When
Granny comes a-sweeping
by Stephanie
Hiller
"The
time for this shame is ending. The American
people see it and have decided against it.
Our brooms are ballots, and we come
a-sweeping."
-- Granny D.
A walk of 3400 miles did
not exhaust the indefatigable Doris Haddock, 90,
known nationwide as "Granny D". Her
fourteen-month walking crusade for campaign
finance reform helped her emphysema so much that
now she recommends walking to everyone who
suffers from it.
She's not about to stop.
She keeps giving talks all over the country and
is working on a book to be published by Random
House next spring. On April 21, she and 35
others from Alliance for Democracy held a
protest in the Rotunda on Capitol Hill. The
likelihood that they were going to be arrested
did not faze her one bit.
"They could forget about
me tomorrow," she responded when asked if she
enjoyed being a celebrity, "that crazy lady who
walked across the country for campaign finance
reform. That's why I'm pushing and pushing until
the elections. We only need 8 more votes to pass
the Feingold-McCain bill" which bans "soft
money" contributions by corporations and unions.
But why is campaign
finance so important to 90-year-old Granny D.
that she was willing to walk ten miles a day in
every kind of weather to make her point? "I went
on this trek because Rich McConnell (Senator
R-Ky) said hell would freeze over before he'd
give up soft money."
She walked because she
loves this country -- the way it used to be. "I
have 12 great-grandchildren and I want them to
grow up in a democracy. I'm willing to give my
life for it because I believe that our
government is in great danger of becoming an
oligarchy, that the rich have taken over and the
big money interests are running our
elections."
She walked carrying the
flag, and when she made her homecoming speech in
Chattaqua, New Hampshire, she emphasized the
unique treasure that is still our birthright:
"Our idea that we can all be free, that we can
treat each other fairly with justice under the
law, and that we might all find some happiness
and prosperity together, is not the common
condition or attitude of the world."
Talking to Granny, it's
apparent that she gets a kick out of everything
she does. "It was hard," she said, "but it was
wonderful." She compares it to giving birth.
"You only remember the good parts." Like "The
exhilaration of being able to do it, arriving on
time in Washington DC on Feb 29 with 2,200
people walking behind me."
Did the Americans she
met on the road agree with her? "You have to ask
the right questions," she said. "If you ask
people if they are in favor of campaign finance
reform, they don't know. But if you ask them if
too much money is spent on elections, they say,
Oh, isn't it awful?."
What effect would
campaign finance reform really have on our
lives? "You would have more money! Do you
realize that $150 billion of our tax money is
given to the corporations, unions and wealthy
people for tax breaks, special subsidies and
special regulations? That money would be
available for health and education and building
bridges.
"I'm not against the
corporations. They are our wealth. But they are
getting too greedy." As she wrote in an e-mail
to a man who asked whether she'd rather have
communes, "I don't want to do away with
corporations. I want them to make our cars,
however, not our laws."
Granny D has a way with
words. At Chattaqua she remarked, "The men and
women who would be our public servants need
mentors who have been grayed and wrinkled by
long experience -- a kind of Big Brother, Big
Sister program for politicians at
risk."
When she's serious, she
cuts to the quick. "Think of the millions of
young men who died fighting for democracy. We
spit on their graves when we let democracy slip
away into the sewer of illegal
money."
She's a modest person
who doesn't like to blow her own horn, except to
make a point. "I didn't anticipate as much of a
wave as I have created and I'm very happy for
it. It just shows what one person can do.
"If you take on the pain
yourself instead of pushing it on someone else,
people respect you for it and they pay attention
to you."
Granny
D Arrested on Good Friday!
At approximately Noon on
Good Friday, April 21, Doris "Granny D" Haddock
entered the Capitol Rotunda to make the
following statement. She was joined by
distinguished authors and leaders of the
American environmental movement and the campaign
finance reform movement.
While she was reading a
passage from the Declaration of Independence,
Ms. Haddock was arrested and manacled by Capitol
Police. She was taken to the Capitol Police jail
with 29 supporters, some of whom were merely
standing near her. They were formally charged
and released Friday evening. The trial date is
set for 9 a.m., May 24 (a six month prison term
is possible under the police charge). She was
not harmed in the event, although a mature
gentleman standing with her suffered a serious
head gash when he fell on the pavement and, his
wrists bound behind him, could not break his
fall. He remained untreated for nearly four
hours.
