Granny D: Progressive Coalition of Kucinich and Dean?

The following is a speech given by 94 year-old Doris "Granny D"
Haddock in Gainesville, Florida today. She is on a 15,000-mile voter
registration trek. In the speech, given to Gainesville's progressive
community, she outlines workable ways to truly "wake up the vote" this
year, and she begins the process of moving the Kucinich people and the
Dean people into a new "progressive caucus" (Here's a good reason to
keep those MeetUps meeting!) She hitchhiked to meet Kucinich this week
to successfully make her case. I hope you will read it and I hope you
and your political friends will employ some of the ideas in the speech
and on her website: http://GrannyD.com The website also contains a
weblog of her travels--difficult, heroic, funny, full of ideas, and
worth the read. This is going to a small list, so please pass it along.


Granny D in Gainesville today:

___________________________________________________

Thank You very much.

I am on a long trek across our beautiful country to see what one person
and a few friends might do to engage more citizens in this democracy
and to have them participate in the coming election in a way that will
provide us with leadership that we will all have had a hand in
selecting. That may seem like boring old politics, but it is much more
than that, at least to me. And my journey is a great joy.

On the farms where I have stayed, and in the poorest corners of our
poorest neighborhoods, I have met so many people who are kind and
generous and full of dreams for their lives and for their community and
for their country.
These people see the elites of the right fighting with the elites of
the left. And that is all it is, usually. Even when the elites of the
left are elected, there are never enough resources provided to really
solve problems of the poor on the required scale. Unless we address
this failing on our part, we have no right to ask people in poor
communities to register just because we want them to. Part of waking up
the vote is waking up our own moral sensibilities.(cut)



Just do it, friends. It's all out there and it's beautiful beyond
description.

Let me say one more thing. I am hoping all the progressives who have
had candidates in the presidential race will join forces in a new
progressive organization, and I hope that can begin this month. I
specifically hope Mr. Kucinich and Gov. Dean will have a conversation
about that soon. In person yesterday, I have asked Mr. Kucinich if he
will call the Governor about joining forces for a new progressive
organization, and he said he would make that call.

Politics is a means of creating social change. The most important word
in politics is the word energy, because energy is needed to overcome
inertia of rest, to lift us forward out of the old ruts in which the
wagons of civilization get bogged down. There are two kinds of
political energy: joy and fear. Too often, we progressives succumb to
using the politics of fear, which is the specialty of our opponents.
The politics of joy is more powerful. We live the free, creative, just
and sustainable life we would hope will spread to others. Our events
and our words and our campaigns must be expressions of this better
world. Our politics must be grounded in the joyful present moment, not
dragged from a fearful future. Even our most progressive candidates
project fear of the future when they should operate from the joy of the
present. That is who we are. We are about life, in all its flowering
forms, and we are about love. We celebrate this. We are fearless of the
future, for if we make too much space in our hearts for fear, we lose
the joy that is the energy we need to move our people forward. So break
out the food and the drinks and the kites and the music and the art and
the creative juices of the moment. We must create a moving feast, a
moving celebration of life. We must put the party back in party
politics, and you will see who joins us.

Thank you.


http://home.earthlink.net/

She speaks the truth.

The true left must band together!

We have been united like never before, by our "uniter not divider" president.

http://www.wgoeshome.com

:kick: