What did you do with your week?
Meet the 92-year-old 'raging granny' who just got arrested for protesting Arctic oil drilling
But for the setting — a set of railroad tracks outside the Seattle terminal where a controversial oil rig is currently docked — and the chains linking their gently rocking chairs, it could have been any casual meeting of old-fashioned matrons.
A few hours after setting up camp near Seattle's Terminal 5 to protest the Arctic-bound Royal Dutch Shell oil drilling rig, all five Raging Grannies were arrested. Seattle police cut through the duct-taped "lock boxes" that bound their arms and loaded them into a van to the department's Southwest Precinct. After processing, they were sent home and told they'd be notified of their charges within a week.
"It was quite a different kind of arrest," said Shirley Morrison, a Seattle great-grandmother just two months shy of her 93rd birthday and the oldest of the five women arrested Tuesday. "They were nice to us."
In 1995, Morrison helped found the Seattle Raging Grannies — the local branch of an international group of progressive-minded grandmothers. At demonstrations, (Morrison calls them "actions") she wears her standard granny uniform of sunhat and flowing skirt, wielding every one of her 92 years like a weapon. Being a Raging Granny is all about making the most of an older woman's moral clout.
The Shell rig "Polar Pioneer," which was recently approved for exploratory oil drilling the Arctic, has been the target of frequent demonstrations over the past month. Environmental groups say that drilling poses the risk of a catastrophic spill and could threaten the fragile Arctic environment, but the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said it considered potential environmental and social impacts before granting Shell permission to move forward with the plan.
On Tuesday morning, group of younger protesters had gathered with oil drums and signs on an overpass near where Morrison and her compatriots were rocking, according to the Seattle Times. When Seattle Police's Apparatus Response Team pulled up with a truck full of saws, jackhammers and other heavy-duty tools to help dislodge them (Seattle, being Seattle, has to have a special unit devoted to removing protesters who have chained themselves to things), the younger activists walked away.
But the grannies stayed put. The police milled around for a few hours, Morrison said, while they figured out what to do with the women. Meanwhile, the women chanted songs they'd composed and set to familiar tunes, replacing "She'll be coming 'round the mountain" with "We're radical environmentalists" and "My Bonnie lies over the ocean" with "You've polluted the air and the water."
