From: dks@MIT.EDU (dks) Newsgroups: alt.fan.dan-quayle Subject: Jesse Jackson: 'You Do Not Stand Alone' Message-ID: <9207151045.AA03583@MIT.EDU> Date: 15 Jul 92 11:40:45 GMT Lines: 290 X-Received: by usenet.pa.dec.com; id AA18786; Wed, 15 Jul 92 03:46:23 -0700 X-Received: by inet-gw-1.pa.dec.com; id AA11426; Wed, 15 Jul 92 03:46:19 -0700 X-Received: from TMS-PORT-9.MIT.EDU by MIT.EDU with SMTPid AA03583; Wed, 15 Jul 92 06:45:09 EDT X-To: alt.fan.dan-quayle.usenet X-Command: Send_AEvt(doAutoForward) Hello! By popular request, here is Jesse Jackson's speech. Cheers, Dhanesh ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Jesse Jackson's Speech: 'You Do Not Stand Alone' --- NEW YORK, July 14, 1992 Here is the prepared text of Reverend Jesse Jackson's speech on Tuesday night to the Democratic National Convention: Chairman Ron Brown, you've done a difficult job well. You 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. 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 or 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 always talked about a stature gap. This time around they have a vice president who cannot spell potato and our candidate can spell chlorofluorocarbon-antidisestablish- mentarianism at the same time, Al Gore. We want to thank Al Gore for his work as an environmental leader, a supporter of social justice, a sponsor of D.C. statehood. And I, for one, look forward to the vice-presidential debate. 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, not pain into polarization. The great temptation in these difficult days of 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 ask, will it win? The conscience asks, 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. History will remember us not for our positioning, but for our principles. Not by our 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. We do so grounded in the faith, that which is morally wrong will never be politically right. But if it is morally sound, it will eventually be politically right. I stand here tonight and look into your faces, I hear the pain and see the struggles that prepared the ground that you stand on. We have come a long way from where we started. A generation ago it seemed in 1964, Fanny Lou Hamer of Sunflower County, Miss., had to fight even to sit in this convention. Tonight, 28 years later, the chair of the party is Ron Brown from Harlem; the manager is Alexis Herman, an African-American woman from Mobile, Ala. We have come a long way. And yet we are 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 were free to win those seats could Bill Clinton and Al Gore from the same South take this rostrum to lead our country. Tonight we face another challenge. Ten million Americans are unemployed, 25 million on food stamps, 35 million in poverty, 40 million have no health care. From the coal miners in Bigstone Gap, West Va., to the loggers and environmentalists in Roseburg, Ore., from displaced textile workers in my home town of Greenville, S.C., to plants closing in Van Nuys, Calif., pain abounds. Plants are closing, jobs leaving on a 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, N.C., 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 three children and no husband.'' She said, ''I pluck 90 wings a minute. Sometimes I can't bend my wrist, I catches this carpal thing.'' Talking about the carpal syndrome. ''Then when we get hurt, we can't bend our wrists, we can't get no medical care ... and then they fires us cause we cripple and then they call us lazy bitch,'' and she began to cry. I said, ''You are not lazy, and you are not a bitch and you are not alone and 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 seven months pregnant. We stand in two inches of water with two 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, N.C., in our hearts and before our eyes, we will act to empower the 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 down payment for S&L bailout thieves is $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. 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 from the military. This year, Gov. Bill Clinton has taken a substantial step in that direction. He's expressed Democratic support for D.C. statehood. More people live in Washington than five states. We pay more taxes than 10 states. We had more youths in the Persian Gulf than 20 states. We deserve the right to vote. He supports home site same-day registration, and for (inaudible) plants willing to retrain workers that they might pay their fare share of taxes. We must build upon that tradition. The Rainbow Coalition has added another dimension. There are $3 trillion in public and private pension funds. We join Felix Rohatyn. We've used pension monies to help prop up South Africa, an immoral use of the money. We've used it for leveraged buyouts to build buildings that are now vacant. We can use 10 years secured $500 billion of the workers' money and another $500 billion, a 10-year, let's put America back to work. We can build a national railroad. We lay the beds and make the steel and lay the rails and ride the cars and build the cars. (inaudible) Put America back to work. For our share. And job share. Put America back to work. Our vision must correspond with the size of our problem. Today there is no Russian empire to fight. Use that money to rebuild America. There's hope in the world tonight. In Israel, Prime Minister Rabin's elec- tion is a step toward greater security and peace for the entire region. Rabin's wisdom in affirming negotiation over confrontation, land for peace, bargaining table over battlefield has inspired hope, hope not only in the hearts of 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 Palestinians and Israelis can live together as brothers and sisters and not die apart in war after war after war after war. (Inaudible) like Mubarak in Egypt and King Fahd in Saudi Arabia and Boutros-Ghali at the U.N. Peace is on the way in the Middle East. Then all the talk stops about driving Jews into the sea or driving Arabs in the land. Let's stop war talk. And let's have peace talk. Let's have peace in that region. In Africa today, democracy is on the march. Under President Babangida 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 Diouf of Senegal, who heads the Organization of African Unity, they are 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 the 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 must not become isolationists. Let us reach out. Let us not forget. In 1939, 900 Jews left Germany coming to America for freedom. They got within Miami Beach, Fla., eyesight. U.S. 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? In 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. A hundred and 20,000 Japanese-Americans locked up while they fought to help us win the Second World War. If it were wrong and anti-Semitic to lock the Jews out in 1939, if it were 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, 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 the child of a single mother. When Mary said Joseph was not the father, she was abused and questioned. If she 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 tried 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're embittered. They were not born that way. We 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. For 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 - with Congresswoman Maxine Waters I stayed with them in the Imperial Courts and Nickerson Gardens - those children cannot imagine a health insurance project. They cannot imagine applying to go to college. They cannot imagine a job. We spend on them to go to high school $5,000 a year but the downtown jail $34,000 a year. For them jail is a step up. For once they are jailed they are no longer 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 summertime. Once they are jailed they have adult supervision. We must reach out to our children. It's better to 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. I say to you tonight as we proceed towards November in all of this ugliness there is hope. There is still that silver lining in the cloud. Let us not forget. We talk a lot about Rodney King and how the white police beat him and how the white jury freed them and how racist it was and it was. But lest you forget unless a white man named George Halliday with a sense of conscience and instinct, had not George Halliday 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 four young black youth operating as Good Samaritans. They saved his life. There is hope. There 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-foot-8 athlete walking across the campus holding the hand of a 3-foot 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 crossed 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, ''I thought you would ask. You see, that is his sister, as a matter of fact it is his twin sister. By some freak of genetics, he came out a giant, she came out dwarfed. He's a top athlete in this 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 where my sister can get a scholarship. The NCAA said, 'But we can't give two scholarships. We have bright lights. We have pro possibilities.''' He said, ''But if my sister can't go, I can't go.'' Somewhere that young 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 mangled, genes busted. But somebody has to measure their giantness not by reaching up but by reaching out and caring and sharing. Democrats, if we pursue that ethic, that love ethic, that care ethic, we will win. We will win and deserve to win. Keep hope. Never surrender. Keep hope alive. Keep hope alive. Keep hope alive. ----------- End of text ------ Jackson, 7/14/92 p.m. ------------------