Madison’s Raging Grannies are in high demand in the age of Trump

For Madison's Raging Grannies to get their anger across, diction is key. As Kathy Miner reminded the group at a February meeting, “we sing dee-mocracy, not duh-mocracy.” 

The Raging Grannies meet twice a month to prepare for upcoming gigs and learn new songs. The 30 or so at this meeting had just finished singing “We’re the Guardrails Now,” a song written this year by longtime granny Sheila Plotkin and set to the tune of the historic hymn and protest song, “We Shall Not Be Moved.”  

The Raging Grannies have been a fixture at protests in Dane County for over 20 years — they say the Cap Times’ John Nichols once called them “the moral conscience of Madison.” The Raging Grannies are an international organization, started in 1987 in Victoria, British Columbia with gaggles (any group of three or more grannies) forming across Canada and the United States.  

The groups are known for satirical protest songs about reproductive rights, environmental justice and gun violence. They wear colorful getups — flower-covered hats, aprons full of buttons — subverting expectations of what protest looks (and sounds) like. Madison’s grannies often get requests to sing at birthday parties, retirement homes and political events in support of progressive issues.  

The Madison gaggle sang its first protest song in 2002 and remains particularly active with about 40 participating members. The grannies don’t track ages of members, but most are in their 60s and 70s. Grannies will sometimes alert the group when they turn 80 and join the “Octogenarian Caucus.”  

Many have been part of the group for years. Their catchphrase is, “We sing where we’re invited and sometimes where we’re not.” 

The Raging Grannies are regulars at the Dane County Farmers Market, playing around twice a month during market season by the Vel Phillips sculpture. At nearly every protest in Dane County, there’s a gaggle of grannies — and their presence is being requested now more than ever.  

In recent months, the grannies performed on Green Morning Radio, a music bloc on WORT, Madison’s community-run radio station.  

They also sang at a rally at Sen. Ron Johnson’s office, protesting Elon Musk’s involvement in cutting federal jobs. They asked the senator to vote no on the appointment of Russell Vought as the director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.  

“We’re kind of in demand,” said granny Carol Carstensen. 

Grannies’ songs ‘get behind people’s defenses’ 

As they debated and clarified the pronunciation of words at that February meeting, Miner reminded the group that this work pays off: “I heard compliments from people who are in choirs that they could really understand everything we said,” she said.  

Miner is a member of a sub-committee within the Raging Grannies called The Wordsmiths, songwriters who find the best rhymes for words like gerrymandered, ozone and uterus. In “We’re the Guardrails Now,” each granny reads lyrics with parts of words in bold to indicate emphasis. 

“Find a community, in numbers we are strong 

Act in your neighborhood, bring your friends along 

We have the pow’r to rescue our democracy. We are the guardrails now.” 

The group anticipates they’ll be singing this song a lot now.  

“They need us,” said Nancy Lindsay, a rehearsal leader, “singing this and many other songs.”  

As they work through the ins and outs of musical arrangements, it’s not about sounding amazing, said Bonnie Block, a granny since 2007. “I think music — it gets behind people’s defenses,” she said.  

“They bring the fun,” said Dr. Kristin Lyerly, a former candidate for Wisconsin’s 8th congressional district and OB-GYN based in Green Bay who spoke at a rally for reproductive rights at which the grannies sang.  

“The world is really heavy right now, and many of us are feeling like we need to do something,” Lyerly said. “To see the grannies, who are clearly serious about the work they’re doing, but doing it in a joyful way, that is a beautiful thing.”  

Mary Sanderson, one of the original Raging Grannies, believes the group can harness its privilege to “help protect people,” she said. “We can be a little more outrageous than other people can.” 

Feather duster choir  

The Raging Grannies define themselves as a “dis-organization” with no formal hierarchy or structure. They’re easy to spot in a crowd: Their floppy hats adorned with flowers and aprons (making fun of what “stereotypical” grandmas wear) covered in protest buttons like “Protect Trans Youth,” “Black Lives Matter,” and “Corporations are not people.”   

Grannies like Barbara Park and Joy Morgan can usually be found with guitars setting the melody while Deborah Lofgren “conducts” the singers, wearing a cape embroidered with the phrase “Raging Granny” and waving her feather duster-turned-conductor’s baton.  

