david's doodles

Granny D

On January 1, 1999, Granny D set out on a walk from San Diego to protest the corrupting influence of money in the country’s politics. Two birthdays and 3,200 miles later, she arrived in the nation’s capital. On arrival, she was 90 years old.

She trekked through over 1,000 miles of desert, climbed the Appalachian Range in blizzard conditions, and even skied 100 miles after a huge snowfall made normal walking impossible. She went on to support the McCain/Feingold finance reform bill, organizing rallies and holding fasts in many states. Her organizing efforts twice landed her in jail, including an arrest in the Capitol building for reading aloud the Declaration of Independence.

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We have a duty to look after each other. If we lose control of our government, then we lose our ability to disperse justice and human kindness. Our first priority today, then, is to defeat utterly those forces of greed and corruption that have come between us and our self-governance.

”

  — Doris “Granny D.” Haddock

Born Ethel Doris Rollins January 24, 1920, in Laconia, New Hampshire, she was no stranger to political activism. She married James Haddock on New Year’s Eve, 1929, and raised two children during the Great Depression. With her husband, she fought against Edward Teller’s 1960 plans to explode a hydrogen bomb in Alaska. Happily, the plans were rejected by President Kennedy. Later, in the 1980s, as well as caring for her ailing husband, she took on a local fight against plans for a new highway — and won.

After her historic walk, she found herself embroiled in politics again in 2004. The only Democrat in the New Hampshire race, State Senator Burt Cohen dropped out of the race at the last minute. Seizing the time, Granny D volunteered to join the race and was eventually supported by the New Hampshire Democratic Party. As she said at the time:

While I may struggle for the right word from time to time, I can yet string my words together somewhat better than even our current President. And, while I need glasses for some reading, I can see clearly the difference between a necessary war and an unnecessary war, and the difference between a balanced budget and a deficit.

Although she lost against a former governor with a well-heeled campaign, she did manage to garner an incredible 34% of the vote. From comments she made after the campaign, I think she was relieved to have lost.

These days, at 97, she is on a film tour. Brooklyn filmmaker Marlo Poras had chronicled Haddock’s career from the initial 2004 voter registration attempts to the heady days after she entered the New Hampshire primary. The resulting film, Run, Granny, Run was shown at the March SWSX film festival in Austin, Texas, at the Edinburgh film festival in August, and other film showings around the world. It premiered on HBO earlier this month.

This country has some amazing active citizens, willing to give up creature comforts for the sake of a better future — even those unlikely to share that future. From talking with youth here, I don’t think these activists will be let down. Now, if only we could get “middle America” to spend less time shopping, or to desist watching “reality TV” long enough to actually engage with reality …