If Nettie can do it, so can all of us!

Many a Wednesday afternoon, as 5:00p.m. creeps around, I think of all the things I'd like to be doing like go home & eat dinner or go to the grocery store or go curl up with a book - and then I think about Nettie. 86 year old Nettie.

Nettie catches the bus from North Berkeley to downtown Oakland – almost every Wednesday evening.

Sometimes she gets on the wrong bus or she gets off at the wrong bus stop and we see her walking down the street in her pink jacket, heading towards the recruiting station where we are vigiling.

Sometimes she goes too far on the bus and has to catch another bus back to the recruiting station. Sometimes we see her peering through the window of the bus, looking out for us, as the bus rolls by. Then several minutes later, we see her & her pink jacket strolling up the street towards us as we vigil.

Or sometimes, she's standing in her pink jacket, in front of the recruiting station, waiting for us to arive.

This is Nettie. Some might know her from the lovely phone messages she leaves on people’s machines. Nettie comes into the office maybe once a month, maybe twice a month, and calls the rest of us to invite us to come to a meeting, or urge us to join her at an action. She’ll leave the details on your voice mail & then say “and I’m also a raging granny – I have 8 grandchildren”.

Tomorrow, Wednesday Jan 4th, we will vigil at 5:15-6:15p.m. in front of the Oakland Recruiting Stations, 2116 Broadway; and then we will come back to the office for a CodePINK birthday party for Nettie! And our first of the month Wednesday meeting!

You’re invited to help celebrate Nettie’s birthday and her amazing activist work in CodePINK. Bring something from your heart, if you want, to thank Nettie – she is one of our amazon foremothers, as she says, she has been an activist since she was 13 yrs. old!