My Name Is
Jody Williams
A Vermont Girl’s Winding Path
to the Nobel Peace Prize
Jody Williams
Foreword by Eve Ensler
University of California Press
Berkeley   Los Angeles   London
a naom i sch n e i de r book
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My Name Is Jody Williams
California Series
in Public Anthropology
The California Series in Public Anthropology
emphasizes the anthropologist’s role as an
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describing, in human terms, how life is lived beyond
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also adds a commitment, through ethnography, to
reframing the terms of public debate—transforming
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with new insights, new framings.
Series Editor: Robert Borofsky
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Contributing Editors:
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My Name Is
Jody Williams
A Vermont Girl’s Winding Path
to the Nobel Peace Prize
Jody Williams
Foreword by Eve Ensler
University of California Press
Berkeley   Los Angeles   London
University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches
lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the
humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its
activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and
by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
© 2013 by Jody Williams
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Williams, Jody, 1950–
My name is Jody Williams : a Vermont girl’s winding
path to the Nobel Peace Prize / Jody Williams. — 1st
Edition.
pages cm. — (California series in public anthropology ; 25)
ISBN 978-0-520-27025-1 (alk. paper)
1. Williams, Jody, 1950– 2. Pacifists—United States—
Biography. 3. Women Nobel Prize winners—United
States—Biography. 4. Nobel Prize winners—United
States—Biography. I. Title.
JZ5540.2.W56 2013
327.1'743—dc23
[B]
2012031155
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Manufactured in the United States of America
22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In keeping with a commitment to support environmentally responsible and sustainable printing practices, UC
Press has printed this book on Natures Natural, a fiber
that contains 30% post-consumer waste and meets the
minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48–1992 (r 1997)
(Permanence of Paper).
 
For my family.
To activists everywhere who work for a world of
sustainable peace, equality, and justice for us all.
And to those who want to contribute to change but
aren’t sure what they do will matter. Every action
we take for the benefit of others matters deeply.
Find your passion and work on it, even a couple
of hours a month. It will change your world
in ways you can’t possibly imagine.
Contents
Foreword by Eve Ensler   ix
Prologue: October 10, 1997   xiii
Part I.
If You Could Be Anyone
1. What Do You Mean I Can’t Be the Pope?
3
2. A Special Place in Hell
15
3. Claude, Casey, and the Corvair Convertible
36
4. V-I-E-T-N-A-M, Marriage, and Mexico
55
Part II.
The Making of a Grassroots Activist
5. The Pamphlet
79
6. Boots on the Ground: Sandinista Interlude
101
7. Dinner with the Death Squad
124
8. I Thought I Wanted a Straight Job—
Instead I Got Landmines
143
9. Landmines and Love
171
10. The Ottawa Process and the 1997 Landmine Ban
World Tour
200
11. Whirlwind: October 10 to December 10, 1997
227
Epilogue
246
Acknowledgments   259
Illustrations follow page 76
For ewor d
Eve Ensler
Jody Williams is many things—a simple girl from Vermont, a sister of a disabled brother, a loving wife, an intense character full
of fury and mischief, a great strategist, an excellent organizer, a
brave and relentless advocate, and a Nobel Peace Prize winner.
But to me Jody Williams is, first and foremost, an activist.
What is an activist? The dictionary says, “an especially
active, vigorous advocate of a cause, especially a political cause.”
My sense—and I think it is most clear in this stirring memoir—is that an activist is someone who cannot help but fight for
something. That person is not usually motivated by a need for
power or money or fame, but in fact is driven slightly mad by
some injustice, some cruelty, some unfairness, so much so that
he or she is compelled by some internal moral engine to act to
make it better.
I have often wondered at what moment one becomes an activist. Are we born with the activist gene, and then some event or
incident catalyzes it into being? Is it a deaf brother, abused and
cruelly treated? Is it witnessing unkindness to those we love
 
 
 
ix
x / Foreword
or being raped or beaten and undone ourselves and surviving
through the love of others and then feeling compelled to give
back the same?
Many of us are accidental activists. We didn’t necessarily or
consciously choose to devote our lives to ending war or violence
against women or racism or poverty or sexual oppression, or to
fighting for the environment, but our survival became so clearly
wrapped in the struggle, we had no choice.
The big question, of course, is why do some shut down and
move away in the face of power and oppression and others move
into action? I think if we could resolve this riddle, we would
unlock millions of sleeping activists who could possibly help
save this world and transform suffering. Some of the secrets are
found in this book.
