As Penny Palmer, 85, stands in front of the downtown Eugene Federal Building each week with her friends, she sings her heart out to protest the actions of the current presidential administration and more. Most people honk and wave as they drive by the corner of East 7th Avenue and Pearl Street, shouting words of support.
Others drive by and flip off the group spouting angry sentiments. That doesn’t stop Palmer and the other grannies. They’re raging, after all.
The Raging Grannies is an international organization founded in 1987 in Canada protesting against U.S. Navy warships and submarines in the waters surrounding Victoria, British Columbia. The group, composed of women of a certain age (being an actual grandmother is not a requirement) dress in elaborate outfits and flowered hats to sing songs of protest. Sometimes the group includes “honorary grandpas” too.
In 2013, a group of Eugene residents traveled to Salem on a bus with the environmental advocacy group 350 Eugene to protest outside the Oregon Legislature. It was during this time that the late Laurie Granger encountered a Corvallis chapter of the Raging Grannies. “She really wanted to be able to do something where she felt like she was making a difference,” Palmer says. So when Granger returned from Salem, she went to her friends at the First United Methodist Church and told them she wanted to start a Raging Grannies “gaggle” here in Eugene.
Now, 13 years later, the gaggle regularly sees more than 10 grannies attend protests each week at the Federal Building and elsewhere, singing songs like, “Onward Christian Nationalists,” and “All You Fascists.”
The Grannies, in their brightly colored outfits and hats sometimes bearing photos of their grandchildren, stand up against oppression in their own way. “We all have to have a voice in what’s going on and stand up for what we believe in,” says Leslie Hunter, 83.
Hunter, like many of the other grannies, has a longstanding history of activism. She was arrested in the early 1980s while participating in nonviolent protests against nuclear weapons on submarines. While she does not wish to be arrested these days, she says she is not scared of the thought. “That’s just how far I’m willing to go for what my values are and what I believe in,” Hunter says.
What the Raging Grannies believe in is nonviolent, peaceful protest that points out injustices and oppression in every form. Whether it be unjust Immigration and Customs Enforcement practices, the war in Iran, climate change, corporate greed or the joys of eating vegetables, the grannies have a song for it all. Anyone can start their very own gaggle of Raging Grannies, as long as they share those common sentiments, are of that certain age and enjoy nonviolent protest. Currently, there are more than 60 gaggles of grannies in North America.
“Two years ago there were maybe 20 people on our email list and now we have over 50 and that has happened in the last two years, which tells you people are looking for ways to stand up and voice their beliefs,” says Katharine Hunt, 79.
Palmer says since Trump took office for the first time in 2016, her rage has grown stronger, but singing with her fellow Raging Grannies helps her express that rage in a healthy way. “I think right now, the most important issue is voting,” Palmer says, “Go out and vote.”
“I do have hope, and the Grannies are part of that hope for me,” says Victoria Koch, age 79 and a periodic column writer for Eugene Weekly. Despite things being scary, it’s important to have compassion and support everyone, especially younger people, she says. “I think that this is a very, very hard time, but we’ve never really been a democracy, and so we’re going to have to create a democracy.”
The Eugene gaggle of Raging Grannies meets 1 pm every first and third Wednesday at First United Methodist Church, 1376 Olive Street. The Raging Grannies will perform at a fundraiser for the Minnesota 15, 7 pm Sept. 11, at Viking Brewing West, 520 Commercial Street. For more information on the Raging Grannies, visit RagingGrannies.org.