Grannies Question Voting--But Will Anthony Have It?

From LiberateRochester

by Alia Souissi (photo by Ted Forsyth)

On Sunday August 20th the Rochester Raging Grannies sang in what may have been their most progressively radical performance yet. Their event was held at the Susan B. Anthony Park, off of Madison Street in downtown Rochester. The middle aged and elderly women performed to commemorate the anniversary of the passing of the 19th Amendment. Ratified in 1920, the 19th Amendment granted United States women the right to vote.

The Grannies would have fit in perfectly with a high school civics class with their first song, but their tune would soon change. Their first song was about the importance of voting. The second song the self described "old bats" sang was about the inefficiency of electronic voting machines. The Grannies demanded a return to paper trail voting in order to assure accuracy during elections.

The women grew increasingly enraged as they next sang about electoral reform. They pointed out that one cannot run in a large scale political race if they are poor. They stated that for anyone to even debate Senator Hillary Clinton that person had to first raise $500,000. The Grannies said big money is killing democracy today and that "Susan B. Anthony would be rolling in her grave".

The next two songs the Grannies performed had to do with the rights of workers. Referring to the recent immigrant worker debates, the women said that every human being must be legal. The Grannies are "tired of these racist laws". In their final workers' rights song, the Grannies sang about the Cintas laundry and uniform workers. Cintas workers in Rochester are forced into unfair contracts, one part being that they do not receive health care benefits until after one year of service.

Finally, the group addressed the most frightening, and possibly humorous, aspect of current day politics. The Grannies, who have been singing for justice since September 2002, announced to their audience that they had recently been added to Bush's terrorist watch list. Absurd.

After the Grannies were done singing, a woman dressed up as and playing the role of Susy B spoke. Her speech was condescending and heavily reformist. She said she couldn't believe that a woman hadn't been president yet and that there weren't enough women or people of color in Congress. It was 2006 for goodness sake. Her "tsk tsk"ing paled in comparison to the progressively radical messages from the Grannies: Voting isn't working. To quote Emma Goldman who used to live in Rochester, "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal."

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