Exploring the F-word in religion at the intersection of scholarship, activism, and community.
Author: Beth Bartlett
Elizabeth Ann Bartlett, Ph.D., is an educator, author, activist, and spiritual companion. She is Professor Emerita of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, where she helped co-found the Women’s Studies program in the early 80s. She taught courses ranging from feminist and political thought to religion and spirituality; ecofeminism; nonviolence, war and peace; and women and law. She is the author of numerous books and articles, including "Journey of the Heart: Spiritual Insights on the Road to a Transplant"; "Rebellious Feminism: Camus’s Ethic of Rebellion and Feminist Thought"; and "Making Waves: Grassroots Feminism in Duluth and Superior." She is trained in both Somatic Experiencing® and Indigenous Focusing-Oriented trauma therapy, and offers these healing modalities through her spiritual direction practice. She has been active in feminist, peace and justice, indigenous rights, and climate justice movements and has been a committed advocate for the water protectors. You can find more about her work and writing at https://www.bethbartlettduluth.com/
The Minnesota resistance went far beyond Gene Sharp’s catalog of techniques. Minnesotans kept their resistance up through creativity, celebration, fun, and humor in those dark, cold days. On a cold, clear January night, hundreds gathered on Lake Nokomis using hand-held candles and ice candles to spell out the words, “ICE OUT.”
The annual sled art contest was turned into a spoof of ICE – with a giant cardboard bowling bowl rolled down the hill to knock down fascist kingpins – Trump, Putin, Orbán; a young boy on his plastic sled festooned with Monarca’s butterflies saying “We Are Family” and “Justice for Renée Good”; sleds with messages of “Resist” and “Love Melts Ice” on a giant heart; a sled decorated as a bottle of de-icer and one of a chicken wearing a whistle with the message, “ICE OUT MSP.”
The whistle was to represent one of the most noteworthy and effective resistance strategies. Whenever witnesses spotted ICE agents in the area or an arrest in progress, they would blow their whistles to alert those close by – short bursts to indicate ICE is nearby or long blasts to indicate ICE is actively detaining someone, with the added instructions to “Form a Crowd. Stay Loud. Stay nonviolent.” The whistles, most given out free by local businesses and activist groups, became a symbol of resistance and more importantly, solidarity, as whole neighborhoods came together to protect their neighbors.
Mulford would have been proud. Mulford Q. Sibley was Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. He was also my PhD advisor and dear friend. A nationally known scholar of political thought, his particular interest and focus was on nonviolent resistance. Some of those in my PhD cohort had come from places of violence with the specific intent to study methods of nonviolent resistance with Mulford. As the creative and impressive acts of nonviolent resistance unfolded in the Twin Cities this past winter, I often wondered how much those in the resistance had been influenced by Mulford, either directly or indirectly in ways they may not even have known.
Mulford introduced me to several classics of nonviolence, including the work of Gene Sharp, author of the 3-volume series, The Politics of Nonviolent Action. Looking through his second volume on the methods of nonviolent action, I saw among the nearly two hundred practices so many that those in the resistance in the Twin Cities used. The resistance was varied, creative, persistent, and grounded. It easily could have been following Gene Sharp’s playbook . . .
Formal Statements – public speeches, letters of opposition, declarations by organizations and institutions, group or mass petitions, etc. At rallies, at the State Capitol, from the governor’s and mayor’s offices, in mass emails the people spoke their opposition to the ICE invasion of Minnesota. We were not cowed into silence and submission. The opposition was vocal, dignified, and determined.
This pretty planet Spinning through space You’re a garden, you’re a harbor You’re a holy place.
Tom Chapin
Earth from the perspective of Atemis
A few weeks ago, NASA successfully launched the second in its Artemis series of rockets. Appropriately named for the Greek Goddess of the Hunt and the Moon, the Artemis mission has the moon as its focus. The first rocket in the series, Artemis I, orbited the moon without a crew. The second, Artemis II, carried a crew of four astronauts to the moon and beyond — the farthest from the Earth that humans have ever traveled – so it’s fitting in more ways than one that it is so named since Artemis was known for her ability to rise to a challenge and aim for a distant target with keen accuracy.
