Approximately 25 women joined the Old Women’s Project on International Women’s Day, Monday, March 8, to protest President Bush’s $1.5 billion Healthy Marriage Initiative. Donning wedding dresses and holding bouquets, the women gathered in front of the Federal Building downtown in the midday heat, listening to speeches, singing marriage protest songs and chasing down potential grooms.

“We’re here to say that Bush’s Healthy Marriage Initiative, $1.5 billion to tell us to get married and stay married, is unhealthy for all of us,” Cynthia Rich, of the Old Women’s Project, said to the cheering crowd. “We can hear what he is saying – if we find ourselves poor, it’s not because of sexism, it’s not because of his economy, we’re just not doing it right. If we just stay virgins and find some man to marry, then stay married, we wouldn’t need housing, decent wages, job training, healthcare and childcare. This is really the ‘Make Women Behave Act’.”

The Old Women’s Project is a San Diego-based organization that works to raise awareness and visibility of elderly women’s issues, ageism and the role of women in issues of social justice. The three politically active women that run it, Rich, Mannie Garza and Janice Keaffaber, plan activities that draw attention to important issues and current events. Monday’s organized response to the proposed federal marriage amendment, dubbed “Bush’s Brides”, declared that the amendment requires women to get married in order to be protected financially.

“At the same time George Bush and company are promoting a hateful constitutional amendment to prevent lesbians and gays from marrying, they want to spend $1.5 billion of our money to push marriage on poor women – that is marriage to men, of course,” Garza said through a loudspeaker as the crowd booed. “This initiative would force states to take this $1.5 billion from already under-funded programs for economic support, childcare, job training and education – things that women truly and desperately need. The Bush administration wants states to spend that $1.5 billion on such things as public advertising campaigns touting the benefits of marriage, marriage promotion and marriage enhancement programs, teaching high school students about marriage and giving $2,000 cash bonuses – wedding presents perhaps? – to women on welfare who marry, paid for by benefit cuts for those women who don’t.”

Gaza said the Healthy Marriage Initiative, part of the reauthorization of HR 4 – the Welfare Act, now known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families – has already passed the House of Representatives. She added that under this act, women who have fallen back on welfare for a cumulative total of five years are no longer eligible to receive it. Globally, 70 percent of the poorest people are women.

“The Bush Brides – gay and straight – band together to give a message to George Bush, to the Republican administration and to give a message to the religious right,” Keaffaber said. “Get off our bodies, get out of our bedrooms, get out of our private lives.”

When a car pulled up to the crowd and the man inside laid on his horn for thirty seconds before squealing his tires and speeding away, Keaffaber quipped, “We make them really mad, don’t we?”

Though the Old Women’s Project is not a membership organization, all of their demonstrations attract large groups of women of all ages. Their first protest, held on International Women’s Day in 2001, was for affordable housing in San Diego. Other demonstrations include two anti-war demonstrations in January and February of last year, where participants linked hands and formed a ring around the federal building, and a silent vigil, “We Mourn With the Women of Iraq” last March. They have also participated in the Home Health Care worker’s rally for a living wage, three actions by the California Coalition for Women Prisoners and the Dyke March.

“Because we’re the Old Women’s Project, let me leave you with just one instance of that contempt for women’s real but unpaid work,” Rich said. “It also answers the question, why is this 70-year-old woman and other old women in wedding gowns today. The one reason is this: Under the welfare act, half of all states are actually requiring the many old women who are raising our children’s children to also go to work. The Bush administration needs to get it that these old women are working. Bush needs to take some of that $1.5 billion for marriage classes, and give a hand to women in their 60s, 70s and 80s who are raising children. It’s enough to make brides of any age blush.”

While the crowd sang versions of “Going to the Chapel” with altered lyrics, sneaker-shod Garza, Keaffaber and Rich chased down “eligible” men walking by and proposed to them.

The procession then moved toward Horton Plaza singing “Dumb, dumb, it’s dumb” to the tune “Here Comes the Bride”, and concluded there with a recitation of mock wedding vows.