends. They got together and wrote some songs, and the next day they sang them on the steps of the downtown Public Library.
The following day sang at a rally against the invasion of Iraq and the Rochester Raging Grannies haven’t stopped since.

“Imagine the ruse you’ll feel when you get up with other older women – all decked out in your finest Granny garb – and knock the socks off your City Council members when you sing out for more money for schools. Or when you stand on the stage in front of 500,000 people at an anti-war rally and sing out for health care – not warfare! What could be better than that?” invites Vicki.

Two years later, Vicki decided to spend her winters in Delray Beach, Florida, but she couldn’t imagine spending half the year without “Granny-ing,” so she put a notice in the local paper. Before she knew it, she found herself with 30 Raging Grannies in her living room.
“If we can leave the world a better place for our grandchildren, how can we not be involved?” asks Vicki, now 66.

Like Vicki, many Raging Grannies are motivated by the desire to care for the next generation and to continue expressing activist and musical passions lingering in them since the sixties.
“Folksinging was a huge part of my activism in the Civil Rights and Anti-Vietnam-War movements,” says Vicki.
With the Raging Grannies, Vicki gets to put her thoughts into song “and people perk up and take notice,” she says. “It sure beats writing yet another letter to my Senator or to the editor of my daily paper – although I do that too,” she declares.

Gail Sredanovic joined the Menlo Park, California Raging Grannies when she saw that the research she was doing seemed to be getting less attention that dressing up and singing.
“I have seen our presence defuse tense situations where young protesters might have ended up in conflict with the police. If we get between them, neither side is likely to attack us,” she says.
“We are also far less likely to be arrested if we push the envelope a little.”

And when there is a risk of getting arrested, some Raging Grannies don’t participate or decide to leave. Others stay and face the consequences.

“Compared to most Canadian groups, we are more ‘in your face’ and happy to confront the cops, as many US groups seem to be today,” says Alison Acker, one of the original Raging Grannies in Victoria. She was jailed for two weeks for protesting against clear-cutting ancient trees in 1993.

Some groups don’t allow men but would support the idea of a separate ‘Grumpy Grandpas’ group.
Others, like Jane Johnson, get their husbands involved. Jane’s group in Westerly, Rhode Island welcomes all ages and genders and states that grandparent status is optional.

Having musical talent is also optional. “Although I am a mediocre singer, I have led singing at rallies with only one other Granny who was not a singer at all,” says Gail.
Most of the groups are quite informal in their recruitment and organization.
“We don’t have leaders, except somebody to conduct us with a feather duster,” says Alison.
“It only takes two or three Grannies to make a gig,” says Gail. “We are delighted to advise new Granny groups on getting started.” Raging Granny Starter Kits are also available online.

Being a Granny is all the rage

In Penticton, British Columbia, Raging Grannies stood in a wind and rain storm at a busy intersection on International Women’s Day, getting waves and cheers from drivers and they’ve gone to picket sites with cookies and sodas for striking workers.

Some Montreal Grannies went to Quebec City in 2001 to protest the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas. “Two grannies in a wheelchair carried a banner between them,” recalls Molly.
Five members of the Tucson, Arizona Raging Grannies were charged with trespassing after they attempted to enlist at a US Army recruiting center in 2005. Their charges were later dismissed.
When it was Vicki’s turn to speak at a City Commissioners hearing about gentrification in 2006, she burst into song. As the other Raging Grannies joined her, “the mayor pounded his gavel for silence, but everyone wanted to hear what we were singing, so he gave up and sat stony-faced while we let him have it,” recalls Vicki. The crowd’s cheers made it clear to her that the Raging Grannies were welcome.
Ellen’s most satisfying moment was when her group was “able to convince the Albuquerque City Council to pass a resolution presented by one of the City Council members to stop the war in Iraq last year when we sang songs about the children of Iraq.”

Struggling together

Apart from hopes and dreams, the more concrete desire for companionship is an irresistible bonus to the Raging Grannies experience. It provides an opportunity to meet like-minded folks at a similar life stage, “at this time in our lives when our other social networks might be shrinking,” says Vicki.
“We can all talk about fountain pens and Victrolas and not have to explain ourselves. We can pass around photos of our grandchildren while marching on the picket lines. It’s perfect!” exclaims Vicki Ryder.

The solidarity that develops between Raging Grannies can be comforting - and intense.
“At times it has been very exciting – even perhaps a bit too exciting for my health,” says Gail.
“On the other hand, the last time I was hospitalized my Raging Grannies friends stepped in with material and moral support that was invaluable. Even with my health problems, our group has worked to be inclusive of all so that I rarely feel sidelined due to disability,” adds Gail.

Molly nursed another Raging Granny through her final days of cancer. “We lost four Raging Grannies in 16 months,” she says.
But these challenges haven’t deterred them.
“I want to be a Raging Granny for as long as I can be,” says Molly, a sparkle in her sharp blue eyes.
It has “re-awakened my creative spirit and my sense of humor,” says Vicki, who has made new friends and has “become intimately acquainted with sound systems, rally programming, parade routes and the inside of City Hall. It challenges us to stay informed on issues both local and global.”

“When we started we thought we were a joke – a funny break in the middle of serious gatherings. Then we found that young people were coming up to us and thanking us, because our continuing activism gave them hope to continue,” says Ellen.

“Most of all”, says Vicki, “it’s reaffirmed my belief that each and every one of us, no matter our age and gender, can and does make a difference if we answer the call to speak up and sing out when we see a wrong that needs to be set right. We owe that to our grandchildren.”

Nadia Hausfather, M.A. (Community Psych), Graduate Diploma (Journalism) is currently a Humanities PhD candidate at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. Born in Montreal, she has worked and done research with diverse populations in Canada, Nicaragua and Bolivia, including migrants, youth, the homeless and Indigenous populations. She works as a freelance journalist and is the author of two books, one about homelessness published in Waterloo, Ontario, and the other about women's access to identity cards published in El Alto, Bolivia.