I have often wondered at what moment one becomes an activist. Are we born with the activist gene, and then some event or incident catalyzes it into being? Is it a deaf brother, abused and cruelly treated? Is it witnessing unkindness to those we love or being raped or beaten and undone ourselves and surviving through the love of others and then feeling compelled to give back the same?
Many of us are accidental activists. We didn't necessarily or consciously choose to devote our lives to ending war or violence against women or racism or poverty or sexual oppression, or to fighting for the environment, but our survival became so clearly wrapped in the struggle, we had no choice.
The big question, of course, is why do some shut down and move away in the face of power and oppression and others move into action? I think if we could resolve this riddle, we would unlock millions of sleeping activists who could possibly help save this world and transform suffering. Some of the secrets are found in this book.
What is most compelling about Jody's writing about her remarkable life and deeds is how unremarkable she makes it sound. It is simple, straightforward, unembellished. It all seems logical, one thing growing out of another. There were landmines destroying the lives of thousands of people worldwide. There was a goal to ban them. There was the insane belief that this was possible. (By the way, I think another characteristic of activists is this dogged faith that change is possible even in the face of what on the surface seems like an utter impossibility.)
Jody had a goal she wanted to accomplish—banning landmines—and she employed her powers, her smarts, her wisdom and engaged all those around her to bring about that end. I think one of the wonderful things about her winning the Nobel Peace Prize is that it honored all the activists in her project who made it happen, and for that matter, it honored activism everywhere.
I have pretty much lost faith in governments or world leaders or patriarchal institutions to reverse the sad and terrifying trajectory of human beings. My hope, my life, lies with activists. I think of the Occupy Wall Street movement, environmental activists in the rain forests, domestic workers’ unions, Pussy Riot, LBGT workers, V-Day activists, antiviolence and antiwar activists, antiracist, fair trade, hunger, animal rights activists. The list is fortunately endless, and these activists are born every minute and are rising everywhere to reenvision and give birth to the new world. They are obsessed, unstoppable, passionate, creative in finding ways over and around obstacles. They are community builders, often humorous, sometimes and necessarily belligerent, insomniacs, usually dancers, celebrators of life.
This book charts Jody's activist journey with a whole lot of other amazing people to successfully ban landmines. It will inspire you to believe that what you do matters a lot and to follow your path and trust your outrage and sorrow. If we are to find a way out of the current madness, it will take a whole lot more of us filled with the spirit, mischief, fury, and determination of Jody Williams.
PROLOGUE
October 10, 1997
The phone did not ring at 3 A.M. on Friday, October 10, 1997. It didn't ring at 3:15. It didn't ring at 3:30 either. If we didn't expect it to ring, we certainly hoped it would. But it didn't. Deflated, at least Goose and I could finally let it go and go to sleep. Since we'd finished cleaning the kitchen around midnight, we'd been tossing and turning in bed for hours.
We dozed off only to be woken up by the harsh ringing of the phone. I looked at the clock. It was 4 A.M. My heart was pounding. It was a combination of adrenaline from being startled awake and weird expectation. I picked up the phone to hear the singsong accent of a man who said he was calling from a Norwegian TV station.
He asked if I was me. When I said I was, he asked where I'd be in another forty minutes. As if I'd be leaping out of bed now and driving around the country roads of Putney, Vermont? I bit back any number of smart-ass retorts and simply said, “Here.” The phone went dead in my ear.
Goose and I looked at each other, wide-eyed and unsettled. Why had a call come at 4 A.M.? And why was it from Norwegian television and not the Nobel Committee?
Just a few weeks before, we'd spent a month in Oslo during the successful negotiations of the treaty banning antipersonnel landmines. Some of our Norwegian friends had told us then that the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which I'd coordinated since getting it off the ground in 1992, was a front-runner for the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize. Media had buzzed about it the entire time we were there, even though we'd deflected their questions.
The last night in Oslo, we'd been out celebrating the success of the treaty negotiations. One of the Norwegian diplomats had whispered to us that if we were awarded the Peace Prize, we'd get a call from the Nobel Committee around 3 A.M. our time. They tried to give recipients time to prepare themselves before the chair of the committee made the announcement at a press conference a couple of hours later in Oslo.
But no call had come at 3 A.M. And when the phone rang an hour later, it was a cryptic exchange with someone from Norwegian television, not the Nobel Committee. Goose and I started speculating, and the only thing that seemed reasonable to us was that the media wanted to know where we were so they could get the ICBL's reaction to not receiving the Nobel Peace Prize after so much hype and expectation. Now we had about forty minutes to try not to fret.
The phone rang again promptly at 4:40 A.M. It was the same guy, who again identified himself as being with a Norwegian TV station. There was no dramatic pause, he quickly went on to say that he'd been “authorized” to inform me that the “International Campaign to Ban Landmines and its coordinator Jody Williams” were the recipients of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize.
I repeated the words so Goose would know what was going on, then asked the guy who had authorized him to say that. He only repeated that he'd been authorized to let me know. He told me to turn on my television in about twenty minutes to hear the announcement live on CNN. I told him we didn't have a TV. “Well,” he said, “turn on the radio.”
When I told him there was no radio either, he laughed and said he'd keep me on the line so I could hear it directly from Norway. Stunned, I wouldn't be able to believe it until I heard the Nobel Committee say it out loud. I asked for about ten minutes to call my family. He said he'd call back then.
Mom screamed, “Hoo-hoo and yippeeee!” It was obvious she'd not slept any better than Goose and I that night. My father could sleep through almost anything. I asked Mom to call my sisters, Mary Beth and Janet, and my brother Mark to tell them to turn on their televisions and watch the announcement live. Then Goose and I waited until the phone rang again. We sat in bed with the receiver between our ears and listened as the press conference began. Francis Sejersted, then chair of the Nobel Committee, read the announcement, which captures the essence of our work in the Landmine Campaign:
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 1997, in two equal parts, to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) and to the campaign's coordinator Jody Williams for their work for the banning and clearing of antipersonnel mines.
There are at present probably over one hundred million antipersonnel mines scattered over large areas on several continents. Such mines maim and kill indiscriminately and are a major threat to the civilian populations and to the social and economic development of the many countries affected.
The ICBL and Jody Williams started a process which in the space of a few years changed a ban on antipersonnel mines from a vision to a feasible reality. The Convention which will be signed in Ottawa in December this year is to a considerable extent a result of their important work.
There are already over 1,000 organizations, large and small, affiliated to the ICBL, making up a network through which it has been possible to express and mediate a broad wave of popular commitment in an unprecedented way. With the governments of several small and medium-sized