• Genre
  • About
  • Submissions
  • Donate
  • Search
Menu

Speakola

All Speeches Great and Small
  • Genre
  • About
  • Submissions
  • Donate
  • Search
Share a political speech

OPrah Winfrey: 'Being free means you get to think for yourself', Obama campaign rally, UCLA - 2008

December 12, 2018

3 February 2008, UCLA, Los Angeles, California, USA

We can vote as we believe. And we can do that because that is what the struggle was for. That was what the struggle was for. You know, after Iowa, there were some women who had the nerve to say to me, "How could you, Oprah? How could you? You're a traitor to your gender."

Audience: Boo.

Yes.

Audience: Boo.

That's how I feel. I was both surprised by that comment and insulted. Because I've been a woman my whole life, and every part of me believes in the empowerment of women. But the truth is, I'm a free woman. I'm a free woman. I'm a free woman. I'm a free woman. And being free means you get to think for yourself, and you get to decide for yourself what to do. So, I say I am not a traitor. No, I'm not a traitor. I'm just following my own truth, and that truth has led me to Barack Obama. Oh, yeah. The truth has led me to Barack Obama. And I, too, look forward to the day when I will vote for a woman for this office, and this election has proven that that is possible.

But for me, when you have a man like Barack Obama, who says, as Toni Morrison said, did you all see what Toni Morrison said? Toni Morrison says, "In thinking about the strength of the candidates," I'm going to quote her here. She says, "I stunned myself when I came to the following conclusion, that in addition to keen intelligence, integrity, and a rare authenticity, Barack exhibits something that has nothing to do with age, experience, race, or gender, and something we don't see in any other candidate.

That something," she said, "is creative imagination. Which, coupled with brilliance, equals wisdom. And wisdom is a gift. You can't train for wisdom. You can't inherit wisdom. You can't learn wisdom. You can't get wisdom in the workplace. Barack Obama has the gift of wisdom."

And then, this election has just brought out the best in folks, 'cause I heard from some narrow-minded folks who said I was just voting for him because he was black. And I say, that too was insulting to me. Don't play me small. I'm not that small. I'm not that small. Don't play me small. I would never vote for anyone based on gender or race. I'm voting for Barack Obama not because he's black, I'm voting for Barack Obama because he's brilliant.

Source: https://www.trendhunter.com/keynote/oprah-...

Enjoyed this speech? Speakola is a labour of love and I’d be very grateful if you would share, tweet or like it. Thank you.

Facebook Twitter Facebook
In 2000s MORE Tags OPRAH WINFREY, PRIMARY, DEMOCRATIC PARTY, GENDER, TRANSCRIPT, HILLARY CLINTON, BARACK OBAMA, ENDORSEMENT
Comment

Bernie Sanders: 'Create a government that works for all of us, not just the 1 percent', CNN Democratic Debate - 2016

February 26, 2018

14 April 2016, CNN Democratic Debate, Brooklyn, New York, USA

I grew up in Brooklyn, New York...

(APPLAUSE)

... the son of an immigrant who came to this country from Poland at the age of 17 without a nickel in his pocket, never made a whole lot of money, but was a very proud American, because this country gave him and my mom the opportunity to send their kids to college.

I believe that this country has enormous potential if we have the guts to take on the big money interests who dominate our economic and political life. And I disagree with Secretary Clinton in the belief that you can get money from Wall Street, that you can get money for a super PAC from powerful special interests, and then at the end of the day do what has to be done for the working families of this country. I just don’t accept that.

What I believe is that this country, if we stand together and not let the Trumps of the world divide us up, can guarantee health care to all people as a right, can have paid family and medical leave, can make public colleges and universities tuition-free, can lead the world in transforming our energy system and combatting climate change, can break up the large financial institutions, can demand that the wealthiest people in this country start paying their fair share of taxes.

And we can do that when millions of people stand up, fight back, and create a government that works for all of us, not just the 1 percent.

(APPLAUSE)

That is what the political revolution is about. That is what this campaign is about. And with your help, we’re going to win here in New York. Thank you. Thank you.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/15/us/poli...

Enjoyed this speech? Speakola is a labour of love and I’d be very grateful if you would share, tweet or like it. Thank you.

