I was living in Dublin, NH at about the age of retirement when something came over the Internet asking for volunteers for Granny D’s Senate race. This was after her cross-country walk, and a friend of mine had spoken to me about her and how important her work was, and so I thought, I’ll just volunteer.
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I started really just doing whatever they needed at the office: answering phone calls and making coffee. The campaign was very exciting and informative, I was doing a lot of learning about how politics works, which I didn’t really understand at this level until that point. As part of the campaign, Granny D walked all over New Hampshire, and we walked with her. She didn’t get to be a senator, but she did get the word out, and that was the main idea -- at 94 she got one third of the votes, which was a big success.
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After her Senate bid, all of the other workers who were involved with the campaign left, and I was the only one left. She was older at that point and she had a bout in the hospital so I spoke with her son, Jim. He told me that she really needed to have some people around on a regular basis so we agreed that I would organize some of her friends once or twice a week to help her run errands, play scrabble with her, or take her out for brunch. So there I was, getting very involved in her life, and before I knew it I was the person who was travelling with her to speaking engagements across the country, getting an inside look at her work; it was really a great experience.
We got to be good friends, and she would always say, Carol, you’re doing so
much, I really want you to know how much I appreciate this. And I would
say: “Granny, it’s all selfish! I never had a grandmother.” She would say,
“I’ll be your grandmother Carol, I love you Carol!”[Laughing]. We had a lot
of fun together… we became close friends, and we would play scrabble
together, and she came over here a lot. We were just buddies.
Granny D is a pretty big name in New Hampshire, can you tell me a bit about how you got to know her?
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Can you talk about how Open
Democracy started?
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Yes, so as Granny D got older she told me, “What I really, really want to see
before I die is publicly funded elections.” So I got some folks together to
see what we could do about it. We got a range of people on board to meet
in the executive chambers: Walter Peterson who was our former
Governor, Arnie Arneson, who had run for Governor and Jim Plain who was
a representative at this time, and we started what is now Open Democracy.
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The goal of the organization was to get publicly funded elections. At the time, a whole rash of people got elected to the legislature who ended up being very unhelpful on public funding, but we were able to work on disclosure. We were able to pass a disclosure bill, but shortly thereafter, we realized it wasn’t being followed very well. So we realized we couldn’t just pass the bill and leave it, we learned that Maine public elections has a whole commission to do the follow up work to make sure that the rules are being followed.
Today, the organization has several focuses, our main campaign is NH Rebellion, which hosts walks throughout the state. We’re also involved in legislative reform, and we host educational events and theatrical performances to keep Granny’s legacy alive.
Meet Carol.
Board Member at Open Democracy
New Hampshire, the home to a host of campaign finance organizations, is fertile ground for the Money-Out-of-Politics Movement. As of 2016, 77 towns in the notoriously independent state have passed resolutions to support reforming campaign finance. After speaking with activists throughout New Hampshire, I got a sense that much of the local mobilization around the issue can be traced to the legacy of Granny D.
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At the age of 88, Granny D, a Dublin, NH resident, famously walked from Pasadena, California to Washington, D.C. to bring the issue of campaign finance into the public consciousness. Under her belief that passionate individuals have the ability to shape American politics even amidst our country’s broken electoral system, Granny D used her 3,200 mile trek as a platform to engage and inform people about the corrupting influence of money in politics. Greeted by over 2,000 people at the Capital in D.C., her journey had clearly garnered national attention.
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For the remainder of her life, Granny D continued her advocacy work, raising awareness through a bid for national Senate, and ultimately establishing Open Democracy, an organization committed to leading NH’s work in campaign finance reform. Today the organization continues Granny D’s legacy of advocacy and public education through public campaigns, theatrical events, research, and writing about the issue.
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Campaign finance activist, Carol Wyndham, is a compelling example of Granny D’s persisting influence in the state. A devoted friend of Granny D, Carol carries on the legacy of citizen engagement as a board member of Open Democracy. In August 2016, I had the pleasure of speaking with Carol about her background and her work with Open Democracy.
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This interview has been edited for clarity and succinctness.
-Bridget, Small Planet Intern
When I was young, I went to a wonderful progressive school in New York called The Park School of Buffalo. The main thing that I recall now is that throughout the twelve years that I was there, the headmaster regularly would speak after lunch and say, “If you want to live in a democracy, you have to take responsibility for it. The key to that is getting informed and getting engaged.” I didn’t entirely understand what that meant then, but I think it was the foundation for a lot of the work that I continued to do over the course of my life.
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In college, I studied to be a teacher. My first job was working I as a local school teacher in Middlebury, Vermont, and then I went on to teach at the Cambridge School of Weston in Massachusetts and was involved with the local schools in Lincoln, Massachusetts. I got involved with a group of mothers in Lincoln who were interested in open classrooms, specifically focusing on racism in the suburbs. Together, we wrote a grant to do a side-track program; a classroom exchange program between 7th and 8th grade classrooms in Roxbury, Boston, and a classroom in Lincoln, a Boston suburb. Half of each class went to the other area every day.
Tell me a little bit about yourself: how did you first come to be involved with political work?
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I have to say, at the end of the year when the state evaluators who gave us the grant came to speak with us, many positive and negative things were brought up and discussed. At the very end of the meeting, the woman who was leading it told us, “I know you have had one heck of a lot of challenges, but the main thing is, you have changed consciousness.”
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In a similar way, the political work I’m involved with now is really about changing consciousness. We are in a consciousness revolution. It’s about race, it’s about elections, it’s big money, it’s corruption, it’s the whole thing. I really think it’s in consciousness, and its happening because people like you and I and the people we work with are out there yelling and screaming, scooping ice cream and walking.
Volunteer – do something! For instance, quite a few retirees sit on our board, and we would like to have young people, particularly of the feminine gender. We would certainly welcome anybody who has any interest in our work to come observe.
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We have a wonderful committee who planned the walk, and now I am looking for people who can help with the administration of the performances: to accompany people, introduce them, to handle the Q&A afterwards, some of the details like where to find the key to get into the building before the performance.
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Young people would be very, very, very welcome.
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There are literally hundreds of organizations that are involved in this work across the country, so if not in New Hampshire, with whatever local organization exists. The movement is building, and it’s an exciting place to be!