Report from Seneca

Abstract

To this refrain, 2,000 women assembled at the Seneca Army Depot on August 1, 1983, to protest NATO deployment of first-strike nuclear weapons in Europe. Their verse testifies to the enduring character of feminist activism, the stubborn conviction that sustains women's resistance to militarism at Seneca, as throughout the world. The Seneca Army Depot is located in Seneca County, New York, tucked away in the rolling farmland of the Finger Lakes region. The depot serves as a storage site for nuclear weapons and is also the departure point for U.S. nuclear missiles bound for Europe. Next to the depot, feminists have built a peace camp, the Encampment for a Future with Peace and Justice, following the example of British women who, in 1981, founded a peace camp beside the NATO base at Greenham Common, England. At Seneca, as at Greenham Common, the goal is not simply to expose and protest the threat of nuclear war and nuclear weapons. Women's peace camps seek to intervene directly-to block the deployment of 572 Cruise and Pershing II missiles in Great Britain, Italy, West Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands which began in 1983 and is scheduled to continue through 1988. The August 1 demonstration marked the culmination of a month-long protest during which some 150 women occupied the Seneca encampment on a daily basis, maintaining a constant vigil at the army depot, conducting outreach activities in the local area, and engaging in acts of civil disobedience on military property. The summer protests set the stage for a worldwide peace actionan International Day of Protest-on October 22, 1983. A month later, however, despite the rising tide of the international peace movement, the first missiles were installed in Europe on schedule. By the end of 1984, according to the Center for Defense Information, at least 118 nuclear missiles had been deployed in European NATO bases: fifty-four Pershing II's at the rate of one per week in West Germany; forty-eight Cruise missiles in Britain; and sixteen Cruise missiles in Italy. Yet even as the flow of weapons proceeds unchecked, women peace activists, at Seneca, at Greenham Common, and elsewhere, have refused to resign their posts beside military bases. Since