- 'Granny D' of Dublin, NH, is the U.S. Democratic Candidate
for Senate. Back in 1927 Granny (Doris) had dreamed of becoming an actress.
Granny says she was a real clown. Granny's acting career got shelved when
James Haddock came along and helped her pursue her dream of going to college.
On a school holiday she and Jim were secretly married. In that long ago
age, women at the school were not allowed to be married. Granny ended up
having to leave for fear that she would contaminate the other young innocent
girls in the school.
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- I don't know about Granny D contaminating people but
she is contagious. In a world of passivity, apathy, and corruption--Granny's
favorite subject; she comes marching out of the past to remind us all of
what patriotism, love of country, and speaking out is all about. When the
presumed Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate dropped out of the race days
before the filing deadline in June of this year, Granny D-having just completed
a more than 22,000 mile voter registration effort directed at working women-decided
to challenge the incumbent. Granny told me that she couldn't stand to think
that the people wouldn't have a choice.
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- Granny became know throughout the nation when on Jan
1,1999, at the age of 89, she began a walk across the country to draw attention
to the need for campaign finance reform. Granny is no stranger to hardship
having raised her family during the Great Depression and working in a shoe
factory. She sees a wrong and she doesn't wring her hands or lament that
nobody cares-she puts on her walking shoes and marches in. Daily we see
people getting accolades for one thing or another while the real heroes
and heroines go mostly unnoticed. That was Doris and Jim Haddock back in
1960 when they stopped the planned use of hydrogen bombs in Alaska, saving
an Inuit fishing village at Point Hope. She nursed Jim through 10 years
of Alzheimer's disease and like the Energizer Bunny just kept on a ticking.
Now at age 94 she's decided that she's not going to sit around waiting
for things to turn around in Washington-Granny's tired of waiting so she's
going to Washington to straighten things out.
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- Granny is a wisp of a woman; gallivanting hither and
yon in her straw hat. But don't let her size fool you-dynamite comes in
small packages and Granny is lit when you get her to a podium. Granny has
lived long-suffered much and seen plenty. She doesn't have time for platitudes,
empty clanging rhetoric, or the usual false promises of politicians. Unlike
the shallow- superficial- designer dressed boys in Foggy Bottom, she doesn't
take kindly to the people being robbed. She may even give them a few lessons
in humility and some wisdom that they're sadly lacking.
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- Granny says, " We live in a many-layered world and
we are many layered people. Think of life as a seven layer cake and you
will do all right. Each person has many different layers and when one makes
a 'snap judgment' about another based on a single quality, it 'dehumanizes'
them, which is a great crime. Most people are worth knowing if you take
time to understand them. Unfamiliarity with other people, ignorance of
other people is what makes war possible and violence possible and it drives
all the social divisions in a school or in a town or a nation or a world.
Sometimes one of the most important but difficult tasks for a person is
to forgive, sometimes without cause, and move on with life." The wisdom
and insight of a Granny D would soon see peace amongst all men instead
of profiteering war without end. Seems to me if you stop at one layer you
miss the multi-layers of icing and other surprises. Maybe that's part of
society's problem- we want only the icing, and if that doesn't please we
ditch the whole cake.
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- Granny states that our nation's leaders have been corrupted
by special interests dollars and no longer represent the interests of their
constituents. She wants to prove that ordinary people can run for office
and win with the small donation from individuals. "So far", she
remarked to me, "it's been harder than I thought." Granny gets
the usual litany of questions everywhere she goes. Isn't it a little late
to be entering politics? "When I was 90, I spent 14 months walking
3,200 miles across America for campaign finance reform. If there is one
thing I learned, it is this: It is never too late, and you are never too
old. I am 94, and I am healthy. I have pledge to one term, which will end
when I am 101. Mr. Gregg pledged to stick to two terms, a promise he is
now breaking by running again. It's my turn."
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- "It took me this long to get angry enough at how
we are misrepresented. We have the power to get involved and set things
right, instead of sitting at home and feeling like victims of our own system.
