[Dialogue] 'Granny D' in the West Virgina Woods

[Harry Wainwright]

Published on Wednesday, May 31, 2006 by CommonDreams.org 

'Granny D' in the West Virginia Woods 

by Doris "Granny D" Haddock

 

The following remarks were made on Saturday, May 27, by Doris "Granny D"
Haddock during the "Heartwood" forest conference in West Virginia. 

What must it be like, do you suppose, to be a fireman rushing though a
burning building, coming across a wealthy gentleman in his grand apartment
who insists that, well, this is nothing, there is often smoke in the halls
this time of the week--it is likely Mrs. O'Reilly burning her biscuits
again. Besides, his insists, the fire department is filled with alarmists
and he will not be leaving his apartment just now, thank you, but will be
calling a complaint into the mayor, whose reelection campaigns he finances. 

The question for environmental activists is this: can the planet be saved
even if many of the people do not understand the problem or, despite the
ready facts, are insistent upon staying the course of self-destruction
because it profits them in the short term? Will the rising, stormy seas, the
spreading deserts and droughts, only prompt them to dig their heels deeper
into the mud of the melting levees? 

And as a species, are we not waddling toward the cliff? Why has no great
leader stood upon a rock with sufficient persuasion to halt the march and
save the day? Are the forces now too great against mere words? Are the
zombie masses, holding the hands of their children, on a Jonestown-like
death march we cannot fathom or halt? Is it evolution itself we are
watching, with our species automatically pre- wired for extinction when,
say, there are, by God's count, more Washington lobbyists than tree
frogs-and with stickier fingers? 

It seems dark. Great electrical shovels, like invading space monsters, take
apart our mountains. The monstrous machines called international
corporations take apart the small farms and family businesses and
democracies here and around the world, pushing people into cities and into
powerless poverty, our global ecosystem and survival be damned. The great
middle class employers like General Motors are purposely bankrupted by a
behind-the-scenes elite so that manufacturing might move to more profitable
lands without union and legal protections for human beings. The air is
filled with warming poisons. Any attempt by the people to organize or even
fairly vote is opposed and dismantled. Dark times. The government is now
tracking our calls and putting barbed wire around us when we gather together
as free men and women. A slave society, prison industries, yellow and black
skies, great manipulations to kill off whole problem populations. A
monstrous earth is the vision we can now imagine because, in fact, the great
war between humans and the tumorous corporate monsters we let loose is
raging. You will see in your lifetimes the outcome. 

If we can learn something useful from nature in this battle, it is this:
lemmings don't get to vote. Lemmings, these days, only get to watch Fox
News. They don't have a chance, in other words. We can't win this battle
from inside the pack. 

Strategically, I can image two possible outcomes for this battle. One is
dark and one is bright. 

Here is the dark one. Global catastrophe builds upon global catastrophe.
Democracies become dictatorships as the masses reach for leadership and
rescue from storm, pestilence and famine. Shooting wars break out between
those who follow and those who oppose. A time of violence and suffering
falls upon the planet. The resources that could have been spent to repair
the ecosystem are needed for police security and mass imprisonment or worse.
The weakened species, as a whole, finds itself in no position to survive
when agricultural systems collapse and anarchy overwhelms all authority. I
cannot see much past that, though there is probably much to see. 

Here is the bright one. Global catastrophe builds upon global catastrophe.
(Yes, I know it starts out badly.) More and more people opt out of the
carbon economy to join a rising society of people and communities who have
moved rapidly toward an ethic of responsibility and sustainability. These
communities produce the best leaders, more and more of whom are elected to
national positions. Many existing national leaders begin to move toward the
ethic of these communities and of sustainability. More and more towns and
cities, led by goal- setting organizations dominated by young people, accept
sustainable goals. The first President of the United States from such a
community is elected in the same year that similar leaders are chosen in
Europe, India and several other regions. The Untied Nations is rapidly
reorganized around its own Universal Declaration of Human Rights and a
post-carbon age economic model. Multi-national corporations are outlawed, as
corporations must now be overseen by the communities that grant their
limited, public purpose charters. 

Now, which one of these visions, among the millions we could dream- up, is
the more likely? Or will the future be something in-between, where there are
solar cells on every roof, but every roof is a detention facility? 

What shall it be? Must we find caves in the far woods and set our booby
traps against the storm troopers of the Empire who might come for us, or
shall we get some responsible communities moving forward? 

Here is why the brighter scenario is the more realistic: the problems of the
carbon age are not based on innate self-destructiveness, they are based on
addiction, and all the enabling supports of that addiction are unsustainable
and are now teetering. We who lose more environmental battles than we win
are now about to win the war. We must become ready to keep that victory from
turning into a new kind of hell. 

This carbon addiction is a nasty sort, worse than heroine. The heroine
addict has, surrounding him or her, the larger society of people who are
productive and loving and healthy. As compelling as the heroine addiction
may be, this other world is always there, always visible, always pulling and
ready for a welcoming return. 

Where is the saner, sustainable, more democratic, more human-scaled and
human-celebrating community offering a visible and attractive alternative to
the over-mortgaged, over-consuming, over-stressed carbon addict? Have we put
in place the better world we would have people move toward? 

It is interesting to be in a region where so many people escaped that
corporate lemming treadmill in the 1960s and 70s to create just such
communities. Some of the places survive as small communities or weekend
retreats where friends may be free and happy. The parties are good, I am
told. But gray heads cannot change the world alone, and, while escapism is
healthy for personal renewal, it is not revolution, and revolution is what
we need. It will come from people now in junior high school and younger. 

