Betsy Cunningham’s to-do list this week ran the gamut from the prosaic to the political – referee a girls’ field hockey game, go to the hair salon, do media interviews about the landmark First Amendment case she and other women launched establishing free speech rights in Baltimore’s public parks and waterfront.

The unpretentious and everyday has always been central to Cunningham’s activism, and was a key element of the peace vigils that got her and her fellow Women in Black members ejected from McKeldin Square more than a decade ago, spawning the legal challenge settled by the city this week.

Cunningham sat down with us on Thursday and recalled those days after the 9/11 attacks, and how disturbed she was by the paranoia and hostility she encountered in Baltimore and across the country.

“I decided, every day, I’m going to do a little thing for peace,” she said, over a bowl of creamy cauliflower soup at One World Cafe.

“Even if it was just seeing a piece of litter and picking it up and throwing it away, I consider that a peaceful act.”

But Cunningham, a peace activist and lawyer, went much further.

What a True Patriot Wants

She helped establish the Baltimore wing of the international peace and justice group, Women in Black. Its members, women and men, hold peace vigils and stage other visible actions to send a message of peace.

They wear black as a symbol of mourning for victims of war. They remain silent because, they say, words cannot express the painful tragedy of violence.

One thing that particularly spurred her: political leaders who said after the attacks on New York and Washington that Americans should show their patriotism by supporting the economy and shopping.

“I thought ‘We shouldn’t be trying to fight back with shopping. We should be inviting everyone we know from another country to come and visit us in our home,’” she said.

“‘We’re the real patriots! What a true patriot wants is not revenge, but peace.’”

In that spirit, she and her fellow Women in Black organized. They decided to go downtown and stand at the highly-visible corner of Pratt and Light streets at McKeldin Square. The first vigil, on Dec. 31, 2001, surprised her – 75 people showed up. They held more of them.

They also began staging vigils along a 12-mile segment of Charles Street. The first, on Sept 11, 2002, drew 1,000 people – from toddlers to Catholic nuns to senior citizens. (The “Peace Path” tradition, on the 9/11 anniversary, continues to this day.)

In early 2003 – with the U.S. waging war in Afghanistan and preparing for an attack on Iraq – members of the city’s established peace and justice groups felt more was needed. They began strategizing a response of their own. Cunningham remembers getting frustrated with them.

“They were having meetings about how to have a meeting. There were all these planning memos with single-spaced type,” she recalled. “I said to myself, ‘I don’t want to go to this! Nobody else I know does either!’”

At McKeldin Square and other locations, including 40th Street in front of Roland Park Place, the women just kept on “vigiling.”

Tried to Get Permits

But the issue of permits remained murky. Try as they might, the city couldn’t be counted on to issue them. “We started applying for them in bulk. But the day would come and no permit. They’d say, ‘Oh well, we didn’t get your check,’” she said.

With the Iraq war in full swing, the vigils continued every Friday, with no problems from the police. Often just a few people would come. Sometimes it rained. People driving by would honk and cheer, or sometimes say ugly things.

“So, we weren’t getting these permits and nobody was asking for them. It was like ‘Why are we bothering?’” Cunningham said.

“Several people said to me ‘You shouldn’t be paying for a permit: this is free speech!’ It sounded good to me, I was the one putting up the money!”

Then came April 4, 2003, the day four city police officers on bicycles came and told the women on the sidewalk to move or be arrested.

“Why?” “Because I said so.” That’s how Cunningham remembers the conversation going.

She remembers writing down the officer’s badge number and asking to talk to a supervisor. The officer went away and came back and told them they could stand on other corners: “Of course, those were much less visible to traffic.”

They didn’t want to go to jail, but they also didn’t think it was right, Cunningham recalled. “So we got on the phone that day and called the ACLU.”

Just a Police Stop Away

The federal lawsuit they filed (plaintiffs included Cunningham, Terry Dalsemer, Katharine LeVeque, Barbara Pula and the late Francis Finney) finally was resolved Wednesday, with Board of Estimates’ approval of a $98,000 payment to the ACLU for legal fees.

The payment was part of a consent decree, signed by U.S. District Court Judge J. Frederick Motz last week, that makes major changes in the way the city handles political demonstrations, clarifying the confusing rules restricting people who want to leaflet or protest at city parks.

It specifies that any group of under 30 people will no longer need a permit to protest in any city park or in any of 10 specific locations, including McKeldin Square.

It requires permits for larger groups, but allows applications to be made two days in advance instead of 30 or more days. It lays out rules for leafleting at the Inner Harbor, megaphone use and many other areas. The city has promised to train police officers in how to properly enforce the new rules.

“I hope it means they will do a better job of living up to it, now that it means money,” Cunningham said, noting that those who break the rule can be fined.

“Until this decision, everyone in Baltimore was just a police stop away from becoming a lead plaintiff in Cunningham v. Flowers.”

Origins of a Trailblazer

Cunningham – who lives in a North Baltimore condominium, does real estate law (“as little as possible!”) and nurtures an extensive network of friends and tennis partners – might seem like an unlikely free speech and anti-war trailblazer.

Asked how it happened, she talked about moving as a three-year-old from Baltimore to rural Manchester, in Carroll County, where she grew up feeling a little out of place. “Perhaps like all teens, I had the feeling that I didn’t fit in.” (The Lions Club had recruited her dad to come work there, after graduation from University of Maryland dental school.)

Her father “rented office space to a Jewish optometrist. He saw black patients. We entertained African-Americans in our home,” she said. That such things were frowned on in her town was eye-opening. Traveling to Israel and Palestine and to various world capitals for Women in Black gatherings has reinforced her commitment, she said.

Friday at noontime she was at it again, at a McKeldin Square vigil that was also a celebration of their legal victory. About 15 people joined her, including ACLU staffers and several of the original women who were there that day when the police kicked them out. Peace signs – on hats, scarves, earrings – were everywhere.

Cunningham brought a half-sheet cake decorated with a photo of their group at McKeldin in June of 2002. (She specifically chose that photo because it showed they had been vigiling there before April 2003, “when the bike police said they’d never seen us before,” and because it included Kimberly Nolan, who is now deceased.)

Eat some cake, she urged reporters, talk to the others: “Every woman here is a story.”

Indeed, Women in Black has no dues, no leaders. All the women were giving interviews, smiling broadly and holding up their signs for motorists and strollers to see.