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Jeanette Wallis became an activist during the WTO Ministerial
Protest in Seattle, WA on December 1, 1999, when she was
tear-gassed and chased by riot police in her Capitol Hill
neighborhood while walking home from the store. She...

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Jeanette Wallis became an activist during the WTO Ministerial
Protest in Seattle, WA on December 1, 1999, when she was
tear-gassed and chased by riot police in her Capitol Hill
neighborhood while walking home from the store. She began
organizing because she believed in the right of the people to
express their opinions about decisions that affect their lives -
and has consequently been tear-gassed, beaten, pepper-sprayed, shot
at with rubber bullets, and arrested while defending this
right.

When the election debacle of 2000 occurred, Ms. Wallis decided
to take the First Amendment literally. She began gathering
"grievances" (hand-written letters to the President) on
Inauguration Day from citizens who felt their votes and voices
weren't being heard, and promised to carry them across the United
States -- gathering more along the way -- to hand-deliver to the
President in Washington, DC. With her black Lab, Sherpa, she left
Seattle on foot on April 1, 2001, and touched the lives of
thousands of people along the way with her dedication, tenacity,
and hope for the future. She spoke at schools, churches, union
halls, picket lines, rallies, and to countless passers-by about the
importance of using our voices in a participatory democracy. Being
a good citizen is more than those magical few minutes spent in a
voting booth every couple of years. Politics is more than what we
hear about from those dull people on the television
– it’s the air we breath, the
water we drink, the food we eat, and the jobs we toil in. We must
be more involved!

2 years, 4,000 miles, and five pairs of shoes later, Jeanette
and Sherpa completed their walk on June 13th, 2003.

Read about their White House experience.

Before deciding to walk across America, Ms. Wallis had worked as
a psychiatric counselor for over ten years. She is a proud
practitioner of Nichiren Daishonin's Buddhism.

http://www.walkfordemocracy.o

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