Nucleus of Hope

It started out as a simple closing song for one of the nightly general meetings: "You can't kill the spirit, she's like a mountain, old and strong, she goes on and on." About 50 women stood in a spiral, circle wrapped around circle, singing and swaying beneath a wooden pavilion lined with banners and workshop schedules.

Near the circle's center the pace of the verse quickened. The women, smiling, began to clap and dance to the song's ever more rhythmic beat. Then they joined hands, and the circles began to move around each other in a flowing connected motion. As the song slowed, the women stopped and moved together toward the center, arm in arm, until they were in a tight huddle.

The song became softer and softer, beautiful high voices echoing each line. And then it fell to a low hum. And then silence. Tears welled, and the women stood immersed in a spirit of strength and unity—clutching one another, holding one another up, creating a nucleus of hope for their futures, for the world's future.

These women were standing, acting, and celebrating on land bordering the Seneca Army Depot. The depot occupies 11,000 acres of land encircled with miles of chain-link fence and barbed wire. A center of nuclear storage and research since 1944, it now stores the neutron bomb and is the most likely point from which first-strike weapons will be shipped for deployment in Europe. The depot is then, for many, a place that symbolizes the thwarting of hope for the future. But now a new hope has taken root on the depot's very borders: the Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice.

The encampment was inspired by women's peace camps throughout Europe, most notably the Greenham Common camp in England. These European camps were set up by women who were and are determined to stop first-strike nuclear weapons from being deployed in their countries. For this reason the camps were located at the very sites where the cruise and the Pershing II missiles are scheduled to be deployed.

Following suit, women on the West Coast of the United States established the Puget Sound Women's Peace Camp in Kent, Washington, near the Boeing Space Center, where cruise missiles are produced. Women on the East Coast set up camp at the Seneca Army Depot.

At every stage of development—production, storage, shipment, and deployment—women are witnessing against first-strike nuclear weapons. They are being present to the horrors that these weapons represent, and they are defying them.

The 51-acre farm that the women have purchased for the camp is a constant flurry of activity. The camp is a community, and it operates like one. Everyone is expected to put in several hours of community work each day. The "work webs" include such duties as security, food preparation, childcare, maintenance of "mother earth" (the camp truck), as well as office and media work.

An old clapboard house located near the main road has been transformed into a maze of cluttered offices, with a half-dozen different phone lines criss-crossing the floors. A handful of women are persistently busy answering telephones, responding to correspondence, doing legal support work, and speaking with the press, the police, and local residents.

Wooden boardwalks extend farther back into the camp, leading to what is called "Heartland." The pavilion, field kitchen, and childcare area are in this more settled and evenly paced section of the camp. Here the evening communal meals are prepared under the shelter of a small canopy tent, and in large pots over open fires in the field. Workshops and the nightly general meetings are also held in this area.

A low row of trees separates Heartland from "Amazon Acres" and "Briar Patch," areas where women and children actually camp. Tents are scattered across two fields in this, the most quiet and private section of the camp.

On August 1 nearly 2,000 women gathered at Seneca for the summer's major civil disobedience action. License plates, bumper stickers, and banners revealed a wide array of women from all over the Eastern seaboard and Canada: old and young women, working class and professional women, church women, single and married women, women with children, lesbian women. Representatives from many other countries also attended the action, including Joan Coxsedge, a member of the Australian Parliament, and Marie Louis Beck-Oberdorf of the West German Parliament. Women from France, Canada, Britain, Sicily, and El Salvador also participated and presented statements condemning the deployment of first-strike nuclear weapons.

The two-mile stretch of road along which the women marched to reach the depot gate was lined with men's support teams equipped with crates of fruit and large plastic buckets of juice, iced tea, and cut vegetables.

The curious and some counter-demonstrators had also turned out for the day's events. The march was repeatedly halted while police negotiated with about 200 townspeople who wanted to block the marchers from the gate of the depot. The relatively short march, which began at 11 a.m., finally reached its destination at about 4 p.m. By the time the women arrived, the counter-demonstration had dwindled significantly, and the action carried on as planned. There was no violence.

In all, 242 women were arrested for scaling the fence and trespassing on depot property.

The depot is located in Seneca County, a rural, sparsely populated area in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. A quiet farming community, its inhabitants are not accustomed to large demonstrations. While many local people are sympathetic and support the camp, others have reacted with fear and hostility. Hecklers on the road in front of the camp and at vigils and demonstrations are commonplace, and some vandalism has occurred at the camp.

In one incident on July 30, a crowd of approximately 250 people in Waterloo, New York, tried to stop 75 women who were on a peace walk to the camp. Although these women had made arrangements with the authorities in the towns through which they were walking, police protection proved very inadequate. An angry crowd chanted and yelled slogans while the women sat in the street discussing what they should do.

The police informed the women that if they didn't re-route their walk they would be arrested for inciting a riot. Most of the women felt that they had a constitutional right to be there and that they would be in even more danger if they should re-route. Fifty-four women were arrested and jailed for four days, after which all the charges were dropped, and they were released.

But this confrontation also proved to be a watershed of support. The arraignment was attended by a group of local women carrying signs that read, "Waterloo women for first amendment rights," and "It's your constitutional right to walk through our town."

One 16-year-old later said that she had come to the Waterloo counter-demonstration angry, but when she saw the violence of the townspeople and the peaceful response of the women she found that she couldn't maintain her anger. Local people donated food from their gardens to the peace camp and brought food to the women in jail. An 89-year-old woman working in a local store patted one woman's hand and said, "My dear, don't ever stop what you are doing, and please don't judge us by our absence, we're frightened and don't know how to deal with this."

It can be difficult for women, regardless of the strength of their feminism, to recognize their potential as agents of change in the broader, largely male-dominated culture in which we live. It is difficult for women to see themselves in a positive and forceful light in peace movements, churches, work environments, and societies with male leadership. It is difficult to face harassment and discrimination without feeling frustrated and powerless.

But when women are able to step back from such circumstances, they can rediscover strength, commitment, and faith that has been quelled within them. At the peace encampment women engage in every aspect of life: they nurture and organize, they garden and write press releases, they cook and split wood, they teach and learn. This shared accomplishment, this activity of women working together on their own, provides a feeling of strength and independence that perhaps cannot be gained in any other setting.

Those at the Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice have a clear understanding that they do share responsibility for the future of this country and for the entire world; and that they can, and are, doing something about it. And that means renewed hope for all of us.

Marrianne McMullen was an editorial assistant for Sojourners and a member of the Washington Support Group for the Seneca Women's Peace Camp when this article appeared.