Silver Moon

Silver Moon (born 1952 as Valerie Smith) is an Australian peace activist, feminist, musician, and teacher who describes herself as an "anarchist feminist lesbian activist".

Early life and education Silver Moon was born on 9 July 1952 as Valerie Smith, at the Northern Community Hospital in Prospect in the northern suburbs of Adelaide, South Australia. She was the youngest of six children, having four brothers and one sister. Her mother, Audrey Mau, was a pianist and her father was a mechanic at South Australian Railways. She grew up in Blair Athol, also in the northern suburbs of Adelaide. She attended Blair Athol Primary School and Enfield High School. She was a Sunday school teacher until the age of 15, which made her aware of the inequality of male and female roles in her church.

At home Moon's family had no books and, an avid reader, she was dependent on the local library. She was a rebel at high school, writing for the school newspaper and, according to her, was disliked by the teachers. She took part in protests against the Vietnam War and in an anti-apartheid demonstration at Norwood Oval in Adelaide against the visiting South Africa national rugby union team. With Australia supporting the U.S. in Vietnam, her youngest brother was conscripted to fight there.

She experienced the frequent attempts by bailiffs to evict the women, and was often arrested for blocking access to or egress from the camp, or for cutting the fence and entering the base, in at least one case with women roller skating down the runway. She conducted her own defence in court. Moon also wrote and performed songs, some of which can be found on the Danish Peace Academy web site. As did many of the women at Greenham, she visited a peace camp in Denmark and the Faslane Peace Camp at the Faslane nuclear submarine base in Scotland.

Moon was imprisoned three times. Her first prison sentence was at Holloway women's prison in London, where she was held for a week. She refused to eat until she was given vegan food. She has said that she went in as anti-nuclear activist and came out as prison reformer. In Risley prison in Cheshire she shared a room with 22 women. In 1986, the International Year of Peace, she joined a Women's Peace Bus from Britain to the Soviet Union. She then spent two years living near Dumfries in Scotland before returning to Australia. She briefly returned to Greenham Common for the tenth anniversary of the protest in 1991. She has lived on a farm with her partner since 1988.