I had the opportunity to meet Granny D in the beautiful old growth Blanton forest in eastern Kentucky. We were there for the national forest protection council and our soulful meeting was one of the highlights of the weekend for me. She is a fireball of energy, with a seemingly endless vitality of spirit and childlike eyes full of wisdom and humor... She calls herself a concerned great grandmother but I see her as a role model who inspires all she meets... She walked across America encouraging campaign finance reform and has become, along with Julia butterfly and Laura Louie, one of my heroes, unafraid of standing up to this misguided government and speaking truth... This interview will give u a lift...

Woody.

Dennis Burke has worked and walked alongside Doris Granny D Haddock for many years. His words resonate with the energy she brings to those who join her agenda.

I met Doris "Granny D" Haddock a hundred years ago: my kids were in high school, Bill Clinton was in the White House, America wasn't yet a subscriber to the German idea of preemptive warfare, the gap between rich and poor was something that leaders tried to narrow, Americans could count on the idea of having an attorney and a hearing if they were arrested: all that--which is now, of course, a quaint memory.

Doris walked through my Arizona desert. People can't do that, especially at age 90, so her stepping out there was a not-so-little leap of faith in the belief that people would rally around to support her and, in the process, support her cause--campaign finance reform.

When she walked out of the deadly Mojave Desert into town of Parker, Arizona, she was big news. The mayor introduced her all over town. "This is the woman who walked here across the Mojave. She is doing it to bring attention to Senator McCain's campaign finance reform bill. Tell them about it, Doris." And so began a cycle of learning and community activism that rolled across America. When she arrived in Washington DC, skiing the last 100 miles after a blizzard, thousands were there to meet her. Boxer, Wellstons, Feingold, and many others were in the crowd as she finished the miles to the Capitol and gave a speech there that is now taught around the world as an American rhetorical classic.

She has no particular genius, except to keep at it: to put one foot in front of another in the pursuit of her dreams for her people and her planet.

Getting to DC was just the beginning of a two year walking vigil and fast in that city--it took that long to get the bill through. She was arrested and jailed twice. Her speech before a DC judge, and his warm and wise reply, is the stuff of a Capra film. It is better than that, actually, because it is all real. She is real. So real, in fact, that you may never have heard of this piece of New Hampshire granite before now, thanks to a media culture that dines on ephemera and illusion.

When no one would speak out for peace after 9/11, she did, suffering the hate that she know would shower down upon her. But she was right, and history already knows that.

When, last year, no Democrat would run against the popular Republican senator from her home state of New Hampshire, she jumped in, using the opportunity to talk about the policies of George Bush, and organizing young and old to get out the vote. She took not one dollar of PAC or other special interest money, yet she won in several major communities where she had the resources to campaign. Mr. Bush lost the state by a mere 9,000 votes, and history needs to give Doris a share of that. Had we a Doris in every swing state...

She is 95 now. She walks several miles a day through the woods of southern New Hampshire. She speaks to groups that know enough to invite her. She is not finished with her dreams for her country. Her voice is strong and her thoughts clear.

Dennis M. Burke, Arizona

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