Speaking in Faneuil Hall, Boston
During the Democratic National Convention
Tuesday, July 27, 2004
Thank you.
Feel this place under you and around you. Know where you are. All the world knows the story of how the Americans became a free people, how they declared their independence, how they devised a constitution that is still an engine of fairness, of improvement, of justice and freedom. But the story seems remote sometimes. So feel this place under you. Know where you are. Remember who we are.
This room, these walls, echoed the words of Sam Adams as he stood in this place and reminded Americans who they were and what they must do. In this room we Americans heard George Washington and Daniel Webster shape the new Republic.
In this room William Lloyd Garrison helped define an American value system that could no longer admit of human slavery, and he defined non-violent resistance in a way that was persuasive with Ruskin in England and Tolstoy in Russia and Gandhi in South Africa and India. And from Gandhi back to Martin Luther King in America. From this room.
And here spoke Susan B. Anthony to move our engine of equality forward again.
And here spoke John Kennedy and so many other Americans who loved freedom and justice and who pushed us to be a better people, ever moving along the Freedom Trail.
Feel this place. Remember who you are and why you are here and understand that all of them and all of us are of one mind and sometimes are of one place. We are in this room. And perhaps those who have come before us are in this room yet, to see their work continue and be the real spirits of our inspiration.
Feel this neighborhood around you: The street corner of the Boston Massacre is but a few steps behind me; The Tea Party was but a few steps behind you. Revere's house, the Old North Church, are but across the way, still there, still living containers for our aspirations and our shared courage. Remember who we are and how we rise up when our liberty is threatened!
We are not a people to be trifled with, Mr. Bush.
We are not to be trifled with, ye corporations who press down upon us like a plague of King Georges, turning our middle class into greeters and our lives into credit card indentures!
We shall have our lives in freedom and we shall have our democracy as it was given us, made better by our own sacrifices.
We are here. Our revolution needs defending in this moment. We are come back to our room where we devise strategies and double our courage. We are in this room. We breathe its air. We hear its soft assent.
So. What is our plan? What shall we do?
We must have an election. As some will distrust the machinery of our voting, let us use mailed ballots. All of us. That will give us time on election day to get out the vote in areas where we are needed.
Let us do nothing until the election except work on our campaigns and prepare people to vote.
After the election, let us repair our old ship of Liberty with some new sails and masts, starting with the public funding of our elections and thereby the removal of special interest campaign donations. Maine and Arizona already have good programs, as you may know. Arizona's is under attack by a repeal put on the ballot by right wing interests. We must help Arizona keep its clean elections system by letting our friends in that State know that they must defeat the measure that would repeal the program. In this state, Speaker Finneran cannot stand forever in the way of an improved democracy. Get him unelected, and revive clean elections here. I know this is in the works.
And it is in the works in Iowa, and in West Virginia, and in Kentucky, North Carolina, Florida, Oregon and many other states. I have been there and seen the work, and these efforts deserve your support.
And with or without the clean elections reform, we must end the double-dip pilliging of public resources by broadcasters and cable systems, who get their airwaves and franchises from the public for a song, then charge their highest rates for election commercials. The politicians do not seem to have the courage to go against the American Broadcasters Association, so we must do it for them, with citizens initiatives in the states with that option. We need, for example, to require broadcasters to apply their lowest contract rates to election commercials, less fifty percent.
Doing democracy ourselves is what it is all about. The Bill of Rights Defense Committees, now successful in over 300 towns and cities, are a model for us in moving many reforms that, in combination, will renew our revolution and return our politics to the human scale, where our freedoms and our futures can be protected.
We must work for other improvements, too, such as instant runoff voting, where you can rank your favorite candidates and not risk splitting the vote.
And beyond the mechanics of campaigns and voting, we must understand that a nation can be very free only so far as it is educated. Failing schools go hand in hand with the rise of oligarchy and worse. It is a conscious suppression of the citizens, and we must stop it and replace it with K-through-university funding for all who will choose it.
There are many things we can and must do.
If Mr. Bush is defeated in November, this work will be easier. And the defense of our tax wealth and our environment and our Bill of Rights will be easier. If he is not defeated, our work will be harder, but we will do it anyway.
For, in this place, we remember who we are. We are the people of an imperfect union, the ordinary people of a great Republic still in the making, and in that we are no ordinary people at all. And it matters not if we arrived ten generations ago or yesterday.
If you are new to America, know that three-quarters of the freedom fighters of 1776 were born across the sea. Remember what America is, and that it is also you the newcomer, and it is your place now. And you have a vote here among equals, and know that you have a new duty to participate among free men and women. Our great word, by which we live and survive, is participation.
This is our place. This is our time to be here. And when we are gone, when we have all passed through this life, others will come to this room after us and remember what we did in our time for the American Republic.
Thank you.