Facebook Twitter Facebook
In 2010s MORE 2 Tags BERNIE SANDERS, ELECTION 2016, DEMOCRATIC DEBATE, CNN, WOLF BLITZER, HILLARY CLINTON, TRANSCRIPT
Comment

Hillary Clinton: 'To all the little girls watching right now, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful', Concession speech - 2016

November 10, 2016

9 November 2016, New Yorker Hotel, New York City, USA

Last night, I congratulated Donald Trump and offered to work with him on behalf of our country. I hope that he will be a successful president for all Americans.

This is not the outcome we wanted or we worked so hard for, and I’m sorry we did not win this election for the values we share and the vision we hold for our country.

But I feel pride and gratitude for this wonderful campaign that we built together—this vast, diverse, creative, unruly, energized campaign. You represent the best of America, and being your candidate has been one of the greatest honors of my life.

I know how disappointed you feel, because I feel it too. And so do tens of millions of Americans who invested their hopes and dreams in this effort. This is painful, and it will be for a long time. But I want you to remember this: Our campaign was never about one person or even one election. It was about the country we love—and about building an America that’s hopeful, inclusive, and big-hearted.

We have seen that our nation is more deeply divided than we thought. But I still believe in America—and I always will. And if you do, too, then we must accept this result—and then look to the future.

Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead.

Our constitutional democracy enshrines the peaceful transfer of power, and we don’t just respect that, we cherish it. It also enshrines other things—the rule of law, the principle that we’re all equal in rights and dignity, and the freedom of worship and expression. We respect and cherish these things too—and we must defend them.

And let me add: Our constitutional democracy demands our participation, not just every four years, but all the time. So let’s do all we can to keep advancing the causes and values we all hold dear: making our economy work for everyone, not just those at the top; protecting our country and protecting our planet; and breaking down all the barriers that hold anyone back from achieving their dreams.

We’ve spent a year and a half bringing together millions of people from every corner of our country to say with one voice that we believe that the American Dream is big enough for everyone—for people of all races and religions, for men and women, for immigrants, for LGBT people, and people with disabilities. Our responsibility as citizens is to keep doing our part to build that better, stronger, fairer America we seek. And I know you will. I am so grateful to stand with all of you.

I want to thank Tim Kaine and Anne Holton for being our partners on this journey. It gives me great hope and comfort to know that Tim will remain on the front-lines of our democracy, representing Virginia in the Senate.

To Barack and Michelle Obama: Our country owes you an enormous debt of gratitude for your graceful, determined leadership, and so do I.

To Bill, Chelsea, Marc, Charlotte, Aidan, our brothers, and our entire family, my love for you means more than I can ever express.

You crisscrossed this country on my behalf and lifted me up when I needed it most—even 4-month-old Aidan traveling with his mom.

I will always be grateful to the creative, talented, dedicated men and women at our headquarters in Brooklyn and across our country who poured their hearts into this campaign. For you veterans, this was a campaign after a campaign — for some of you, this was your first campaign ever. I want each of you to know that you were the best campaign anyone has had.

To all the volunteers, community leaders, activists, and union organizers who knocked on doors, talked to neighbors, posted on Facebook—even in secret or in private: Thank you.

To everyone who sent in contributions as small as $5 and kept us going, thank you.

And to all the young people in particular, I want you to hear this. I’ve spent my entire adult life fighting for what I believe in. I’ve had successes and I’ve had setbacks—sometimes really painful ones. Many of you are at the beginning of your careers. You will have successes and setbacks, too.

This loss hurts. But please, please never stop believing that fighting for what’s right is worth it. It’s always worth it. And we need you keep up these fights now and for the rest of your lives.

To all the women, and especially the young women, who put their faith in this campaign and in me, I want you to know that nothing has made me prouder than to be your champion.

I know that we still have not shattered that highest glass ceiling. But some day someone will—hopefully sooner than we might think right now.

And to all the little girls watching right now, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world.

Finally, I am grateful to our country for all it has given me.

I count my blessings every day that I am an American. And I still believe, as deeply as I ever have, that if we stand together and work together, with respect for our differences, strength in our convictions, and love for this nation—our best days are still ahead of us.

You know I believe we are stronger together and will go forward together. And you should never be sorry that you fought for that.

Scripture tells us: “Let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season, we shall reap, if we do not lose heart.”

My friends, let us have faith in each other. Let us not grow weary. Let us not lose heart. For there are more seasons to come and there is more work to do.

I am incredibly honored and grateful to have had this chance to represent all of you in this consequential election. May God bless you and God bless the United States of America.

Source: http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/hi...

Enjoyed this speech? Speakola is a labour of love and I’d be very grateful if you would share, tweet or like it. Thank you.

Facebook Twitter Facebook
In 2010s Tags HILLARY CLINTON, CONCESSION, DEMOCRATIC PARTY, DONALD TRUMP, ELECTION 2016, GLASS CEILING, WOMEN
Comment

Michelle Obama: 'This was a powerful individual speaking freely and openly about sexually predatory behavior', New Hampshire campaign speech - 2016

October 18, 2016

13 October 2016, Manchester, New Hampshire, USA

My goodness! You guys are fired up!

Well, let me just say hello everyone. I am so thrilled to be here with you all today in New Hampshire. This is like home to me, and this day – thank you for a beautiful fall day. You just ordered this day up for me, didn’t you? It’s great to be here.

Let me start by thanking your fabulous governor, your next US senator, Maggie Hassan. I want to thank her for that lovely introduction. I also want to recognize your Congresswoman Annie McKlane Kuster, who’s a dear, dear friend. Your soon-to-be congresswoman once again, Carol Shea Porter – all of whom have been just terrific friends to us. And your executive council and candidate for governor, Colin Van Ostern.

And, of course, thanks to all of you for taking the time to be here today.

Audience member: We love you!

Thanks so much. That’s very sweet of you. I love you guys too. I can’t believe it’s just a few weeks before election day, as we come together to support the next president and vice-president of the United States, Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine! And New Hampshire is going to be important, as always.

So I’m going to get a little serious here, because I think we can all agree that this has been a rough week in an already rough election. This week has been particularly interesting for me personally because it has been a week of profound contrast.

See, on Tuesday, at the White House, we celebrated the International Day of the Girl and Let Girls Learn, and it was a wonderful celebration. It was the last event that I’m going to be doing as first lady for Let Girls Learn. And I had the pleasure of spending hours talking to some of the most amazing young women you will ever meet, young girls here in the US and all around the world. And we talked about their hopes and their dreams. We talked about their aspirations. See, because many of these girls have faced unthinkable obstacles just to attend school, jeopardizing their personal safety, their freedom, risking the rejection of their families and communities.

So I thought it would be important to remind these young women how valuable and precious they are. I wanted them to understand that the measure of any society is how it treats its women and girls. And I told them that they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, and I told them that they should disregard anyone who demeans or devalues them, and that they should make their voices heard in the world. And I walked away feeling so inspired, just like I’m inspired by all the young people here – and I was so uplifted by these girls. That was Tuesday.

And now, here I am, out on the campaign trail in an election where we have consistently been hearing hurtful, hateful language about women – language that has been painful for so many of us, not just as women, but as parents trying to protect our children and raise them to be caring, respectful adults, and as citizens who think that our nation’s leaders should meet basic standards of human decency.

The fact is that in this election, we have a candidate for president of the United States who, over the course of his lifetime and the course of this campaign, has said things about women that are so shocking, so demeaning that I simply will not repeat anything here today. And last week, we saw this candidate actually bragging about sexually assaulting women. And I can’t believe that I’m saying that a candidate for president of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women.

And I have to tell you that I can’t stop thinking about this. It has shaken me to my core in a way that I couldn’t have predicted. So while I’d love nothing more than to pretend like this isn’t happening, and to come out here and do my normal campaign speech, it would be dishonest and disingenuous of me to just move on to the next thing like this was all just a bad dream.

This is not something that we can ignore. It’s not something we can just sweep under the rug as just another disturbing footnote in a sad election season. Because this was not just a “lewd conversation”. This wasn’t just locker-room banter. This was a powerful individual speaking freely and openly about sexually predatory behavior, and actually bragging about kissing and groping women, using language so obscene that many of us were worried about our children hearing it when we turn on the TV.

And to make matters worse, it now seems very clear that this isn’t an isolated incident. It’s one of countless examples of how he has treated women his whole life. And I have to tell you that I listen to all of this and I feel it so personally, and I’m sure that many of you do too, particularly the women. The shameful comments about our bodies. The disrespect of our ambitions and intellect. The belief that you can do anything you want to a woman.

It is cruel. It’s frightening. And the truth is, it hurts. It hurts. It’s like that sick, sinking feeling you get when you’re walking down the street minding your own business and some guy yells out vulgar words about your body. Or when you see that guy at work that stands just a little too close, stares a little too long, and makes you feel uncomfortable in your own skin.