The grannies used to use a wooden spoon to conduct until it flew out of someone’s hands and almost hit one of the singing grannies. The duster is much safer. Usually someone also waves along a long pole carrying Ursula, a bright knitted uterus. Her fallopian “arms” give her a little attitude, and sometimes she wears a white lace “dissent” collar in honor of former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  

What really draws eyes and ears to the grannies are their protest songs, most of which use humor to call attention to important social issues.  

“When humor is used, you can say a lot of things that you couldn’t say without humor,” said granny Lynn McDonald (she’s also mom to Ben Wikler, the chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin). “People, when they laugh, they retain (the message) longer.”  

Part of the reason Block got involved was for the tunes. “They sang some songs, and it changed the energy of the event,” she said. “It made me a bit less angry and a little bit more hopeful.” 

Many of the grannies have backgrounds in social justice and activism. Block, for example, joined the League of Women Voters after being told she had to leave her job in 1965 because she was pregnant, according to the book “Listen To Your Grandmothers,” a collection of stories from members of the Raging Grannies of Madison compiled by granny Marie Martini. Block also got involved in anti-war and nonviolence work during the second invasion of Iraq in 2003.  

Others found activism work later: Miner called herself a “Jenny come lately” to activism in Martini’s book and Pam Moe said it was in retirement that she felt compelled to stand up for social justice.  

“As I got older, and particularly right when I retired, I looked at my generation and thought, ‘Boy, we failed it,’” Moe said. “What am I leaving my grandchildren? I’m leaving them a worse environment and worse situations than I am in, and I want to do something about it.’” 

Growing granny movement 

Since they began singing in 2002, the group has had two inflection moments where membership soared.  

The first was in 2011 during what unions named “the Wisconsin uprising,” when then-Gov. Scott Walker signed Act 10 into law. That law significantly restricted the rights of public sector employees to participate in collective bargaining. Months of protests followed. The group doubled in size.  

“I was less depressed,” Carstensen said. “And I knew (Walker) hated the songs we were singing, which made it more fun.” 

The second inflection point happened after President Donald Trump’s second inauguration in January 2025. There are now 80 members on the grannies email list, with nearly 40 or so actively participating. 

In March, the Raging Grannies were asked to appear at two to three events a week. “We’ve been busier than ever before,” said Rebecca Alwin. “More people know about us.”  

“We’re getting so many new grannies sign up as a result of what’s happening in our country politically,” said Barbara Arnold. The grannies open the top of every meeting introducing new members, if there are any. Between both their February rehearsals, there were at least half a dozen new faces.  

So far this year, Park has fielded about two requests a week from people interested in joining. “People are saying, ‘I need to do something,’” she said. 

The group meets twice a month to practice and has nearly 200 songs in its catalog. Because there’s no hierarchy, most of the work is done on a volunteer basis.  

Most see their work as especially critical now. “I think we’re all really getting tired of the word unprecedented,” said Miner, adding that the country is seeing the kind of government takeovers “we’ve never seen” in the grannies’ lifetimes. 

Block pushed back a bit, noting the United States’ long history of foreign invasion. “We’re the world’s biggest arms dealer. We are involved in endless wars,” she said.  

The grannies are comfortable disagreeing with one another and sharing space with people who disagree with them. Alwin, a granny since 2011, is married to a fairly conservative man, but he is still “very supportive,” she says. Park’s husband runs the grannies’ website (the members are proud of how they adapted to technology — at recent events, they’ve promoted their new QR code, which takes people to their website).  

Although the group is anti-war, the members also sometimes disagree about what that looks like.  

“Some of us are against all war, which means you don’t fight war and you only use diplomacy,” Lofgren said, while others believe “there are times when you have to fight. … We are respectful of each other’s opinions.  

“The point is that in any group, especially a group that is as big as ours and growing, you’re not going to have consensus,” she added. “We do not demand consensus, or we would not be successful.”   

While they don’t agree on every issue, they do come together through a shared need to harness their rage.  

“We are really angry about what is happening,” Arnold said. “Angry is a feeling, but violence is an action — that’s not us.” She sees protest as a “a way to not temper our anger, but a way to channel it.” 

