Seniors for Peace Turns Nine

When the average age of your members is 87 years old, you'd be hard pressed to describe your organization as vibrant, growing and irrepressible.

That is, unless you are the Seniors for Peace, the group founded in 2003 during the run-up to the Iraq War that celebrated its ninth anniversary last week with an event at , where all but 20 of its 160 members live.

And if you needed any evidence of the group's vibrancy, the video (at right) of 17 of its members performing "This Little Light of Mine" at the Occupy San Francisco protests last November should do the trick.

"We had quite a group of people watching us for that," says 94-year-old Seniors for Peace co-founder Bill Usher. "We don't approve of the violent aspects of that movement, but the objective of showing the inequality between the 99 percent and the 1 percent, we're all for that."

A few dozen Seniors for Peace members gathered Monday at the Redwoods to celebrate the anniversary of the group's first anti-war protest, which occured on the final Friday of January 2003 at Camino Alto and Miller Avenue during the early buildup to the Iraq war.

Those protests have continued ever since - 468 consecutive Fridays, by Usher's count. Its membership includes 99-year-old Al Goldbaum, who attended an Occupy Oakland event recent, as well as Jean Murphy, who is 101 - "just like the highway," she says.

"We're going to keep at it," Usher says.