Follow along for the latest updates from the trail, as reports indicate Donald Trump’s son-in-law ‘informally approached’ idea of a Trump TV network

It’s that feeling of terror and violation that too many women have felt when someone has grabbed them, or forced himself on them and they’ve said no but he didn’t listen – something that we know happens on college campuses and countless other places every single day. It reminds us of stories we heard from our mothers and grandmothers about how, back in their day, the boss could say and do whatever he pleased to the women in the office, and even though they worked so hard, jumped over every hurdle to prove themselves, it was never enough.

We thought all of that was ancient history, didn’t we? And so many have worked for so many years to end this kind of violence and abuse and disrespect, but here we are in 2016 and we’re hearing these exact same things every day on the campaign trail. We are drowning in it. And all of us are doing what women have always done: we’re trying to keep our heads above water, just trying to get through it, trying to pretend like this doesn’t really bother us maybe because we think that admitting how much it hurts makes us as women look weak.

Maybe we’re afraid to be that vulnerable. Maybe we’ve grown accustomed to swallowing these emotions and staying quiet, because we’ve seen that people often won’t take our word over his. Or maybe we don’t want to believe that there are still people out there who think so little of us as women. Too many are treating this as just another day’s headline, as if our outrage is overblown or unwarranted, as if this is normal, just politics as usual.

But, New Hampshire, be clear: this is not normal. This is not politics as usual. This is disgraceful. It is intolerable. And it doesn’t matter what party you belong to – Democrat, Republican, independent – no woman deserves to be treated this way. None of us deserves this kind of abuse.

And I know it’s a campaign, but this isn’t about politics. It’s about basic human decency. It’s about right and wrong. And we simply cannot endure this, or expose our children to this any – not for another minute, and let alone for four years. Now is the time for all of us to stand up and say enough is enough. This has got to stop right now.

Because consider this: if all of this is painful to us as grown women, what do you think this is doing to our children? What message are our little girls hearing about who they should look like, how they should act? What lessons are they learning about their value as professionals, as human beings, about their dreams and aspirations? And how is this affecting men and boys in this country? Because I can tell you that the men in my life do not talk about women like this. And I know that my family is not unusual. And to dismiss this as everyday locker-room talk is an insult to decent men everywhere.

The men that you and I know don’t treat women this way. They are loving fathers who are sickened by the thought of their daughters being exposed to this kind of vicious language about women. They are husbands and brothers and sons who don’t tolerate women being treated and demeaned and disrespected. And like us, these men are worried about the impact this election is having on our boys who are looking for role models of what it means to be a man.

In fact, someone recently told me a story about their six-year-old son who one day was watching the news – they were watching the news together. And the little boy, out of the blue, said, “I think Hillary Clinton will be president.” And his mom said, “Well, why do you say that?” And this little six-year-old said, “Because the other guy called someone a piggy and,” he said, “You cannot be president if you call someone a piggy.”

So even a six-year-old knows better. A six-year-old knows that this is not how adults behave. This is not how decent human beings behave. And this is certainly not how someone who wants to be president of the United States behaves.

Because let’s be very clear: strong men – men who are truly role models – don’t need to put down women to make themselves feel powerful. People who are truly strong lift others up. People who are truly powerful bring others together. And that is what we need in our next president. We need someone who is a uniting force in this country. We need someone who will heal the wounds that divide us, someone who truly cares about us and our children, someone with strength and compassion to lead this country forward.

And let me tell you, I’m here today because I believe with all of my heart that Hillary Clinton will be that president.

See, we know that Hillary is the right person for the job because we’ve seen her character and commitment not just in this campaign, but over the course of her entire life. The fact is that Hillary embodies so many of the values that we try so hard to teach our young people. We tell our young people “work hard in school, get a good education”. We encourage them to use that education to help others – which is exactly what Hillary did with her college and law degrees, advocating for kids with disabilities, fighting for children’s healthcare as first lady, affordable childcare in the Senate.

We teach our kids the value of being a team player, which is what Hillary exemplified when she lost the 2008 election and actually agreed to work for her opponent as our secretary of state – earning sky-high approval ratings serving her country once again.

We also teach our kids that you don’t take shortcuts in life, and you strive for meaningful success in whatever job you do. Well, Hillary has been a lawyer, a law professor, first lady of Arkansas, first lady of the United States, a US senator, secretary of state. And she has been successful in every role, gaining more experience and exposure to the presidency than any candidate in our lifetime – more than Barack, more than Bill. And, yes, she happens to be a woman.