What is most compelling about Jody’s writing about her
remarkable life and deeds is how unremarkable she makes it
sound. It is simple, straightforward, unembellished. It all seems
logical, one thing growing out of another. There were landmines
destroying the lives of thousands of people worldwide. There
was a goal to ban them. There was the insane belief that this was
possible. (By the way, I think another characteristic of activists is
this dogged faith that change is possible even in the face of what
on the surface seems like an utter impossibility.)
Jody had a goal she wanted to accomplish—banning landmines—and she employed her powers, her smarts, her wisdom
and engaged all those around her to bring about that end. I think
one of the wonderful things about her winning the Nobel Peace
Prize is that it honored all the activists in her project who made
it happen, and for that matter, it honored activism everywhere.
I have pretty much lost faith in governments or world leaders or patriarchal institutions to reverse the sad and terrifying
 
 
Foreword / xi
trajectory of human beings. My hope, my life, lies with activists. I think of the Occupy Wall Street movement, environmental activists in the rain forests, domestic workers’ unions, Pussy
Riot, LBGT workers, V-Day activists, antiviolence and antiwar
activists, antiracist, fair trade, hunger, animal rights activists.
The list is fortunately endless, and these activists are born every
minute and are rising everywhere to reenvision and give birth
to the new world. They are obsessed, unstoppable, passionate,
creative in finding ways over and around obstacles. They are
community builders, often humorous, sometimes and necessarily belligerent, insomniacs, usually dancers, celebrators of life.
This book charts Jody’s activist journey with a whole lot of
other amazing people to successfully ban landmines. It will
inspire you to believe that what you do matters a lot and to follow your path and trust your outrage and sorrow. If we are to
find a way out of the current madness, it will take a whole lot
more of us filled with the spirit, mischief, fury, and determination of Jody Williams.
Prologu e
October 10, 1997
The phone did not ring at 3 a.m. on Friday, October 10, 1997. It
didn’t ring at 3:15. It didn’t ring at 3:30 either. If we didn’t expect
it to ring, we certainly hoped it would. But it didn’t. Deflated, at
least Goose and I could finally let it go and go to sleep. Since
we’d finished cleaning the kitchen around midnight, we’d been
tossing and turning in bed for hours.
We dozed off only to be woken up by the harsh ringing of the
phone. I looked at the clock. It was 4 a.m. My heart was pounding. It was a combination of adrenaline from being startled
awake and weird expectation. I picked up the phone to hear the
singsong accent of a man who said he was calling from a Norwegian TV station.
He asked if I was me. When I said I was, he asked where I’d be
in another forty minutes. As if I’d be leaping out of bed now and
driving around the country roads of Putney, Vermont? I bit back
any number of smart-ass retorts and simply said, “Here.” The
phone went dead in my ear.
Goose and I looked at each other, wide-eyed and unsettled.
xiii
xiv / Prologue
Why had a call come at 4 a.m.? And why was it from Norwegian
television and not the Nobel Committee?
Just a few weeks before, we’d spent a month in Oslo during
the successful negotiations of the treaty banning antipersonnel
landmines. Some of our Norwegian friends had told us then that
the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which I’d coordinated since getting it off the ground in 1992, was a front-­r unner
for the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize. Media had buzzed about it the
entire time we were there, even though we’d deflected their
questions.
The last night in Oslo, we’d been out celebrating the success
of the treaty negotiations. One of the Norwegian diplomats had
whispered to us that if we were awarded the Peace Prize, we’d
get a call from the Nobel Committee around 3 a.m. our time.
They tried to give recipients time to prepare themselves before
the chair of the committee made the announcement at a press
conference a couple of hours later in Oslo.
But no call had come at 3 a.m. And when the phone rang an
hour later, it was a cryptic exchange with someone from Norwegian television, not the Nobel Committee. Goose and I started
speculating, and the only thing that seemed reasonable to us was
that the media wanted to know where we were so they could get
the ICBL’s reaction to not receiving the Nobel Peace Prize after
so much hype and expectation. Now we had about forty minutes
to try not to fret.
The phone rang again promptly at 4:40 a.m. It was the same
guy, who again identified himself as being with a Norwegian
TV station. There was no dramatic pause, he quickly went on
to say that he’d been “authorized” to inform me that the “International Campaign to Ban Landmines and its coordinator Jody
Williams” were the recipients of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize.
Prologue / xv
I repeated the words so Goose would know what was going
on, then asked the guy who had authorized him to say that. He
only repeated that he’d been authorized to let me know. He told
me to turn on my television in about twenty minutes to hear the
announcement live on CNN. I told him we didn’t have a TV.
“Well,” he said, “turn on the radio.”
