The 28-year-old activist and mother arrived at a Kmart in New York City last Sunday afternoon to protest something she’d read about in The Village Voice, the New York weekly. The store has been selling Easter baskets filled not with traditional chocolate bunnies, but instead with military action figures. The packages, wrapped in pretty bows, also contained little machine guns, grenades and knives. She quietly stood inside the store holding a sign that read SOMEONE’S IN MY EASTER BASKET … AND IT’S G.I. JOE!!
“Children should understand that war is not a game,” says Hamilton-Thibert, who has been active in recent protests against possible war in Iraq. “These are replicas of weapons that are used to maim and kill.” Hamilton-Thibert, a resident of the Astoria section of Queens, refused to leave the store and was eventually arrested and taken to the city’s Ninth Precinct, where she spent the night.
This weekend, Hamilton-Thibert plans to return to Kmart on Sunday afternoon. Only this time, she thinks her 3 p.m. protest will be mirrored across the country at other Kmart stores. Founding a group she calls the Easterbunny Liberation Organization and Friends of Chocolate Bunnies, Hamilton-Thibert began a massive e-mail campaign this week to bring pressure on Kmart. She’s gone on the radio, she’s written about her experience for activist Web sites and she’s worked her network of like-minded friends. Another organization, MAMA (Mothers Alliance for Militant Action) will take part in the protest. All involved will wear bunny ears.
Kmart spokesperson Abigail Jacobs says that as long as protestors have the proper permits, they are free to assemble in front of the stores. But any demonstrator who steps inside may be arrested. Jacobs also says the military-themed Easter baskets are not new to Kmart. “We’ve carried these for years, and it’s the first time we’ve heard from anyone,” she said Friday. The corporate office has given store managers the option of pulling the products, but has issued no directive. “Kmart considers itself the ‘store of the neighborhood’ and we are responding to this issue by making decisions at a neighborhood level, not a national level,” Jacobs says.
Walgreens also sold the baskets until last week, then pulled them from the shelves at nearly 4,000 stores. The chain “considered the impending war and thought it would not be appropriate to sell baskets with soldiers or military men,” spokesperson Carol Hively told USA Today.
But Hamilton-Thibert won’t be happy until the product is banned all across the country. “We’re indoctrinating our children,” she said. The baskets are “really foreboding and almost sinister, besides being in completely bad taste.” And when it comes to taste, it’s hard to argue with a bunch of moms in bunny ears.
