Educator – Author – Activist: Clare Hanrahan

Clare Hanrahan, one of Asheville’s anti-war activists.   Photo: Urban News

Empowering People to Speak on Behalf of Others

by Mike Hopping

Clare Hanrahan is one of Asheville’s best known anti-war activists. Her participation in last month’s protest against the expansion of Duke’s coal-fired plant at Cliffside might have surprised some, but not those who know her.

Social justice activism runs broad and deep in her veins. Her parents were ahead of their time in supporting the civil rights movement in Memphis, Tennessee. Clare’s first taste of personal involvement came during the sanitation workers’ strike of 1968, in the aftermath of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination. Shortly thereafter her civil rights education continued — are you sitting down? — as Miss USO. African American service personnel from states outside the South were a new experience.

More than a decade later she returned to Memphis with a young
daughter in tow. The Midsouth Peace and Justice Center was Clare’s real
introduction to organized protest action. Involvement in stopping a
“white train” carrying nuclear weapons through town resulted in her
first arrest.

Homelessness also concerned her. In 1986 she talked St.
Petersburg, Florida, community leaders into funding a new housing
service for homeless women and children. That collaborative project has
grown into ASAP Homeless Services.

War became a frontline issue for Clare when she met Salvadoran
refugees fleeing death squads and civil war. Several death squad
leaders were graduates of Ft. Benning’s School of the Americas (SOA).
Clare’s participation in SOA protests actions eventually lead to a
six-month federal prison term.

Her mother was a writer, and Clare carries that tradition on as
well. She moved to North Carolina in 1989 to work as editor of the
Burnsville-based Rural Southern Voice for Peace Newsletter. Since then
she’s recounted her prison experience and advice for prospective
prisoners in two books: Jailed for Justice and Conscience and
Consequence. A compilation of her public addresses, Dissenting
Opinions, is new this year. She has edited four other books, including
three in the Greenhaven Press series, Opposing Viewpoints.

Both direct action and assisting others with her freelance
writing and editing remain important to Clare. She says, “I continue to
see the value of listening to people on the ground and hearing their
stories. They give us all hope. And nonviolence training is a powerful
force for good that we haven’t expertly applied. People are rising and
how they rise is very important. We need to empower people to speak on
behalf of others.”