Women's Pentagon Action (WPA)

As a decentralized activist organization, Women's Pentagon Action (WPA) ran two large demonstrations at the Pentagon in ovember 1980 and November 1981, emphasizing expressive feminist protest. The collective of peace, feminist, and environmental organizers was active in the early to rnid-l 980s. Its origins lay in a conference entitled "Women and Life on Earth: A Conference on Ecofemin:ism in the '80s," held in Amherst at the University of Massachusetts in March 1980. Its 700 participants explored feminist responses to the Three Mile Island nuclear accident of 1979, and the coalition of New York and New England-based organizers behind the conference aimed to facilitate a discussion of how philosophies of feminism and ecology could connect to issues of militarism, racism, and environmental disaster. The Women and Life on Earth coahtion immediately began planning a program of action around the theme of militarism, and organizers soon formed a new collective-the Women's Pentagon Action-to coordinate the protest scheduled for later that year.