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Anti-war grannies strike a chord

Oliver Burkeman and Emma Brockes

New York: Three years after the start of the Iraq war, one thing New York police do not lack is experience in dealing with protesters — so when they were called to a disturbance at the military recruitment centre in Times Square last October, it sounded like just another routine demonstration.

Instead, they found 18 elderly women, many in their 80s and one aged 90, blocking the entrance and demanding to enlist in place of young men. They called themselves Grandmothers Against The War, and after they ignored polite requests to move on, police had no option but to arrest them, making sure the handcuffs weren't too tight, and cart them off — complete with canes and walking frames — to the holding cells.

They were finally acquitted on Friday after a trial that caught New Yorkers' imagination, even as it seemed to agonise the prosecutors saddled with the job of arguing that the ``peace grannies'', as they became known, should be jailed.

Growing network

At the height of the proceedings, Cindy Sheehan, the anti-war activist who became a celebrity for camping for months outside President George W. Bush's Texas ranch after her son was killed in Iraq, showed up to lend her support.

The women are part of a growing network of American anti-war groups made up of senior citizens, including the Raging Grannies of Tucson, Arizona, and Grandmothers for Peace International, who use the positive social stereotype attaching to grandmothers — and the reluctance of the authorities to come down too hard on them — to further their cause. Banners held by sympathisers outside the Manhattan courtroom read ``Arrest Bush, Free the Grannies'' and ``Can't whip the insurgents? Whip Grannies!``

``I'm very happy,'' Joan Wiles (74), who founded Grandmothers Against The War two years ago, said yesterday. ``Our goal was to put the war on trial, and I think we did that. Mission accomplished.''

Ms Wile, a former cabaret singer and songwriter who wrote the original music to Lynn Redgrave's 1975 film The Happy Hooker, said she had protested only twice before in her life: once in the 1980s for nuclear disarmament, and then in 2000 in the Million Mom March, which demanded tighter gun control.

Their experience in detention, where they were kept two to a cell, had been ``very unpleasant'', she said. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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