A women's movement that brought peace to Liberia

T-shirts are an important modern political weapon. This is one of the first things we learn from this vibrant and hopeful documentary about the women's struggle in Liberia to end violence and civil war and get rid of a corrupt leader between 2003 and 2005.

The Liberian women wore their matching movement T-shirts as a badge of their unity and strength as they marched and sat together day after day in the central market of Monrovia, the capital, and they carried many homemade placards with a strong but uncontroversial message: PEACE PEACE PEACE. They organized first in churches and meetings, then in big rallies. Their aim was to force Liberian dictator Charles Taylor to take notice that they were tired of the rapes and killings and hacking of limbs as much by Taylor's government forces as by the motley warlord-led rebel army ironically named Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD). Eventually the women succeeded in getting noticed and presenting a formal letter of protest to the president, and after lengthy meetings of pan-African leaders in Ghana, despite a further backlash of violence in Monrovia, Taylor fled into exile.

When the peace talks dragged on and stalled, the women formed human barricade around the building and refused to move till an agreement was reached. They threatened to break a taboo and strip naked. Earlier they had withheld sex from their husbands till they stopped the violence--the Lysistrata method.

During their struggle the leaders of the women forged alliances and devised policies that carried over into an equally tireless campaign to find a good replacement from the ousted Taylor. Not surprisingly, Taylor's eventual replacement in 2005 turned out to be the women's candidate and the country's popularly elected first female head of state, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.

Pray the Devil is an amalgam of news footage about the leaders of Liberia and surrounding countries, action on the streets, and interviews with the women leaders. Images of vernacular signage and paintings of conflict help capture the Liberian flavor It's the voices and personalities of the women that give the film its propulsive force and positive energy. These are primarily Janet Johnson Bryant, Etweda Cooper, Vaiba Flomo, Leymah Gbowee, Asatu Bah Kenneth, and Etty Weah. Gbowee, a social worker, gathered the women together from her church. Kenneth, a policewoman and a Muslim, organized women of her faith. Thus the movement for the first time in the country joined Muslims and Christians in a common struggle.

Charles Taylor was a charismatic warlord who stayed in power by encouraging barbarism and ethnic conflict. The drug-addicted boy soldiers who perpetrated some of the worst atrocities are familiar to movie-goers from Edward Zwick's Blood Diamond and other films, which have dramatized how children were stolen from families to feed a world of terror. Taylor's forces were just as violent against the general population as the LURD. Arms trading to other countries and blood diamonds were factors, but this film focuses on the women's struggle and their concerns. Their vigorous voices dominate. But the smugness of Taylor's public pronouncments and warlords' unguarded posturings also are shown.

The womens' testimony describes the main events of their movement and the UN-backed agreement that led to peace and Taylor's removal. Their voices confirm a sense of home, a program of reconciliation aimed at reintegrating the perpetrators of atrocities back into society, and the understanding that "peace is a process, not an event" and once achieved must still be continually fought for.

No artistic flourishes garnish this straightforward documentary as in Ellen Kuras' film about Laotian exiles, The Betrayal, nor attempts to point out larger historical implications. Just the story of the women's peace struggle and its results. But since the Wikipedia political article on LIberian history doesn't even mention the women's role, this film is needed, and in a world of seemingly endless and growing chaos, it offers hope that grassroots efforts can matter where it most counts.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.