“This, My Government”
The U.S. Capitol steps
March 19, 2001
Mrs. Haddock with this speech began a week-long, 24-hour walk and fast around the Capitol building during the Senate debate of the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Bill, which passed. Much of her walk was in freezing rain.
Dear Friends,
The idea that the American government is my government is an idea that is a joy to my heart, though it does not always feel like my government. When it is, it is a part of me. I am a part of it. I help direct its actions according to my civic values, through the work of my representatives in its powerful councils. In this way, through them, I can better fulfill my responsibility to do good for my countrymen and for others around the world. If I cannot fulfill these responsibilities, a soul sickness comes over me and over the land itself. There is a high price paid in America and around the world when Americans, whose values are profoundly fair and generous, are not in control of their own government and when they do not believe they are indeed a self-governing people.
Some of you have never known the feeling that it is your government. Some groups, by income or race, have been denied that feeling through all their generations. I have been lucky. I have known the feeling.
Well, I feel it coming again.
You may say, "Doris, did you not see how the credit card industry bought a bill last week?
I saw that. All America saw that.
Or, "Doris, did you not see, just before that, how manufacturers stopped the worker safety bill, or how the coal lobby has undermined our nation's ability to stop the destruction of the earth's climate?"
Yes, I see that. I agree with you.
I agree that there may have been uglier Congresses in our history, or less competent ones, but there has never been a more fundamentally corrupt one than the present 107th Congress. It may some day be a mark of great shame to have a family member who served in it if they did not mightily resist it.
And I agree that this corporate coup that we have suffered, fueled by the campaign finance system, is the most serious threat to our democratic republic during my long lifetime --certainly democracy had a better chance of survival in the darkest days of the two world wars.
But I am not worried that we shall overcome this time of evil.
It is a bit early to celebrate. I do hope that, at the end of this present battle for reform, we can say the day is ours. I know we are small and the forces against us are strong and unprincipled in battle. Before this week is out, they may take our best garden tools for reform and twist them into poisoned blades to dig corruption deeper. Indeed, the 107th shall make a nice plum pudding of the McCain-Feingold bill. It will be fun to watch.
They will cry into their million-dollar campaign troughs over the idea that any real reform might tilt the playing field unfairly. It doesn't matter how the field it tilted if no team is playing for the people. The playing field is up beyond the moon now, and it matters very little to ordinary Americans whether it is tilted in favor of the credit card party or the coal party. They are not playing for us anymore.
I am not discouraged. We the people can afford any such loss and yet we shall always overcome. We are the millions. Ours are those who have happily died to defend this country and its idea of a government of its people. We the people are generous in our sacrifice for democracy, and no one is rich enough or cruel enough to stand forever in the way of our sacrifices and our dreams.
But we need not wait forever for that feeling of having our own government. I feel the earth and sky trembling around us, The profitable glory days of this bawdy house called the 107th Congress are fading in the bright light of America's rising contempt. A breeze of reform rises.
It will be written in history that America came into a dark time when its leaders became corrupt--so dishonest they could not admit it even to themselves.
And history shall further record that a dedicated band of people sacrificed the best years of their lives to set their people free from the bondage of corruption. Let history say they did so, or that they died trying.
I know these heroes by name and I am so proud to know them, as they stand around me now.
Americans will succeed in this battle, I assure you. And as we march, the spirits of those who sacrificed everything for democracy walk behind us--bandaged, on crutches, but each wearing a determined smile because they understand that we are not interested in forgetting their sacrifice or giving up this fight. They walk before us with fife and drum, reminding us that heaven may be our work tomorrow but America is our work today. And as long as any one of us is left standing to claim these columns--to claim this, my government! then we are not defeated.
Thank you, and now I should like to begin my walk.