A Community Resource: Women's Voices on War and Peace

Edited by Janet Chisholm

by Carol Bragg

For many Americans, war is something remote that happens "over there." We learn the fact of war through the "experts" - the generals, the war journalists, and the think-tank analysts. Occasionally, there are US speaking tours by ordinary people whose lives have been shattered by war, like the Israeli-Palestinian Families of the Bereaved. And some veterans are willing to talk of their experiences.

There is another largely untapped resource that can help us to understand more about the nature of war and the yearning for peace.

A women's forum in Providence, Rhode Island, has made it obvious that the experience of war is indelibly engraved in the hearts of countless members of our own communities. Their stories have often never before been told. These are stories that wrench the heart of the listener. They need to be shared with high school students to counter war's romanticism. They need to be told in the halls of government to pry open hearts that regard war as a necessary evil, domestic violence as a fact of life, and gun violence as the inevitable price some must pay for Americans'"right to bear arms."

On March 1st, 2003, a local peace organization and a college public service center organized the forum, advertised as "Women’s Voices for Peace: Our Words, Experiences, and Visions of Global Security." Over two dozen co-sponsors from a wide variety of local groups signed on.

The organizers selected an able and knowledgeable speaker to open the forum. She set the stage, creating a philosophical and emotional atmosphere in which local women could share their personal experiences, illuminating both the uniqueness and the universality of the tragedy of war and the yearning for peace. When Betty Reardon spoke, she lit a central candle in a sand-filled sculpted birdbath. Each woman speaker who followed used a taper to light a candle in memory of the victims of war and violence.

Words in the Wind of the Wampanoag Nation recited her original poetry, accompanied by a Native American flutist. Her invocation, remembering both the slaughter and oppression of her ancestors and the spirit of compassion and gentleness that has sustained her people, was the perfect prelude to more stories.

Rosi described her childhood experiences in Niquinohomo, Nicaragua during the civil war that overthrew Somoza and later during the US-backed contra war against the Sandinistas. She was followed by Orit, an Israeli student, who spoke of her fears for family and friends back home since the start of the second Palestinian intifada. Lara, a Palestinian student, recalled her father grabbing her by the hand and telling her to run as they escaped an episode of violence during the first intifada, and the eerie feeling when she last visited of seeing the academic and cultural institutions in Ramallah, where she had grown up, devastated by Israeli military action.

Regina, who fled Colombia with her two sons, spoke through an interpreter about her husband’s kidnapping. Ill with colon cancer at the time of his disappearance, he is now presumed dead. Regina was overcome by grief when she held up a photograph of her husband.

Cathy's violin solo from the balcony of the meeting hall served as a plaintive meditational piece that soothed better than any words the grief those in the audience shared with Regina.

The stories continued. Nancy was only two at the time that Pol Pot came to power in her native Cambodia, so her early "memories" are those shared by family. She has no memory of her father, who was killed by the Khmer Rouge.

Barbara spoke as a refugee from the Liberian civil war. She told of the continuing fighting in that country, and of struggling desperately to raise the funds necessary to bring her son to this country.

Eleanor, the founder of a shelter for battered women, spoke of her experience of the "war at home." A witness to and victim of physical abuse as a child, she was later brutally beaten by her husband. Cleora then shared every mother's nightmare - that of learning that her high-school age son had been the unintended victim of urban gun violence, the war in our city streets.

Jin Ok, a Korean woman active with the Green Party, ended the program on a hopeful note, telling of her participation in the Women’s Reunification Rally in North Korea last October. There 300 North Korean women paired with 300 women from South Korea in a call for peace and reconciliation.

These women, by sharing their very painful stories, empowered themselves and others. The force of the experience led many participants to attend a first Women in Black vigil a week later. That vigil is now a regular event. Each Saturday morning, women quietly take their place on the steps of Providence City Hall. They mourn all of the victims of war, of human rights abuses, of domestic violence, and of gun violence. They are greeted with respect, with silent bows, with "thank you's," and with only a rare shaking of the head. Unlike "the facts," the stories of these women’s experiences of war and violence are irrefutable—and many can hear their cries for peace.

©2003 Fellowship of Reconciliation