transcript

2009 Profile in Courage Award recipients

Liberia profile

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LISA MULLINS: I'm Lisa Mullins, and this is The World. Leymah Gbowee grew up in the mountains of Liberia in West Africa. She remembers that American doctors and nurses came to work in her village. It was Gbowee's first exposure to the Peace Corps and its founder, President John Kennedy. As it happens, Gbowee and the legacy of John Kennedy crossed paths again today. She accepted a Profiles in Courage award from the Kennedy Library in Boston. It wasn't just for her; it was for several dozen Liberian women who launched a movement to help put an end to Liberia's civil war. JFK's daughter, Caroline Kennedy, presented the award today. She said it honors people who have had the courage to risk their careers or even their lives for the good of their country.

CAROLINE KENNEDY: What we often find with winners of this award is that people really feel like there was no other choice. They don't really see themselves at the moment as being courageous, in that they feel like, “I didn't have a choice. I just did what I absolutely had to do.”

MULLINS: That's how Leymah Gbowee feels as well. She says she and the Christian and Muslim women of Liberia had to speak out against Liberian dictator Charles Taylor. In the 1990's, Taylor presided over murders, rapes, and widespread atrocities against the people of Liberia. Leymah Gbowee and her fellow peace activists said no more. She told me this morning that her group simply had to defy Charles Taylor, regardless of the risk.

LEYMAH GBOWEE: At the time we stepped out, Taylor had said to his forces, “Even if my mother step out to protest, deal with her.”

MULLINS: He said, “Deal with her. Even my mother isn't allowed to protest.”

GBOWEE: No one was allowed to protest. Protest was an act of treason, so no one could protest. When we step out, we step out, say, it's either we die and let your world know we were fighting for peace, or we sit home and die anyway. So not a courageous act, but just an act of survival. And the beauty of the work that we did was that Liberia had gotten to a point where there was serious war fighting. So we even had people in Charles Taylor's camp, some of his Generals who were calling us and telling us, “You can't stop. You are the hope for this nation.”

MULLINS: It's a very profound thing, because the country has had so much hope and so many leaders who promised to be entirely different and then acted just as much brutality as their predecessor. So how did the kind of courage you had, what kept the fire under you especially against such odds?

GBOWEE: Every challenge we encountered, we saw it as a reason to step out. The first day we did that protest defying the government. The next day, the camps where most of the women came from was raided.

MULLINS: Those are refugee camps?

GBOWEE: Internally displaced women. That camp was raided. That next day we went to find those women. They had come into a school building where they decided to sleep because the camp was raided and they had to run, and we decided, “If the government can't provide relief, we will provide relief.” So with $10 US dollars, we bought half a bag of something called Farina and sugar and milk and peanuts and mixed it up and served almost 100 persons, women and children. And then we started calling different aid agencies and saying to them, “We're going to the press. We have to do this.” And by nightfall, they had said, “Okay. We'll give them only biscuits.” That emboldened us. The more defiant he became, the more defiant and the more bold we got.

MULLINS: And the more their numbers grew. Gbowee says Liberia's President Taylor never thought so many women in Liberia could unite.

GBOWEE: Because everyone was so afraid of this man that he didn't think we had the capacity to mobilize 2,500 women at the peak of a civil war and when treason charge was imminent. And so we went back up the hill where the women had gathered, at the University of Liberia and told them to form a straight line. The soldier who was guarding the gate at the mansion almost fainted when he saw this sea of white coming down.

MULLINS: Sea of white?

GBOWEE: Sea of white. 2,500 women, all of them dressed in white, coming down. He was just like, “These women are really serious about what they're doing.” And I think it was that moment Taylor realized, “I can't back down.”

MULLINS: And at what moment did you realize you can't back down?

GBOWEE: Well, from the moment we stepped out. When you step out to do activism, and you have the closest aide of the President calling you and saying to you, “I will provide all of the financial resources you need but don't stop. This man has gotten mad.”

MULLINS: That man, the closest aide to the President was –

GBOWEE: That woman.

MULLINS: That was a woman?

GBOWEE: Who was the closest aide to the President, who was the President of the Senate at the time, was risking her life and saying to us, “You all cannot stop. I have been the closest confidant of this man and I have seen the change. He's gotten crazy. He's not listening to anything. You all cannot stop.” And then we got to the point where we had this prayer vigil this night, and this woman came covered up in a blanket of white, and I'm sitting in the front of the group. And she came and sat behind me, covered up, and said, “I'm here. I cannot stay home. I decided to come in solidarity.” Then you know that, “Wow. This is good that we're doing this here.”

MULLINS: Leymah Gbowee is the founder of the group Liberian Mass Action for Peace. Today, they were honored with a Profiles in Courage award by the Kennedy Library in Boston.

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