My Stump Speech
I’m obviously not running for office, but I wrote this speech and surrender my copyright in it to any politician who might want to use it on the campaign trail.
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More than sixty years ago on a hot day in August 1963, in Washington, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, in front of a quarter of a million people Martin Luther King delivered his "I have a dream" speech.
It was more than a speech. It was a powerful sermon that proved instrumental in leading to profound and long overdue changes in the civil rights of African-Americans.
Martin Luther King was a preacher, an activist....and to his credit not a politician. He wasn't seeking our vote. His appeal was to our conscience, to our moral compass.
I am no Dr. King. I'm a politician asking for your vote. But I'm in this race because I believe Americans have a working moral compass, an intact conscience, and want leaders who share those traits and will work to make public policies follow that compass, that conscience.
That compass points towards fairness; has truth as its North Star; and reminds us how essential kindness is to a life well-lived. Those, by the way, are not meant as an exclusive list of our necessary virtues. There are many others. A willingness to set goals and work hard to achieve them; to get a good education; to be a good neighbor are of course on that list. The full list of what’s required for a good and virtuous life would be a long document. In the Jewish faith, for example, there are 613 commandments to follow.
While King's speech was focused on the discrimination and inequities suffered by African-Americans, his words, it seems to me, are highly relevant to the struggles that many Americans are trying to cope with today.
King spoke about the "shameful conditions," the "defaulted promissory notes," the "lonely islands of poverty," that defined the lives of too many Americans.
As he put it: "When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that [all people] would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds."
Today, too many Americans are unable to afford to buy a home. Or to save much, if anything, for their retirement; or to fund their children's college educations. Public institutions---our schools, the government---are dysfunctional. Our schools fail to adequately educate our children. Our government passes laws and implements regulations that either benefit the well-off, or obstruct everyone else. Both of our political parties are to blame for the bureaucratic swamp we have had to navigate since the New Deal—-nearly a century ago! It’s called red tape, but could just as well be known as blue tape.
That promise to Americans that King spoke about more than sixty years ago has again been defaulted on.
While Dr. King spoke about the inequalities in the lives of African Americans, today we face an equally serious inequality of income that affects many in our midst. Income inequality is pervasive, and while its effects falls disproportionately on certain racial and ethnic populations, it is a virus that has propagated widely.
The only people immune to that virus are the wealthy, which is unsurprising. Wealthy people, everywhere and always, are generally happy with their lot. Income inequality, however, is a problem that cannot to pinned on wealthy Americans for what they’ve done or failed to do. It came about for many reasons, over many decades. The Whys don’t really matter now. Our focus must be on What Are We Going To Do About It?
To reverse this deleterious state of affairs; to give all hard-working (and all over-worked) Americans the break they need allowing them to buy a home, pay its mortgage and raise their families in stable homes, we have much work to do as a nation. There are no magic wands to wave. There are plenty of empty promises politicians can make, each reducible to a sound bite. But, I think most Americans are tired, very tired of all that.
What we must first do is come together in recognizing the scope of the problem before us. That promissory note Dr King spoke about, that promise that all Americans have to the right to pursue their happiness has not been canceled, though it must be revived. Rewritten on new paper with fresh ink.
We must instruct the leaders we elect---in no uncertain terms---that income inequality in America is today our most significant civil rights issue. How we address it, the quality of the solutions we devise, is our burden as a nation. It will be a heavy lift here, but one we must embrace.