Complete Bookshop/CompleteWorkshop.iso/politics/jessed/jackson

Text File | 1992-07-18 | 16KB | 308 lines

                   Text of Jackson's Speech
    Here is the prepared text of the speech Tuesday by Rev
 Jesse Jackson to the Democratic Natl Convention:

    "Chairman Ron Brown, you've done a difficult job well.
 You have brought down barriers. Your work makes us proud. We
 must not take the genius of Ron Brown for granted. Give Ron
 Brown a great round of applause. President Bill Clinton, you
 have survived a tough spring. It will make you stronger for
 the fall. With your stripes you must heal and make us
 better. The hopes of many depend upon your quest. Be
 comforted that you do not stand alone.

   And now that it looks like you are going to win the race
 in November, people are already lining up outside your hotel
 to get a job on appointment. Just remember when you get to
 the White House that I put Hope, Ark, on the map by saying
 keep Hope, Ark, alive, all over America.
    Vice President Al Gore, in years past Republicans would
 always talk about a stature gap. This time around they have
 a vice president who cannot spell potato, and our
 chlorofluoro-carbo-antidisestablishmenatarianism at the same
 time, Al Gore.

    We want to thank Al Gore for his work as environmental
 leader, supporter of social justice, and original sponsor of
 DC statehood.
    We stand as witnesses to a pregnant moment in history.
 Across the globe we feel the pain that comes with new birth.
 Here in our country pain abounds.
    We must be certain that it leads to new birth, and not a
 tragic miscarriage of opportunity.
    We must turn pain to power, pain to partnership, and not
 pain to polarization.

    The great temptation in these difficult days, racial
 polarization and economic injustice, is to make political
 arguments black and white, and miss the moral imperative of
 wrong and right.
    Vanity asks: is it popular? Politics asks: will it win?
 Morality and conscience ask: is it right?
    We are part of a continuing struggle for justice and
 decency, links in a chain that began long before we were
 born, and will extend long after we are gone.

    And history will remember us not for our positioning, but
  for our principles. Now by a move to the political center,
 left or right, but rather by our grasp on the moral and
 ethical center of wrong and right.
    We who stand with working people and poor have a special
 burden. We must stand for what is right, stand up to those
 who have the might, reduce those grounded in the faith that
 that which is morally wrong will never be politically right;
 but if it is morally sound it will eventually be politically
 right.
    As I'm standing here tonight and look into your faces, I
 hear the pain and see the struggles that prepared the ground
  that you stand on. We've come a long ways from where we
 started a generation ago it seemed, in 1964. Fanny Lou Hamer
 from Sunflower County, Miss, had to fight even to sit in
 this convention. Tonight, 28 years later, chairing the party
 is Ron Brown from Harlem, managers Alexis Herman, an African
 American woman from Mobile, Ala, We've come a long way.
    And yet we're more interdependent that we realize. Not
 only African Americans benefited from the movement led by
 Dr King for justice. It was only when African Americans in
 the South are free to win those seats that Bill Clinton and
  Al Gore from that same South takes this rostrum to lead our
  country into the next century.
    Tonight, we face another challenge. Ten million Americans
 unemployed, 25 million on food stamps, 35 million in
 poverty, 40 million have no health care. And the coal miners
 in Big Stone Gap, West Va, to the loggers and
 environmentalists in Roseberg, Ore, from this place textile
 workers in my home town of Greenville, SC, the plants
 closing in Van Nuys, Cal, pain abounds. Plants are closing,
 jobs leaving on the fast track, more working for less,
 trapped by repressive anti-labor
  laws, the homeless are a source of national shame and
 disgrace. There is a harshness to America that comes from
 not seeing and a growing mindless materialism.
    Our television sets bring the world into our living
 rooms. But too often we overlook our neighbors. It was there
 in Hamlet, NC, 25 workers died in a fire at Imperial Foods,
 more women than men, more white than black. They worked
 making chicken parts in vats heated to 400 degrees with few
 windows and no fans. The owners locked the doors from the
 outside. The women died. He said he locked the doors because
 they may steal some chicken wings.

   These women died trapped by economic desperation and
 oppressive work laws.
    One woman came up to me after the fire and said Rev
 Jackson, I want to work, I don't want to be on welfare, I
 have 3 children and no husband. She said, "I plucks 90 wings
 a minute. Sometimes I can't bend my wrists, I catches this
 carpal thing", talking about the carpal syndrome. Then when
 we get hurt and can't bend our wrists, then we can't get no
 medical care, then ungrammatical profundities shows, and
 then they fines us, because we're crippled. And then they
 called us lazy bitch. And she began to cry, and I said you
  are not lazy, and you are not bitch, and you are not alone,
 and a change is coming. We stand with you.
    Her friend, a white woman, came up to me and said, let me
 have your other shoulder. I'm 7 months pregnant. We're
 standing in 2 inches of water, with 2 5-minute bathroom
 breaks a day. Sometimes we can't hold our water. And then
 our bowels break, and then we faint.
    We wept together. If we keep Hamlet, NC, in our hearts
 and before our eyes, we will act to empower working people.
 We will protect the right to organize and to strike.

