• Unity
• Big Money
• We Stuggle for Survival
• The road to freedom
• Boston Social Forum's Convocation
• What's a poor multinational corporation to do?
• Formal announcement for candidate
• Citizens for Participation in Political Action
• Granny's Pledge for Candidates
• Trickle-down democracy?
• Public Financing
• Court May 24, 2000
• Campaign Finance Reform
• Don't Give Up the Ship!
• How a Small Group of Dedicated People Might Actually Do Something
• Don't Stand in the Way of our Joy
• Don't Stand in the Way of our Joy 2
• The Cornerposts of Democracy
• Reform Party Convention, Dearborn
• A New Chautauqua
• Earth Day
• Old Elijah's Tree
• You cannot lose when your enemy is unsustainability itself
• Faneuil Hall
• Fight like hell for your values
• Franklin Pierce College '02
• Franklin Pierce College '03
• Heartwood Conference
• Hogs at the Public Trough
• International Women's Day
• The Internet and Campaigning
• JFK Forum
• To the Apologists of Corruption
• In answer to your question, Mr. McConnell
• The Four Freedoms
• Working Women vote
• Marsh Institute award
• The Monster at the Door
• The Efficacy of Sacrifice-Based Protest
• Arrival in Nashville, 2,200 Miles
• The Center of the World
• Penn State
• Progressive Democrats Alliance
• Robert Frost's Farm
• Rotary Club – Peterborough, NH
• Senators, how did you dare think we do not care?
• Simpson College
• Taxation without Representation
• The Media Conglomeration
• The Rising Sun
• This, My Government
• Like a Tree Standing By the Water
• West Capitol steps
• Where Honor Comes From
• Will We Represent Love in the World?

You cannot lose when your enemy is unsustainability itself

Doris "Granny D" Haddock speaking at the Austin Rolling Thunder Chautauqua,
March 24, 2002

Thank you.

I'm here to offer a word of advice.

I'm not offering it because I think any of you will outlive me. Because, as things are going with the current White House, it looks like we're all going to go together, and any day now.

Indeed, any time the leader of a powerful country points to other people and says, "evil ones," you know he's deep in a hall of mirrors and we're in for a few million deaths, including many of us.

The only thing we can take any cheer in is knowing that the same financial companies who backed all these bad leaders won't be able to send us our credit card bills when we're gone. So let's at least have a nice dinner somewhere before he drops the big one or rounds us all up--both being distinct possibilities.

But don't spend too much because you never know when you're going to be one of the survivors. And if you are, you can bet that the MasterCard folks were in the shadow government bunker with Tom, Dick and George.

But we who may not be able to run as fast as you leave you with a word of advice, as I promised.

Some of you are going to be around to pick up the pieces.

You will have to work very hard to win back the soul of the U.S. Constitution from those who would fearfully put it over their heads in the first little rain and let its ink run away to nothing.

You will have to wrestle democracy away from an imperial presidency, and from a corporate-military-industrial complex the likes of which dear old Ike only half imagined.

You will have to replace the special-interest funding of elections with the public funding of elections.

You will have to replace winner-take-all elections with proportional representation elections, so that all parties, including Greens and Reforms, can sit at the table of power in this country and in the world.

You will have to take down the prisons and build up the schools. You will have to dismantle a health care system that lets only the rich live and replace it with a system worthy of a civilized society.

And how will you find your victories? That is what I will tell you. This is my advice.

As reformers, we seldom win by making a frontal attack. No, we work and we work at a reform and never get too far with it. And while we are hitting our heads against the wall, we tinker with the idea and it gets better and better and more and more people understand what we are getting at. But we never win. The other side loses. Just when we we are about to pack up our banners, along comes an Enron or a Watergate. In the states and in the nation, we only win by being ready, by being on the spot with a good, workable alternative, when the unsustainable systems fail, as they always do.

So don't worry if your state isn't ready for this reform or that. Don't worry if you think the federal government isn't ready for public financing or proportional representation or instant runoff voting or single payer health care or, God forbid, simple human justice and a mature concern for the global environment.

More Enrons are coming than you will be able to count. I see them lining up like wobbling biplanes on approach. Go do your reform work. Represent the good issues, regardless of their chances of victory by today's measures. The measures will change tomorrow.

The rivers are drying up. The seas are rising. The poles are melting. Unsustainably corrupt politics on a global scale has reaped the whirlwind for all of us. We can only save this earth and this democracy by working hard and developing our skills of timing and our courage to act with great leadership and with great wisdom and expertise when opportunities present themselves.

Be an expert in these matters. Work hard as a reformer. And I promise that you will have your day on the field, matched more evenly for the fight than you ever imagined possible.

Well, we got some campaign finance reform. But we didn't get it just because we walked and talked and protested and got hauled away and lobbied and lobbied and did it all so hard --thousands of us-- for so many years. It will be because we did all that and were still right here, right on the sidewalks of Capitol Hill with two bills in the hopper when Enron came to town.

That is my advice. Work hard, with the certain knowledge that a break is coming your way. When your enemy is unsustainability itself, you cannot lose if your play it wisely.

Thank you.