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I'd like to share some info and thoughts around the Greenham Tour in Spain, from the viewpoint of my involvement, hoping this will be useful to illustrate how complex the issue of contacts is and how we all form, in our diversity, a movement of social change.

I traveled to London in 1989 to volunteer for the preparation of the WRI Prisoner for Peace campaign, which was focused that year in the movement of Insumisión in Spain and in December I started visiting Blue Gate.

Once the WRI campaign was over, I stayed on to help out with the preparation of the WRI 's Gathering (to be held in Nov/Dec 1992 in Thailand) and the Nonviolent Struggle and Social Defence conference in Bradford (to be held in April 1990; in 1991 WRI published a book on this).*

In this time I was a useful connecting thread between Greenham , the WRI Office and MOC in Spain, and from that accidental bondage we all managed to put together a Greenham Women Tour in Spain, organized by MOC women and coordinated by the Feminist Antimilitarist MOC Group in Madrid, Vicky, Ana, Chinorri... (Then I can't remember why but Indra and I traveled to Kiruna to give a workshop on Greenham!)

To my knowledge, in the 1980s MOC antimilitarist 's groups formed inside the movement of COs and by 1992 they disappeared, with no analyses made in MOC about that. The WRI Women's Working Group was formed in the 70s and it's 92 WRI Women's Gathering in Thailand (where Stasha Zajovich, from WiB Belgrade, was a guest speaker) would be its last to date (2012). One of the most beautiful developments from that was the eruption in our lives of Women in Black Belgrade, and the complex web of contacts that activated.

In Spain, the Movement of COs developed in independent mixed groups which met in State Assemblies (asambleas estatales), meaning meetings with reps from the different groups, at a national level. Their way of working was the anarchist asamblea. In the 1970s MOC as a whole started talking about feminism. However, most men who did not understand the need of feminism in antimilitarism and were despiseful towards feminist analyses, believing it was an unnecessary and dangerous event in the movement because it diverted efforts away from support to objetors and insumisos (total resisters).

I did not feel comfortable enough to be part of MOC, but I was in close touch with the feminist group and the international group, gave them my "Illegal Translations" for their discussions, and traveled with some of them to WRI Council Meetings or Triennials. Being a bridging contact for this project was easy.

I personally did not feel well with the MOC antimilitarist work that turned men into heroes who ignored the participation in the analyses of less self-centered or agressive earthlings, including most women (and certainly myself, at that time). The value of women's work was only acknowledged when in support of the insumisos. It was difficult to name, far more to change, a simple issue turned very complicated because insumisos needed a strong network of support which left no room for other issues. In any case, there were feminist women in MOC, and some more receptive men (far too few to change things). In the 1986 MOC State Assembly, insumisión and feminism were acknowledged in a Statement of Principles. Feminist discussions continued. Women took part in actions, apart from all the "office work" organizing requires, and via the strategy of "autoinculpaciones" (saying you had convinced a man to become a total resistor), women moved also into the position of being sent to prison. That, by the way, was the strongest aspiration and strategy, and as I discovered later at Greenham, that was not the only "effective, courageous" way to fight. Actually, at Camp wimmin generally thought out how not to be repressed!!! But who would dare to pose that other actions were just as valid or valuable when the MOC movement was being so successful.

Some MOC groups in Spain were affiliated to War Resisters' International, and my guess is that the most open-minded people and groups (some Spanish objetores and insumisos seemed to despise feminism as well as any kind of 'International' work, forgetting about how important both are, actually, to open up one's mind and actions!) got inspiration, materials, ideas, and/or contacts from the 1985-86 WRI Triennial in India, when the WRI Women's Working Group was established. WRI as a network of pacifist groups and individuals had also been involved in discussions from a feminist viewpoint, and women shared that it was really hard to make non-feminist people aware of the urgent need to connect feminism and antimilitarism -- antimilitarism within the larger arena of pacifism being especially machista in all the countries were these people worked. A forerunner of the WRI Women's Working Group managed to share their analyses in a book called "Piecing It Together. Feminism & Nonviolence" (1983)