    We will empower workers to enforce health and safety
 laws. We will provide a national health care system, a
 minimum wage sufficient to bring workers out of poverty, and
 paid parental leave.
    We must build a movement for economic justice across this
 nation.
    This land is our land.
    Tonight, we face a difficult challenge. Our cities have
 been abandoned, farmers forsaken, children neglected. Floods
 in Chicago, fires in Los Angeles. They say they cannot find
  $35 billion for our mayors. but the latest downpayment for
 S&L bailout thieves was $25 billion. If we can find the
 money to bail out S&L thieves, we can find the money to bail
 out American cities.
    It is time to rebuild America. When I made the quiet
 reasoned judgment to support this ticket, I did a sound
 analysis. Four years ago we fought for a program to reinvest
 in America, paid for by fair taxes on the rich, and savings
 on the military.
    This year Governor Bill Clinton has taken a substantial
 step in that direction. He has expressed Democratic support
  for DC statehood. More people live in Washington than 5
 states. We pay more taxes than 10 states. We had more youth
 in the Persian Gulf than 20 states. We deserve the right to
 vote.
    He supports on-site same-day registration, and
 furthermore, willing to retrain workers that they might pay
 their fair share of taxes. We must build upon that
 tradition.
    The Rainbow Coalition has added another dimension. There
 are $3 trillion in private and public pension funds. We've
 drawn on Felix Rohatyn. We've used pension monies to help
  prop up South Africa and immoral use of the money. We've
 used it for leveraged buy-outs, to build buildings that are
 now vacant. We can use over 10 years secured $500 billion of
 the workers' money with workers' consent, add another $500
 billion--a 10-year trillion dollar plan. Let's put America
 back to work. We can build a national railroad, where we lay
 the bed and make the steel and make the rail, and ride the
 cars, and build the cars. And let's put America back to
 work!  Not welfare, but our share, and job share. Put
 America back to work!
    Our vision--our vision must correspond with the size of
  our problems. Today there is no Russian empire to fight.
 Use that money to rebuild our nation.
    There's hope in the world tonight. In Israel, Prime
 Minister Rabin's election is a step towards greater security
 and peace for the entire region.
    Rabin's wisdom in affirming negotiation over
 confrontation, and land for peace, and bargaining table over
 battle field has inspired hope, not only in democratic
 Israel, but on the West Bank as well. Israeli security and
 Palestinian self-determination are inextricably bound. There
 must be a new Middle East where Israelis and Palestinians
  can live together as brothers and sisters and not die apart
 in war after war after war after war.
    With stable partners like Mubarak and King Fahd in Saudi
 Arabia, and Boutros Ghali at the UN, peace is on the way in
 the Middle East. Let all the talk stop about driving Jews
 into the sea, or driving Arabs from the land. Let's stop war
 talk, and let's have peace talk. Let's have peace in that
 region.
    In Africa today, democracy's on the march. Under
 President Babangida [phonetic] successful elections were
 held just last week. But democracy cannot flourish amid
  economic ruins. Democracy protects the right to vote, but
 not the right to eat. Today President Deuf of Senegal, who
 heads the Organization of African Unity, is pushing for
 democracy. But just as there was a Marshall Plan to rebuild
 Europe and Japan, then apply it to Africa as well. Let's
 wipe out hunger and starvation all over the world. Make a
 world of peace and justice for everybody.
    As Democrats, it's not our mission just to fight for the
 political center, but the moral center. We cannot become
 isolationist. We must reach out. Let us not forget in 1939,
 900 Jews left Germany, coming to America for freedom. They
  got within Miami Beach, Fla, eyesight. US authorities
 turned the 900 Jews, mostly women and children, around on
 the ship called the St Louis. They got back to Germany.
 Hitler killed them, and said to them, no one would accept
 you. It was anti-Semitic and wrong to lock them out. But
 guess what? 1942, you saw young Kristi Yamaguchi skating to
 glory in the Olympics a few months ago. Her mother was born
 in an American concentration camp. 120,000
 Japanese-Americans locked up while they fought to help us
 win the 2d World War. If it was wrong and anti-Semitic to
 lock the Jews out in 1939, if it was wrong to lock the
  Japanese-Americans up in 1942, it's wrong to lock the
 Haitians out in 1992.
    Tonight, South Africa remains a terrorist state.
 Sanctions should be reimposed until there's an interim
 government established in South Africa.
    Lastly, there's a lot of talk these days about family
 values. Even as we spurn the homeless on the street,
 remember, Jesus was born to a homeless couple, outdoors in a
 stable, in the winter.
    Jesus was a child of a single mother. But when Mary said,
 Joseph was not the father, she was abused and questioned.

