By Kayla Walker
The arrest came as no surprise to Carol Husten as she protested outside a Times Square military recruitment office last October against U.S. military involvement in Iraq. The University alumnus had been arrested at that same place before.
“We planned on going into the recruitment station to read a written statement, but they locked the doors,” Husten, a grandmother of two, said. “We turned around, sat down on the steps and started chanting, ‘We insist, we enlist.'”
Police arrived and warned the women that they would be arrested if they did not end their protest.
Undeterred, Husten and the 17 other grannies didn’t budge and were soon arrested for disorderly conduct and civil disobedience.
“The police treated us wonderfully, it was very difficult for some of the women to sit down and stand up-in fact, two of the grannies have had hip replacements since the day we were arrested,” Husten, a member of Peace Action New York State, said.
Husten and the other 17 women were found not guilty on April 27 after spending six days in court. Their lawyers used their clients’ status as grandmothers, although not all of them are, as a part of their defense.
The Woodmere native, who now lives in Brooklyn, was arrested a few years back at a protest at the School of Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia, where men from Latin American countries were being trained to be guerillas.
Husten was also arrested before the American invasion of Iraq at the same recruitment station in Times Square with other PANYS members.
Husten’s activism began when she was in college at Russell Sage College in Troy.
“I became a world federalist when I got there. It wasn’t until later that I realized that one government for the whole world was impossible, we can’t even work our own one,” she said.
Husten graduated from Russell Sage in 1953, the same year she wed her husband.
“I got married when I was 21 and had two children when my husband died in 1957 when I was 26,” Husten said. “I haven’t been married since and I moved back to Long Island with my parents.”
Shortly after coming back to Woodmere, Husten enrolled at the University to earn a masters degree in guidance.
“I figured out that you need to take what you learn and apply it to everyday living,” she said.
From there, Husten began working at James Madison High School in Brooklyn.
“I worked in a special program for potential dropouts and truants,” Husten said. “The thing Hofstra didn’t teach me was how to go to a student’s house, knock on their door and tell them to go to school.”
Universiy history professor Carolyn Eisenberg has known Husten for 10 years and said her friend’s activism stems from her concern for young people.
“She’s willing to take risks, and you can see that in her protest of the war in Iraq,” Eisenberg said. “She believes that this is a horrific thing that is happening to young people.”
Husten has been a member of PANYS for 25 years and works with other organizations in the New York area. She has even served as a chair for PANYS before stepping down last summer.
“I thought it was time to turn it over to younger people who had new ideas, new energy to try hard to make a difference.”
“The most important thing, it seems wherever I go, people your age can protest and make a difference and stand up for what they believe in,” Husten said. “It was the right time for us [the grannies] to be arrested. We knew we wouldn’t have to do more than some community service or pay a fine, although some of us decided we wouldn’t do either as we saw our protesting as a service to the community, so we knew we’d go to jail.”
Although Husten spoke highly of the ability of today’s youth to effect change, she warned about underestimating the power of a group of grannies.
“The great thing is that all 18 grandmothers banded together, we had meetings and came to a consensus on all of our actions.”
Carol Husten, a University alum, assembles with other grannies to protest U.S. involvement in Iraq.