However, there were true Patriarchs among the objectors and insumisos who made open fun of feminists, and encouraged they were totally ignored. The MOC Antimilitarist groups were formed after 1986 but the insumisión campaign sucked up most time and effort and feminist issues were neglected by the movement as a whole -- not only those, for there were activists working on other topics, like Tax Resistance, too; in any case, ignoring Feminism is a much deeper, resilient and telling event. At the end of 1991 or the beginning of 1992, the longest-lived MOC 's working group, Grupo de Mujeres Antimilitaristas de Madrid, dissolved and nobody got interested in finding out why or holding a State Assembly discussion or analysis. I did mention the point at least in MOC Madrid's headquarters, but --

Which also means that the Greenham Tour (at the national level) would become the last attempt by feminist MOC women (all of them, scattered throught Spain, not only the Madrid group) to promote feminism within the MOC groups -- to my knowledge (at the time, I was a volunteer at the WRI International Office in London, and worked with them to prepare this tour). I think MOC did not send any member to the November/December WRI Women's Gathering in Thailand, called "Women Overcoming Violence". (The first international meeting where WRI had invited Stasha Zajovic / WiB Belgrade.)

During the Greenham Tour, it was apparent that many insumisos followed the popular trend of "mistrusting feminists", in relation to how we acted and what we analyzed, and understood why it was not encouraging for wimmin in that movement to work on Feminist Antimilitarism. I believe the wimmin's groups in MOC just had an impact in the wimmin who formed them, really. As MOC closed down their groups, a new movement, this time women-only at all levels, was born -- that of Wimmin in Black in Spain, thanks to WiB Belgrade, and very particularly thanks to Stasha Zajovic's antimilitarist feminist analyses in Spanish! (her Spanish is fluent). At the same time all this was happening, some Greenham and MOC (not necessarily in the previous feminist groups but MOC members) got in touch with the Belgrade group and Stasha, who had been invited to the 1992 WRI Women's Gathering in Thailand. (Some MOC insumisos, I think it was 4, traveled to the Balkans and got also in touch with the Belgrade WiB, that I've heard, but I've never heard this other information, which is also factual: WRI and MOC women members were also networking). Greenham women, apart from that, would organize support for wimmin in the Balkans by getting a van and filling it up with much needed materials, like sanitary towels. A great "excuse" to meet and talk. That's how they formed Women's Aid to Former Yugoslavia ??? check this + ZOE

try to finish this piece - reorganize and finish!

Woman in Black Belgrade came out on the street in October of 1991 in order to protest against regime of Slobodan Milosevic, militarism, nationalism and violence against women. This impressed us all, for there was a war going on, a war that had been cooking -- as Stasha explained -- in the two years preceding its outbreak, mainly via disinformation campaigns. This group offered us all extraordinary feminist antimilitarist analysis, and women started organizing in women-only groups to build the movement of Women in Black we know today.

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1988 Women allowed in Spanish Army - MOC wimmin create groups of feminists within the mixed group to contribute feminist insight. The groups were more useful to the wimmin who took part than to the whole of the movement of insumisión, and actually, the longer-lasting group (Madrid) dissolved with no especial notice from the rest after the publication of .... and the Greenham tour, in spite of the fact that wimmin had supported insumisión via a campaign which made it possible for them too to be imprisoned: the self-accusation campaign, where 4 people per insumiso accused themselves of having convinced the insumiso to proceed as he did.
1989 Prisoners for Peace WRI Campaign - highlighting insumisión

* Incidentally, I was invited to help in its organization as a volunteer because I had spent six months in Costa Rica with Peace Brigades International as a peace researcher and a translator at the University for Peace so that PBI could develop the PBI Nicaragua project on social defence, with Julio Quan, from whom I learned about nonviolent struggle by Mayan people, Maralise Hood from whom I learned about Nonviolent Conflict Resolution, and Jean De Wandelaer, a WRI member with years of experience in nonviolent struggle in Latin America, and before this, I had had a bad experience in PBI Guatemala, which I couldn't deal properly with because I was not an articulate feminist at that time, to react well to unconscious people's machismo with women activists and in projects.

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