"We Will Rise"
Last week, I unplugged from social media and mainstream news to maintain some sanity. I will continue to be unplugged from all the mainstream news. It has been a week that feels like a year…or maybe two!
I wake up in the morning and feel like I am living in an alternate reality. Actually, as a friend pointed out, I am. How do we survive in this insane time? What are the skills that we need?
Foremost, I believe that awareness is one key. Being aware of how we are reacting, what we are allowing in, and what drives us. Take a good look. Is it fear? Is it love? Love is another big key and can not co-exist with fear.
We know that the world is cruel and dangerous right now. Do we allow fear to immobilize us as we sink into a deep, dark place? I choose not to. Hence, no mainstream media. I refuse to watch/listen as people continue to point out the obvious ad nauseam. Yes, the world is in crisis on many levels. I must acknowledge this, do what I can, and let go of what I can’t change. The Serenity prayer fits well here. I must become focused and use my voice to speak with commitment.
We have a voice; we have power, every one of us. As Clarissa Pinkola Estes says, “we were made for these times.” Will we get sucked into the abyss or will be gather together and join the battle of what we can change? One way that we can do that is by being aware of what is going on without getting swept up in despair. Focus on issues that arise that are unjust or offensive. While this is not a time to get swallowed up in the darkness, it is not a time to be passive either. This is the part where we do what we can and let the rest go. Gather all of your representatives in both the house and senate. Leave that list with an email addressed on your desktop. Put together a boilerplate letter that you can adjust according to the issue. Leave that on your desktop.
Support alternative media, The Contrarian and Heather Cox Richardson present clear, understandable coverage of the current mess. I am sure there are others…let’s find them.
The women in my tribe have inspired me, some local, some far away, who have stepped up offering solace and sane ways to come together and support each other. That is how we will survive. Find your tribe and stick close!
Women from the past who resisted also inspire me. If ever there was a time for resistance again, it is now. Let’s join together, and support each other in as many ways as we can and resist! As Maya says, “we will rise!"
The following are some notable women who have resisted. Let them inspire you to resist.
We can do this!
Women have played an important, although not always noted, role in resistance. Women resisted slavery in many ways. They developed skills and tried to preserve the dignity and unity of their communities. Some of them became the concubines of their masters or married a freeman hoping to gain freedom for themselves and their children.
WWI and WWII, many women selflessly led resistance movements. Women played an important role in the resistance during World War II, participating in a variety of activities, including smuggling, espionage, and intelligence work.
Women played an active role in the Campaign of Defiance Against Unjust Laws during which, in 1952, many were arrested. They also helped to organise the Congress of Democrats, a white organisation in alliance with the ANC and the Coloured People`s Congress. In 1956 20,000 women marched to the Union Buildings in Pretoria to protest the pass laws. The march was organized by Lilian Ngoyi, Helen Joseph, Sophie de Bruyn, and Rahima Moosa.
One of my favorite woman resisters, is the sexy, sultry singer and dancer Josephine Baker. She saved refugees and smuggled military secrets in invisible ink on her sheet music.
Isabel Townsend Pell was an American socialite who joined the French Resistance during World War II — one of the few women who was part of the Maquis — purportedly because of her good aim. Going by a code name of Fredericka, she was commonly known as “the girl with the blond mèche “ (mèche de cheveux means a lock of hair). She was imprisoned twice during the war and subsequently decorated with the Legion of Honor for her service.
While in France during World War II, Isabel took the name of “Fredericka” and joined the Marquis. (The Maquis were French and Belgian resistance fighters during World War II who operated in rural areas of France. The name “maquis” comes from the French word for “underbrush”, which provided cover for the fighters).
Italian soldiers captured Isabel and interned her at Puget-Theniers, but she continued to smuggle information to the resistance during her daily walks at the camp. When released, she disguised herself as a peasant and went to a mountain forest. A report in the Associated Press recounts how, in 1944, Isabel rescued a contingent of American soldiers surrounded by the enemy in Tanaron. She was wearing the badge of Free France and came out from her hiding place, leading the men to safety. Subsequently, they decorated her with the Legion of Honour.
Notable Female Resistantes from the Library of Congress.
Berty Albrecht was passionate about family planning and better working conditions for women, and founded the feminist journal Le Problème Sexuel. During the war, she joined with Henri Frenay to develop the movement Combat. Her previous publishing experience helped her spearhead the publication of the clandestine newspaper Combat , named after the movement of the same name. At its height the circulation reached several hundred thousand. She was captured and tortured three times and assumed to have committed suicide.
