At the age many people collect their first pension cheque, Betty Krawcyk was arrested for the first time, and has since dedicated her remaining years to “actively illuminating the Earth’s environmental crisis.” She does so through her activism, writing and, most recently, video blogging.
She has since taken civil disobedience to new heights, garnering international attention for having been arrested on eight occasions and serving more than three years in prison for refusing to budge on her ecofeminist principles, or to acknowledge wrongdoing. She says she is merely standing up for the rights of nature. She has received letters from over 1,500 supporters while in jail, and prominently placed supportive graffiti during the Vancouver Olympics.
While she’s been an effective crusader for change from the outside, Krawczyk has also attempted in numerous elections to become a Big-P political force. In the 2001 British Columbia provincial election she finished third in the Vancouver-Kensington riding with 9.32 percent of the vote for the Green Party. In the 2008 Canadian federal election she ran in the Vancouver East riding for the Work Less Party. She ran for Mayor of Vancouver the same year and vowed to legalize pot.
Krawczyk is also a prolific writer. Besides blogging she has written four analytical memoirs, each of which make the personal political: Clayoquot: The Sound of My Heart; Lock Me Up or Let Me Go; Open Living Confidential; and This Dangerous Place. These volumes explore her early history, politicization, activism and jail time.
She says she was not raised to be an activist, but the confinement of being the daughter of a preacher in the South seems to have inspired a will to fight. She was born in 1928 and raised in an East Baton Rouge Parish. From a young age she was disturbed by the oppression of women and girls, and by racial segregation.
She married three times, the first at age 16, and had eight children. It was after her first marriage, which left her single parenting three boys in Phoenix while working in a cafeteria, that she first picketed as part of a strike.
During her second marriage Krawczyk began selling confessional essays about her life to True Story magazine for $400, the beginning of her freelance career.
A pivotal moment came when she joined her first mass protest in the early 1960s, an anti-segregation rally in Louisiana. In catalyzed a painful split with her church, which was anti-integration.
Krawczyk is an active pacifist who, after her son registered for the draft during the Vietnam war, refused to pay taxes and was harassed and threatened by the IRS. In 1966 she immigrated to Canada. She eventually settled in British Columbia, hoping for a break, but found herself increasingly entangled in environmental disputes as forestry companies ramped up their clear-cutting efforts.
It was her participation in direct-action protests that led to her arrests. She started her first jail stint at age 65. She was imprisoned with two other grandmothers when she joined protesters blocking a bridge to prevent logging. At 72 she served a year in the Burnaby Correctional Institute for Women for peacefully demonstrating against Interfor’s logging of ancient rainforests.
Most recently, on March 5, 2007, she was sentenced to 10 months imprisonment for her role in protesting highway construction, after being convicted of contempt after being arrested three times while taking part in protests against highway construction through the Eagleridge Bluffs in West Vancouver.
Krawzyk is now a great-grandmother, a Raging Granny, and is always in demand as a public speaker.
