'We Need a Gentle Anger': The Triangle's Raging Grannies are Protesting Injustice through Music

‘We Need a Gentle Anger’: The Triangle’s Raging Grannies are Protesting Injustice through Music
PUBLISHED 5/2/2025 by Chloe Courtney Bohl

Founded in Canada in the 1980s, the Raging Grannies have “gaggles” around North America—and plenty to sing about.
(Jenny Warbug)



Even in a crowd of thousands, they’re instantly recognizable by sight and sound: silver-haired women wearing colorful aprons and floppy hats, brandishing cardboard signs and sheafs of lyrics, singing acerbic protest songs set to cheerful nursery tunes.“We were angry when you raised all those taxes on the poor / We were outraged when you authorized those pipelines / Our infrastructure’s gone to pot, and our grandkids are getting shot / So we’re raging, ’cause now you’ve pissed off Grandma!” The Raging Grannies originated in Canada in 1987, following the Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion the year prior. The Grannies’ first-ever protest, staged on Feb. 14 in Victoria, British Columbia, involved an umbrella punched through with holes—a dig at the idea of protection beneath a “nuclear umbrella”—and a broken-hearted “Un-Valentine” delivered to an unsympathetic member of parliament, accompanied by a satirical lullaby.

Today, there are more than 50 groups of Grannies (gaggles, in their vernacular) spread across Canada and the United States. They protest peacefully against injustices in their communities and farther afield, from war to political corruption and environmental degradation. The gaggles operate independently of each other but share song lyrics and a penchant for loud, gaudy outfits. “We’re mocking the stereotype,” says Vicki Ryder, who joined the Triangle Raging Grannies more than a decade ago and is one of the group’s most prolific songwriters. “We’re gonna look like what you think grandmothers look like, but when we open our mouths, we’re gonna make you sit up and take notice.”



(Jenny Warbug)
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(Jenny Warbug)
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You won’t hear Donald Trump’s name in Ryder’s lyrics. “It didn’t start with Trump and it’s not going to end with him,” Ryder says. “Getting rid of Trump is not going to get rid of the problem. We will still have racism that is allowed. We still will have poverty that is allowed. We will still have environmental destruction that is allowed, and it’s allowed by the courts, it’s allowed by the Congress, and it’s allowed by the media.” Ryder’s activism is a full-time commitment. “What has suffered, I think, is time with my grandchildren,” she says. “They know what I do. They respect me for it. I have apologized to them over and over by saying, ‘I know I’m not spending as much time with you as we both would like, but I’m doing this for you. I’m 82 years old, but you’re the ones who are going to have to live with what we leave for you, and so this is my way of showing my love for you.’ And they understand that.”

Libby Johnson, another Triangle Raging Granny, also has decades’ worth of activism under her belt. While working as a nurse practitioner and social worker in Alabama during the civil rights movement, Johnson met her husband, Erik, a Presbyterian minister. They were both politically active, committed to anti-nuclear and anti-imperialist causes. She and Erik frequently moved their five children between congregations and states. (“We would last about six or seven years before they said, ‘You’re too radical.’”) She encouraged her kids to care about peace and justice, sending one to the Soviet Union for a “fellowship of reconciliation” and bringing them all to protests against the Gulf War.


Jo-Hanna Read, Rosy Betz-Zall, and Laurie Rostholder, members of the Seattle Raging Grannies, share a laugh during the ShellNo flotilla demonstration against Royal Dutch Shell on May 16, 2015 in Seattle, Washington. (Photo by David Ryder/Getty Images)
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https://msmagazine.com/2025/05/02/we-need-a-gentle-anger-the-triangles-raging-grannies-are-protesting-injustice-through-music/