“Right now you must be thinking ‘Jesus, is she on drugs?’” says the sly, weathered-yet-energetic voice on the other end of the phone. “I’m not. I have a caffeinated beverage.”
That voice belongs to Patricia “Paki” Wieland, the (in)famous Northampton political activist and “Raging Granny” who added another mark to her long tally of politically-connected arrests two weeks ago. Wieland had traveled to Washington, D.C., to protest the advancement of Jeff Sessions’ nomination for U.S. Attorney General. On Feb. 1, C-SPAN caught her forcible ejection by police from the Republican-led committee as she yelled “Shame, shame!” Wieland was bedecked in a makeshift Code Pink, a women-led anti-war group, vest/sign reading “No to Islamophobia.” She arrested on a charge of “disrupting Congress.”
When asked how many times she’s been arrested over her 71 years of life, Wieland laughed. “I don’t keep track. As [fellow longtime Valley activist] Frances Crowe says, ‘Not enough.’”
Weiland’s arrest record reads like a catalog of major political controversies over the last several decades. She protested the war in Vietnam, the Iraq War, drone warfare, violence at the Gaza Strip, nuclear power plants, Wall Street’s abuse of the economy during, before, and after the Great Recession, and the Trump administration.
“She’s the model citizen, I think, in Western Massachusetts,” says Jeff Napolitano, program director for the Northampton chapter of American Friends Service Committee, a peace-promoting organization, and friend of Wieland’s. “That’s why we work with her so much [at the AFSC], because she, more than anyone else I know, puts her money where her mouth is — or more accurately, her body where her mouth is.
“If everybody when they retired became a Paki Wieland, the world would be a tremendous place.”
One of Wieland’s most memorable police detainments was in Bahrain.
In 2014, Wieland traveled to the island nation in the Persian Gulf as a human rights advocate as part of a group of international observers calling themselves “Witness Bahrain.” The government had banned international journalists and observers from covering the national crackdown on protesters.
“They were tear gassing us,” Wieland recalls, “police were chasing us. … I asked my friend ‘Do you think we’ll be killed?’ He said, ‘No, but we may get hurt.’”
Of course, Wieland did make it out alive, and although she says “there was never an arrest … a man with the [U.S.] embassy waited with me at the airport until I was deposited on the plane.”
Laughing, she wonders: “I’m not sure if I was deported.” Reflecting on the experience, Paki says she “came away with the utmost respect for the people of Bahrain and their willingness to suffer.”
Wieland, 71 of Florence, has been causing a ruckus since before half the Valley was born; showing a new generation of activists how to obstruct injustice and speak truth to power by being the change she wants to see in the rest of the world.
And she’s got a message for people out protesting today: Cause more trouble. Wieland isn’t advocating for violence or force, she wants protesters to “inconvenience” more people, to impact their day-to-day lives so that they will hear what they have to say. In short: Get in the way.
American protests have become “somewhat lukewarm,” Wieland says: “We don’t inconvenience anybody.”
She says that protesters “need to pay more attention to our conscience” and not let fear get in the way of standing against government immorality. This goes just as much for older activists as young ones. One of the things Wieland’s learned from working with indigenous communities fighting for social justice is “the need for people my age to act like elders, to pass the torch on.”
In the wake of Donald Trump’s election to the presidency, political activism has increased dramatically. Massive protests have been organized nationwide and internationally to decry Trump’s ignorant decrees, tweets, and plans. Meanwhile, in at least 18 states, legislation has been introduced or voted on to curb mass protests by increasing penalties for things such as blocking highways and using masks. Most politicians filing the bills, which have been largely appeared in Republican-led states, say they are necessary to curb “paid” protesters despite the lack of evidence to support the allegations.
“The peace and justice communities have come back to life,” Wieland says. “People really are standing with one another … I’m heartened by that.”
Although Wieland said she isn’t scared of what lies in store for her at her hearing on March 27th, “there’s always a tension” when she’s detained by law enforcement. She describes the uncertainty of her present situation as being “still in limbo;” until her hearing and probable trial, she’s banned from appearing in Capitol buildings.