And finally, we teach our kids that when you hit challenges in life, you don’t give up, you stick with it. Well, during her four years as secretary of state alone, Hillary has faced her share of challenges. She’s traveled to 112 countries, negotiated a ceasefire, a peace agreement, a release of dissidents. She spent 11 hours testifying before a congressional committee. We know that when things get tough, Hillary doesn’t complain. She doesn’t blame others. She doesn’t abandon ship for something easier. No, Hillary Clinton has never quit on anything in her life.

So in Hillary, we have a candidate who has dedicated her life to public service, someone who has waited her turn and helped out while waiting. She is an outstanding mother. She has raised a phenomenal young woman. She is a loving, loyal wife. She’s a devoted daughter who cared for her mother until her final days. And if any of us had raised a daughter like Hillary Clinton, we would be so proud. We would be proud.

And regardless of who her opponent might be, no one could be more qualified for this job than Hillary – no one. And in this election, if we turn away from her, if we just stand by and allow her opponent to be elected, then what are we teaching our children about the values they should hold, about the kind of life they should lead? What are we saying?

In our hearts, we all know that if we let Hillary’s opponent win this election, then we are sending a clear message to our kids that everything they’re seeing and hearing is perfectly OK. We are validating it. We are endorsing it. We’re telling our sons that it’s OK to humiliate women. We’re telling our daughters that this is how they deserve to be treated. We’re telling all our kids that bigotry and bullying are perfectly acceptable in the leader of their country. Is that what we want for our children?

And remember, we won’t just be setting a bad example for our kids, but for our entire world. Because for so long, America has been a model for countries across the globe, pushing them to educate their girls, insisting that they give more rights to their women. But if we have a president who routinely degrades women, who brags about sexually assaulting women, then how can we maintain our moral authority in the world? How can we continue to be a beacon of freedom and justice and human dignity?

Well, fortunately, New Hampshire, here’s the beauty: we have everything we need to stop this madness. You see, while our mothers and grandmothers were often powerless to change their circumstances, today, we as women have all the power we need to determine the outcome of this election.

We have knowledge. We have a voice. We have a vote. And on November the 8th, we as women, we as Americans, we as decent human beings can come together and declare that enough is enough, and we do not tolerate this kind of behavior in this country.

Remember this: in 2012, women’s votes were the difference between Barack winning and losing in key swing states, including right here in New Hampshire. So for anyone who might be thinking that your one vote doesn’t really matter, or that one person can’t really make a difference, consider this: back in 2012, Barack won New Hampshire by about 40,000 votes, which sounds like a lot. But when you break that number down, the difference between winning and losing this state was only 66 votes per precinct. Just take that in. If 66 people in each precinct had gone the other way, Barack would have lost.

So each of you right here today could help swing an entire precinct and win this election for Hillary just by getting yourselves, your families, and your friends and neighbors out to vote. You can do it right here. But you could also help swing an entire precinct for Hillary’s opponent with a protest vote or by staying home out of frustration.

Because here’s the truth: either Hillary Clinton or her opponent will be elected president this year. And if you vote for someone other than Hillary, or if you don’t vote at all, then you are helping to elect her opponent. And just think about how you will feel if that happens. Imagine waking up on November the 9th and looking into the eyes of your daughter or son, or looking into your own eyes as you stare into the mirror. Imagine how you’ll feel if you stayed home, or if you didn’t do everything possible to elect Hillary.

We simply cannot let that happen. We cannot allow ourselves to be so disgusted that we just shut off the TV and walk away. And we can’t just sit around wringing our hands. Now, we need to recover from our shock and depression and do what women have always done in this country. We need you to roll up your sleeves. We need to get to work. Because remember this: When they go low, we go …

Audience: High!

Yes, we do.

And voting ourselves is a great start, but we also have to step up and start organizing. So we need you to make calls and knock on doors and get folks to the polls on election day and sign up to volunteer with one of the Hillary campaign folks who are here today just waiting for you to step up.

And, young people and not-so-young people, get on social media. Share your own story of why this election matters, why it should matter for all people of conscience in this country. There is so much at stake in this election.

See, the choice you make November 8 could determine whether we have a president who treats people with respect – or not. A president who will fight for kids, for good schools, for good jobs for our families – or not. A president who thinks that women deserve the right to make our own choices about our bodies and our health – or not. That’s just a little bit of what’s at stake.

