Feminists Transform the Work to End Violence

Feminist and lesbian feminist leaders in War Resisters League Southeast sought to apply feminist approaches to leadership and political strategy to strengthen movements for peace and justice. They transformed top-down organizational practices towards more collective decision-making. Influenced by pacifist and Black and Third World feminist thought, they connected the dots between interpersonal violence, intersectional oppression, and militarism.

Typed sheet of paper titled, "Women and Nonviolence (A Program of the War Resisters League)" with an image of a small cartoon drawing of a group of three women, with a Black-presenting woman at the center, surrounded by two white-presenting women, one barefoot, one in heels.

An info sheet on feminism and nonviolence, a central piece of WRL Southeast office’s early political education program led by WRL Southeast co-founder Diane Spaugh, ca. 1978. Feminists aligned with revolutionary nonviolence believed in nonhierarchial organizing that dismantled domination within movement spaces, as well as in people’s lives.

Majority-white group of women-presenting people standing in a crowd facing a row of journalists. Some people are raising their fists in the air. Some women are holding a banner with a web on it that reads, "We meet as women to weave a world web of life to entangle the powers that bury our children." Other signs have women's symbols on them, and some read: "No nukes," "Shanti," and "Socialist feminists"

The Women’s Pentagon Action gathered anti-war feminists from across the country, including members of WRL Southeast. Participants blockaded the Pentagon with their bodies and hand-woven webs of yarn to raise awareness about the interconnections of nuclear weapons and other forms of violence, 1980. Photo Copyright © Diana Mara Henry.

Poster featuring a design of a flower in which the decorative symbols inside of the petals resemble people with their arms raised and touching the hands of the person next to them. The heading of the poster reads "Women's Pentagon Action, November 16 & 17, Washington D.C." The local contact is listed as "War Resisters League" in Durham, NC

The Women’s Pentagon Action was a forerunner of a decade of majority-white, women-led peace actions that connected everyday violations like sexual harassment to structural violence like racism, patriarchy, poverty, and militarism. It was an anti-nuclear action that embraced an expansive vision about the root causes of war. WRL Southeast organized a local group to participate in the action, 1980.

Flier on yellow paper of the Durham to Seneca Women's Peace Walk-Women's Peace Camp. The name of the walk is written along the edges of the inside of the circular part of a women's symbol, the most prominent image on the page, along with a line featuring multiple dots with names of cities up the eastern coast of the US, indicating the route of the walk. The page describes the walk from Durham, NC to Romulus, NY, the site of the Seneca Women's Peace encampment outside of Seneca Army Depot. The opposite page features a list of actions that people can take from home: "Write Congresspeople"; "discuss the issues" and a cartoon image of a woman kicking a missile.

Women’s peace camps sprang up across the US and in Europe in the early 1980s to call attention to the invisible sites of the US nuclear arsenal, to demand the redistribution of government resources, and to imagine a world without violence. WRL Southeast led this march from Durham, North Carolina to the Seneca Women’s Peace Camp at the site of the largest nuclear weapons storage facility in the US, 1983.

“I see the Women’s Peace Walk as a chance to make people-to-people contact and point out that there are people in opposition to our government’s policies.” -Mandy Carter, WRL Southeast staff organizer, “Why I Walk” statement, 1983

Mandy Carter, a young Black woman with short hair stands in front of a barbed wire fence at a military base. There is a handwritten sign on the fence with German writing on it that is difficult to see because the sign is folded over.

WRL Southeast staff organizer Mandy Carter at a US military base in West Germany. Carter was part of an American delegation to German-led protests against the US/NATO deployment of nuclear missiles.

These readings belonged to WRL Southeast staff organizer, Dannia “Sunshine” Southerland, ca. 1980. Members of WRL Southeast connected with other feminists and lesbian feminists across the country through War Resisters League’s Feminism and Nonviolence Task Force. Women leaders transformed anti-war organizing through feminist frameworks.

Cover page of a booklet on newsprint with an enlarged photograph of a majority white crowd of protesters holding banners and signs, one of which reads, "Coalition for Direct Action at Seabrook" and another that reads, in part, "Shut 'em Down." At the top of the page, in printed red lettering, reads: "Let's Shut Down Seabrook!"

Feminist approaches to peace organizing included innovations in activist decision-making structures during direct actions. One such innovation was the “affinity group” model, where small, decentralized groups made decisions that, together, informed action strategy. Affinity groups guided mass actions like this one in 1977 led by the Clamshell Alliance to shut down a nuclear power plant in New England.

"For me, the thing about training is it's something I felt I could embrace, and also, training, as it became developed—not at the beginning, as it became developed—had such a strong feminist perspective as part of it. Just the affinity groups being something that was inspired by women's consciousness-raising groups as well as the Spanish anarchist cells. Something that really does put us all on some equal footing, rather than somebody telling us now what we can do."

Listen to War Resisters League Feminism and Nonviolence Task Force member Joanne Sheehan describe the influence of the women's liberation movement on nonviolence training for civil disobediance actions.

News clipping featuring a photograph of a group of white women and men-presenting people sitting with their arms linked and holding each others' hands in front of a doorway surrounded by white police officers and a white man in a business suit. The heading of the caption under the photo reads, "Demonstrators Arrested." At the top of the page, the name of the newspaper is listed as The Chapel Hill Newspaper, and the article is dated Tuesday, April 10, 1979.

Soon after the Clamshell Alliance's Seabrook occupation, WRL Southeast members with the Kudzu Alliance organized to shut down the construction of the Shearon Harris nuclear power plant in North Carolina, drawing on strategies shared through feminist networks. Featured here is a Kudzu action, including WRL Southeast staff organizer Steve Sumerford (seated, second from right), at the headquarters of Carolina Power and Light, the company behind the new plant. Sumerford and fellow WRL staffer Dannia Southerland spent eight days in the Wake County jail following the action.

“Racism, housing, the draft, social services cutbacks and military spending increase, US imperialism, the neutron bomb, human rights, Third World liberation struggles—all these are women’s issues.” -Dannia “Sunshine” Southerland, WRL Southeast staff organizer

WRL Southeast staff organizer Dannia Southerland.

Poster with a circular carved-appearing pattered print as an art object at the center, reading, "Announcing a Womens' Roundhouse for Survival." Underneath the date for the gathering in June 1983 is text reading, "For three days, women from throughout the region will meet to share and exchange information, skills, resources, and ideas."

Lesbian feminist WRL Southeast staff organizer Dannia “Sunshine” Southerland worked with North Carolina Triangle-area feminists to build women's solidarity across race, class, and sexuality. White radical feminists in Durham learned from Black and Third World feminism and international solidarity organizing about interlocking forms of oppression. One local example of feminist cross-movement organizing was the Women's Roundhouse for Survival in Durham, NC. The work was challenging and slow, and the group scaled back to build trust among a small group of women, 1983.