Granny D Says Bush Guilty of Treason, Urges People to Scare Congress
into Ending Occupation
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/32480
<http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/32480>

Doris "Granny D" Haddock, 98, was just in Gettysburg and delivered the
remarks copied below.

Thank you.

It is a great honor to be here again. One should never bring a long
speech to Gettysburg, so I shall be only two or three times as long as
Mr. Lincoln.

I first met some of you eight years ago. We were all so worried about
losing our democracy that we were wiling to walk across the country and
go to jail. You meet the nicest people in the Washington jail, by the
way –that's where I met Lou and Patricia Hammann.

Eight years ago we could not have imagined what our country was headed
into.

We could not have imagined how many protests, how many marches, how many
letters, phone calls, emails, posters, banners, and campaigns we were in
for. We could not have imagined the amazing people who have come into
our vision, for good and for ill. We could never in our wildest
imaginings have come up with a story about how the US would attack
countries at will based on phony propaganda, how we would become a
country that tortures people, how we would become a country that spits
on the grave of every patriot who lived or died for our freedoms under
the Bill of Rights. Just those eight years ago, we could not have
imagined stolen elections, an eviscerated and cowardly Congress, or
eviscerated and cowardly national news organizations that refused to
see and report the obvious, or editorial pages that refused to call for
the obvious. It has been a remarkable time.

Before the Iraq invasion, you know many of us were on Capitol Hill
trying to talk sense into some people. The people who knew very well
that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were the arms
inspectors. They were on Capitol Hill too, trying to talk sense into
those people. Senators did not want to talk to them because the
Senators knew very well what the truth was. They knew that, if we
wanted to keep looking for those weapons, we only needed to put our
inspectors back in. The inspectors were telling everyone that they then
had the freedom to go anywhere and look at anything in Iraq. They only
stopped looking because Mr. Bush called them home so he could have his
little war. Those inspectors wanted to go back and keep looking.

Here's something you may not know or may have forgotten: Saddam
Hussein, several weeks before our attack, invited our military to come
in and look at anything they wanted to look at. They were invited to
come in, fully armed, and look wherever they wanted. Our administration
said no thank you. The incredible Mr. Richard Perle, who used to live
next door to my late daughter in Washington and who didn't like my
support van parked on the street when I arrived after my long walk,
evidently, according to the New York Times of November 6, 2003, went to
London to meet on behalf of Mr. Bush with a representative of Iraq who
made this offer. No thanks, was the silent response. How is that not
treason against this nation and all who have died?

Men like John McCain knew all this. Men like John Kerry knew all this.
In fact, most the people in Kerry's home state knew all this. They
tried to get appointments with him to talk it over. He refused. Some,
desperate for his attention, went to sit in at his office in Boston and
were arrested. Bishops tried to get to him and offered to be arrested.
He would not listen, because he already knew the truth and knew he
would turn away from it in order to have a chance for the presidency.
Of course, he thereby killed his chance for the presidency. Millions of
Americans marched to stop that attack because WE ALL KNEW. We all knew.
We all did. The people who voted to go to war did so--sent young men
and women to die, sent our bombs to fall on innocent families
abroad--to better their chances to run for president. Was there ever a
more cynical and unpatriotic act than that? Do their hands not drip
with the blood of our children and the world's children? Indeed
they do. And do we believe them when they now say they were fooled by
Mr. Bush? That they had no idea that he would go to war with their
vote, when the name of the bill was in fact the Joint Resolution to
Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq? What does
it say about them if they were fooled when millions of us were in the
streets because we were not fooled?

I mention all this only to make the point that we have not exactly
turned our country around with all our efforts. The same lobbyists who
were swiveling in their chairs and blowing smoke rings around our
Declaration of Independence are swiveling yet, blowing smoke yet. The
same politicians who were selling out our poor and our middle class for
their rich friends are still on the prowl, still selling us out at
every opportunity. And now, when the great casino called Wall Street is
toppling, corruption will allow our tax dollars to prop it up. The same
harm that was being inflicted on our planet then is even more so today,
with very little time left to save the day and save the night and the
winter, spring, summer and fall.

And yet I see that these people who stood up and who marched and who
were willing to go to jail to move America back into the brighter path
have changed things. It is very hard to turn a great ship around when
it is going fast in the wrong direction. But the ship has turned. I
feel it. I see it in young faces.

Some of us have grown weary of trying to bring America around. Some have
given up for a time. Some no longer see the point of standing on street
corners with signs or making demands of their tone-deaf Congressmen. It
is tiring and discouraging. The arrival of the young people in this
election year are a great boost, but it is tiring work, nevertheless.

And the biggest fights are still ahead? Indeed, the revolution we
require is yet ahead – a revolution away from coal and oil, away
from corporate domination and corrupt governance, and toward a new way
of living—a way of living as neighbors, friends, people of the
earth who are not the enemies of the earth, of nature. We are on that
path now, though the road is hardly marked with yellow bricks.

Creative leadership is not the essential ingredient. We need leaders who
can inspire the American people and the people of the world to move in
new directions quickly. We need creative leaders who will so inspire
the common man and woman that corrupt Congresses will have no ability
to resist.

Creative leaders, honest election systems, an economy redesigned to make
communities self-sufficient and healthier, and an education system
designed to make all of us and our children the well-informed, bright,
creative, interested and interesting people needed to run a democracy:
these are the visions we must hold in the backs of our eyes now.

We have been running America for many decades with negative
visualizations. You see it even in the movies. Before 9-11, all the big
summer films were about aliens attacking the United States, and hero
presidents jumping in jets to save us. The movies didn't bring on
that history, but what we think and what we dream have an effect in the
world. We have to make room in the world for what we dream of by
actually dreaming it, by making space for it, by making it imaginable to
others through our own creative leadership in our own families and
neighborhoods.

Let's not be tired. Let's not be old. Let's make a new
beginning by getting together with our neighbors more often. How about
next week? Let's plant some more vegetable gardens. Let's make
some furniture or art. Let's fix up some bicycles. Let's get
the whole neighborhood to go down to visit the local office of our
elected people and get them on board or scare the hell out of them.

This is our democracy if we can keep it. This is a grand planet if we
can save it. It really is up to us. Each person is the hero of the
world, and, in saying that, I do not joke or exaggerate. Every one of
you has the power to do this, to start something big … and
necessary … and beautiful.

Thank you very much.



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