‘When I grow up’ 

The grannies have been building an archive of what activism looks like through buttons, hats, bibs and embroidered pieces with political messages. Some of those items were part of a recent exhibit at the University of Wisconsin-Madison called “It’s All the Rage: Activism, Aging, and the Raging Grannies of Madison.” 

“Some of these objects we selected because the objects were so powerful,” said one of the exhibition’s organizers, Svea Larson, a Ph.D. student studying Swedish-American folklore and history.  

“Other ones were things that the grannies were like, ‘These are really important moments in our group’s history,’” she said.  

Student outreach was baked into the Raging Grannies exhibit. Members of the group visited classrooms at UW-Madison, including Christine Garlough’s Gender and Women’s Studies classes (Garlough was the main curator). They led “craftivism” workshops, teaching students how to make political signs and knit their own Ursula uteruses.  

The grannies said they’re seeing young women become politically active and recognize what the grannies are protesting. “It’s become very personal, with these attacks on reproductive rights,” Alwin said.  

They’re not just reaching women. Carstensen said she’s had people come up to her and say, “I wish my grandparents would feel this way,” when singing in support of the LGBTQIA+ community.  

A young man came up to Miner “crying” when the group sang about immigration rights. They marched alongside students during protests for gun control. 

The Raging Grannies might not be the faces one imagines when thinking about activists.  

“We oftentimes think politics is for the young or not for the old,” Larson said. “Rarely do we say, ‘Oh, grandmothers have a powerful voice.’ They have a lot of wisdom, and I think we can learn quite a lot from them.”  

“I love the fact that they are willing to express ideas that touch us all, and they’re our age,” said Carolyn Turke, an attendee at a gig the grannies performed for a group of seniors at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church in Middleton. Society sometimes dismisses older people, Turke said. The grannies demand attention.  

“This group, with their wonderful songs, bring out the important issues that have touched us all and future generations,” Turke said. “That’s beautiful.”   

Many of the grannies reported that the best and most frequent compliment they get is from young people: “When I grow up, I want to be just like you.” 

Activism at any age 

Aspiring protesters don’t have to be a certain age or even a grandmother to be a granny. Park, a granny since 2004, told Larry Meiller on Wisconsin Public Radio that all a Raging Granny has to be is “against war” and believe “that we all belong in our society.”  

The grannies know they occupy a position of privilege as an organization mostly made of older white women. One of the ways they harness that privilege is by being in the front lines of protest — they know people are less likely to arrest them (although grannies have been arrested before: in 2013, Cap Times’ Steve Elbow wrote a story about how three members were arrested during a Solidarity Sing Along at the Capitol).  

“The reason we can get away with a lot is because we are all older women,” Arnold said.   

“We’re old and we dress sort of ridiculously,” Block added. “That really protects us in a lot of ways,” she said, but it also can mar how people receive their messages. “Some people have trouble taking us seriously, but also they don’t see us as a danger.”  

Grannies regularly show up for one another. Granny Kathleen McQuade was in an accident about four years ago that she said “almost killed” her and left her in the hospital for two and a half months.  

“There were grannies who called me, who sent cards, who did whatever I needed to have done,” McQuade said. “When I got home … they came and sang to me on the front porch.”  

The grannies even showed up to one of her occupational therapy sessions to sing.  

“ I apologized to the OT,” said McQuade. “And she said, ‘Oh, no — this is the best therapy.”  

Madison granny Nancy Lindsay said that “ being a member of a group like this makes it very, very easy to show up.” They believe the kind of work they do would not be possible without fellow grannies.  

“People ask, how are you dealing with things?” said Park. “I have the Raging Grannies, and I’m able to express what I want and feel like I’m doing something with my sisterhood.” 

Although the grannies try to sing in tune, not every song comes out perfectly. Reflecting on a past gig, one granny mentioned they were “so flat on ‘uterus’” in the song “If My Uterus Were a Gun.” Another heard someone comment that what the grannies “ lack in talent, they make up for in enthusiasm.” That got a raucous laugh from the group.  

One of their key messages is to “not to try to do political activism alone,” Alwin said. “You’re so much stronger as a group.”  

And they all agree it’s never too late to get active. For those who aren’t sure what’s next, they have one last piece of advice: “Listen to your grandmothers.”