Wintertime is Here Carrie Nation, Move Over

The Raging Grannies are not your usual activists. The supposed “elderly” women in the international association love to hit the streets and protest injustice wherever they find it. And they have found plenty.

It must be a tad intimidating when, in their own term, a "gaggle" of women aged 50 to 90 and dressed in stereotypical outfits to illustrate their point come knocking while waving signs and singing songs about topics from war, gun control and climate change to LGBTQ and abortion rights.

The organization began in 1987 in Victoria, British Columbia, and has been active in the Bay Area for two decades. On January 17, local Grannies gathered at the Menlo Park Library, intending to show a documentary about the movement. Technical difficulties intervened but didn’t faze the group’s leaders as they traded stories and recruited new associates.

Bay Area charter member Ruth Robertson remains committed to the cause and scoffs at the idea that advancing age necessarily equals decline. “Being old,” she says, “is a superpower.”