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Grass Roots Heroes« Thread Started on Apr 28, 2007, 11:47am

Daily newsbrief journal for April 2007, also see http://www.usdemocrats.com/brief for a global 100-page perpetual brief and follow twitter @usdemocrats


Grass Roots Heroes« Thread Started on Apr 28, 2007, 11:47am

Postby admin » Sat Jan 28, 2012 11:37 am

Grass Roots Heroes« Thread Started on Apr 28, 2007, 11:47am » --------------------------------------------------------------------------------Grass Roots Heroes Prepared Remarks of Senator Paul D. Wellstone Before the Grassroots Training Seminar at Iowa State July 11, 1998 Thank you for that kind introduction. Thank you, Mike Peterson for creating these leadership gatherings, this grassroots academy. And I especially want to thank you, the participants here today, for coming out this weekend, for taking part. You are my heroes and meetings like this are my dream. You are my heroes because you are taking the time, giving your effort to make a better Democratic Party, a better Nation, and a better world -- one home, one block, one town at a time. You are my heroes because grassroots organizers like you won the 8-hour day. Grassroots organizers like you won civil rights for women and for people of color. And grassroots organizers like you ended the Vietnam War. Meetings like this are my dream because today, I see the need for another American movement for change. Growing numbers of Americans feel that their daily struggles don't matter to Congress and the White House. They see a Washington dominated by big money and special interests. They see a Republican Congress that, as a favor to big insurance companies, blocks sensible protections for patients. They see a Republican Congress that, as a favor to big tobacco conglomerates, blocks efforts to reduce teen smoking. And they see a Republican Congress that, as a favor to bottom-dwellers of commerce who don't want to compete fairly, even blocks an increase in the minimum wage. This November, as a favor to the American people, we ought to block these Republicans from coming back to Congress! When too many Americans don't vote or participate, some see apathy and despair. I see disappointment and even outrage. And I believe that out of this frustration can come hope and action. People do care what happens. They care deeply. And they are willing to give their time and effort to the matters about which they care most. People like you and meetings like this can transform the politics of apathy into the politics of values. We need grassroots leaders like you to forge solutions that can serve as models for other communities and for the Nation. Together, we can build a growing movement to restore democracy, reclaim the American promise of economic and educational opportunity, and revitalize moral leadership in our country. We need to restore the leadership of values that brought us the civil rights movement and the women's movement. And we need a new leadership of values that can build a nation where no child is left behind. A nation where not only the economy grows, but the quality of life grows for all Americans. We all read about how well the economy is doing. But how can we live in the richest, most affluent country in the world, at the peak of its economic performance, and still hear the Republicans tell us that we cannot provide a good education for every child, that we cannot provide good health care for all of our citizens, and that we cannot at least ensure that every child comes to kindergarten ready to learn? And how can it be that at the Nation's peak economic performance, one out of four children under the age of 3 is growing up in poverty in America, and that one out of every two children of color under the age of 3 is growing up in poverty in our country? How can it be that we allow our most vulnerable -- our children -- to be the most poverty-stricken group in America? That is a betrayal of our heritage. We can do better. And that's certainly what I hear when I meet and talk with people all over the Country. I traveled some over the last two years. I started out in the Mississippi Delta, not to come in to tell people what to do, but I wanted to go there because I had read a book by Nick Kotz, who won a Pulitzer prize for his book, Let Them Eat Promises. And he tells how Bobby Kennedy came and focused on hunger. And there was a little African-American boy and Bobby Kennedy tried to play with him, but the little boy couldn't respond. He just had a vacant look. He was so severely malnourished. And Bobby Kennedy kept trying to play with him like we do with our children and grandchildren, but the little boy didn't respond. And then Bobby Kennedy broke down and cried. I wanted to start our trip in a neighborhood in the Mississippi Delta. And then we went to East L.A., and then we went to Chicago in the Pilsen neighborhood, a Latino community, and then public housing projects -- the Robert Taylor Homes and Ida Wells. And then we went to inner-city Baltimore, and then we went to Appalachia. I can tell you that we met a lot of heroes who give a lie to the argument that nothing can be done. We meet here today to celebrate their worth. We can do so much at the community level if people have the resources. I promised to come back to the Mississippi Delta. I was at a community gathering with an incredibly dedicated African-American teacher, named Robert Hall. A year ago, he stood up at a community meeting and said, "Senator, it's hard to give the students hope. Only half our students graduate. Would you come back for graduation?" So I asked him if I could come back to teach. I was a teacher, and so I came back to speak at the high school. A few weeks ago, I got off the plane, and as we were driving to Tunica, Mississippi, they said to me, "First we're going to go to the elementary school and you will address the third and fourth graders on the last day of class." I said, "Address? On the last day of school?" But I said okay, and we went there. I asked the children, do you like school? What's important about it? And one young girl said, "It's important because I can be what I want to be." And I said, what do you want to be? And then there were forty hands up, and the rest of the hour was students talking about what they want to be. One of them wanted to be a psychiatrist. Or a doctor. Or a professional wrestler. Or a professional basketball player. Or a teacher. Or an artist. Or a business person, on and on and on. Those children had hope. I saw as a teacher how, if you take that spark of learning that those children have, and you ignite it, you can take a child from any background to a lifetime of creativity and accomplishment. But if you snuff out that spark of learning, it is the cruelest and most shortsighted thing a nation can do. Too many children see that spark of learning snuffed out. Everywhere we went, people asked, "what happened