On November 1, 1961, Women Strike for Peace (WSP) was created after over 50,000 women across America marched against nuclear weapon testing. At first the women only identified themselves as "concerned housewives" (Swerdlow 1993). Their aim was to urge their government to:
ban all atomic weapons testing, negotiate in good faith to put all atomic weapons under control of an international agency, take concrete steps toward world-wide disarmament, devote as much of the national budgets to preparation for peace as is now-being spent in preparation for war, use the United Nations, the press and all mass media for facts, not name-calling nor propaganda, develop the ability of the United Nations to keep peace and promote world law - University of Wisconsin Digital Collections 2015
The group was made of women from all different political backgrounds. "They came from liberal to left political backgrounds, having been pacifists, Quakers, New Deal Democrats, socialists, anarchists, Communist sympathisers, or Communist party members in the years before and during Wold War II" (Swerdlow 1993). However, these women all held the core conviction of families protection and were often women who had "made the choice to devote themselves to live-in motherhood" (Swerdlow 1993). It was this devotion to children as "concerned housewives" and "live-in [mothers]" that shaped their protest activities. They protested nuclear weapons as they feared for their children's safety. They would often use the slogan "End the Arm Race- Not the Human Race" (Jewish Women's Archive 2015). |
WSP Anti-Nuclear Protests (Richards 1962) |
On November 1, 1961 the founding WSP anti-nuclear protest took place. Women went to talk to their elected officials "to express their deep anxiety and indignation concerning the pollution of the atmosphere by radioactive isotopes released by nuclear explosions". In Washington DC, seven-hundred and fifty to eight-hundred along with a few children marched in front of the White House, carrying signs that urged for peace and nuclear disarmament. Women in other cities also marched for peace and nuclear disarmament, their "maternal indignation was manifested by the number of women pushing baby carriages, holding aloft placards that read "Save the Children", "Testing Damages the Unborn" and "Let's Live in Peace Not Pieces."" In Los Angles four thousand women assembled on the steps of the State Building, "demanding an end to stockpiling and testing of nuclear weapons." It is believed that this nation-wide protest in part lead to the Soviet Union-United States signing of the 1963 Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty.
During the 60s, WSP "grew to consist of a network of loosely organized, independent locals in over one hundred cities throughout the nation. Although the main headquarters was located in Washington, D.C., there was little direction on the national level; each local was autonomous and free to set its own priorities" (University of Wisconsin Digital Collections 2015). Though their methods varied within local groups, overall the group developed a system of "simple maternal rhetoric, spontaneous direct action on the local level" and "relentless political lobbying in Washington" (Swerdlow 1993). They continued to stage protest in front of the White House, the United Nations headquarters in New York City and the Pentagon to demonstrate their opposition to nuclear weapons and their call for disarmament (Encyclopedia Britannica 2015). They distributed facts on radiation to Congress and to the public wherever people congregated. They lobbied at the UN Disarmament Conference in Geneva and demonstrated at the nuclear bomb testing site in Las Vegas. (Swarthmore College Peace Collection 2015).
By 1964, their focus shifted to the Vietnam War. Their methods of protest did not really change. WSP established a Vietnam Committee "which was actively involved in organizing demonstrations and educating the public about war atrocities such as napalm" (University of Wisconsin Digital Collections 2015). They organised many public demonstrations and rallies across America, met with women from North and South Vietnam, organised boycotts, met with United Nations and political figures and counselled draft resisters (Matloc and Chmielewski 2015). WSP also "visited North Vietnam and the organization served as a liaison between American prisoners of war and their families" (Swerdlow 1993). "On March 16, 1965 Alice Hertz, an 82-year-old founder of Detroit WSP, sacrificed her own life by setting her body on fire in a Detroit shopping center in order to protest the escalation of the Vietnam War...In the summer of 1966 two women from WSP... were arrested for blocking a napalm shipment from Santa Clara, California. The following winter 2,500 women gathered outside the Pentagon with photos of napalmed Vietnamese children" (Beck 2005).
|
WSP Vietnam Protests (Marder 1972) |
After the war in Vietnam ended in 1975, WSP resumes its anti-nuclear weapons campaign. In 1979, WSP initiated the campaign, "Proposition #1 - A Peoples Referendum for Survival" which they had signed by over 100,000 people (Swarthmore College Peace Collection 2015) and in 1984, "WSP sent a delegation to the Prime Ministers of the Netherlands and Belgium, urging those countries to refuse to place U.S. missiles on their soil" (Swarthmore College Peace Collection 2015). "During the late 1990s WSP focused on total international abolition of nuclear armaments by the end of the 20th century" (Encyclopedia Britannica 2015). Today, WSP is no longer an active organisation.