Doris “Granny D” Haddock will be celebrating her 95th birthday at the counter-inaugural events in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 20th. She wrote an essay for the Democracy Week website that is incredible. It’d be nice to see her essay linked up around the web as much as all the blathering about the Dean campaign paying bloggers.
Look at me: I am still alive, and I am looking at you, and you are alive. This is our world as much as anyone else’s. We who are old enough or wise enough to see the edges of life can understand that we have a choice between fear and joy, and between victimization and service. All elections and other indications to the contrary, happy days are here again when we but say they are. We do not turn our hearts away from injustice or suffering, indeed we mend them as best we can with our joyful engagement and our courageous non-cooperation with the forces of fear and death. And no one can take away our joy, for even our suffering for justice and brotherhood is joyful.
This is our Velvet Revolution, American style. We resist what we must and what we can, but our victory is not in defense, but in a cultural offensive made irresistible by the power of love and courage, pulling our people together, and our own lives together, over time.
