Every week in Palo Alto, a group of women gathers outside a Tesla showroom, sporting wide-brim hats and carrying anti-billionaire signs. They call themselves the Raging Grannies: a coalition of senior women who use humor, harmony and handmade costumes to protest inequality, social injustice and the lopsided concentration of wealth in America.
“Every day there’s something new with these big corporations,” said Sherry Hagen, who goes by “Granny Sherry.” “It’s ridiculous.”
The Raging Grannies are part of an international collective of women whose mission is to use performance art to deliver pointed anti-corporation and political messages, a movement that began in Victoria, British Columbia, in the late 1980s and has since spread to cities across the United States. The Palo Alto chapter, known as the Raging Grannies Action League, shows what activism can look like in older age.
Many Grannies are lifelong activists. Ruth Richardson, “Granny Ruth,” the leader of the Bay Area chapter, traces her organizing roots back to 1969, when she was a senior in high school and joined anti-Vietnam War demonstrations between classes.
“We were mad our boyfriends were getting sent off to fight in the Vietnam War,” she said, chuckling.
Hagen, 78, also traces her activism to that era. Those early protests motivated her to speak out against later conflicts, including the Gulf War in 1991 and the war in Afghanistan in 2001. Many of the grannies have shown up for nearly every major progressive movement of the last half-century, from civil rights to reproductive rights after the overturn of Roe v. Wade in 2022. More recently, they’ve co-led local Black Lives Matter demonstrations following the murder of George Floyd, bringing their quirky, musical protest style into some of the Bay Area’s most charged political spaces.
It’s a brand of activism that some question. Jan Soule, president of the Silicon Valley Association of Conservative Republicans, offered a starkly different interpretation of the Grannies’ activism. She said she believes many older progressive protesters are being pushed toward actions that won’t meaningfully address policy concerns. Soule also questioned the logic of the weekly protests targeting Elon Musk’s Tesla, saying conservatives view the company as an economic engine rather than a political symbol.
“Conservatives are way too educated to think that destroying any business is going to lead to some change in policy,” she said.
But to the Grannies, demonstrations that double as musical street theater are the point. They show up in aprons pulled from their own drawers, stylish cat-eye shades and large sun hats crowded with political pins — a look playful enough to disarm passersby. The whimsy often works in their favor; people don’t see them as threatening, which gives their message time to land.
“They make an effort to not be hip,” said Scott Herscher, a Palo Alto activist who organized recent anti-Trump No Kings protests. “They’re so not hip, that they are hip.”
As older protesters, many Grannies are navigating health issues that make standing, walking and marching increasingly difficult. At the most recent No Kings Day protest, they joined the crowd farther down the route instead of walking the full march, adjusting to members’ varying abilities.
“Some are in wheelchairs and some use walkers, but we make it happen,” Richardson, 78, said.
They say older adults can show up civically in ways younger people often can’t. Retirement frees them from the worries of missed shifts, childcare or a boss’s reaction. With many demonstrations held on weekday afternoons, they see their availability as a chance to speak out when others are tied to work.
For many members, their activism is rooted in the world they’ll leave behind. Though the group identifies as nonpartisan, it is outspoken in its opposition to conservative politics and has stepped up its community presence since the start of the new Trump administration. This year, its efforts have included patrolling neighborhoods for possible ICE activity, partnering with scientific groups to counter health misinformation promoted by officials in the Robert F. Kennedy Jr.-led Department of Health, and staging “No War on Venezuela” demonstrations.
Lisa Burns, 67, said she feels that sense of responsibility, even though she became a step-grandmother later in life. She often thinks about the world her grandchildren will inherit, and about climate change, poverty and widening inequality.
“It worries me because I have maybe 15 years left on this planet, and what happens when we’re gone?” Burns said.
When the current political climate feels too heavy to them, the grannies say think about the moments when strangers join their chorus: aprons fluttering, wide-brim hats tilted against the sun, their lyrics carried by voices decades younger than theirs. Those moments, they say, tell them that maybe the youth will be OK.
“When young people sing with us,” Burns said, “it gives me chills, like maybe the spark is still there.”