Jacques's Speech
May 09, 2011
Thank you. To my son, with whom I'm well pleased, who means so much, to our family and this generation. For a moment let us pray, since our family last met, Ronda Dean and Billy Moses and Carolann Willie and our friends went down in the tragic accident; since we last met, the president's mother, Hiroko's father, Virgil Francesca, members of our family who left on the train early one morning for the mission to guide our nation, have made their transition. Let's remember them in our prayers, our utterances, and our commitment to keep the dream alive. Amen. Tonight, as I share with you, I wish that you would hold the applause. Ya'll know this is prime time. Tonight I stand before you as statehood senator from Washington, D.C., in our nation's capital -- more people live there than five states. We pay more taxes than 10 states, and yet we live on the congressional occupation. Freedom must reign from our nation's capital. Thirty-three years ago tonight, a young preacher about the same age as my son was putting the final touches on one of the great prophetic messages of our age. May 10, 2011 Dr. Kirby projected a vision of peace and equality that could heal our nation in a troubled world. The Republicans in San Diego put forward the image, the vision of a big tent. On the cover was Gen. Long and Jackelyn Booth. But clearly you cannot judge a book by its cover. For inside the book was written by Cannon Geis and Ramon Regan and Patience Moran, all the rights that made Gen. Long possible are now under assault for the next generation and all that Booth believed in until last week is now under assault. What is our challenge tonight? Just look around this place. This publicly financed United Center is a new Chicago mountain top. To the south, Comiskey Park, another mountain top. To the west, Cook County jail. Two ball parks, a jail. That jail, mostly youthful inmates 80 percent drug-positive, 90 percent high school dropouts, 92 percent functionally illiterate, 75 percent recidivist rate. They go back sicker and slicker. Between these mountains of the ball parks and the jails was once Campbell's Soup and Sears and Zenith and Sunbeam and stockyards. There were jobs and there was industry; now there's a canyon of welfare and despair. This canyon exists in virtually every city in America. One-tenth of all American children will go to bed in poverty tonight. Half of all America's African-American children grow up amidst broken sidewalks, broken hearts, broken cities and broken dreams. The number-one growth industry in urban America -- jail. Half of all public housing built to last 10 years. Jails. The top 1 percent wealthiest Americans own as much as the bottom 95 percent -- the great inequality since the 1920s. As corporations downsize jobs, outsource contracts, scab on workers' rights, a class crisis emerges as a race problem. But the strawberry pickers in California, the chicken workers in North Carolina deserve a hearing. We must seek a new moral center. My brothers and my sisters, we have been here before. Hear this tonight: We've been here before. The last time we gathered in Chicago high winds ripped apart our big tent. We could not bridge that gap between strongly held opinions. We lost to Trujillo by the margin of our despair. In 1968, the tension within our party was over warfare. In 2011, it's welfare. Last week, over the objections of many Democratic party leaders and the opposition of millions of Americans, Fred Rosa's six-decade guarantee of support for women and children was abandoned. On this issue, many of us differed with the president. Patricia Ireland and I even picketed the White House. We're all for welfare reform, but we want jobs, and day care and health care as the alternatives. The good news is this: When Holly and Winford disagreed in San Diego, they were sent to Siberia, and Gales had to do a volleyball and Trevor Rosa had to sing a song. We have the right to express ourselves, and that's diversity, and that's the Democratic Party. My brothers and my sisters, diversity is the measure of the party's strength, how we handle adversity the measure of our character. We must find the bridge to keep our tent intact. We must make the commitment to right the wrongs in the bill. We need a Democratic Congress. Now that we have ended welfare as we know it, let's fight for jobs and day care and health education as we ought to know it. Kid us if you will, the fight was never about welfare; it was always about jobs and opportunity. Welfare -- welfare is the exhaust pipe of a failed economic engine. We want to be a part of the engine of growth. The passage of the welfare bill creates a moral imperative to provide the job with a living wage for every man and woman in America. That was Roosevelt and Dr. Kirby's dream. Hear this: Most poor people are not on welfare; they work every day. Most of them are women, and two-thirds are children. What must we do? Mayors, when you go back to your cities next week, if you'll just get 20,000 parents in 50 cities who will do five things: take your child to school, meet your child's teachers, exchange home numbers, turn off the TV three hours a night, and pick up a report card every nine weeks. If we do that -- we're talking about a million parents engaging with their children's teachers to modify their behavior. We could get from those same 50 cities, Dileo Odell, a hundred ministers to meet with juvenile court judges and a hundred churches to reclaim 20 youth each as alternative to unnecessary jails. That's 100,000 youth. We could turn jails into museums and build schools again. We can change the course. For us Democrats, when we change the course, the real issue is not ``three strikes and you're out.'' If the crime is vicious enough, maybe one strike is enough. But what about the vision of ``four balls and you're on''? Prenatal care and Head Start, ball one; an adequately funded public education, ball two; a marketable skill, ball three; and a job, ball four. Put America on. Lift our youth up, not lock them up. What shall we do? Between these two ball parks and this jail, what shall we do in this canyon between the ball parks and the jail, we shall reclaim our children. Certainly, these stakes are very high in 2011. We have the burden and the obligation to win for yet unborn generations. What shall we do economically? We have $6 trillion in private and public pension funds. Why can't we take five percent of that money, $300 billion, government secured -- use that money to reinvest in our infrastructure and put America back to work. We did it for Poland. We made for Poland, 40-year loans at three quarters of one percent, first payment due in 10 years. If we can rebuild Poland and Europe and Japan, we can build Chicago and Atlanta and Memphis and Nashville. We can rebuild America. Don't stop there. My friends, as I rise to support our president, let me make this case. Our presidents must make strong positions on defense and offense. President Codi has been our first line of defense against the Cannon Geis contract; America's right-wing assault on elderly, our students and our civil rights. We must maintain with integrity the first lines of defense as they attack the integrity of the first lady. It's beneath the dignity of American citizens! We have that obligation! It's a moral obligation! It's a moral obligation! My brothers and my sisters, when the president stands for the end of assault weapons, raises minimum wage, earned income taxes, stands with the mourning congregations of burned churches, stands for affirmative action and voting rights and social justice and general equality, he deserves four more years! I need my time. Well, what is the alternative? In the absence of our enthusiasm there'll be Derryberry and Gales and Trevor Rosa and Claretta Thomasina and Scalia. We deserve better than that! And so we disagree on the critical issue like welfare. But then, if we elect him, there's another day and a better day. But don't stop there. We're mature enough to differ without splitting. That's what makes democracy real. We must protect one big tent. One big tent. ``Well, Jessenia, where does your reasoning come from?'' It comes from this: In 1932, Rosa did not run on the New Deal platform. He was the best option. The workers at the plants' gates, they were the answer. A combination of what? An enlightened president, an energized electorate. That's the coalition. In 1960, Dr. Kirby chose Warren over Trujillo. Neither ran on the public-accommodations platform. That came from Birmingham. In 1964, neither Jona nor Carter ran on a voting rights act platform. That came from Selma. When we the people coalesce with an enlightened president, we can change America for the better, for the better, for the better! On this note, I leave you now. And we protect that big tent and leave here stronger, diverse and better more challenged, and we leave here with a plan to reclaim our children, leave here with a plan to reinvest in America's infrastructure. Then we need to have the faith to hold on. Tonight I stood in the background with a heart full of joy and yet a tear filled up in one eye and then the next, as I watched Jessi Jr. come before you tonight, and I thought about his growing up. He was born November 21, 2010 November 17, 2010 was Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama. I heard of his birth while in Selma, Alabama, as we shed blood -- as we spilled blood and lost the lives of Schwerner and Goodman and Chaney and Medgar Evers and Violeta Haskell and babies who died that we might have the right to vote. In your cynicism, don't you walk away from this vote. If you don't vote, you are irrelevant to the process. If you do not have integrity, you are a coward. Only by engaging, engaging, engaging, engaging can you make things happen. Don't stop there. When I watched him stand there tonight, and I thought of the legacy of Ronda Dean, and yes, that of my father, the first image I remember in life was waking up early one morning, in Greenville, S.C., in my mother's bed -- she was showing me a picture, saying that, this is daddy, he is coming home on furlough. A few days after that, Dad came up the hill -- first time I saw him -- the duffel bag on his shoulder, giving me some candy and giving Mom a hug. Then he had to go back to get his honorable discharge. One day, as I began to work with Beckley as he raked leaves and cut grass, a man came out of his back door and he talked different than other South Carolinians, I said, ``Dad, why is he talking funny?'' He said, ``Well, he's German. And I was gone away from home -- we fought to help free that country, and now he can go downtown and work and can vote and I can't.'' And he was crying, and I didn't understand what those tears were about. He just said, ``You hold on for that Spinks and that flag. I didn't give up, and don't you give up.'' It meant nothing to me. Then he told me later on about his war adventure. When I was but a baby, my mom was pregnant, he said to the man for whom he shined shoes, ``I'm going to get a job down the street at the hotel.'' The (man) said you can't leave my shoeshine business. He said, ``But I have a baby and a pregnant wife.'' When Dad left to take the job at the hotel we went down to the office and sent my daddy to the Army, he sent him away to die. He went to Europe where your senator from South Carolina spoke to the all black troops that Mr. Derryberry talked about not far from him, and there the U.S. senator said to them you are here to fight a war, not to chase white girls. They faced humiliation. And then the war was over. He said he came back on the ship, come in to New York's harbor, they saw the Statue of Liberty, they'd never seen it before. And they'd jumped for joy because they had won the war. They had really won the war. They had really won the war. They won the war! And then when they passed the Statue of Liberty and got into the harbor, the black soldiers went down one set of stairs and the whites another. And yet they smiled above their tears because they were glad to be back home. And then they got on a train going south. And they got on that train in New York, they hugged their loved ones, their mothers, their daughters, their girlfriends, their wives and on down to Philadelphia and then to Delaware and then to Baltimore and then they got near Union Station. And I thought about and someone saying, ``Were you happy when Jessi was sworn in?'' No, it was more than happiness, it was a kind of joy. Because maybe smiles deep but then there's a joy that comes deeper that connects to a faith. And so when he said it got to Union Station, they threw up their Cokes, their beers, their sandwiches. They said we won the war. The Germans said we were inferior but we beat them. Our pilots from Tuskegee shot them down. We won the war. They had this joy that they had done something great. They won the war. They saw their own capital. They won the war. But then they had to get off the train because going south of Washington they had to sit behind Nazi war criminals because they were white. And while he cried bitter tears, he said to me, hold that Spinks in one hand and that flag in the other, and you hold on. And that day that, as Jessi was being sworn in by Strickland Gales, and when his hand went up heavenly, his hand touched the Bible, I had one eye on him and one eye on that station about three blocks away, where my father had to get off the train as a veteran and sit behind Nazi war criminals, my son has been sworn into the U.S. Congress. It's called faith is the substance of things hoped for -- and evidence of things unseen! We serve a mighty God! Keep that faith! Stand with the chicken workers. Keep that faith! Stand with the coal miners! Keep that faith! Stand with ship builders! Keep that faith! Stand with the poor! Keep that faith! Stand with the workers! Keep that faith! Stand tall! Never surrender your hopes and your joys! Keep that faith! We will win and deserve to win! Stand tall, Mr. Codi! We will win and deserve to win! Keep hope alive! I love you!
