Speech by "Granny D", Doris Haddock
For WAND's Mother's Day Breakfast, Detroit, Michigan, on 5/9/03

We meet in disturbing times, but we must not be disturbed. We must be calm and peaceful, for peace cannot come from hearts disturbed and angry. And peace, if it is to come, must come from us, from our hearts.

Here are some things to give us calm comfort. France and Germany were together in something at last, and our man in the White House deserves a Nobel Peace Prize at least for that, if for nothing else.

The man in the White House is the best political organizer we have ever had. He generated the largest protest demonstrations the earth has ever seen in the last few months. He has us organizing on the peace front; the civil liberties front, the environmental front, and the domestic budget front - everywhere, people all over the world are waking up after a long sleep. It is a dangerous time, but a great time - a great awakening - and we must give credit to the man whose monumental presumption has made this possible.

Will our hearts be on a roller coaster of Bush's design? We will not give him that. There is only one way off this roller coaster, and that is to focus our lives now on November 2nd, 2004. That is the mountaintop we must have in our vision. We American have a dream of independence, of responsible self-governance and individual freedom. We want to see ourselves as a beacon in the world for the great dream of freedom and justice and for simple kindness and common sense. We have offered to the world that dream of freedom and plenty, that dream that humans have always held in their hopes for themselves and for their children.

We have held this dream in spite of the reality of our history. We have engaged in slavery and we wiped out a noble race who lived in this land before us. We held our dream in spite of everything, because it has been our duty to hold this dream, imperfect as we are. All the nations of the world remind us of our duty when they send us their children to educate or to assimilate into a culture where individuals have a chance to freely live up to their unique potentials. The French reminded us of our duty with their gift of Lady Liberty that stands today in New York Harbor. Oh, I hope they don't want her back!

We must not be discouraged because in our slow and wobbly path forward to a better world we sometimes find ourselves taking great steps backward.

And so it is now, as we discard our Bill of Rights and discard our international cooperation of all kinds and remake the world for power and greed instead of for justice. It has happened before. But always there have been activists who pulled us back from the brink of Fascism and recovered our Democracy. And so it will happen today, if we do the job fate has given us to do. This is a dark and violent time in a dark presidency, but it is no coup. This is not the end of American Democracy, or the beginning of some fascist regime. We are too big, we are too willful and too brave a people for that to ever be so, though there is great cause to worry.

We have invaded and bombed before when we might have negotiated, or when we might have worked cooperatively. Americans have gone to jail before, and suffered popular abuse before because they stood against great wrongs. History usually proves them right. And so it is now, as many of us prepare to go to jail rather than pretend that nothing serious is happening in America. We must do our best until the nation awakes again and embraces its dream again.

Alaska's glaciers are melting. Seas are rising. Droughts and their fires sweep across our purple mountains and our fruited pains. No respected scientist doubts any longer that we are destroying the planet rapidly. We have an obligation to our children. We will have to stand in front of our Maker - will we not? - and explain how we properly cared for the great gift of life we were given - the birds and fish and flowers of this Eden.

Here is what we must do now. We must, of course, find a good candidate who can represent all of us well, including the moderate middle of American thought where elections are won. We must not look for the perfect candidate, but for a candidate who believes in the value of our planet and who will uphold the Bill of Rights, which is now under attack by Bush's wildly unpatriotic Patriot Act and its planned Patriot Act II, which is treason.

Here is what we must do. We must arrange to vote by absentee ballot in the general election, so that we can go to the swing states and work to get out the vote on Election Day. I will do that, will you?

If you live in a swing state, of course, you can do your work in your own neighborhood. But if you live in a state that is clearly on one side of the ledger or the other, you must get in your car or a bus or an airplane and go, at your own expense, to an area where you can do some good getting people to the polls. You can also do some good in advance of that to make sure that people are registered to vote.

We can be happy in this great adventure, upon which so much depends. We will not let anger and frustration poison our lives. We will get busy and make our plans. Sign up with me as a swing state suffragette on http://www.goodgovernment.org/swingstate/index.htm Let us build an army and be happy about it. When you were a child, did you not want a chance to save the world? Well, be happy. We have been given that job. We have work to do now with our neighbors, so that they wave refreshed in their heart the idea of a great America. One that takes care of its people and one that acts as a force for reason and peace and justice throughout the world.

Now we move toward the 2004 election, those of us who want to see a change of leadership in the United States - and that is not everyone, to be sure - many Americans think our present leadership is excellent and they have a right to that view, which we respect.

But those of us hoping for a different direction must get busy now, as we will face a $200 million campaign by the Bush people, plus every trick in the book in regards to linking Mr. Bush to the emotions of the 9/11 tragedy. Even if the economy is still suffering and even if Iraq is still a mess, not to mention our relations with so many of our traditional allies, it will be a hard campaign to beat.

But if it happens that he is defeated, how will historians one day describe how it happened?? We must be able to visualize this outcome if we want it to occur. I think that historians will say that the mass disinformation of the right wing news organizations and the nearly quarter billion dollars spent by the Bush campaign were overcome because hundreds of thousands of people organized a door-to-door campaign to get quality information into people's hands, that these people registered millions of new voters, that they drove people to the polls and made millions of phone calls. In short, that the election of 2004 was people against money, and that the people won.

I think our world depends upon our work in the months ahead. Who are we to be out there fighting, to be winning elections? We are the people who believe in a world of environmental beauty, of happiness and not exploitation, of justice and not oppression and torture. A world safe for children. Government budgets that invest in our smart babies not smart bombs. We believe in international law and cooperative action. We are the opposite numbers to the Bush neo-conservatives. If we lose, the world loses its environment, its justice, its happiness. So we are clear that we must win.

There are many among us on the peace trail who will not support a candidate unless that candidate is perfect on every issue. Politics is about winning. For us, it is about winning to save lives and raise people up from poverty and illness and loneliness and injustice. Those posturing on the left sometimes forget that. Don't tell me that you can't support a particular candidate because of this issue or that. This isn't about you and your precious political standards. It is about saving nature and our people. We are coming out to win, so please don't stand in our way.

This is great work. Is it not indeed joyful to find yourself embarking on a life of great meaning? Yes, that is the great peace march smile we saw on the streets of New York and Washington and San Francisco and a thousand other cities and towns. Aren't we joyful for this moment, when all is at stake? We are, we are. And do not stand in the way of our joy.

For what is life, if not a theater of the soul where we might take our part for good or ill? What better thing do we have to do in these months ahead than save the world? We will, we will. And do not stand in the way of our joy.

Thank you.