Doris Haddock Is Dead at 100; Walked for Campaign Finance Reform

I was so saddened to learn of the passing of Granny D, one of my biggest heroes. I'm also feeling sad because of how many still do not know of this phenomenal woman... and because she lived to see the Supreme Court decision of 1/21/10 officially invoking corporate personhood. But more than all this sadness is my supreme heartfelt gratitude for this amazing woman. She inspires me! Does she inspire you?... Peace & blessings ~ Molly

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Doris “Granny D” Haddock

at her home in Dublin, N.H, in 2004.

Doris Haddock was almost 89, stoop-shouldered but stiff-spined, when she laced up her sneakers, threw on a backpack and began trekking 3,200 miles across the country on New Year’s Day in 1999 — a one-woman march for campaign finance reform that started in Pasadena, Calif., and ended on the steps of the Capitol in Washington 14 months later.

Granny D, as she preferred to be called, drew considerable attention to her cause along the way. Cameras captured her strides. Drivers who had seen her banner on TV — “Granny D for Campaign Finance Reform” — honked. Politicians came out to pose for pictures. Reporters scratched her utterances into their notebooks.

In El Paso one Saturday night in April 1999, after passing strip clubs, fireworks stands and a sea of scrub brush along Route 62, Mrs. Haddock sat with a New York Times reporter at a Mexican restaurant.

“It just infuriates me!” she said, balling her hands into fists and striking the table. “I feel we are losing our democracy. The corporations are taking over and deciding who gets elected.”

On Tuesday, at her home in Dublin, N.H., Mrs. Haddock died of complications of emphysema, her longtime friend Maude Salinger said. Mrs. Haddock was 100.

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/us/12haddock.html

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Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander. ~ Holocaust Museum, Washington, DC

Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral. ~ Paulo Freire

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt