Talk:Candy Lightner

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[edit] Source

Hi Wham- Please note that I created this page (Candy Lightner) on 6-9-05 using Candy Lightner: Founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) as the Source. Therefore, it is not spam. Thanks. David Justin 14:40, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Source information

Hi Wham- Please note that I created this page (Candy Lightner) on 6-9-05 using Candy Lightner: Founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) as the Source. Therefore, it is not spam. Thanks. David Justin 17:52, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Important

Hi Wham- Please note that I created this page (Candy Lightner) on 6-9-05 using Candy Lightner: Founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) as the Source. Therefore, it is not spam. Thanks.David Justin 16:12, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Source verification

Hi Wham- Please notice that the material in bold was from “Candy Lightner: Founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD).“ The Wikipedia entry is clearly sourced from that page and indicating so does not constitute spam. To the contrary, it is proper documentation. Its also important in correcting the assertion added on 31-12-06 that the Wikipedia entry is “Based primarily on material on MADD's official website.” In reality, the MADD site has virtually nothing about Candy Lightner and recently even denied that she was the founder o the organization. Thanks.David Justin 00:15, 22 March 2007 (UTC)


Candace Lynne Lightner (born May 30, 1946) is the organizer and founding president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). In 1980, (Candy) Lightner’s 13-year-old daughter, Cari, was killed by a drunken hit-and-run driver as she walked down a suburban street in California. "I promised myself on the day of Cari’s death that I would fight to make this needless homicide count for something positive in the years ahead” Candy Lightner later wrote. In recent years, Lightner has broken with the organization, as she believed it has become an advocate of neo-prohibitionism and the establishment of a so-called nanny state.

The leniency of the sentence given to the repeat offender of driving while intoxicated (DWI) outraged Ms. Lightner who then organized Mothers Against Drunk Drivers. The name was later changed to Mothers Against Drunk Driving. The object of her organization was to raise public awareness of the serious nature of drunken driving and to promote tough legislation against the crime.

Candy Lightner appeared on major television shows, spoke before the US Congress, addressed professional and business groups, and worked tirelessly for years to change public attitudes, modify judicial behavior, and promote tough new legislation.

With the passage of time, MADD decided to eliminate all driving after drinking any amount of alcoholic beverage. Lightner disagreed with this focus and asserted that “police ought to be concentrating their resources on arresting drunk drivers—not those drivers who happen to have been drinking. I worry that the movement I helped create has lost direction.”

Lightner left MADD in 1984[citation needed] and disagrees with its change in goals. The organization "has become far more neo-prohibitionist than I ever wanted or envisioned," she says. "I didn't start MADD to deal with alcohol. I started MADD to deal with the issue of drunk driving."[citation needed]

Candy Lightner is a recipient of the Presidents Volunteer Action Award', an honorary doctorate in humanities and public service, and was the subject of a made-for-television movie, "Mothers Against Drunk Drivers: the Candy Lightner story." She is the author of “Appalling to capitalize on innocents’ deaths,” Wall Street Journal, June 12, 1991, and co-author (with Nancy Hathaway) of Giving Sorrow Words. NY: Warner books, 1990 and “The other side of sorrow,” Ladies Home Journal, September 1991, 107(9), 150.

Lightner, who is half Lebanese, also served as president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee from October 1994 to March 1995. [1] [2]

References


Based primarily on material on MADD's official website

  • "Candy Lightner: A grieving mother helped America get MADD." People Weekly, 1999 (March 15), 110
  • Frantzich, S. E. Citizen Democracy: Political Activists in a Cynical Age. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999
  • Friedrich, O. "Candy Lightner." Time, 1985, 125, 41
  • "One woman can make a difference: Candy Lightner and Mothers Against Drunk Driving or MA

Original thinkers: These five helped reshape the way we see our world --and live and work in it." Life, 1989, 12(12), 167-171

  • Sellinger, M. "Already the conscience of a nation, Candy Lightner prods Congress into action against drunk drivers.” People Weekly, 1984, 22, 102+

[edit] Cleanup

I've removed some of the statements that were still unsourced, per WP:BLP. If you add them back, make sure there's a reliable source to refer to, and add that source. Also, sources quoting another source don't work very well, please try to get hold of the original (via archives, for instances). It's a lot more work, but relying on others to interpret and quote other sources has proved problematic in the past. --JoanneB 10:32, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] American River College

Lightner went to American River College? Isn't that the college where they had that Black Chalks American College Testing Service deletion scandal? She was there years before it happened, but things tend to cumulate. Pease don't confuse the two issues, both separated by many years. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.212.148.215 (talk) 03:38, 5 November 2007 (UTC)