So we cannot afford to be tired or turned off. And we cannot afford to stay home on election day. Because on November the 8th, we have the power to show our children that America’s greatness comes from recognizing the innate dignity and worth of all our people. On November the 8th, we can show our children that this country is big enough to have a place for us all – men and women, folks of every background and walk of life – and that each of us is a precious part of this great American story, and we are always stronger together.

On November 8, we can show our children that here in America, we reject hatred and fear and in difficult times, we don’t discard our highest ideals. No, we rise up to meet them. We rise up to perfect our union. We rise up to defend our blessings of liberty. We rise up to embody the values of equality and opportunity and sacrifice that have always made this country the greatest nation on Earth.

That is who we are. And don’t ever let anyone tell you differently. Hope is important. Hope is important for our young people. And we deserve a president who can see those truths in us – a president who can bring us together and bring out the very best in us. Hillary Clinton will be that president.

So for the next 26 days, we need to do everything we can to help her and Tim Kaine win this election. I know I’m going to be doing it. Are you with me? Are you all with me? You ready to roll up your sleeves? Get to work knocking on doors?

All right, let’s get to work. Thank you all. God bless.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/o...

Enjoyed this speech? Speakola is a labour of love and I’d be very grateful if you would share, tweet or like it. Thank you.

Facebook Twitter Facebook
In 2010s Tags MICHELLE OBAMA, HILLARY CLINTON, CAMPAIGN ENDORSEMENT, DONALD TRUMP, TRUMP VIDEO, IMWITHHER
Comment

Hillary Clinton: 'This is a moment of reckoning for every Republican dismayed that the Party of Lincoln has become the Party of Trump'', anti-Trump Speech, Reno rally - 2016

September 5, 2016

25 August 2016, Reno, Nevada, USA

Thank you, Reno! It’s great to be back in Nevada…

My original plan for this visit was to focus on our agenda to help small businesses and entrepreneurs.

This week we proposed new steps to cut red tape and taxes, and make it easier for small businesses to get the credit they need to grow and hire.

Because I believe that in America, if you can dream it, you should be able to build it.

We’ll be talking a lot more about our economic plans in the days and weeks ahead.

But today, I want to address something I hear from Americans all over our country.

Everywhere I go, people tell me how concerned they are by the divisive rhetoric coming from my opponent in this election.

It’s like nothing we’ve heard before from a nominee for President of the United States.

From the start, Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia.

He’s taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over one of America’s two major political parties.

His disregard for the values that make our country great is profoundly dangerous.

In just the past week, under the guise of “outreach” to African Americans, Trump has stood up in front of largely white audiences and described black communities in insulting and ignorant terms:

“Poverty. Rejection. Horrible education. No housing. No homes. No ownership.

Crime at levels nobody has seen… Right now, you walk down the street, you get shot.”

Those are his words.

Donald Trump misses so much.

He doesn’t see the success of black leaders in every field…

The vibrancy of black-owned businesses…Or the strength of the black church… He doesn’t see the excellence of historically black colleges and universities or the pride of black parents watching their children thrive…And he certainly doesn’t have any solutions to take on the reality of systemic racism and create more equity and opportunity in communities of color.

It takes a lot of nerve to ask people he’s ignored and mistreated for decades, “What do you have to lose?” The answer is everything!

Trump’s lack of knowledge or experience or solutions would be bad enough.

But what he’s doing here is more sinister.

Trump is reinforcing harmful stereotypes and offering a dog whistle to his most hateful supporters.

It’s a disturbing preview of what kind of President he’d be.

This is what I want to make clear today:

A man with a long history of racial discrimination, who traffics in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and the far reaches of the internet, should never run our government or command our military.

If he doesn’t respect all Americans, how can he serve all Americans?

Now, I know some people still want to give Trump the benefit of the doubt.

They hope that he will eventually reinvent himself – that there’s a kinder, gentler, more responsible Donald Trump waiting in the wings somewhere.

After all, it’s hard to believe anyone – let alone a nominee for President of the United States – could really believe all the things he says.

But the hard truth is, there’s no other Donald Trump. This is it.

Maya Angelou once said: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

Well, throughout his career and this campaign, Donald Trump has shown us exactly who he is. We should believe him.

When Trump was getting his start in business, he was sued by the Justice Department for refusing to rent apartments to black and Latino tenants.

Their applications would be marked with a “C” – “C” for “colored” – and then rejected.

Three years later, the Justice Department took Trump back to court because he hadn’t changed.

The pattern continued through the decades.

State regulators fined one of Trump’s casinos for repeatedly removing black dealers from the floor. No wonder the turn-over rate for his minority employees was way above average.