Alice Arteil was one of the only women who commanded her own unit in the Resistance. She was part of the Maquis known as the Franc-Tireurs using the code name "Sylva." She used her expertise in local terrain to assist in the various missions and earned the Croix de Guerre on September 30th, 1944.
Lucie Aubrac was a founder of the movement Libération-Sud. She wrote an account of her experience in the Resistance called, Outwitting the Gestapo (1993). She is famous for convincing the Germans to release her beloved husband, Raymond, from prison by using her second pregnancy as a pretext for him to be released to marry her (though they were already married). After that he managed to escape.
Renée Bedarida was a Resistance fighter who worked with the Lyonnais group Témoignage Chrétien (Christian Witness). After the war, she wrote two books about the movement and its leader, Father Pierre Chaillet.
Célia Bertin was recruited to help Allied aviators hidden in Occupied Paris because of her ability to speak English. In 1993 she published a study of women during this period, Femmes sous l’Occupation.
Françoise de Boissieu married her husband early during the Occupation and they focused on working with the movement Combat, founded by Henri Frenay and Berty Albrecht. After the birth of her daughter Muriel, de Boissieu left the baby with her parents and continued to fight with the Resistance.
Jeanne Chanton was arrested and sent to a work camp in Germany during WWI. She worked with Resistance groups, including Front National Universitaire, but was never arrested.
Claire Chevrillon, code name Christian Clouet. Chevrillon came from a family of assimilated Jews. After the increasingly harsh laws were imposed on Jewish citizens, she joined the resistance most notably encoding and decoding messages between the Free French in London and de Gaulle's Paris delegation. She spent four months in prison after being betrayed and wrote her memoirs entitled, Code Nae Christiane Clouet: A Women in the French Resistance.
Marie- Madeleine Fourcade one of the most famous female resistants and the only woman to be made chef de résistance. She led one of the largest resistance networks, Alliance, which supplied more crucial intelligence to British and American Allied forces than any other. She was captured by the Nazis twice and managed to escape both times. She and her husband, a Free French fighter, Hubert Fourcade, helped return General de Gaulle to power in 1958. She published her memoirs, Noah's Ark and was chairwoman of the Resistance Action Committee.
Annie Kriegel joined a Communist Resistance group at age fifteen because no other groups would admit a member so young.
Pippa Latour Doyle moved to England from her native South Africa in 1941 to join the war effort. She was recruited into the UK’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) to spy for the Allies in France due to her fluency in French. A “knitting spy,” she hid her information within a knitting kit by knotting codes onto silk. She received the Legion of Honour in 2014.
Lise Lesèvre welcomed and trained young men who, like her two sons, joined the Maquis. She was brutally tortured by Klaus Barbie, the so-called “Butcher of Lyon,” after being captured with clandestine documents.
Danielle Mitterrand the wife of France’s former president, joined the Resistance as a teenager and met her future husband while helping to care for wounded Resistance fighters.
Madeleine Riffaud was a French journalist and poet, born in Arvillers in 1924. She first began to work for the French Forces of the Interior under codename “Rainer” (reflecting her admiration for poet Rainer Maria Rilke) at just 18 years old. She contributed to the capture of eighty Wehrmacht soldiers from a German supply train, and shot a German officer to death in broad daylight in 1944. She also served as a war correspondent in Algeria and Southeast Asia. After being captured by the Gestapo, Riffaud was transferred to the Fresnes prison where she was tortured and set to be executed, but escaped death via release in a prisoner exchange. She died on November 7, 2024 at the age of 100. A sketch of Madeline Riffaud by Pablo Picasso in 1945 was included in a publication of her poems.
Evelyne Sullerot was on vacation with her family when the Occupation began. They relocated to Compiègne, where she and her younger siblings aided the Resistance. Her father ran a psychiatric clinic that hid Jews and other persecuted individuals.
Suzanne Vallon fled France after her Resistance activity was discovered and ended up in North Africa on active duty. She also accompanied Allied troops as they went north after being freed from Germany.
Sonia Vagliano-Eloy joined de Gaulle’s Free French and trained in London. After D-Day, she was sent to France with her female colleagues to oversee refugee camps. She worked with the survivors of Buchenwald.