I want to put the US back in the U.S. Senate." Will not taking PAC
money doom your chances? "On the contrary, I am the voter's only real
choice if they want to be truly represented in the Senate." Do you
have the experience to serve as a U.S. Senator? " Let's see. We have
a $455 BILLION dollar deficit, and unnecessary war, a disappearing job
market and an evaporating middle class. If these are the products of the
experience and expertise of the professional politicians now in office,
do you really want me to brag about such experience? Better that I have
been all over America, in a thousand living rooms and town halls, listening
to the problems and aspirations of our people. I am prepared to represent
them, and I am far better prepared than most of those in Congress, who
look to their own interests and not the people's, and who dance with their
campaign donor masters and not with the people who brought them to the
party".
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- Are there specific positions or things about your own
life experience that set you apart from all other candidates running for
the job? "Perhaps more than any U.S. Senator, I have met with thousands
of Americans in their homes and communities, listening to their ideas and
concerns. I have organized to address those ideas and concerns. The fact
that I will arrive in the Senate with no strings of obligation to special
interest groups does set me apart from all other candidates. As someone
who nursed a husband with Alzheimer's for ten years and who did the hard
legwork of community organizing, I think I am more able to represent real
people than professional career politicians."
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- In what areas have you shown independence from either
your President or party leadership? " I have spoken against the Clinton
White House on campaign reform and I have spoken out against the Bush W
hite House on the issue of war in Iraq and civil liberties. I am a Democrat,
but I have declined financial and other help from the PAC organizations
within the party, and I have neither solicited nor accepted endorsements
from special interest groups."
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- The thing that most impressed me when meeting Granny
D the other evening in a small rural NH town was her simple attire, her
lack of self-importance, her candor, her humor, and genuine interest in
people. It wasn't the usual distant-plastic smile, cold fish handshake,
and measured-scripted sound byte. She stated to me matter-of-factly, "I
say what I want to say." I agreed wholeheartedly telling her at 94
I felt she could say anything she wanted. As she chatted away at the table
where we sat while people gathered I was impressed with the mischievous
sparkle in her eye, her quick wit, and attentiveness to detail. Talking
with Granny D was more like visiting over a back fence-sitting on a front
porch from a long ago time-stopping for a chat as she worked in her garden.
Granny was and is the spirit of America that people long for, the energy,
the openness, and the intelligent discourse. Granny was introduced and
with a simple thank you gave the following speech not only for NH but for
all the nation.
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- "There are many people who are doubtful that a 94
year old woman can get from here to the U.S.Senate. A pollster said that
my victory would be the political upset of the century. Well, the century
is very new, so that may not be too much of an accomplishment, but it will
indeed be a sign that times have changed when I unpack my family pictures
on my Senate office desk and put the "No Lobbyists" sign on my
door."
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- "It will be a sign that the old order is rapidly
fading. The nicely polished men in blue suit and red ties and so full of
themselves and so full of money from all the people who buy their votes---they
will begin to look like the con men that they are. They are slick operators
indeed, the Yes Men of a President who lied us into a war that is killing
our children and the children of another nation; the Yes Men who backed
this President's looting operation of our national treasury, sending us
deeper into the red than ever in our history-so that billionaires might
have another huge tax break while our people can't get health services
and our schools fall apart. These Yes Men have backed the President's service
to multinational corporations, not only in their looting and war profiteering,
but in the destruction of our middle class jobs, offering tax breaks to
companies that will take our best jobs overseas. What kind of representation
is this? It is no representation at all for our taxation, and for the democracy
that so many have given their lives to protect and advance."
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- "Are we to be please with the sprinkling of bacon
bits of jobs and federal this and that these fellows pepper our local newspapers
with, while they serve as unswerving Yes Men to the dark administration
that kills our children and exports our jobs and poisons our air and water
and every day damages our global climate?"
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- "Are we in New Hampshire to be pleased that one
of our senators in particular backed this president as blindly as any senator
from the most right-wing states? Are we prepared to give the radical elements
behind this administration another six years of New Hampshire's vote in
the Senate? How could I stand by and see it happen---see him unopposed?
