From: David Harding (davidharding@optusnet.com.au)
Date: Fri Nov 05 2004 - 11:28:48 GMT
For those of you who are wondering about the future of a 'divided'
nation. I point in the general direction of Barack Obama who has
recently won the United States Senate spot in Illinois. As reported will
he be the only black Senator currently residing, but even more
importantly he speaks and says things with a great openness when talking
about quality. For example he said "In the end, that is God's greatest
gift to us, the bedrock of this nation; the belief in things not seen;
the belief that there are better days ahead." at the Democratic National
Convention in a speech which took many by surprise[including me] and
threw him into the political spotlight and become more noticed by than
just by a handful of registered voters in Illinois. A link to
video/audio of the DNC speech is
http://www.dems2004.org/site/apps/nl/content3.asp?c=luI2LaPYG&b=125925&ct=158769
His acceptance speech also rings a similar tune in which he refers to
Lincoln; someone who Pirsig also has said he admired, because underneath
the casual speaking surface there is infact a surveyor's precision
underlying every sentence he writes. You get that impression with Obama
as well. The acceptance speech is far better left to speak for itself
than any summarising I can do, so below is a transcript taken from
http://www.obamaforillinois.com.
"656 days ago I announced in a room a little smaller than this -- it was
a lot smaller -- that I was announcing for the United States Senate. At
the time, as many of you know, people were respectful but nevertheless
skeptical. They knew the work we had done to provide health insurance to
children who didn't have it, to help make the tax system more fair, to
reform a death penalty system that was broken. But they felt that in a
nation as divided as ours there was no possibility that someone who
looked like me could ever aspire to United States senate. They felt that
in a fearful nation like this someone named Barack Obama couldn't hope
to win an election.
Yet here we stand because we had a different concept and notion of the
American people. We understood that there was a core of decency to the
American people. That there was a set of shared values that extended
beyond race and region, extended beyond income and ethnicity. A belief
that every child in America should have a decent shot at life. A belief
that we are brothers and sisters. And that we have mutual obligations
towards each other, and that those mutual obligations express themselves
not only in our family, not only in our workplaces, not only in our
places of worship, but also through our government. We believed in the
possibility of a government that was just as decent as the American
people are. And we knew that despite the misinformation, despite the
bitterness, despite the partisan politics, that when you talk to people
those common values would come out. That the innate instincts of the
American people would surface, if we could speak to them, if we could
connect to them, if we could talk to them directly.
And because of the efforts of so many of you in this room, we had the
resources, we had the manpower, we had the capacity to touch each and
every one of those hearts throughout the state.
And so as a consequence, I had a chance to hear the stories of people.
And they would tell me we don’t expect our government to solve all our
problems. We know that we have to teach all our own children initiative
and self-respect and a sense of family and faith and community. But what
we also know is that government can help provide us with the basic tools
we need to live out the American dream. And we also know that we’re
tired of politicians who are attacking each other instead of attacking
problems. And that if we can come together as one people that we can
make progress and close the gap between the ideal of America and its
reality.
And today we stand here in the Land of Lincoln, the man who once called
for us to appeal to the better angels of our nature, we stand here as
testimony to that belief that Lincoln articulated: the possibilities of
appealing to those better angels. We stand here as one people, as one
nation, proclaiming ourselves to be one America with a capacity to work
together to create a better future for each other. And what a
magnificent gift that is to the nation. How wonderful it is that we have
been able to accomplish this without negative ads and without the normal
partisan politics and just focusing on the issues that matter to people:
healthcare, and jobs and education.
And it is because of you that I have been able to do that. Because you
created a protective garment over this campaign. Your spirit allowed us
to run the kind of campaign that we’ve been able to run. We have had
some good breaks in this campaign. There is no doubt about it. And I am
under no illusion that we come out of this assuming that all people
throughout the state of Illinois agree with me on every single position.
But I think that what we’ve showed is that all of us can disagree
without being disagreeable; that we can set aside the scorched-earth
politics, the slash and burn politics of the past. We can consign that
to the past. We can look forward to the future. We can build step by
step to ensure that we arrive at the practical common sense solutions
that all of us hope for. That's what this campaign has been about.
But we also have to remind ourselves that this is really just the end of
the beginning. This is not the end itself. In the ultimate equation we
will not be measured by the margin of our victory, but we will be
measured by whether we are able to deliver concrete improvements to the
lives of so many people all across the state who are struggling.
