Voting for Nader? Listen To Your Elders First

Dinah Sanders posts this:

Doris Haddock is the woman who walked across the U.S. from California to Washington D.C. at age 89 - 90 to dramatize the public demand for campaign finance reform. She is now running for the U.S. Senate in her home state of New Hampshire. See her biography and more at http://www.grannyd.com/ As you'll see from the speech below, she remains an intelligent and highly concerned citizen. A motto of her campaign: "Think positive about our future and work like hell."

From Granny D's speech at the Alliance for Democracy
Convention in Boston, Wednesday, July 21, 2004:

On history, and how short the American experiment truly is:

Well, Friends, here we are in a city that has known the struggle of free people against tyranny, their rise above personal self-interest, their rise during the occasions of human emergency to move forward with courage, with intelligence and a long view to the future of the people, and with great energy and a perfect concentration on victory. "We must all hang together or assuredly we shall all hang separately" is a phrase spoken in Philadelphia by a man of this city--a phrase that again has personal meaning to us.

We are not so far in time from 1776. My own life extends over 40% the way there.

On coming together:

Two centuries ago, there were probably Americans who didn't quite like part of the Declaration of Independence or who did think George Washington was just the right man to lead the Continental Army, or who thought there should be a few more articles to the Bill of Rights before they would sign on. They were barnacles on that Yankee Clipper that sped despite them toward liberty, and they are now less than footnotes.

On the ballot itself:

And I shall vote for [Kerry] on October 12th. I think all Democrats should vote three weeks early by mailed ballots. That way, there will be a paper record of our votes. You may have suspicions about the voting machines, but I assure you that the Secretaries of State and the town and county clerks of this nation take their jobs very seriously and our paper ballots in their hands will be our best defense against any secretly rigged or otherwise malfunctioning or sabotaged machines--and the Bush Administration can stop talking about putting off the election, for that issue may not be as dead as we hope.

Read it all.