In her masterpiece, A Chorus of Stones, ecofeminist Susan Griffin traced our trajectory to the moon through the intimate interweaving of flight and its uses in war — from the delegates to the Second International Peace Conference overturning of the prohibition against dropping projectiles from flying machines that had been adopted previously at the First International Peace Conference to the research and funding for the development of the V-1 and V-2 rockets at the Nazi Peenemünde Army Research Center during WWII and on to ever increasing enhancement of guided missile systems mostly for purposes of war. Those early days of flight generated an enthrallment with technology that continues to this day, and that Griffin found alarming. In the poetry and scientific writings of the early days of flight she found an expressed desire to escape the limitations of the earth and feared our ever-increasing exploration of space beyond the Earth would lead to Earth’s abandonment altogether.[i] Indeed, the ultimate mission of the Artemis program is to establish a colony on the moon, and talk has swirled in popular culture about the need to establish colonies on Mars should Earth become uninhabitable due to climate change or nuclear annihilation.
As someone who came into feminism in the late 1970s early 1980s, reading Lucy Pearce’s Burning Woman was re-entering the power and promise of women-centered feminism – the heyday of Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Mary Daly, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Andrea Dworkin, Charlotte Bunch, China Galland, Riane Eisler, Carol Christ, Gloria Anzaldúa, Susan Griffin, Starhawk, Sara Ruddick.[i] It was the era of reclaiming the Feminine from its patriarchal definitions and women defining themselves outside of patriarchy – celebrating women’s spirituality, art, music, language, bodies, sexuality, birthing, voices, and power – when feminism was about transforming patriarchy rather than fitting into it — when Meg Christian proudly sang Betsy Rose’s “Glad to Be a Woman.”
And then everything changed. Just as women were coming into our own beyond patriarchy, women-centered feminism came to a halt due to pressures both from within feminism and without – with a whole school of deconstructionist feminists[ii] now critiquing women-defined women as “essentialists,” and moving back to minimizing rather than maximizing the differences between the sexes,[iii] with an emphasis on abolishing the gender binary, welcoming trans and non-binary folk, and questioning the whole concept of “women.” Indeed, one of my Women’s Studies, now Gender Studies, students asked me privately if it was okay to call herself a “woman” because the term had become so forbidden among many of the students. At this time, feminist theorist Nancy Hartsock raised the important question, “Why is that just at the moment when so many of us who have been silenced begin to demand the right to name ourselves, to act as subjects rather than objects of history, that just then the concept of subjecthood becomes problematic?”[iv]
The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago: Donald Woodman, Wikimedia Commons
Knitting and other forms of needlework made a resurgence when Second Wave feminism reclaimed traditional “women’s work” as a form of feminist expression, promoting crafting as a tool of feminist empowerment. The most prominent example of this was Judy Chicago’s 1979 The Dinner Party that celebrated prominent female historical and mythical figures. A massive artwork, it consists of 539 quilted triangle pieces from all over the world, embroidered place banners, and ceramic plates arranged on a large triangular table.
Women form the vast majority of those engaged in knitting resistance,[i] and beyond the reclamation of women’s domestic arts, craftivism provides women a voice that is often usurped and talked over in masculine political spaces. As one of the participants in a resistance knitting circle that was studied by feminist scholars stated, “’Because politics is still very sexist and configured for men . . . I think women don’t get very far . . . I think craftivism is . . . something that’s accessible to women . . . and is an alternative form of expression.”[ii]
“All the women knitted. . . . So much was closing around the women who sat knitting, knitting, that they their very selves were closing in around a structure yet unbuilt, where they were to sit knitting, knitting, counting dropping heads.”[i] – A Tale of Two Cities
So does Charles Dickens tell the tale of perhaps the most infamous resistance knitter, the character of Madame DeFarge in his A Tale of Two Cities. Using a different pattern of knots for each letter of the alphabet, Madame DeFarge uses her knitting to encode the names of spies and traitors to be beheaded by guillotine in the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror.
Tricoteuse
Her character is based on the true story of the tricoteuse – the women who notoriously knitted while sitting next to the guillotine. They undoubtedly took up this public position because just a few months before the Reign of Terror began they were banned from government proceedings and prohibited from forming any political assembly. Initially praised for their role in the resistance after successfully forcing Louis XVI to acquiesce to their demands following their march on the palace at Versailles protesting rising food prices, they had become too much of a threat to the aristocrats. It is said they were knitting liberty hats.
