Speech to Rainbow/PUSH Annual
  Convention 
 
    Reverend Jackson, thank you very much for the invitation
    to be here today for a chance to speak to the
    Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. Your life reminds me of the
    old saying "One person with courage makes a majority,"
    and I think that you have demonstrated time and time
    again that you're a man of courage, strength and
    convictions. Your idealism and your commitment make
    this country a better place. I also want to give
    congratulations to all the awardees, many of whom I've
    known for a long while. 

    What I'll like to do this morning is talk to you a little bit
    about my wife and myself. What I hope to do and what I
    hope we can together. I grew up in a small town -- 3,492
    people -- on the banks of Mississippi in Missouri. It was
    a town that had 96 people in its graduating class and
    one stoplight. It was a multiethnic, multiracial, factory
    town. It was a town where the Little League was
    integrated before the schools. It was a town where, on
    league tournaments, I remember staying at hotels in the
    third or fourth grade, and we had African-American
    players on our team and weren't allowed to stay in a
    better hotel. I remember traveling to the boot heel of
    Missouri with American Legion Baseball Teams with
    African-American players, we'd go to restaurants and
    wouldn't be served. It was a factory town, but there were
    opportunities. It was a good place to grow up, even
    though the area in which we grew up and the time we
    grew up in was so distant to many young people today,
    that its hard for them to ever believe that it happened.
    But of course we know. My father -- I guess you would
    call him disabled today -- he had a calcified arthritis of
    the lower spine. I never saw him tie his shoes, or drive a
    car, or throw a ball. He went to work at age 21, no high
    school education, in the bank in that small town. He used
    to say his job was shining pennies. And over 40 years,
    he worked his way up to where he was the majority
    shareholder in that small town bank. I once asked him,
    as sons often ask their parents, "What was your
    proudest moment?" He said his proudest moment was
    that during the Great Depression he never foreclosed on
    a single house. The other thing he said was that you
    can't tell who will pay their loan by the color of their skin.
    That was a man I was proud of. 

    My mother was an energetic, church going, civic club
    attending, college graduate, elementary school teacher
    who poured all her attention into her only child, me. And
    my mother always wanted me to be a success. My father
    always wanted me to be a gentleman, and neither one of
    them wanted me to be a politician. But that of course is
    what I became. 

    I remember the summer of 1964, when it first dawned on
    me that maybe someday I might want to be in the U.S.
    Senate. I was an intern that summer in Washington, that
    was the summer of the first $100 billion budget, the Gulf
    of Tonkin Resolution and the 1964 Civil Rights Acts. I
    stood in the corner of the Senate Chambers as a lowly
    19 or 20 year old intern the night the 1964 Civil Rights
    Act was passed that desegregated those hotels and
    restaurants that has been a part of my youth. And I
    thought to myself something happened tonight that made
    America a better place. Not just for African Americans,
    Latino Americans, Asian Americans, but for all
    Americans. And maybe someday, I thought to myself, I'd
    like to be in the United States Senate and help make
    America a better place. 

    You know, on the way to the United States Senate, I
    played 10 years for the New York Knicks and I had the
    opportunity to travel the country with an extraordinary
    group of human beings. Some might say it was a black
    world, but in the course of those travels, I began to see
    the country through the eyes of my teammates as much
    as through my own eyes. And I've said often that I gained
    so much more from my teammates than they ever
    gained from me. It was also an experience that made
    me realize what can happen when people work together,
    when they share a common purpose so that they see
    beyond the differences to what we share and they
    realize that the individual group cannot accomplish as
    much as all of us can accomplish together. 

    In 1978, I was elected to the Senate -- never forgot that
    moment of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 -- served for 18
    years. I supported Affirmative Action; I stood up to the
    Reagan and Bush Administrations when I thought they
    were wrong on federal support of segregated schools,
    on civil rights bills, or on just plain practicing the politics
    of pitting one group against another. I remember, in
    1992 I think it was, the Rodney King episode occurred. I
    kind of thought I'd go to the Senate and talk about race.
    And when I saw the police beating Rodney King with
    batons 56 times in two minutes, I was appalled. I thought
    this was the time that a white face needed to be on the
    floor of the United States Senate. So I went to the floor, I
    had a few words written down, but was not sure I was
    going to make the point about what this means. And
    when I got there I decided what I was going to do, so I
    took a watch and put it on the podium. Took about six or
    seven pencils and said "Ladies and gentleman we just
    heard or maybe you saw it on television, Rodney King in
    California, he was beaten 56 times in two minutes by the
    Los Angeles Police Department", and then paused. And
    (tapping on microphone) I hit the podium 56 times in two
    minutes. The chamber was silent. They carried it on the
    evening news, "Nightline." 

    The predictable happened, over the next couple weeks, I
    got a lot of hate mail from people across the country that
    didn't understand -- or maybe they understood. They
    wanted to let me know what they thought, but I also got a
    lot of wonderful mail. I remember one man wrote me
    from Philadelphia. He enclosed a cassette of the
    symphony he had written after hearing that speech, and
    he entitled the symphony 56 blows. So those were the
    years in the United States Senate. 