I could not, and New Hampshire's values and common sense will sweep him
out"
-
- "I am only arriving in Washington as an announcement
that OTHERS are coming. Others will run for Congress who, like me, will
take no special interest money. They will run on a shoestring and yet they
will win, for we are the 'none of the above' votes that give Americans
the power to say something they have been literally dying to say for some
time. They are saying that we the People have had enough of the selfish,
greedy, destructive careerism and pure baloney that has been passing for
public service for too long in the capitol city of our great representative
democracy."
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- "So we are sending real people in to clean up the
mess and start voting with common sense and not with selfishness. All the
special interest lobbyists will all have heart attacks when they see us
coming, and I will not be doing any mouth-to-mouth unless it will frighten
them further."
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- "History will say that it began with the unlikely
election of a 94-year old woman from New Hampshire. If it is the upset
of the century, it is because the people are upset beyond belief. I am
happy to be their 'none of the above' vote, but I do stand for positive
things, too. I am for a Canadian-style system of health insurance for all
Americans. Let us finance it the same way we finance the other things that
all people need----we all need the roads and the fire stations and the
police departments and the defense department, and we all need hospitals,
too. So let's quit beating around the bush and get it done. Do you think
someone who takes nearly a half million dollars from the health industry
is going to tell you that? I am describing Judd Gregg, of course."
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- "In the short days of my campaign I will have much
to say about how we can sensibly get out of Iraq, how we can get our jobs
back from overseas, and how we in New Hampshire can get our federal tax
dollars back for our schools and other programs, so that it is not all
on the back of our property owners. I will have many positive things to
say, and not one of these ideas could be said by someone who gets his campaign
dollars from the special interests who pay politicians to shut up. I am
NOT going to SHUT-UP, because the people of New Hampshire deserve real
representation, and, God help them, I am all they have when it comes to
the U.S.Senate."
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- "I am now running for the things I have walked long
for: a decent government that represents the values, the needs, and the
highest aspirations of its people---a government where the people do participate,
and, through their cooperative action as a local, state and national community,
become that government. In this, we send our neighbors and, yes, our grandmothers
to Congress, because the professional politicians have just not worked
out lately."
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- Like Granny says, she's only the "announcement"
that "others are coming". With all the millionaires in the Senate,
a multi-million dollar health club, plush offices, private dining rooms,
laden tables of fine foods, full medical coverage, pensions that would
choke a horse, vacations which are called "fact finding missions",
relatives given cushy appointments or lobbyists jobs; is it any wonder
that they've lost sight of just who it is they are supposed to be serving?
Seems to me that they don't call it Foggy Bottom for nothing---with the
state of implosion of our nation, it appears that they're all stumbling
and groping their way, from one do nothing committee hearing after another;
while war rages, food lines grow, the young go dying for some elusive utopian
dream of conquest, and tens of thousands in a distant desert land; are
liberated by shells, rockets, and computer guided missiles.
-
- Cheney tells us this is a 'generational war' that this
will go on for years. Look at your youngsters, daughters and sons, is this
what we want for our children; never ending maniacal warfare, blowing whole
lands up and giving lucrative no bid contracts to billionaires to build
them back up again or disappear with the loot? A few are growing obscenely
rich while veterans fight and die for pennies-leaving their families destitute.
Haiburton isn't going to care for them and certainly not a bankrupted treasury.
Washington isn't worried, they've got their health plans, pensions and
speaking fees putting them on easy street. Nope-it's like Granny says,
it's time to clean house and stop this con-game. It's time to stop the
foolish distractions-silly ass promotional debates-and numerous meaningless
single issue arguments and talk about the ruination of America. Time for
the Granny D's to arise and march on Washington-the boys had their chance
and they messed it up big time.
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- Take a lesson from Granny D---start right where you live
and demand some real truth not the scripted sound byte pabulum. Once upon
a time, back in 1927, Granny D (Doris) was in a school play called "The
Goose Hangs High". All is well and the goose hangs high-meant when
the geese were flying high the weather would be good. We wish for Granny
that the Goose Hangs High!
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