Fast forward to today. Begun with a simple “Melt the Ice” pattern designed by Paul Neary from the yarn shop in Minneapolis, Needle & Skein, women and men all over the world are once again knitting liberty hats. The red pointed hats are modeled after the nisselue — or “Santa hat”– that Norwegian women knit as a symbol of resistance to the Nazis who were occupying Norway during WW II. Needle & Skein made the pattern available for $5, with proceeds going to support rent and food assistance to those unable to leave their homes due to ICE’s ongoing presence in the Twin Cities. As of March 5th, they had already raised $705,000.
That the movement has become worldwide is extremely moving to those of us in Minnesota. It lets us know we are not alone. It has become a sisterhood of sorts, with a continual round of Facebook messages like this one from Elisabet Engström, “I am knitting the Melt the Ice hat right now. . . . It feels so good to be a part this. I live in Sweden. Happy knitting to all of you.” Another writes from Ibaraki, Japan, that has a cultural exchange program with Minneapolis, that she is knitting MTI hats “in solidarity and support.”[ii] I particularly loved this one, “I changed the pattern a bit, but I’m loving the resistance and how much it’s already earned for donation. I’m 82 and can no longer march, but I can do this.”[iii]
These days, at every protest I attend and just walking around town, I see people, mostly women, wearing the red Melt the Ice hats. There’s something particularly fortifying about wearing one’s convictions so visibly in solidarity with others doing the same. On the 84th anniversary of the Naz’s banning the wearing of the nisselue hats, people all around the world wore the red MTI hats they had inspired, proudly displaying their resistance to the occupation forces of ICE that have terrorized cities and immigrant communities throughout the US.
I first engaged in knitting resistance in 2009 when students in my course, “Women, Peace, and War” participated in CodePink’s Mother’s Day action against war, displaying a banner on the White House fence with the words, “We will not raise our children to kill another mother’s child.” CodePink sent out requests for 4X4 knit squares in pink yarn, and so we began to knit. Many of the students already knew how to knit. We taught those who did not. Most class sessions we were all busily knitting while discussing the readings on women’s roles in war and peace, and by the due date sent in a few dozen squares. It was a wonderful exercise in activist engagement that also brought us together as a community in the classroom and with other anti-war feminist activists throughout the country.
Many people first engaged in knitting resistance when Kat Coyle of Ravelry – the social group for knitters and crocheters – created a pattern for the “pussy hat”[iv] – a symbol of resistance to Donald Trump worn in the first Women’s March following his inauguration in 2017. The streets in Washington, DC and other cities across the country were filled with pink pussy hats.
Women’s March on Washington in 2017
These are just a few of the hundreds of ways knitting and other crafts have been used in resistance to oppression, tyranny, violence, and war. In 2003, Betsy Good coined “craftivism” – a combination of “craft” and “activism” – to describe this worldwide movement.[v] As one craftivist described it, craftivism is “a strategy for non-violent activism in the mode of do-it-yourself citizenship or do-it-together citizenship’.”[vi] Craftivist and author Sarah Corbette wrote, “To be a craftivist is not just to be someone who likes craft: it is to be someone who hones their craft to question injustice, encourage peace and show ways to achieve a better world for everybody involved.”[vii]
Craftivism includes all forms of fiber and needle arts – from knitting and crocheting to embroidery and quilting and more – from the use of quilts encoded with messages about the underground railroad and its resurgence as a medium for resistance during the Civil Rights movement to the AIDS memorial quilt,[viii] from suffragists’ embroidered banners for votes for women to the embroidered arpilleras of women in Chile to document human rights abuses during Pinochet’s regime. But the craft that is currently engaging so many is knitting. Knitting has featured prominently in anti-war resistance, such as the aforementioned CodePink banner. During WWI and II, knitting was central to resistance workers who knit secret messages into scarves and mittens and sweaters, using knit and purl stitches to represent dots and dashes in Morse Code, or dropping stitches in strategic places to represent German train activity. Women knit themselves into webs during anti-nuclear protests at Greenham Common in the 1980s and decorated the perimeter fence around the air base with ribbons and knit items. The British “Cast Off Knitting Club” knit grenade purses to protest the Iraq War and in the US Starhawk and fellow protestors created a yarn web around the Pentagon.
