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The Seneca Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice was a women-only peace camp formed to protest the scheduled deployment of Cruise and Pershing II missiles before their suspected shipment from the Seneca Army Depot to Europe in the fall of 1983.
The camp took place mainly during the summer of 1983, from July 4 through Labor Day, concluding with a Labor Day Action honoring workers and highlighting the inflation and job loss that militarism brings. Thousands of women came to participate and rally against nuclear weapons and the "'patriarchal society' that created and used those weapons."[1]: i The encampment continued through till 1994 when it "transitioned" into a "Women's Peace Land." Through its entire existence it continued to make the same principled philosophical connections between militarism, patriarchy, racism, high rates of inflation, unemployment and global poverty, sexual & physical violence, addiction, oppression, & abuse in its many forms, and global environmental destruction. As it evolved the first summer, it became a living expression of all women's skills & empowerment, as well as a visible celebration of a joyful lesbian sub-culture. The encampment continued as an active political presence in the Finger Lakes area for at least five more years, supporting anti-nuclear education and the connections between ecofeminism, nonviolence, the need for civil disobedience and ideas of permaculture and sustainability.
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