We will be measured by whether those men all across the state in
Galesburg, in Rockford and Decatur and Alton, those folks who have been
laid off their jobs, seen their jobs move to Mexico or China, lost their
health care, their pensions threatened, whether they are able to find
jobs that allow them to support a family and maintain their dignity. We
are going to be measured by how well we deliver the resources to the
school districts all across the state who are in deficit spending. To
make sure that our children have the teachers and the programs they need
to excel. We are going to be measured by whether or not we can provide
access and affordability to healthcare so that no families in Illinois
are bankrupt when they get sick. We are going to be measured by whether
our senior citizens can retire with some dignity and some respect. We
are going to be measured by the degree to which we can craft a foreign
policy in which we are not simply feared in the world but we are also
respected. That's what we are going to be measured by.
I told some of you about a story a couple of days ago where during a
rally that the clergy had organized on the South Side of Chicago I was
asked to meet with a woman who had attended a reception beforehand. And
she was a woman who had voted absentee for me already and wanted to
shake my hand and take a picture with me. And she came to the reception
and she was very gracious and said how proud she was to have voted for
me and how proud she was of the campaign that we had run. We shook
hands, we hugged, we took a picture and all of this would be
unexceptional except for the fact that she was born in 1899. Her name
was Margaret Lewis. She may be watching television tonight. She’s 104.
She will be 105 on November 24.
And I have had much occasion over the last several days to think about
Margaret Lewis. Trying to imagine what it would be like for this woman,
an African American woman born in 1899, born in the shadow of slavery.
Born in the midst of Jim Crow. Born before there were automobiles or
roads to carry those automobiles. Born before there were airplanes in
the sky, before telephones and televisions and cameras. Born before
there were cell phones and the Internet. Imagining her life spanning
three centuries, she lived to see World War I; she lived to see the
Great Depression; she lived to see World War II; and she lived to see
her brothers and uncles and nephews and cousins coming home and still
sitting in the back of a bus.
She lived to see women get the right to vote. She lived to see F.D.R.
drag this nation out of its own fear and establish the GI bill and
social security and all the programs that we now take for granted. She
saw unions rising up and she saw immigrant families coming from every
direction making a better life for themselves in this nation.
And yet she still was held back by her status until finally she saw hope
breaking through the horizon and the Civil Rights Movement. And women
who were willing to walk instead of riding the bus after long day's work
doing somebody else's laundry and looking after somebody else's
children. And she saw young people of every race and every creed take a
bus down to Mississippi and Alabama to register voters and some of them
never coming back. And she saw four little girls die in a Sunday school
and catalyze a nation. And then she saw the Civil Rights Act of 1964
passed and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed.
And she saw people lining up to vote for the first time and she was
among those voters and she never forgot it. And she kept on voting each
and every election, each and every election she kept voting thinking
that there was a better future ahead despite her trials despite her
tribulations, continually believing in this nation and its
possibilities. Margaret Lewis believed. And she still believes at the
age of 104 that her voice matters, that her life counts, that her story
is sacred, just lake the story of every person in this room and the
stories of their parents and grandparents, the legacy that we’ve
established. The history of so many people building calloused hand, by
calloused hand, brick by brick a better future for our children.
That's what America understands that we don't just inherit the world
from our parents, but we also borrow it from our children. And that is
why tonight; as we stand here we have to understand that we have another
join ahead and it is going to be a journey even more challenging than
the one we have already embarked on. There are people today right now
who are as skeptical about the future as they were at the outset of this
campaign. There are people who are saying that the country is too
divided, that the special interests are too entrenched. That there is no
possibility that one person in the senate can ever make a difference,
they don't believe that we can provide affordable healthcare to families
across the state of Illinois. They are not convinced we can provide
economic development for rural communities that have been forgotten.
They don't really ascribe to the notion that in this competitive global
economy we can still assure that every person gets a living wage. They
are skeptical of the possibilities that our children can enjoy a better
future than we had.
And for those skeptics who believe that we can accomplish what we set
out to accomplish, if our minds are clear and our heart is pure and we
believe in a just and merciful God, I say to them look at this crowd
tonight, look at this election today, and I have three words for them.
The same three words that we started the campaign, the same three words
that we finished the primary, the same three words that are going to
carry us, because as Dr. King said, "The arc of the moral universe is
long but it bends toward justice as long as we help bend it that way."
I have three words for them. What are those words? Yes, we can. Thank
you Illinois and I love you. Thank you. Thank you Illinois."
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