https://youtu.be/TFoIGSTIFak?si=-ZIlcbxG63xJYaP7
In the crisp spring air of March 2025, a group of elderly women in outlandish hats and colorful shawls gathered at a town hall event, armed with nothing but their voices and a biting sense of humor. The Piedmont Raging Grannies had arrived, ready to deliver their musical protest against Senator Thom Tillis – a politician notably absent from his own constituency’s gathering.
“Where are you now? Where could you be? Are you hiding at home, you chicken?” belted the Grannies in perfect imperfect harmony, their voices carrying across a crowd of over 1,000 attendees. Their song, “Oh Tillis Do Your Job,” cut through political niceties with the sharp precision that only grandmothers can wield.
As Granny Vicki Ryder once explained in her documentary, “These issues all grow from the same root, and that root is those who use power to subjugate, exploit, and oppress others for their own gain.”
The Piedmont gaggle’s performance embodied this philosophy, directly challenging what they saw as Senator Tillis’s failure to represent their interests.
“The way we saw it, we had to ask him directly – ‘Will you stand up to tyranny?’” explained one Granny after the performance, echoing the refrain that had the audience joining in by the second chorus. Their message was unmistakable: “You work for us. That’s how it works.”
The Raging Grannies phenomenon began in 1987 in Victoria, British Columbia, when eleven determined women, frustrated that their anti-nuclear submarine petitions were being ignored, decided to make “a literal song and dance about the issue.”
“We were inspired to start the project as we got mad at the government and found other people to speak out together on the street,” explains original Raging Granny Fran Thoburn.