The Tempestry Project
Knitting has been used as a form of protest for countless other causes as well. Suffragists in the US knit, sewed, and embroidered banners with declarations of women’s right to vote. The “Tempestry” project was begun in 2016 in response to concerns that the incoming Trump administration would minimize climate data. Participants knit ‘temperature scarves’ with specific color-coding to record climate change data in various places in the US.[ix] The “Liberty Crochet Mural” – consisting of 40 individual crocheted squares assembled into a 17ft x 11ft yarn mural — celebrates women’s reproductive autonomy and freedom to choose. In the “Welcome Blanket” project — a response to the first Trump administration’s proposed 2,000-mile wall along the United States–Mexico border, Los Angeles artist Jayne Zweiman and dozens of other fiber artists knit, sewed, crocheted, and wove 3,500,640 yards of blankets to welcome immigrants.[x] And the Minnesota MTI hat is not the only anti-ICE knitting project. In Portland, Tracy Wright formed “Knitters Against Fascism,” which designed and promoted the Portland frog hat and conducts “knit-ins” outside the Portland ICE facility.[xi]
MTI hat in production
In Part II, more on knitting resistance and feminism, gentle protest, and community building – tomorrow
Laware, Margaret L. “Circling the Missiles and Staining Them Red: Feminist Rhetorical Invention and Strategies of Resistance at the Women’s Peace Camp at Greenham Common.” NWSAJournal, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Autumn, 2004), pp. 18-41.
[iv] The “pussy hat” was inspired as a protest against Trump’s infamous statement in a 2005 tape, “When you’re a star, they let you do it. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”
[v] The term “craftivism” is usually attributed to Betsy Greer, but she actually coined the term when after she mentioned a connection between craft and activism, “Buzz,” one of the women in her knitting circle, said, “You could call it craftivism.” Greer then posted it on her online journal in 2000, and in 2003 bought domain named craftivism.com, which has become a worldwide network of craftivists.
[viii] Evidence suggests that quilt patterns such as the “Log Cabin” or “Flying Geese” may have been used in the Underground Railroad to provide coded messages to guide enslaved people to freedom. Women in the Civil Rights movement organized quilting circles as a form of resistance. The quilts made during the Civil Rights movement were often sold to raise funds for the movement. The AIDS memorial quilt originated in San Francisco in 1985 to memorialize those lost to AIDS. Gert McMullin, the ‘mother’ of the quilt, sewed the first stitch and since then 50,000 panels have been added, honoring more than 110,000 individuals. Weighing 54, it is thought to be the largest community art project ever created. It has raised more than $3 million dollars for AIDS services. Other famous resistance quilts include The Border Wall Quilt Project, a collection of 8” x 16” quilt pieces expressing concern about the border wall and the Broken Treaty quilts, created by Gina Adams, with texts taken from treaties to demonstrate the broken promises and injustices to indigenous peoples.
[x] The project quickly exceeded its goal and aims to encircle the globe in 36,521 handmade pieces. 8,000 have been collected so far. To learn more or participate, see Welcome Blanket.
[xi] The proceeds from the sale of the pattern have raised $500 for local food shelves.
“ . . . when people no longer have the space to construct homeplace, . . .” Minnesotans mobilize – providing home wherever the need arises
On Friday, January 23rd, seven hundred faith leaders from across the country heeded a call that had been put out just a few days before to come to Minneapolis to train, to observe, and to protest actions by ICE agents in the Twin Cities. Hundreds of them gathered in an interfaith service at Temple Israel. Others joined the National Prayer Call for Minnesota. And still others headed to the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport to engage in nonviolent direct action against the MSP airport authority, and Delta Airlines and Signature Aviation in particular, for their complicity with ICE in transporting those arrested either for deportation or for removal to other detention facilities.
While I was simultaneously livestreaming both the Temple Israel service and the National Prayer, Cal, my son, was among those headed to the airport. In the midst of my concern for his and others’ safety from both the bitter cold – it was -40 below windchill – and from the violence of ICE agents, came the words of Rabbi Marcia Zimmerman offering a prayer for all those engaging in the protests that morning. In that moment, my anxiety eased as I could feel them all being surrounded by the prayer shawl of protection. Then, in a stunning moment of synchronicity, the cantor at Temple Israel sang while a Buddhist priest on the National Prayer Call invoked the blessings of Kuan Yin, goddess of compassion – the compassion that moved the protestors to act, but also that which surrounded the protestors with care. For while thousands engaged in protests that day – 50,000 at the march in sub-zero weather, and thousands more daily participate in protests on the streets and outside the Whipple Building – the ICE detention center in St. Paul, or act as constitutional observers throughout the Twin Cities and greater Minnesota, even more are engaged in daily acts of sustenance and care to support the protestors and those afraid to leave their homes for fear of being detained and disappeared by ICE. These acts of care are at the very heart of the resistance.