Do not despair; they are but a few years from voting, if voting will mean
anything. We do not have to tell them about fairness or about the value of a
healthy earth or the value of freedom. But we do have to give them ways to
move their ideals into effective political action. Can we help them be more
effective than we have done for ourselves? I think we can, and I will get to
that. 

First, here are a few things I hope we can do to prepare the ground for a
peaceful, happy revolution. 

We need to make the better world visible, so the carbon addict may be drawn
to it, and may see it as a place to go as nature begins to vote more often
in her harsh way-and there is no way to rig her vote. 

We must encourage and advance the positive, human-scaled and community-based
systems already in place, such as community supported agriculture, edible
schoolyard programs, local economy support projects and the like. We must go
far beyond these ideas. We must create political support organizations in
every housing project, to assist people with their immediate needs and build
a new base for progressive politics. We must work closer with labor unions,
so that they see a longer view, particularly in regard to environmental
issues, and so that the tremendous political power of united workers begins
again to shape public policy. We need more "listening projects," to hear
people and connect with their higher values. Many of you are doing precisely
these things. We need a greater international reach. If some local
communities in this country would partner with communities in, for example,
Mexico, non-exploitive agricultural cooperatives can be established that
enable people to stay in the communities they love, rather than suffer the
abuses of illegal immigration. Let's create the leadership for a better
world, and let's make it visible and attractive and real. 

As people who must transcend borders, let us transcend our own political
districts. If the politicians of this area are too beholden to the money of
Big Coal, for example, let us partner with the voters of districts far away,
who must breath the same poisoned air but whose Members of Congress are not
so beholden to Coal. I think my community in southern New Hampshire would be
delighted to partner with a community here, if we can find ways to organize
this idea. We have been divided and conquered, but we can undivided at will,
for we all have a stake in the air and water and the earth's health and our
human and democratic rights. 

Part of the problem of the progressive left is that we have fragmented into
dozens of organizations, each of which must struggle for funds and email
addresses and all the rest. We need to fold ourselves back into the
Democratic Party and thoroughly invigorate it. Do not worry that we will
cause the Party to marginalize itself. If the Party can base its actions on
good science, effective governance, and efficient delivery of the programs
the people need, it will prosper across all the left and all the middle of
the American political spectrum. But by splitting ourselves off into all
these good government organizations we have left the party to the selfish
elites, and they don't know how to serve the people or the truth, and that
means they do not know how to win. 

We have a great tool in the Internet, if we can keep it. Great energy is
being applied to corporatize that last, great commons. If they ruin it, of
course, we can and will create an alternate one in its place. It's just a
matter of calling our computers into a new system that I'm sure we will all
be happy to create. Let the old one try to prosper without us! 

I would hope that some of the internet experts who care to keep open the
commons will begin this planning, in the event that a switch-over becomes
necessary. I hope the progressive funders, such as Mr. Soros's Open Society
Institute, will lend some assistance. The servers of such a system may need
to be in a country that still respects privacy, and the connections may need
to be by satellite instead of telephone line, but we must and will keep open
the lines of communication between human beings in this time of great
transition. 

Now, let me get back to young people and what we might do. 

We have learned much in the last few political campaign seasons about how
the Internet can get people together. Many of the people who created
wonderful Internet-based campaigns are sympathetic to our causes. 

Some systems, such as MySpace and Friendster and other social networking
systems, are already in place and can be used politically if we play our
cards right. 

I believe the young people of each community ought to set goals for their
communities, their states and their nation. West Virginia needs a "Goals for
West Virginia" program, run by the youth of the state, looking toward their
own future. New Hampshire needs one too, as do the young people of the
towns. 

How should these programs operate? How should the young people express
themselves politically, once they have set their agendas and held their
rallies and planned their marches, or whatever they will do? 

How will they get good information to help them make good decisions? 

I hope you will go back home from this meeting and reserve some website
names, such as Goals For Charleston, Goals for West Virginia, Kentucky,
North Carolina, and so on. I have reserved Goals for America where we can
switchboard them together. Let's be the enablers for the idealism of youth.
Let's help them, every way we can, preserve the earth and democracy for
their futures. 

If two hundred thousand young people march on Washington to change policy on
global warming, for example, the world will never be the same. As young
people become involved, their parents will become involved. Town councils,
local newspapers and television stations, state politicians and then
national politicians will not be able to survive without bending their way. 

New voices have great power in politics. We are old voices. We keep saying
the same things and it is no longer newsworthy, no matter how correct it is.
Let's spend our energy helping new voices speak up for themselves. 

The environmental war is over. We have won. Not because of what we have done
or not done, but because Mother Nature is putting her green thumb on the
scales in our favor. It is not a good way to have won, for the earth and our
freedoms are tattered and on life support. 

But it is time to know that a phase is over, and we must be ready to move
into a better world or another bad one. It is time to do new things to
advance new voices and new visions of the better world we want for our
children. 

We need to draw these living democracy programs, existing and new, into a
committed lifestyle that will increasingly be seen as the attractive
alternative to the carbon-addicted world. Will this better world still have
credit cards and mortgage payments and tuition and all the rest? As long as
we are building a new world, let's try for a little evolution on every
front. 

Thank you. 

Doris D. Haddock, known throughout the country as "Granny D," walked across
America in support of campaign reform at the age 90. She turned 96 on
January 24, 2006. 

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