Patrick: "To Seize Our Common Humanity"
Deval Patrick was a young lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund when he sued the Governor of Arkansas in a voting rights case. That governor -- Bill Clinton -- later appointed him Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights -- making him the top civil rights enforcement officer in the United States.
This week, Patrick was the keynote speaker at a conference sponsored by the Boston-based New Democracy Coalition, celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act.
Here are a few excerpts from his inspiring speech -- which is well worth reading in its entirety.
"My first experience with the voting rights act was as a young lawyer with the NAACP legal defense fund. I joined the fund about a year after the act was reauthorized. It had been in effect for twenty years already. And yet we had to sue the then-governor of Arkansas to challenge barriers to registering that persisted. That’s how I first met the man I would serve as president. In fact that settlement formed the basis of what would later become the motor voter law."
"Just a few years after that, I was in a federal courtroom in Selma, in the shadow of the Edmund Pettus bridge, defending three aging black activists from nearby Perry county who had helped to organize the Selma-to-Montgomery march two decades before. They were indicted by the Reagan administration for trying to use absentee ballots to help poor, elderly black farmers and others vote. Take a minute and absorb the irony: three people who had spent their lives helping these same neighbors get the right to vote then stood accused of trying to steal it. After a bitter and lengthy trial -- during which the home of one the defendants was burned -- the jury acquitted on all counts."
"A few years later, I found myself at the justice department, overseeing an active preclearance program and a slew of redistricting cases in the Supreme Court about the constitutional balance between equity and politics. In fact, I remember having to defend the principle in the Supreme Court that evidence of intentional racial discrimination by redistricting officials was still sufficient basis to deny preclearance in a Louisiana parish. (I even got Scalia to vote with me - but not Clarence!) ...."
"Why have we worked so hard to make voting easier and failed so miserably at making voting more meaningful. Fewer citizens care. And I think that has much to do with politics itself."
"Increasingly, the political class is insular. We have perfected a conversation with ourselves about how elections get won, while everyone else wants to know why it matters.... while insiders and political 'wags' focus on who votes, where they live, how the hot-button issues move that vote, what time of day they vote, etc., most people see that the game is not about principle but power and too many just check out..."
".... while we parse the language, tone and reasoning of supreme court opinions, there are millions of children all over this nation who are left out and left back -- who will never become doctors or lawyers or teachers or police officers or much else -- who cannot even imagine coming into a hall like this one -- whose latent idealism will never be freed to grow into compassion and action -- because there was no teacher, no friend, no one like you, who by action or example, quietly inspired them; showed them how to look up, not down; helped them to see their stake in their own and their neighbors dreams; touched a life in some private, but powerful way, and gave someone else a reason to hope."
"And so what is the lesson of the civil rights struggle? What is the perspective without which America has no hope of becoming what she has dedicated herself to become? That civil rights today is, as it has always been, a struggle for the American conscience. And that we all have a stake in that struggle. so, when an African American stands up for a quality, integrated education, he stands up for all of us. When a Latina stands up for the chance to elect the candidate of her choice, she stands up for all of us. When a person who uses a wheelchair insists on access to a public building, she stands up for all of us. when a Jew stands up against those who vandalize his place of worship, he stands up for all of us. Because civil rights is still about good citizenship. its still about the perennial American challenge to reach out to one another -- across the arbitrary and artificial barrier of race, across gender, across ethnicity, across disability and class and religion and sexual orientation, perhaps most of all across our fear and hopelessness -- to seize our common humanity and see our stake in that."
Oh, and by the way. Deval Patrick is running for governor of Massachusetts. This speech can be found in its entirety on his campaign web site.
He could use your help.
This week, Patrick was the keynote speaker at a conference sponsored by the Boston-based New Democracy Coalition, celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act.
Here are a few excerpts from his inspiring speech -- which is well worth reading in its entirety.
"My first experience with the voting rights act was as a young lawyer with the NAACP legal defense fund. I joined the fund about a year after the act was reauthorized. It had been in effect for twenty years already. And yet we had to sue the then-governor of Arkansas to challenge barriers to registering that persisted. That’s how I first met the man I would serve as president. In fact that settlement formed the basis of what would later become the motor voter law."
"Just a few years after that, I was in a federal courtroom in Selma, in the shadow of the Edmund Pettus bridge, defending three aging black activists from nearby Perry county who had helped to organize the Selma-to-Montgomery march two decades before. They were indicted by the Reagan administration for trying to use absentee ballots to help poor, elderly black farmers and others vote. Take a minute and absorb the irony: three people who had spent their lives helping these same neighbors get the right to vote then stood accused of trying to steal it. After a bitter and lengthy trial -- during which the home of one the defendants was burned -- the jury acquitted on all counts."
"A few years later, I found myself at the justice department, overseeing an active preclearance program and a slew of redistricting cases in the Supreme Court about the constitutional balance between equity and politics. In fact, I remember having to defend the principle in the Supreme Court that evidence of intentional racial discrimination by redistricting officials was still sufficient basis to deny preclearance in a Louisiana parish. (I even got Scalia to vote with me - but not Clarence!) ...."
"Why have we worked so hard to make voting easier and failed so miserably at making voting more meaningful. Fewer citizens care. And I think that has much to do with politics itself."
"Increasingly, the political class is insular. We have perfected a conversation with ourselves about how elections get won, while everyone else wants to know why it matters.... while insiders and political 'wags' focus on who votes, where they live, how the hot-button issues move that vote, what time of day they vote, etc., most people see that the game is not about principle but power and too many just check out..."
".... while we parse the language, tone and reasoning of supreme court opinions, there are millions of children all over this nation who are left out and left back -- who will never become doctors or lawyers or teachers or police officers or much else -- who cannot even imagine coming into a hall like this one -- whose latent idealism will never be freed to grow into compassion and action -- because there was no teacher, no friend, no one like you, who by action or example, quietly inspired them; showed them how to look up, not down; helped them to see their stake in their own and their neighbors dreams; touched a life in some private, but powerful way, and gave someone else a reason to hope."
"And so what is the lesson of the civil rights struggle? What is the perspective without which America has no hope of becoming what she has dedicated herself to become? That civil rights today is, as it has always been, a struggle for the American conscience. And that we all have a stake in that struggle. so, when an African American stands up for a quality, integrated education, he stands up for all of us. When a Latina stands up for the chance to elect the candidate of her choice, she stands up for all of us. When a person who uses a wheelchair insists on access to a public building, she stands up for all of us. when a Jew stands up against those who vandalize his place of worship, he stands up for all of us. Because civil rights is still about good citizenship. its still about the perennial American challenge to reach out to one another -- across the arbitrary and artificial barrier of race, across gender, across ethnicity, across disability and class and religion and sexual orientation, perhaps most of all across our fear and hopelessness -- to seize our common humanity and see our stake in that."
Oh, and by the way. Deval Patrick is running for governor of Massachusetts. This speech can be found in its entirety on his campaign web site.
He could use your help.
posted by Frederick Clarkson at 4:02 PM
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