History of the 1000 Grandmothers
In October 2016, moved by the courage and wisdom of the Grandmothers at Standing Rock, a half dozen elder women from Oakland and Berkeley, CA started meeting In October 2016. Our first work together was supporting the Grandmothers at Standing Rock, - who, as water protectors, stood up against the fossil fuel industry’s Dakota Access Pipeline . Subsequently, guided by our core group’s belief that grandmothers have a deep heart connection to future generations and could be a powerful voice in the Climate Movement, we began organizing elder women locally about the Climate crisis.
Acting on our belief that given a platform to step into the Climate Movement many would join in and co-create a piece of the Climate justice movement, we began to grow our Grandmothers’ network
A growing number of us began to ‘show up in the streets’ to do non-violent direct actions to support the leadership of indigenous and youth climate groups. We had large contingents in two international days of climate action/strikes. We participated in a sister-Grandmothers project with Lakota Grandmothers from South Dakota.
We created a very active email and Face Book page. (Aware that many of our Grandmothers do not use Facebook, we hope to launch an active website, soon). Many of us participated in calls to impact climate legislation, and block support of the fossil fuel industry and its disproportionate impacts on communities most affected, i.e. those who lack the economic and political power, to prevent the dirtiest impacts of the fossil fuel industry from being experienced by their communities. We were particularly engaged in working against local fossil fuel industry efforts to expand their reach in our local communities. Many of us were drawn to work on the bold vision of the Green New Deal.
By the middle of 2019 the number of Grandmothers who had joined our list (as well as those who joined us in actions) was in the hundreds, and we called for our first ‘gathering’ of grandmothers to build our network in new ways. We developed work groups (see web-site), and have been engaging in multiple ways of organizing about the climate crisis. By Sept. 2019 our numbers reached over 1000.