But she’s no wimp.
Jody is fond of saying that if she can become an activist, anyone can.
But few Americans have the drive and singlemindedness of a Jody Williams. Even after winning the world’s most prestigious accolade, she works tirelessly to promote women activists and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. She also teaches at the University of Houston’s Graduate College of Social Work. When she isn’t traveling around the world touting the Nobel Women’s Initiative or ICBL, she’s at home in Fredericksburg, Virginia — or her second home in Westminster West.
We caught up with her after she spoke at an anti-nuke rally in Burlington on Aug. 6, 2009, where activists marked the 64th anniversary of the U.S. nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. See “The backstory” for a brief bio of Williams.
Excerpts of her conversation with Anne Galloway follow.
Q & A with Jody Williams
Q. You say the U.S. has complied with the conditions of the international treaty to ban landmines. It has stopped exporting landmines and has destroyed stockpiles, but it has not yet agreed to the ban. Why? What is ICBL doing to persuade the Obama administration to sign the treaty?
JW: The Bush administration never met a treaty that it liked. Mr. Bush was the only American president to unsign a treaty as a matter of fact. We’re very pleased that under the Obama administration there is a review of the policy on landmines.
We’re guardedly optimistic that the review will conclude that it’s time for the U.S. to join the landmine ban treaty. The U.S. has not used the weapons since 1991 in the first Gulf War. We have started destroying stockpiles. We have not exported (landmines) since Sen. Patrick Leahy’s first legislation banning (the practice) in 1992. In fact, Sen. Leahy has been working to convince the Obama administration to join the mine ban treaty.
It would be very helpful if people could hand write a letter to President Obama asking him to join the treaty.
Q. It sounds like getting the U.S. to sign the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which 120 countries signed in 2008, is even more of an uphill battle. Could you explain why?
JW: The U.S. military believes that it can’t live without cluster bombs. We beg to differ, and we hope that once the Obama administration has joined the landmine treaty they will join the cluster munitions treaty as well.
Some U.S. military in the invasion of Baghdad during the invasion of Iraq refused to use cluster munitions. They believed it was illegal and immoral to send cluster munitions into urban centers because the people you’re firing at are civilians and they would be putting their own soldiers at risk as they moved through the cluster munitions.
I think it is not impossible to convince the military that it’s time to give up that weapon as well. Indiscriminate weapons have no place in warfare.
Q. What is the ICBL doing to bring China and Russia on board?
JW: The same thing the campaign does with any country that’s not part of the treaty yet. We believe every country ultimately will join. We have a campaign in Russia. We do not have one in China, but Chinese officials now go to official meetings of the landmine treaty, which was a huge breakthrough.
In the early days of our work they didn’t show up at all, but because of the stigmatization of the weapon they have slowly but surely come around. They stopped producing landmines for export. Russia did the same thing.
Once Mr. Obama’s administration joins the treaty, we’ll see a lot more movement from Russia and China.
I’m heartened by Obama’s call for the elimination of nuclear weapons, and one way to demonstrate a serious commitment to negotiating with other countries would be to sign the landmine treaty and to sign the cluster munitions convention.
Q. How does ICBL differentiate between IEDs and landmines?
JW: Landmines are mass produced. They’re like a commodity; they’re like a tube of lipstick. They were produced by private industry and sold by the millions.
IEDs are something I could make in my kitchen. There are always going to be people and organizations that keep inventing ways to inflict harm on others, but that’s not what we were after in the landmine treaty. It was getting rid of the weapons that were stockpiled by the millions, getting rid of a doctrine that “civilized militaries” used, saying it was OK to use an indiscriminate weapons that unleash harm for generations after a war. I know war is hell and all that, but that does not absolve military from finding ways to achieve their objectives without indiscriminate weapons.
Q. What do you think about predator drones and other remote robotic devices in warfare?
JW: They further dehumanize war. When a country chooses to go to war, it really has to be clear about what it’s doing to another people.
I’ll take the example of Iraq. If there had been a national draft, certainly in Congress before the election that year, there would have been a discussion about the resolution which Mr. Bush managed to get, allowing him to go to war. If every family had to worry about their kids going to war, they would have sought a different kind of discussion.
I would like to see a draft reinstated. I would like to have the nation be cognizant of what it is doing when it goes to war and that includes using mechanized drones. I understand the military argument that it saves our people, but at what cost?
I think if you’re going to make a decision to kill people, you have to be pretty damn clear about why you’re doing it.
I’ve been a little disturbed about the extension of the use of drones into Pakistan. My vote for Obama was for ending war, and here we see an expansion into Afghanistan and an expansion into Pakistan. I am not convinced that the U.S. is going to be able to do in Afghanistan what no other army has been able to do.
Q. How can women activists bring more attention to the issues that affect themselves and their families?
JW: I think there’s a growing recognition that men have been running the world for a long time, and they’ve made something of a mess of it.
In the global economic collapse, Iceland lost something like 85 percent of its wealth over night. Its response was to put women in charge of all the banks, in the belief that women are more thoughtful about consequences and that men are more hard wired for competition.
Until women’s voices are heard everybody suffers. We’re more than 50 percent of the population of this planet. We’re wasting resources by keeping women from fully exploring and achieving what they are capable of.
Q. I was reading that you pioneered People Power. How has this kind of intensive communication between groups changed social activism?
JW: It wasn’t so much pioneered as it kind of developed as we went. It’s not magic. It’s thinking through a strategy, it’s sharing strategy, it’s getting input from the people who are part of the overall plan so it’s theirs as much as mine and following through, following through, following through. When people say that peaceniks are wimps, I want to invite them to come and do my job for a while. There’s nothing wimpy about it. It’s really hard work every day, but if you stick to it and you’re straight, narrow and true, as we were in the landmine campaign, you’ll be successful.
Q. How are activists using social networking to achieve their ends?
JW: The Nobel Women’s Initiative uses it a lot. I think they even Twitter. I don’t Twitter.
All of the tools are terrific, but I think people forget that it’s not just the tool, it’s what’s behind the tool. It’s the humans behind the tool, the ideas behind the tool. It’s the goal. How clear is the goal? How committed are people to the goal? Do they really feel part of a movement for social change? We manage to keep that going in the ICBL still.
Q. What do you tell your students about becoming effective social change agents?
JW: You don’t have to have special abilities to be an activist. Get up off your butt, go find an organization working on something you care about and start as a volunteer.
If you really love it, maybe you can become a full-time activist, but it’s not going to happen if you sit there and wish it to be so. It happens because you make it happen.
I say to my students, we all are concerned about things that are happening in the world but I don’t want to hear you whine about it. Don’t bug me until you tell me what you’re going to do to make it better.
Weighing in: