I've found a new hero. On January 1, 1999, then 89-year-old Dorris Haddock (Granny D) set out from Pasadena, California on a 14-month, 3,200-mile walk across America. Her goal was to draw attention to our need for real campaign finance reform, and she took every opportunity to make her case. When she finally arrived in Washington, Mrs. Haddock was met by a crowd of 2,200 supporters, including several members of Congress, who joined her for the last few miles.
Granny D is still hard at it. On September 27 she gave a speech to The Citizens for Participation in Political Action in Boston, and it's one of the most exciting pieces I've read in weeks.
It is still a wealthy nation for many people, but poverty is on the rise, and those with jobs find themselves so overworked trying to make ends meet that there is little time for family or for the joy of living. Indeed, there is very little joy left in American life. Workers are not loyal to their companies, because companies treat them like expendable slaves, with no dignity or assurance that hard work will result in advancement or security. We are living in the harsh world invented by a handful of corporate raiders whose values were completely foreign to the fairness and moderation that had so long served as the proper foundation of American success and the American dream of plenty for all. They were not a new kind of person, for there have always been among us a few reptilian hearts of uncommon greed. What was new was the political permission they received for their rape and rampage, which continues.
This brand of rhetoric has become a standard voice in America's political discourse in recent years, particularly since McCain's campaign in 2000, but it seldom carries such weight. Granny D has done something remarkable here: she has appropriated the language of the left — most notably its focus on poverty and the working class — and found in it an essentially conservative attitude, that is, an almost nostalgic desire for a fading American Dream. And, really, who can deny that there is little joy in contemporary American life? What I find most striking about this is that it is so glaringly obvious — I assume that it is one point behind which the vast majority of Americans could rally — and so alien to our actual political life, which is the actual point of her speech:
If we Americans are split into two meaningful camps, it is not conservative versus liberal. The two camps are these: the politically awake and the hypnotized --hypnotized by television and other mass media, whose overpaid Svengalis dangle the swinging medallions of packaged candidates and oft-told lies. It is all done to politically prolong the open season on us --open season indeed, as the billionaire takeover artists bag their catch for the day. And in their bags are our freedoms, our leisure, our health care futures, our old age security, our family time, our village life, our family-owned businesses on Main Street, the middle class itself, and our position of honor and peaceful leadership in the world. . . .
True conservatives and liberals unite! Bring your issues and your opinions to our young people, and create a new expectation that they will get involved, get informed, and form a view of themselves as problem-solving citizens of a democracy. Our differences from the left or right are nothing compared to the differences between the politically awake and the hypnotized drones of the new colonialism that now stalks and shreds our civilization.
I urge you to think young, to link with moderates on the other side of the fence, and to approach the schools and teachers who can help you connect your young, rising citizens to the issues that will shape their lives.
If you believe that human beings, in addition to all their other instincts, want to help create and live in a happy, creative and cooperative world, then you must believe that people are to be trusted in their politics so long as they are encouraged to study everyone's experience and study the competing points of view --and so long as they are raised with enough love and security to be capable of empathy. We need not force a liberal agenda on our society, any more than we need force our political opinions on our children. We can enjoy life instead of banging our heads against the old walls. If we encourage an awake thoughtfulness, democracy and justice will have all the victories our hearts can handle.
Preach on, Granny D!
And now this wonderful anecdote from my father, who has been filling my head with great music and stories for as long as I've been listening:
Shortly before Bird's death, he went on tour with the Stan Kenton Band. The story was that Stanley and Charlie were riding across Kansas in Kenton's Porsche listening to the radio. They could get nothing but country. After about an hour, Kenton reached over to turn the car radio off. Bird asked him no to - "I want to listen to that. I never know where my next sound may come from."
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