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What protest?
Demonstration more fuss than bother
Posted: Saturday April 12, 2003 8:09 PM
Updated: Sunday April 13, 2003 8:26 PM
By TARA GRAVEL
Senior Editor, GOLF MAGAZINE
AUGUSTA, Ga. -- Down Washington Road, about a half-mile from Augusta National, past Norton Car
Stereo and Copy Uniform, past the Scottish Rite Center (home of the Ancient
and Accepted Scottish Rite of Free Masonry), past the Augusta Ballroom Dance
Studio and the IHOP, past a slew of signs for $10 parking, beyond the Food
Lion and the Dollar General Store, and finally past a small booth selling "No
Burk" buttons, a protest happened. Sort of.
The entire affair was more of a kerfuffle than a controversy.
Print reporters, television crews, and the police far outnumbered the
protesters, and rumors of busloads of hundreds of women turned out to be just
that -- rumors. About six or seven people lined Washington Road, holding signs
that said, "Discrimination is not a game," and "Women pay while CEOs play."
One said, "Hootie, Patootie, Shame on Youtie." Men driving by yelled out
things like, "Get a real cause," but their taunts were mostly drowned out by
Martha Burk's loudspeaker, set up facing the weedy five-acre field.
Repeatedly, the women on stage, which included Burk and 25-year-old Jessica Terlikowskia, a full-time activist from Washington, D.C., said
that women were not allowed to play at Augusta National.
Not true. They can, and frequently do, as guests of members.
However, that didn't matter to many of the women there.
"We're aware of that," said Becci Robbins, who drove from Columbia, South
Carolina, Saturday morning to support the cause. "I just don't feel I should
have to be anybody's guest to be able to play."
Robbins, who doesn't play golf and works for an activist organization in
South Carolina, traveled to the protest because, "I'm stunned that it's 2003
and women are still being excluded from major organizations. I felt like I
had to come out and back this. I can't stand back and watch blatant
discrimination."
But even Robbins noted the poor turnout. She had expected more support from
Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition and perhaps other African American groups.
"Jackson should have showed up himself. It's unfortunate that it's just women
at the table here," she said.
One man who attended, Christopher Turman, is one of three employees,
including Burk, at the National Coalition of Women's Organizations. Around 11
a.m., he was helping a woman into an oversized costume of a female military
officer, as a group of people approximately 20 yards away began pumping air
into a 20-foot pink pig.
"We're reminding people that women have come a long way," he said before
being distracted by the unwieldy, 10-foot-tall outfit, out of which its
wearer couldn't see.
"Women are defending us," added Connie Cordevilla, a member of the Washington Union of Women who was helping Turman. "They're being taken as prisoners
of war, and they can't play at a place like Augusta."
Cordevilla and Turman finally got the soldier costume centered, and Turman
said to the woman inside, "It'd be great if we could teach her to salute."
Meanwhile, a woman on stage yelled that Augusta National members were
terrified that the controversy would force them to let a woman in.
Those in the know realize that the powers at Augusta tremble at
nothing -- especially not outsized rhetoric and props. And most golf
industry insiders have long discussed among themselves whether Burk's
movement has actually set the cause back. Hootie is notoriously stubborn, and
at last year's Masters, before anyone had heard of Burk, the
scuttlebutt was that it wouldn't be long before a female was admitted. Now,
Hootie will likely hold his ground so as not to appear he is bending to political
pressure.
Back inside the gates, away from the strip mall glory of Washington Road
and the-protest-that-almost-was, there was one sign, of concession or
prudence, that things had changed a little at Augusta National. The plaque
that always graced one of the clubhouse doors, "Gentlemen Only," had been
replaced with another: "Grill Room."
You can E-mail your comments to Tara Gravel at: tara.gravel@time4.com.
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