Doris 'Granny D' Haddock is in the hospital

WilliamPitt

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Thu Feb-03-05 12:26 PM
Original message

Doris 'Granny D' Haddock is in the hospital

If you are the praying sort, now would be a good time. Surgery for someone of her age is as dangerous as whatever the ailment requiring surgery may be. Please keep this hero in your thoughts.

Received via email:

Friends,

Doris "Granny D" Haddock, 95, is in a Lebanon, New Hampshire hospital
today. She is in surgery at this moment to remove a tumor in her throat.
The surgery is expected to cost her her normal voice, though she said
before surgery that she will find ways to continue to communicate her
political message of reform and democracy. "Sometimes you speak loudest
just by standing there," she said, remembering her several arrests in
the U.S. Capitol Rotunda for standing up for the Bill of Rights and
democratic reforms..

For friends wishing to send cards, her address for the next five days
will be: Doris Haddock, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, 1 Medical
Center Drive, Lebanon NH 03756.

Sincerely,

Dennis Burke

Ps. I will post updates on the http://DemocracyWeek.org site. For those
of you who heard her speak in Washington DC during the recent
counter-inaugural protests, cherish that memory of the great sound of
her voice -- one of the few in our times with the courage to speak the
truth.

Her remarks that morning (Jan 20) at Meridian (Malcolm X) Park:

Thank you.

We have honored Dr. King this week. When we honor him we honor many
others, all the way back in time to the Sermon on the Mount and beyond,
who have given us, if we will but use them, the political tools of love
and their great power over all other human forces.

Gandhi taught us that, when used right, non-violent non-cooperation
always wins. He gave us five principles to remember in its use: First,
know that you are dealing with the truth. Do your research. Bring in the
experts. Know the truth before you dare speak for it.

Second, ask those in authority to remedy the problem at hand, and give
them a reasonable time to act. Don't ask them to do more than they can.

Third, involve the wider community's conscience in the problem. Share
the problem widely.

Fourth, if those in power will not remedy the problem, show the extent
of your moral concern through your personal sacrifice. Stand in the way
of the injustice with your own body, doing no harm to others, for it is
your moral courage that will move the conscience of society toward
awareness and action. If you have not won yet, your sacrifice has been
insufficient. The fifth principle, because the previous four will give
you control of the issue, is to graciously allow the opposing side to
save face in the final settlement, as you must love them, too, and will
meet them again.

We have the power to win, to serve justice, to protect our neighbors and
our planet, but victory comes at the price of our courage and our pain.

So we have our issues. A warming planet, an unjust war, a long list of
policies that do great harm to the people and places of the world. We
have done our homework and know the truth. We have petitioned for the
redress of our grievances and we have waited. We have informed the world
so that many are involved. We know what is next for us and it is the
fourth principle: our sacrifice.

So that our great grandchildren will look back and say of us, yes, in
the first years of the 21st Century, they faced the most difficult of
times with extraordinary courage. They knew they would not live forever
and they cared that their lives and deaths should mean something. They
saved American democracy and the life of the planet with their creative
resistance and their courage. While others around them slept through
grey lives, they were awake, they saw, they acted, they overcame all the
great forces against them. They saved the forests and mountains, the
oceans, streams, the air, the Constitution and its Bill of Rights, they
saved our ancient hope for a just world, for a peaceful world, where the
highest potential of every human might be understood as the greatest
resource of every society and nation.

Well, we know where we are and who we struggle against. I have been in
their jails and it's not so bad. I know many of you have been in their
prisons and felt the sting of their batons and bullets and gasses, and
it is not so bad, compared to losing our freedom or the life of our
planet.

The limousines of monstrous presumption whisk by us today, but we need
not feel powerless, for the real power of history is always in the
people's hearts and hands. All the power of change is given by fate and
history to the courageous, who fear the loss of liberty and justice more
than that brief glimmer of life that sparkles through the eternity of
who we are. And so we take our parts in the great struggle between dark
and light, fear and love, between the withering decomposition of
separation, and the living joy of combination, cooperation and growth.

Let our neighbors, who have voted another way or not at all, see what we
are made of and what we are willing to do for love, for life, for
justice. Only a few more of them need step forward to our side for love
and life and justice to win. They will not step forward if we are not
full of courage and grace and beauty and most of all love. We will
inspire them with awe. For, from this time forward, our courage must
rise to end the war and the coming wars, to end the destruction of our
land and its people, and of our planet and its life. With love in our
hearts, with a vision before us of a better America made visible in our
own lives, we will do what history demands of us now. And so say us all.