    If Mary had aborted the baby, she would have been called
 immoral. If she had the baby she would have been called
 unfit, without family values.
    But Mary had family values. It was Herod, the Quayle of
 his day, who put no value on the family.
    When Dan Quayle tries to ride both sides of this private
 religious moral issue, he is above his potato.
    Above all, Democrats, we must reach out to our children,
 our children are in trouble. They are embittered, they were
  not born that way. They live amidst violence and rejection.
 They live in broken streets, broken glass, broken sidewalks,
 broken families, broken hearts.
    Their music, their rap, their video, their art, reflects
 their broken world. And yet, these are our children. To many
 of them, I say to you, jail is a step up.
    We spend in Los Angeles, on those children, to go to a
 high school, where Congresswoman Maxine Waters and I stayed
 with them in Imperial Courts and Nickerson Gardens, those
 children cannot imagine a health insurance package. They
 cannot imagine applying to go to college.

    They cannot imagine a job.
    We spend on them to go to high school $5000 a year, but
 the downtown jail, $34,000 a year. For them jail is a step
 up. For once they are jailed, they will no longer be hit by
 drive-by shootings. Once they are jailed, they are no longer
 homeless.
    Once they are jailed, they have balanced meals.
    Once they are jailed, it's warm in the wintertime; it's
 cool in the summer time. Once they are jailed, they have
 adult supervision.

    We must reach out to our children. Better that we have
 clean hearts and dirty hands than to have dirty hearts and
 clean hands. These are our children. These are our children.
    These are our children.
    These are our children.
    And I say this to you tonight as we proceed toward
 November, in all this ugliness there is hope. There is still
 that silver lining in the clouds.
    Let us not forget, we talk a lot about Rodney King and
 how the white police beat him, how the white jury freed
  them, and how racist that was--and it was.
    But lest you forget, and lest a white man named George
 Halladay with a sense of conscience and instinct, had not
 George Halladay filmed the beating and made it public,
 tonight Rodney King would be in jail accused of assaulting
 police officers.
    He is a genuine point of light.
    But then on the other side of town, you saw the white
 truck driver beaten on television. It was wrong. It was
 wrong for the police to withdraw from their duty. But those
 police did not save Mr Denny. It was 4 young black youth
  operating as good Samaritans. They saved his life. There is
 hope. That is hope.
    As we move to the next dimension, I share this with you,
 Mr Chairman, to our next president and vice president, not
 very long ago, I was in South Carolina speaking to a small
 school. I saw a strange and unusual sight.
    I saw a 6'8" athlete walking across the campus, holding
 the hand of a 3' dwarf. There was this contrast. It looked
 to be romantic. She was looking up, and he was looking down.
    They got to where the sidewalks, and she jumped up on the
 bench and they embraced and kissed.
    And he gave her books. She went skipping down the
 sidewalk.
    I tried to act normal, but Andy, it looked funny to me. I
 said, Mr President, what am I looking at? He said, well, I
 thought you would ask. You see, it is his sister. As a
 matter of fact, it is his twin sister.
    And by some freak of genetics, he came out the giant, and
 she came out dwarfed.
    He's a top athlete in the state. We couldn't afford to
 get him. All the big schools offered him scholarships.
 The pros offered him a contract.
    But he said, I can only go to the college that my sister
 can get a scholarship. The NCAA said, but we can't give 2
 scholarships. We have bright lights; we have pro
 possibilities. He said, but if my sister can't go, I can't
 go.
    Somewhere that boy learned something about ethics, about
 real caring, about real character. If my sister can't go, I
 can't go.
    All of us are not born giants with silver spoons in our
 mouths and gold slippers on our feet. Some of us are born
  short--short of hope, short of opportunity, abandoned,
 neglected, homeless, motherless, teeth crooked, eyes
 tangled, dreams busted, hurt. But somebody has to measure
 their giantness, not by leaping up, but by reaching back and
 reaching out and loving and caring and sharing.
    Democrats, if we pursue that ethic, that love ethic, that
 care ethic, we will win.
    And deserve to win.
    Stand tall. Never surrender. Keep hope alive. Keep hope
 alive.
    Keep hope alive. Keep hope alive."