Culture Clash

Inspiring anger, not peace

The professed purpose of the 600 women who began camping out on a 52-acre farm in the Finger Lakes region of New York State on July 4 was to protest the storage of nuclear weapons at the nearby Seneca Army Depot. Calling themselves the Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice, the women, mostly white, well educated and feminist, sought to pattern their demonstration after the Women's Peace Camp protest at England's Greenham Common, a projected site for U.S. cruise missiles. There, several thousand women have assembled, on and off, since September 1981. But by last week the Seneca protest had mainly managed to provoke an angry clash of cultures in a conservative rural community.

Purchasing a rundown farm as their live-in headquarters, the women, representing about 20 organizations, including the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and Boston's Women Against Militarism, banned men from entering their camp and hung out decorated pillowcases on which political slogans were scrawled (I DREAM OF A UNITED SISTERHOOD). Some walked arm in arm around the camp, occasionally embracing.

When about 150 of the women started a 15-mile march from Seneca Falls to their camp near Romulus, 300 residents of the nearby village of Waterloo (pop. 598) blocked their path. One man brandished a shotgun and was arrested. The women sat quietly on the street; 52 were arrested for disorderly conduct. Many were detained for five days in a school before charges of disorderly conduct were dropped. When nearly 1,700 protesters approached the depot two days later, residents shouted, "Commies, go home!" and waved American flags. After local and state police permitted 244 of the women to climb over a 6-ft.-high fence, military police were waiting to catch them.

Matters might have got out of hand, except for the civilian and military police, who were deployed in force. "One way or another, we're going to get the freaks out," threatened Wayne Morrison, a printer from Romulus (pop. 2,600). Contended Millie Todd, who runs a beauty parlor in Romulus: "They're lesbians. They don't salute the flag. They have set back what women have fought for, for a good 50 to 100 years." Said Tom Selling, a local carpenter sympathetic to the protest's cause: "You come here and act like 'We're enlightened and you're jerks,' and things are bound to happen." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.