    And now I'm a candidate for President of the United
    States. The first speech I made in the campaign was
    about race in America. Why did I do it? It's part of what I
    am and what I care most deeply about. And I make that
    kind of speech not only to the Rainbow Push Coalition,
    but to everyone. 

    I was in Iowa earlier this year talking about race and
    unity. Afterwards, at a reception at somebody's house, a
    white person came up to me and asked "Why are you
    making a speech about race and unity to a lot of white
    Iowans?" And I said, "Why not? I speak about it
    everywhere." And indeed racial unity to me, is not a
    project, it is not a political position, it's my core and I'm
    staking my presidential campaign on the belief that way
    over 50 of the 60 percent of Americans, including white
    Americans, want to have racial unity in this country. And
    that's why I'm here, because the history of progress of
    racial unity in this country has come most when there is a
    multiracial, multiethnic coalition pushing for change. 

    Let's look at the 1960's. The 1960's -- where Rev.
    Jackson once again played such a powerful role --
    where he learned from the best where commitment ran
    deep from the beginning. Their future was injustice and
    the injustice was clear segregation and the inability for
    African-Americans to vote, that the remedies to justice
    were equally clear, desegregate and open up by
    increasing voting rights. A multiracial coalition achieved
    that. That's what the Rainbow Coalition is. A coalition of
    all Americans, to change things for the better, but we
    must be given pause, as this Rainbow Coalition is not
    just within this room. It must be CEO's, it must be
    lawyers, it must be computer programmers, it must be
    your friends and neighbors, and yes it must be the
    President of the United States, who must put the full
    force of the office towards bringing this kind of change.
    And I'll tell you that working on Civil Rights laws are
    important and I will not yield on them. I have also heard
    recently, that the Vice President said that, his first civil
    rights act if he became President would be to sign an
    executive order ending racial profiling. I say, "Why wait,
    Mr. Vice President? Walk down that hall to where the
    President is seated, hand him an executive order and
    say, "Sign it, now." 

    You know Albert Einstein gave a final exam to a class at
    a college, once. And one of the students came up to him
    and said, "Professor Einstein, Professor Einstein! One
    of the questions on this year's exam is the same as the
    one on last year's exam." To which Einstein replied
    "That's okay. This year, the answers are different." And
    that's the world we're living in. The answers are different
    almost everyday. Were in the midst of multiple changes.
    Globalization of the economy, technological changes, 10
    years ago who had ever heard of the Internet. Now you
    can't be a self-respecting politician without your own
    website. By the way, mine is billbradley.com. Changes
    in family structure, the reality is that all these changes
    are occurring simultaneously, and somebody who runs
    for President of the United States, has it incumbent upon
    him or her to be able to give people a narrative or story
    that they can locate themselves so that it makes sense
    to them and they can say we can get a part of this
    prosperity. We can live up to the ideals of our founders
    and each of us in our own way find some meaning that is
    deeper in this life than material. 

    So what does that imply, for the Rainbow Coalition? I
    think it implies that we have to recognize and spread the
    message widely. That until people work and live
    together, until they grow and learn together, and they
    share their pride in humanity together, racial unity will
    never be achieved. But when good people with good will
    come together we can build something together, we can
    build something good. Now, what areas must we direct
    this at? 

    First lets take health care, 44 - 46 million people without
    health insurance in America. 60 percent of those without
    health insurance are working Americans. 30 percent of
    Americans are underinsured. Clearly if I'm President of
    the United States, I'm going to be back at the
    Rainbow/PUSH Coalition asking you to help me -- join
    with me -- to make sure that we get as much or as close
    to all Americans on some form of health insurance. It
    means we need to look at this seriously, at the issue of
    children in poverty. One in five children as Rick said;
    40% among black children; 11 million children without
    health coverage; one million homeless in America. After
    seven years of the first two-term Democrat since
    Franklin Roosevelt, the number of children in poverty in
    America barely went down. One year after the Welfare
    Reform bill passed -- which I voted against saying that it
    was the wrong direction, saying that it shouldn't cut the
    bond between mother and child. They shouldn't send a
    bunch of federal money to the states and spend it on
    poverty (80 percent); saying that it's not going to happen
    in the long run, particularly in tough times - but, one year
    after, there were 29 percent more children in America in
    what is called "deep poverty." Which is half of the
    poverty income. Reducing the number of children in
    poverty in our society should be the North Star for our
    society. It should be by how we measure ourselves; it
    should be our guiding star. If I'm President of the United
    States, I'm going to be back here asking the Rainbow
    Coalition to reduce the number of children in poverty. 

    What about hand guns? I think it's time that somebody
    stood up to the NRA. In 1968, I remember saying to
    myself when I saw Robert Kennedy, his head in a pool of
    blood on the floor of the Ambassador Hotel, that
    somebody in the United States should ban Saturday
    Night Specials. It's time to stop playing politics with guns
    and start doing something about guns. Like licensing
    and registration of all handguns in this country. We can
    trace cars because they're registered. Why can't we
    trace handguns because they're registered? It's time we
    get the gun dealers out of residential neighborhoods,
    where it is so easy for the kids to get the guns. We
    should also say that if you're a gun dealer and sell to a
    "straw man" and then that person passes the gun along
    to somebody else that shouldn't have been given the
    gun. That shouldn't be a misdemeanor, it should be a
    felony. 