Wieland got her “woke” moment in the 1960s while she attended high school in segregated New Orleans. She was able to absorb progressive values from a handful of adults around her, Wieland says, but she’ll never forget the isolation she felt when in high school she was one of two white people at an all-black mixer.
After graduating high school, she attended college at St. Mary’s in Louisiana and became heavily involved in protesting the war in Vietnam.
Following the end of American hostilities, Wieland was eager to start the “peace conversion process,” rebuilding Vietnam and helping American veterans. This was something that was “very exciting to about six people,” she says.
But instead of working on social justice issues for the Vietnamese, most activists were looking for the next battle front, Wieland says. People were more interested in focusing efforts on the Middle East, helping end conflicts there, like the Lebanese Civil War. Moving on to the next crisis, to start a new up-hill battle against government, wasn’t something Wieland was interested in doing at the time.
“I was so overwhelmed. I thought, ‘This is more than I can deal with,’” says Wieland. “So I went to social work school.”
Wieland spent some time in the Appalachian Volunteers in West Virginia before attending Boston College to study social work. She went on to teach narrative and family therapy at Antioch University in Keene, New Hampshire. Being a professor had a slower pace to it than being an activist, but she didn’t bail on her commitment to obstructing injustice.
In 1989, under the slogan, “Between women there are no boundaries,” Wieland joined nearly 70 other people in the Women’s Convoy to Central America. The national convoy was organized by women with the goal of spreading material and physical aid to less fortunate females over five weeks. Women from the north, east, and west drove down to Austin, Texas, stopping at shelters, widows’ groups, and unions along the way donating supplies and helping however they could. Once all convoy members arrived in Austin, the entire group crossed the border to aid people in Mexico, Guatamala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicuragua.
Wieland was a professor committed to education right up until the Iraq War. In 2003, with the U.S. on the presipice of invading Iraq under the guise of removing weapons of mass destruction, Wieland says she couldn’t sit on the sidelines.
A friend “sparked my conscience,” Wieland says of attending her first protest of the Iraq war. Her friend encouraged her to join a Northampton committee opposing sanctions on Iraq.
Wieland balanced teaching and protesting until Jan. 15, 2003. It was the first day of the spring semester at Antioch and Wieland was teaching a class in the afternoon. Figuring she had some time to spare, that morning, Wieland attended a protest against the Iraq war at Westover Air Force Base in Chicopee. She was arrested and detained so long, she missed her class.
That day, on her drive home, Wieland says she reconsidered her path in life. If she was willing to miss her first day of class, was academia really the place for her? Perhaps the front lines of a protest would be better.
“I was willing to take the risk of not being in school,” Wieland says, “I thought, ‘You say [teaching] is important, but you did this to jeopardize it?’”
Soon after that day, Wieland resigned and returned to activism in a big way. In 2009, she reunited with the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group that promotes peace that she was familiar with back in her days protesting Vietnam. And it wasn’t long before Wieland was back on the streets protesting and working with program director for the Northampton chapter Jeff Napolitano. In 2011 the two were arrested in Springfield while demonstrating against Bank of America’s evictions of poor homeowners. It would serve as a warm-up for a string of arrests that continues today.
Wieland says despite her many years in social justice activism, she still has much to learn. She recalls discussing an action to fight harmful immigration policy on the Arizona border. It ended with a “die-in,” where participants emulated corpses and others took on the role of their mourners. When Wieland spoke enthusiastically about this to a friend who lived in the area, her friend pointed out locals had been distressed and hurt by the symbolic act, which brought back traumatic memories. This was a moment of reflection for Wieland.
“If I don’t pay attention to the local people,” she says, “all my knowledge is for naught.”
So what can newly awakened activists glean from those years of accumulated knowledge? No one can do it alone. Activists have to work together to create the biggest impact.
“Find your community,” Wieland says, “the people with whom you have an affinity. We’ve got a lot of smart young people” who she says need to come together and brainstorm ways to put pressure on the state and on business interests.
Contact Sam Riedel at samriedel@valleyadvocate.com.