And let’s not forget Trump first gained political prominence leading the charge for the so-called “Birthers.”

He promoted the racist lie that President Obama isn’t really an American citizen – part of a sustained effort to delegitimize America’s first black President.

In 2015, Trump launched his own campaign for President with another racist lie. He described Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals.

And he accused the Mexican government of actively sending them across the border. None of that is true.

Oh, and by the way, Mexico’s not paying for his wall either.

If it ever gets built, you can be sure that American taxpayers will be stuck with the bill.

Since then, there’s been a steady stream of bigotry.

We all remember when Trump said a distinguished federal judge born in Indiana couldn’t be trusted to do his job because, quote, “He’s a Mexican.”

Think about that.

The man who today is the standard bearer of the Republican Party said a federal judge was incapable of doing his job solely because of his heritage.

Even the Republican Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, described that as “the textbook definition of a racist comment.”

To this day, he’s never apologized to Judge Curiel.

But for Trump, that’s just par for the course.

This is someone who retweets white supremacists online, like the user who goes by the name “white-genocide-TM.” Trump took this fringe bigot with a few dozen followers and spread his message to 11 million people.

His campaign famously posted an anti-Semitic image – a Star of David imposed over a sea of dollar bills – that first appeared on a white supremacist website.

The Trump campaign also selected a prominent white nationalist leader as a delegate in California. They only dropped him under pressure.

When asked in a nationally televised interview whether he would disavow the support of David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, Trump wouldn’t do it. Only later, again under mounting pressure, did he backtrack.

And when Trump was asked about anti-Semitic slurs and death threats coming from his supporters, he refused to condemn them.

Through it all, he has continued pushing discredited conspiracy theories with racist undertones.

Trump said thousands of American Muslims in New Jersey cheered the 9/11 attacks. They didn’t.

He suggested that Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the Kennedy assassination. Perhaps in Trump’s mind, because he was a Cuban immigrant, he must have had something to do with it. Of course there’s absolutely no evidence of that.

Just recently, Trump claimed President Obama founded ISIS. And then he repeated that nonsense over and over.

His latest paranoid fever dream is about my health. All I can say is, Donald, dream on.

This is what happens when you treat the National Enquirer like Gospel.

It’s what happens when you listen to the radio host Alex Jones, who claims that 9/11 and the Oklahoma City bombings were inside jobs. He said the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre were child actors and no one was actually killed there.

Trump didn’t challenge those lies. He went on Jones’ show and said: “Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.”

This man wants to be President of the United States.

I’ve stood by President Obama’s side as he made the toughest decisions a Commander-in-Chief ever has to make.

In times of crisis, our country depends on steady leadership… clear thinking… and calm judgment… because one wrong move can mean the difference between life and death.

The last thing we need in the Situation Room is a loose cannon who can’t tell the difference between fact and fiction, and who buys so easily into racially-tinged rumors.

Someone detached from reality should never be in charge of making decisions that are as real as they come.

It’s another reason why Donald Trump is simply temperamentally unfit to be President of the United States.

Now, some people will say that his bluster and bigotry is just over-heated campaign rhetoric – an outrageous person saying outrageous things for attention.

But look at the policies Trump has proposed. They would put prejudice into practice.

And don’t be distracted by his latest attempts to muddy the waters.

He may have some new people putting new words in his mouth… but we know where he stands.

He would form a deportation force to round up millions of immigrants and kick them out of the country.

He’d abolish the bedrock constitutional principle that says if you’re born in the United States, you’re an American citizen. He says that children born in America to undocumented parents are, quote, “anchor babies” and should be deported.

Millions of them.

And he’d ban Muslims around the world – 1.5 billion men, women, and children –from entering our country just because of their religion.

Think about that for a minute. How would it actually work? People landing in U.S. airports would line up to get their passports stamped, just like they do now.

But in Trump’s America, when they step up to the counter, the immigration officer would ask every single person, “What is your religion?”

And then what?

What if someone says, “I’m a Christian,” but the agent doesn’t believe them.

Do they have to prove it? How would they do that?

Ever since the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, America has distinguished itself as a haven for people fleeing religious persecution.

Under Donald Trump, America would distinguish itself as the only country in the world to impose a religious test at the border.

Come to think of it, there actually may be one place that does that. It’s the so-called Islamic State. The territory ISIS controls. It would be a cruel irony if America followed its lead.