    And then of course, there's democratic participation. As
    Rev. Jackson said "Money controls democratic process
    today." We have a system where people can contribute
    $100,000 -- $500,000. We have a system where we
    have one man, one vote, but the people who have more
    money, have more clout. I mean, I was on the Finance
    Committee for 18 years. When we would have a big tax
    bill, there would be billions of dollars at stake, hundreds
    of billions of dollars. And the lobbyists would be jammed
    in the room. There would be a line going down the
    hallway, all in their Gucci shoes, and each one would be
    charged with the responsibility of getting something in
    the tax bill that would reduce their client's taxes. And
    leave the rest of us to pay higher taxes. Two days later,
    there would be a meeting of the Finance Committee on
    child poverty. Not billions of dollars, tens of millions of
    dollars. The phones and beepers would be gone; the
    lobbyists would be gone. The third row would be full and
    that was it. And it would be a struggle to get the tens of
    millions of dollars. 

    In a world where we have campaign finance reform, we
    would have good people who work in a bad system be
    able to realize what the democratic process wants them
    to do, which would be doing something about national
    health insurance and doing something about children in
    poverty. Remove the excuse, remove the pretense
    created by money dumped into the democratic process
    as it does today. 

    Then of course, there's participation. People in this room
    have led the fight for the registration of voters in this
    country. For a generation you have registered hundreds
    of thousands of voters to participate in the democratic
    system. But maybe we ought to go a different way?
    When you become a citizen of the United States you
    take a test, and on that test it says what is the most
    important right? Some people say it's the freedom of
    speech, some people say well it's freedom to worship
    whomever you choose. But the right answer on the
    citizenship test -- it is the right to vote. But the right to
    vote is the only right we put obstacles in the way of. So
    I'm saying that we need to have a national same day
    registration bill. In Minnesota, one out of six people
    registered on the same day. You want to vote? You show
    up, you register, you vote. We ought to have voting
    through the mail for the disabled -- like my father -- and
    the elderly, and for people who can't get to the polls.
    They will be able to vote in advance. They do that in
    Oregon, why can't they do that for the whole country? We
    ought to have a voting leave law that allows an hour or
    two off on election day, in order for people to exercise
    their most important right. If I'm president of the United
    States, I will ask you to join me in that endeavor. I look
    forward to it. 

    Have you ever asked yourself, who are the lowest paid
    workers in America? The lowest paid workers in
    America are those that take care of our children and
    take care of our elderly parents as they're dying. They're
    home healthcare workers. One of the most exciting
    moments of this campaign for me was the day I was in
    Los Angels and 80,000 home health- care workers
    became represented by SEIU. We need more
    Americans represented by unions in this country that will
    give them some leverage with their employer so they
    can make more money. We need more Americans with
    health insurance, we need an increase in the minimum
    wage, and we need to work to try to raise the people up
    so that they can go as high as their abilities will let them
    go. 

    You know race in America is never simple -- never
    simple. More men and women who are Black, Latino
    and Asian are making it into the corporate towers of law
    firms and corporations. But too many corporate boards
    fail to reflect the diversity of this country. And those that
    do often have one person of color on multiple boards.
    There are thousands and thousands of qualified
    African-American, Latino and Asian-Americans, there's
    no reason why every Fortune 500 board cannot have an
    African American, Asian or Latino on their board. 

    What inspires people to do things? When Ronald Regan
    was President of the United States and you wanted to
    impress the boss, what you did was talk about
    increasing defense spending and cutting taxes. If I'm
    President and you want to please the boss, you're going
    to have to show how in your life, in your company, in your
    department you promoted racial unity and racial
    understanding in this country. It's as simple as that. 

    You know there's a story about three stone cutters in the
    Middle Ages. And each one is asked what are you
    doing? The first one says, well I'm cutting stone 1 foot by
    1 foot by 1 3/4 from this larger stone and I'm putting one
    next to the other over and over and over and over and I'm
    frustrated and I'm bored. The second stone cutter, what
    are you doing? Well I'm cutting stone 1 foot by 1 foot by
    1 3/4, and with those stones I built a wall and with that
    wall, I got paid and with that money I fed my family, and I
    have a wonderful family life. Third stone cutter, what are
    you doing? Oh, I'm building a holy lighthouse that will last
    1,000 years. And the question is, which of those stone
    cutters are you? 

    If more of us could realize that, multiracial coalitions
    could come together to serve people who are
    undeserved in this country. To provide them with health
    care, to reduce child poverty, to increase participation in
    politics and give working people a chance to be
    represented by unions and have a chance to help their
    families move forward. This is simply not enough. It is
    also about building that holy lighthouse that will last for
    1,000 years. 

    Thank you very much.