Here is her Rotunda
statement:
Dear Friends,
The First Amendment to
the Constitution says that Congress shall make
no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of
the press; or the right of the people peaceably
to assemble, and to petition the Government for
a redress of grievances.
We are peaceably
assembled here, in this our hall, to freely
speak, to petition our Government. Our grievance
is that we no longer have proper representation.
Our elected leaders are consumed by the need to
raise election funds from special interests, and
they no longer are able to represent the needs
of the people or of our ravaged earth.
We must declare our
independence from the corrupting bonds of big
money in our election campaigns by reforming or
campaign finance system. We must alter our
government. As a people, we know how to declare
our independence and authorize alterations of
our government. Here is how we did so in
Congress, July 4, 1776:
"We hold these truths to
be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable Rights, that among these are
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness.--That to secure these rights,
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving
their just powers from the consent of the
governed, --That whenever any form of Government
becomes destructive of these ends, it is the
Right of the People to alter or to abolish it."
"We have Petitioned for
Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated
Petitions have been answered only by repeated
injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked
by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit
to be the ruler of a free people."
Dear friends, we would
never seek to abolish now what has become our
dear United States. But it is our constant
intention that it should be a government of, by
and for the people, not the special interests.
Our right to alter our government must be used
to sweep these halls clean of greedy interests
so that people may use this government in
service to each other's needs and to protect the
condition of our earth. This we declare.
"And for the support of
this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the
protection of divine Providence, we mutually
pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and
our sacred Honor."
Thank you very much.
Source:
http://www.grannyd.com
Senators,
how did you dare think we do not
care?
Granny D speaking on
the east steps of the U.S.
Capitol
Tuesday, February 29,
2000
Thank you.
Before the days of the
Civil Rights Movement, a senator might have said
that the millions of oppressed people were happy
in their condition. But now, after so much
history, after so much painful growth, we see
the insensitivity and ignorance of such a
statement. How did anyone dare think that the
oppressed and abused were happy in their
condition?
Before the rise of the
Environmental Movement, a senator might have
looked upon a polluted Hudson river and said
that the old river is simply paying the
inevitable price for progress. But now, after so
much sickness endured, so much new understanding
gained of our fragile network of life, and after
so much effort by so many, we see the
insensitivity and ignorance of such a statement.
How did anyone dare think that our beautiful
land stretches itself out for companies to
ravage for their profit and our
misery?
Before the Campaign
Finance Reform Movement, which grows every day
now with such power that it shakes the political
parties to their foundations, a senator might
have advised his fellow member to not worry
about voting down campaign reforms, because the
people don't care. That is, in fact, what
Senators McConnell and Lott did say --and that
is what precipitated my walk. I have come to
tell them that they are wildly mistaken, and I
am glad to have you along to add your voices to
mine.
This morning we began
our walk among the graves of Arlington --so that
those spirits, some of whom may be old friends,
might join us today and that we might ask of
them now, Did you, brave spirits, give your
lives for a government where we might stand
together as free and equal citizens, or did you
give your lives so that laws might be sold to
the highest bidder, turning this temple of our
Fair Republic into a bawdy house where anything
and everything is done for a price? We hear your
answers in the wind.
What might we call the
selling of our government from under us? What
might we call a change of government --from a
government of, by and for the people, to a
government by and for the wealthy elite? I will
not call such a change of government a treason,
but those more courageous shadows standing among
us, whose blood runs through our flag and our
history, and whose accomplishments are more
solid beneath us than these stone steps, why
they might use such a word in angry whispers
--Whispers that trace through the polluted
corridors of this once great Capitol and slip
despairingly through the files of correspondence
and receipts in this city of
corruption.
Senators, we speak for
these spirits and for ourselves: Of course you
may not have our democratic republic to sell.
What our family members died for, we do not
forget. They died for our freedom and equality,
not for a government of the rich alone.