When I told him there was no radio either, he laughed and
said he’d keep me on the line so I could hear it directly from
Norway. Stunned, I wouldn’t be able to believe it until I heard
the Nobel Committee say it out loud. I asked for about ten minutes to call my family. He said he’d call back then.
Mom screamed, “Hoo-hoo and yippeeee!” It was obvious
she’d not slept any better than Goose and I that night. My father
could sleep through almost anything. I asked Mom to call my
sisters, Mary Beth and Janet, and my brother Mark to tell them
to turn on their televisions and watch the announcement live.
Then Goose and I waited until the phone rang again. We sat in
bed with the receiver between our ears and listened as the press
conference began. Francis Sejersted, then chair of the Nobel
Committee, read the announcement, which captures the essence
of our work in the Landmine Campaign:
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel
Peace Prize for 1997, in two equal parts, to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) and to the campaign’s coordinator
Jody Williams for their work for the banning and clearing of antipersonnel mines.
There are at present probably over one hundred million antipersonnel mines scattered over large areas on several continents.
Such mines maim and kill indiscriminately and are a major threat
to the civilian populations and to the social and economic development of the many countries affected.
xvi / Prologue
The ICBL and Jody Williams started a process which in the
space of a few years changed a ban on antipersonnel mines from a
vision to a feasible reality. The Convention which will be signed in
Ottawa in December this year is to a considerable extent a result of
their important work.
There are already over 1,000 organizations, large and small,
affiliated to the ICBL, making up a network through which it has
been possible to express and mediate a broad wave of popular commitment in an unprecedented way. With the governments of several small and medium-sized countries taking the issue up and
taking steps to deal with it, this work has grown into a convincing
example of an effective policy for peace.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to express the hope
that the Ottawa process will win even wider support. As a model
for similar processes in the future, it could prove of decisive importance to the international effort for disarmament and peace.
I can’t remember our immediate reaction when I hung up the
phone, because we heard people outside. I crept to the window
to see several cars parked in the driveway. Panicky, we threw on
the clothes we’d taken off only a few hours earlier and went out
to see who they were.
Journalists? The house sat at the end of a mile-long unmarked
dirt road in the-middle-of-nowhere-Putney. We weren’t prepared for them, and even less so for the onslaught that would
follow. By 5:15 I was serving coffee to them in my kitchen. They
were the first and last journalists we let in the house that day.
I was so thankful it turned out to be a glorious eighty-degree
Indian summer day in Vermont. I kept wondering what we
would have done with all the people if it had been raining.
By midmorning, the field in front of the house overlooking
the beaver pond was studded with satellite feed trucks. Eight or
nine of them. There were TV cameras dotting the field. On the
Prologue / xvii
deck. At my front steps. The day didn’t stop, except for one tenminute break, until the last TV truck rolled out at 8 p.m.
The interviews flowed from one to the next almost seamlessly. Journalists arrived from all of the morning TV news
shows in the United States. From several in Norway, Canada,
Sweden, and other places I can’t begin to remember. There were
some from several different shows on the BBC. We had local
media. National media. International media.
All of them wanted to know how we’d use the Nobel Prize
to pressure the Clinton administration especially, and other
holdout states, to get on board. For the whole day we had media
attention resulting from the Nobel announcement to further the
message of the ICBL: Come to Ottawa. Sign the treaty. Ratify it
as soon as possible. Join the tide of history.
I had no time that day to think about the course of my life
and how I’d come to be surrounded by journalists, talking about
antipersonnel landmines and the Nobel Peace Prize. No one
would ever have predicted it. That a quiet kid from Vermont
had become a hardheaded, straight-talking woman who’d helped
change our world. But I did, and this is my story.
Pa rt I
If You Could Be Anyone
Cha pter On e
What Do You Mean
I Can’t Be the Pope?
At some point in grade school, I finally realized I didn’t have
a snowball’s chance in hell of becoming the first woman pope.
Then again, I’d also been slow in noticing I couldn’t even be an
altar boy. Perhaps that turned out to be not such a bad thing, but
at the time it felt unfair. Why boys only? What was so special
about them?
I so wanted to be clothed in magnificent vestments one day,
head bowed to receive the Papal Crown. And of course, I’d be
fluent in Latin. At church on Sundays, I’d imagine myself gloriously robed, standing at the altar, cloaked in incense. The tiniest whiff of its burning fragrance still summons vestiges of my
religious upbringing.
Even after my papal dreams were shattered, I remained mystified by the pageantry, the drama, and the majesty of the Holy
Roman Catholic Church. Simply saying those four words made
me feel transported. I was enthralled by the stories of the lives
of our brave and tragic saints and martyrs. I, too, wanted to be
resolute and heroic and leave a big mark on the world. No one
3