When I saw the banner held by the ten “brave” grannies arrested for protesting the Iraq War in front of an Atlanta Army recruiting station on March 17, and the same tag in the YouTube video by an aspiring filmmaker, I thought they didn’t want us to send them their grandchildren.
What else can you make of “Send Us Not Our Grandchildren”? That “we’re too busy for them with our protesting, and fulfilling our potentials? Send us puppies instead?”
It was only after I read the blurb accompanying the video for the Atlanta Grandmothers for Peace protest that I got it. Oh! “Send us, not our grandchildren.”
The grannies, you see, wanted to sign up for the army. As I tell my students: That’s the power of punctuation.
You can watch the harrowing experience here where you’ll see ten grannies chanting from a balcony and then politely asked to leave by a couple of police officers, or else they’ll have to take further action.
In a supreme act of bravery they stand their ground and state they will not leave.
Then comes the footage of the grannies’ ordeal. As the doors to the paddy wagon are opened for them, they are asked to hand over their bottled water!
What kind of a democracy is this when one cannot even take her bottled water or the snacks in her purse with her to jail?
Well, that’s about it, except towards the end the mug shots are flashed as if they were of those “disappeared” by some South American regime. These grannies were released in time for dinner—and grocery shopping and a stop at the beauty parlor if they wanted. Their imprisonment lasted two hours.
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