Moderator’s Note: We are breaking into our hiatus because of the importance of what is happening in Minnesota. FAR is not designed for breaking news but we do look at underlying patterns about what is going on in the world and what we are seeing is patriarchy in action. We think it important to bear witness and to understand the trends of what is occurring. This piece by Beth Bartlett does both.
Author’s Note: I live in Duluth, Minnesota, 150 miles north of the Twin Cities where “Operation Metro Surge” is being conducted by ICE agents. Since first writing this, the invasion and siege against the Twin Cities has increased. The Department of Homeland Security has sent 1000 more ICE agents to Minnesota, making the total over 3000. Constitutional observers and people simply driving through an area or being at gas station or parking lots are being pepper sprayed or detained. ICE agents are smashing car windows and dragging people from their cars. ICE agents have targeted schools and daycare centers. They are going door to door. The brutality they have unleashed is indescribable. No one is safe. But the resistance is strong; the mutual aid efforts even stronger. People are caring for each other. …. And as I write this, ICE agents have arrived in force in my city.
“This city will be wiped out, and upon its ruins history will expire at last. . . .” –Albert Camus, State of Siege
“Loving the daylight that injustice leaves unscathed. . . I found an ancient beauty, a young sky. . . in the worst years of our madness the memory of this sky never left me. It was this that in the end had saved me from despair.” –Albert Camus, State of Siege
The scene as I drove to the protest and vigil against yet another of the government’s actions and agents was a bit surreal. Juxtaposed against the violence and state repression lay the backdrop of a strikingly beautiful sunset, the sky streaked with pink and purple, peach and blue, and then ahead of me as I passed the hospital, in glowing neon red, the words ”EMERGENCY/TRAUMA.” Yes. We are facing an emergency in this country and trauma of epic proportions. Violence and beauty, rage and tenderness – both. Among the fellow vigilers — friends, former students, long-time comrades in the struggle. We hugged and cried, lit candles, shared our hopes, our fears, our sorrows. Together in this moment we found community in each other.
Every day another story of ICE agents randomly arresting and detaining immigrants – these are the chronicles of these times in the US. A few days ago, the news broke of ICE agents trapping two construction workers on the roof of a construction site in a suburb of Minneapolis for hours in frigid temperatures, while the thirty or so ICE agents took turns being inside their warm vehicles. They didn’t even know who the men were. They simply looked to be Latino. A day or two later, in Minneapolis, ICE agents tackled and arrested a Somali-American citizen who stepped outside during his lunch break simply because of the color of his skin. Yesterday brought the story of ICE agents forcibly arresting and separating suburban Minneapolis parents from their 7-year-old child when they came home from the grocery store. The story went on to talk about efforts being made to educate parents about preparing a DOPA – a Delegation of Parental Authority – that gives a designated caretaker temporary legal and physical custody of a child in the event parents are taken away from their children. This is the nightmare facing so many families in this country under the reign of terror inflicted by the Department of Homeland “Security.” One must ask, security for whom.
A few weeks ago, “This American Life” profiled a family trying to decide whether the husband and father of two should stay and risk arrest and detention or self-deport. Fidel, the dad, was married to an American citizen, but due to a technicality, could not get citizenship through his wife until he had lived outside the US for ten years. He had been living in the US “illegally” for thirty years, raised a family, had a good job, paid his taxes, had no criminal history. But the family had heard the stories of torture and abuse in the detention centers, and that possibility loomed over them now. When ICE agents started appearing near their small town in North Carolina, they faced the decision of whether to uproot the teenage girls and go together to Mexico or for Fidel to leave on his own. It was a painful decision. Ultimately, they decided Fidel would leave, and after working five years and getting her teacher’s pension, his wife would join him. The girls would come visit when they could. The family would be torn apart.
At the No Kings rally on October 18th, Anishinaabe elder Ricky DeFoe affirmed to the gathered crowd that “the natural response to oppression, ignorance, evil, and mystification is wide-awake resistance.” Such resistance, he claimed, calls for an “ethic of risk.” I was immediately struck by his use of the term, paralleling feminist theologian Susan Welch’s A Feminist Ethic of Risk.[i]Returning home, I picked up my copy and found many of the same points DeFoe had articulated.[ii] Both asserted that an ethic of risk recognizes that “to stop resisting, even when success is unimaginable, is to die,” and by this they meant not only the threat of physical death, but also “the death of the imagination, the death of the ability to care.”[iii]
Feminism and Religion 