Along my three thousand
miles through the heart of America, which I made
to disprove your lie, did I meet anyone who
thought that their voice as an equal citizen now
counts for much in the corrupt halls of
Washington? No, I did not. Did I meet anyone who
felt anger or pain over this? I did indeed, and
I watched them shake with rage sometimes when
they spoke, and I saw tears well up in their
eyes.
The people I met along
my way have given me messages to deliver here.
The messages are many, written with old and
young hands of every color, and yet the messages
are the same. They are this: Shame on you Mitch
McConnell and those who raise untold millions of
dollars in exchange for public policy. Shame on
you, Senators and Congressmen, who have turned
this headquarters of a great and self-governing
people into a bawdy house.
The time for this shame
is ending. The American people see it and have
decided against it. Our brooms are ballots, and
we come a-sweeping. We will visit every state
where anti-reform Senators are up for reelection
and bring with us the long lists of your
corruptions, and I will be with them. You will
try to buy your way out if it with expensive
advertisements. But we will take such spending
as further proof of your corruption, for
Americans pay ten dollars in extra taxes for
each dollar you receive for your campaigns from
special interests.
While we are here to
speak frankly to our representatives, let us
also speak frankly to ourselves: Along my walk I
have seen an America that is losing the time and
the energy for self-governance. The problems we
see in Washington are problems that have been
sucked into a vacuum of our own making. It is
not enough for us to elect someone, give them a
slim list of ideas and send them off to
represent us. If we do not keep these boys and
girls busy they will always get into trouble. We
must energize our communities to better see our
problems, better plan their happy futures, and
these plans must form the basis of our
instructions to our elected representatives.
This is the responsibility of every adult
American, from native to newcomer, and from
young worker to the long retired. If we are
hypnotized by television and overwrought by life
on a corporate-consumer treadmill, let us snap
out of it and regain our lives as a free, calm,
fearlessly outspoken people who have time for
each other and our communities. Let us pass
election reforms and anti-corruption measures in
our towns and cities and states, winning the
reform wars where they are winnable, changing
the national weather on this subject until the
winds blow even through these columns.
In that regard, I will
spend part of my time now helping motivate
communities to improve their civic life and
their democratic processes. I will do so in
concert with the National Civic League, founded
in 1894 by Theodore Roosevelt and represented
here today by the League's President, Mr.
Christopher Gates of Denver.
Now, Senators, back to
you. If I have offended you speaking this way on
your front steps, that is as it should be; You
have offended America and you have dishonored
the best things it stands for. Take your wounded
pride, get off your backs and onto your feet,
and go across the street to clean your rooms.
You have somewhere on your desks, under the love
letters from your greedy friends and
co-conspirators against representative
democracy, a modest bill against soft money.
Pass it. Then show that you are clever lads by
devising new ways for a great people to talk to
one another again without the necessity of great
wealth. If you cannot do that, then get out of
the way --go home to some other corruption, less
harmful to a great nation. We have millions of
people more worthy of these fine
offices.
So here we are,
Senators, at your doorstep: We the people. How
did you dare think we do not care about our
country? How did you dare think that we would
not come here to these steps to denounce your
corruptions in the name of all who have given
their lives to our country's defense and
improvement? How did you dare think we were so
unpatriotic to have forgotten all those rows
upon rows of graves that mark how much we, as a
people, care for our freedom and our
equality?
The People of our nation
do care. They have told me. They laugh with
disgust about you on the beaches of California.
They shake their heads about you in the native
village of Hashan Kehk in Arizona. In Toyah,
Texas, they pray for deliverance from your
corruption. In Little Rock, they understand in
anger how you undermine their best dreams for
our society. And in Memphis and in Louisville
and in Chillocothe and Clarksburg, through
Pennsylvania and Maryland and into this city
today, the people see you for what you have
become and they are prepared to see you another
way: boarding the trains at the great train
station down the street. They are ready for real
leaders, unselfish and principled leaders who
will prove their worth by voting for meaningful
campaign finance reform this year.
The time has come,
Senators, for reform or for some new Senators.
Tell us which it will be, and then we will go
vote.
In the name of the
people who have sent me along to you, and in the
name of the generations before who have
sacrificed so much for the sanctity of our free
institutions and who stand with us in spirit
today, I make this demand.
For more by and about
Doris Haddock go to her website
at
http://www. GrannyD.com
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