Ingrid Laas
On May 7, the day before Mother’s Day (appropriately), the Raging Grannies of Madison will make their 2016 debut at the Dane County Farmers’ Market. It won’t be tough to find them.
They’ll be the older women decked out in colorful aprons and flowered hats singing politically charged ditties to the tunes of popular folk songs.
These spry and sassy liberals — most of them between the ages of 60 and 90 but not all necessarily grandmothers — make plenty of noise about public schools, fracking, gun control and uteruses. In fact, at a recent performance for the UW’s Gender and Women’s Studies Club, the group smiled for pictures with an oversize stuffed uterus that rather resembles a blood-red crab.
Madison’s Raging Grannies, one of several chapters, or as they call it, “gaggles,” in the United States, Canada and other countries, will play anywhere they perceive a need for their voices, from Fighting Bob Fest to a Lechayim Lunchtime Plus! event sponsored by Jewish Social Services of Madison.
“The Grannies are very important to me as a way to push back against all that is wrong and frustrating,” says Marjorie Matthews, a Sun Prairie resident who will turn 65 in May and is one of the more active members of the group. “People find what we do amusing, even if they don’t agree with us. I think we do make a difference.”
Formed in 2003 as a project of the Madison chapter of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, the Raging Grannies of Madison first sang to crowds of Iraq War protesters. According to the group’s website, “membership is open to all older women who know that ‘war is stupid’ and that for the sake of our children and grandchildren we must sing out for peace, economic and social justice and the environment.”
Madison’s Raging Grannies were out in force five years ago to protest the Budget Repair Bill at the Capitol, and in 2010, the group received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice, an umbrella group of more than 170 organizations (including the Grannies). Three years later, the group was honored with the first-ever Forward Award for Grassroots Activism from the independent organization United Wisconsin.
In addition to collectively raging against the machine, many Madison Grannies also sing with other groups and participate in numerous outside political activities.
“Joining the Raging Grannies is one of the smartest things I’ve done,” says Sheila Plotkin, a 78-year-old former teacher of the deaf and hard of hearing for Milwaukee Public Schools who now lives in McFarland and runs “We, the Irrelevant,” an organization dedicated to seeking accountability in elected officials. “We reinforce one another’s beliefs and inspire each other.”
Although Madison is a hub for Grannies activity, the organization’s so-called herstory dates back to 1987 in British Columbia. Initially, a group of women between the ages of 52 and 67 — teachers, business professionals, an anthropologist, counselors, artists, a librarian — sought a creative outlet for responding to nuclear threats of the era, as well as ageism and sexism.
According to the Raging Grannies International website, protests originally took the form of street theater before morphing into musical performances in which participants’ wardrobes parody “old lady” stereotypes. (Plotkin calls the style “Granny glam.”) Today, there are almost 500 titles in the Raging Grannies song database, with such titles as “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy,” “Reluctant Talk About Torture,” “Transgender Pride” and, of course, “The Uterus Song.”
“We are purposely leaderless,” says longtime Granny Andrea Musher, Madison’s former poet laureate and a retired UW-Whitewater English and women’s studies professor. While Matthews often stands center stage, playing an acoustic guitar (“without it we just don’t sound good,” she says), individual Grannies take turns introducing songs about topics close to their hearts — climate control, water quality, women’s issues.
This approach is new for the Madison Grannies, as are question-and-answer sessions during performances, says Matthews, a university services specialist in the UW’s School of Public Affairs. “We have found that it helps people get a better idea of us as three-dimensional people and why we do what we do.”
Audience participation is encouraged. “I love the idea of getting people to sing with you, because there is something very energizing about that,” Plotkin says. “I believe that we can make people laugh at the same time we make them cry.”
Some Grannies have been with the group since the beginning, while others joined as recently as a few months ago. Political activism is not a prerequisite, but it certainly helps fuel the fire.
Rosemarie Lester, the oldest Madison Raging Granny at age 90, grew up in Berlin under Nazi rule. She made her way to California in 1948 and found herself collecting signatures for Dwight Eisenhower’s presidential campaign.
“I didn’t know that much about American politics, but I wanted to do something,” says Lester, a former professor of German language, literature and cultural history at several universities in the United States and abroad. “I was reacting to my ancestors in Germany, who did not do enough.”
Today, 20 years into retirement and despite pelvic fractures and multiple hospitalizations, Lester participates in as many Raging Grannies performances as possible. “What would I do otherwise?” she asks. “Sit around and knit?”
Ingrid Laas
Grannies protest South Towne’s Hobby Lobby in 2014 after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the company to deny contraception to employees.
Grannies from Madison and throughout North America will gather this August in Seattle at an annual get-together dubbed the “Unconvention,” and local Grannies say they’d like to eventually bring the event to Madison. Uncons feature massive sing-alongs, social opportunities and workshops on such topics as civil disobedience and its ramifications. “In other words, are you willing to be arrested?” Matthews explains. “And if so, who’s going to feed your cat?”
Some Madison Grannies have been arrested, most frequently during Solidarity Sing Alongs at the State Capitol. Others have been arrested for trespassing and protesting drone warfare.
Plotkin says she doesn’t worry about arrests anymore because she’s not in the job market and isn’t concerned about her public record. And Matthews, a former employee of the U.S. military, is less concerned than she used to be. “A lot of us are from the Vietnam era, when there was a lot going on,” she says. “So this is nothing new. I don’t feel as constrained in my current position as I did when I was a federal employee. In fact, working for the university under Gov. Walker gives me more reasons to go out and protest, because he’s messing with this state so much.”