to our national vow, our vow as a Nation, that there should be equal opportunity for every child? Not in our community. And where are the jobs or the business opportunities so that we can do well economically and we can give our children the care we know they need and deserve?" That's what we heard. And then we traveled to other parts of our country, and when we did, it was the same kind of issues. And people said to me: "Senator, my daughter is twenty-four. She graduated from college. She's a diabetic. She now will be off our health insurance plan. I know that the insurance companies are no longer allowed to deny her coverage, but it's going to cost her ten thousand dollars a year, and she won't be able to afford it." "Senator, I want you to meet my husband Joe. You met him a year ago. I told you he only had two months to live, but he's a fighter. Joe's now in a wheelchair. He's a fighter. Please come over and say hello." And so I did. And then she takes me aside and she says, "Every day it's a nightmare. I'm on the phone battling with some of these insurance companies because I don't know what they'll cover." I don't think any American, with a loved one struggling with an illness, cancer or otherwise, should have to worry about whether or not there'll be decent care, should have to be battling for coverage every day. Medical decisions should be made by doctors and patients, not by insurance company bean-counters! Or, "Senator, I'm a student at Moorhead State University in Minnesota. It's taken me six years to graduate. I've been working forty hours a week for the last six years." Or, "Senator, I sell plasma at the beginning of the semester in order to be able to buy textbooks." Or, "Senator, I'm a single parent. I'm one of the welfare mothers you hear about, but I'm in the community college. I want to be independent, but now I'm being told, in the name of welfare reform, that I have to leave school and take a job, but the job pays six dollars and fifty cents an hour and I won't have health care in a year and I'll be worse off. Please let me finish my schooling, my education, so I can support my children." I don't think that any mom should have to leave school to keep her assistance. That's why this past Thursday, I offered an amendment to allow welfare beneficiaries to have up to 2 years of higher education counted as good as "work" for the purposes of the welfare law. And I'm happy to report that the Senate adopted my amendment by a 56-to-42 vote. Or, "Senator, we're both thirty, our combined income is thirty-five thousand dollars a year, but it costs us twelve thousand dollars in child care for our two children." Can't we do better? Or, "Senator, my dad is a Vietnam vet. He took a shower last week, but when he came out of the shower he wouldn't talk to anybody any longer. We're told that he suffers from post traumatic stress syndrome. But we don't have any compensation, how do we get him the care?" I don't think politics has anything to do with left, right, or center. It has to do with trying to do right by people. Many agree with this sentiment: "Senator, we're disillusioned by politics, we think both parties are run by the same investors, we don't have any faith any longer, we think the special interests dominate the process, we have so little confidence in politics, and we don't think politics is very important." A friend of mine who teaches at the Kennedy School at Harvard said he taught a class a few weeks ago and was talking about electoral politics and how he worked in New Hampshire in 1968 for Eugene McCarthy, from Minnesota. The students said, "Yeah, but that's when politics were important." I want to say today, to grassroots leaders like you who are involved in community service -- that is so important. My worry is when people say community service is good but political service is disreputable. We need you. We need you involved in community service, we need you to volunteer at battered women's shelters, we need you to be mentors and tutors, and we need you to help children and families battle the odds. But we also need you to care about public policy, to be citizens speaking out for better public policy and integrity in politics, and for you to believe that government and public policy can make a difference. That politics is not just about power and money games, politics can be about the improvement of peoples lives, about lessening human suffering in our world and bringing about more peace and more justice. And I say to you, grassroots leaders, as a political scientist and a United States Senator, that in the last analysis, politics is what we create, by what we do, by what we hope for, and by what we dare to imagine. And this is what I dare to imagine. As a father and now a grandfather of three, I dare to imagine a country, where I travel, and meet children, and I pick up an infant and hold her in my arms, I want to be able to believe, that in the United States of America, I dare to imagine a country where every child I hold in my hands, are all God's children, regardless of the color of their skin, regardless of whether they're boy or girl, regardless of religion, regardless of rich or poor, that every child I hold in my hands, will have the same chance to reach her full potential or his full potential. That is the goodness of our country. That is the American dream. I believe in a Country where every child, not just every boy in the shiny new suburbs, but every girl in the old suburbs, every boy on the farm, every girl in the inner city, where every child will be able to follow that dream of becoming a psychiatrist or a doctor, a basketball player or a teacher, an artist or a business person. And that none of them will have their dreams snuffed out. That's the America I believe in. I do not believe the future will belong to those who are content with the present, I do not believe the future will belong to the cynics, or to those who stand on the sideline. The future will belong to those who have passion, and to those grassroots heroes who are willing to make the personal commitment to make our country better. The future will belong to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. And if together we believe, we can create a movement like that which seized for women the right to vote, like the one that launched the New Deal, like the one that fought the War on Poverty. I believe now is a time for change. I'm convinced that the final two years of this Century offer us the opportunity to galvanize a new grassroots movement all over the Country -- a new American movement working for changes that will improve the lives of our families, our children, our communities, and our Nation for generations to come. If you and others in your community will join together, we can create the kind of movement that will make history again. Please join the fight. Let's change America!
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