Blockading the Bombmakers With My Mother and Grace Paley

Poster from the action

On Monday, June 14 during the War Resisters League organized civil disobedience at the nuclear nations missions to the United Nations, my mother (Elma Paneth) and I protested the nuclear arms race and got arrested together. Three years earlier, Mom had been inspired by legendary activists from Holliston, Massachusetts - Joe and Izzy Hines - when they participated in the Wall Street action. Protests were not limited to young people and Mom had decided that next time she was going. She got her non-violence training in New York and I arranged with my Boston affinity group that she could join us. A couple of my friends decided to join our group at the last minute.

We got up at the crack of dawn to go downtown. At 181st Street, on the A train platform, led by Harry Levine of Citizen's Band, we began to sing Al Giordano’s song based on the anarchist Emma Goldman’s famous quotation: “If I can’t dance I don’t want to be, In your revolution, That’s no solution, If I can’t sing and shout, You can count me out, And I’ll dance my way to freedom” and “If there is some struggle, there can be some progress,” based on the words of abolitionist Frederick Douglass.[1]

We got down to the U.N. to find the police were guiding protesters to an “official area” to be “officially arrested.” They were carefully placing people on stretchers and carrying them away to buses. It was very orchestrated, but luckily my affinity group had a number of experienced protesters, so we formed a circle to discuss the situation and decided to walk around and see what was happening elsewhere. Perhaps there was a better place for us to sit down and lodge our protest.

We learned that people were accessing their offices at the U.S. Mission through a nearby hotel. An all women’s affinity group from the Women’s Pentagon Action, which included veteran activist and writer Grace Paley, was already weaving colored threads through the doors to close them off. We sat down and blocked the doors as the women wove the threads. People could not get in or out. “No business as usual. Call in sick of bombs,” we told them and then we began to sing. People got mad because they were missing planes, trains, and business appointments.