Don’t worry, some will say, as President, Trump will be surrounded by smart advisors who will rein in his worst impulses.

So when a tweet gets under his skin and he wants to retaliate with a cruise missile, maybe cooler heads will be there to convince him not to.

Maybe.

But look at who he’s put in charge of his campaign.

Trump likes to say he only hires the “best people.” But he’s had to fire so many campaign managers it’s like an episode of the Apprentice.

The latest shake-up was designed to – quote – “Let Trump be Trump.” To do that, he hired Stephen Bannon, the head of a right-wing website called Breitbart.com, as campaign CEO.

To give you a flavor of his work, here are a few headlines they’ve published:

“Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy.”

“Would You Rather Your Child Had Feminism or Cancer?”

“Gabby Giffords: The Gun Control Movement’s Human Shield”

“Hoist It High And Proud: The Confederate Flag Proclaims A Glorious Heritage.”

That one came shortly after the Charleston massacre, when Democrats and Republicans alike were doing everything they could to heal racial divides. Breitbart tried to enflame them further.

Just imagine – Donald Trump reading that and thinking: “this is what I need more of in my campaign.”

Bannon has nasty things to say about pretty much everyone.

This spring, he railed against Paul Ryan for, quote “rubbing his social-justice Catholicism in my nose every second.”

No wonder he’s gone to work for Trump – the only Presidential candidate ever to get into a public feud with the Pope.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, Breitbart embraces “ideas on the extremist fringe of the conservative right. Racist ideas.

Race-baiting ideas. Anti-Muslim and anti-Immigrant ideas –– all key tenets making up an emerging racist ideology known as the ‘Alt-Right.’”

Alt-Right is short for “Alternative Right.”

The Wall Street Journal describes it as a loosely organized movement, mostly online, that “rejects mainstream conservatism, promotes nationalism and views immigration and multiculturalism as threats to white identity.”

The de facto merger between Breitbart and the Trump Campaign represents a landmark achievement for the “Alt-Right.” A fringe element has effectively taken over the Republican Party.

This is part of a broader story -- the rising tide of hardline, right-wing nationalism around the world.

Just yesterday, one of Britain’s most prominent right-wing leaders, Nigel Farage, who stoked anti-immigrant sentiments to win the referendum on leaving the European Union, campaigned with Donald Trump in Mississippi.

Farage has called for a ban on the children of legal immigrants from public schools and health services, has said women are quote “worth less” than men, and supports scrapping laws that prevent employers from discriminating based on race -- that’s who Trump wants by his side.

The godfather of this global brand of extreme nationalism is Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In fact, Farage has appeared regularly on Russian propaganda programs.

Now he’s standing on the same stage as the Republican nominee.

Trump himself heaps praise on Putin and embrace pro-Russian policies.

He talks casually of abandoning our NATO allies, recognizing Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and of giving the Kremlin a free hand in Eastern Europe more generally.

American presidents from Truman to Reagan have rejected the kind of approach Trump is taking on Russia.

We should, too.

All of this adds up to something we’ve never seen before.

Of course there’s always been a paranoid fringe in our politics, steeped in racial resentment. But it’s never had the nominee of a major party stoking it, encouraging it, and giving it a national megaphone. Until now.

On David Duke’s radio show the other day, the mood was jubilant.

“We appear to have taken over the Republican Party,” one white supremacist said.

Duke laughed. There’s still more work to do, he said.

No one should have any illusions about what’s really going on here. The names may have changed… Racists now call themselves “racialists.” White supremacists now call themselves “white nationalists.” The paranoid fringe now calls itself “alt-right.” But the hate burns just as bright.

And now Trump is trying to rebrand himself as well. Don’t be fooled.

There’s an old Mexican proverb that says “Tell me with whom you walk, and I will tell you who you are.”

We know who Trump is. A few words on a teleprompter won’t change that.

He says he wants to “make America great again,” but his real message remains “Make America hate again.”

This isn’t just about one election. It’s about who we are as a nation.

It’s about the kind of example we want to set for our children and grandchildren.

Next time you watch Donald Trump rant on television, think about all the kids listening across our country. They hear a lot more than we think.

Parents and teachers are already worried about what they’re calling the “Trump Effect.”

Bullying and harassment are on the rise in our schools, especially targeting students of color, Muslims, and immigrants.

At a recent high school basketball game in Indiana, white students held up Trump signs and taunted Latino players on the opposing team with chants of “Build the wall!” and “Speak English.”

After a similar incident in Iowa, one frustrated school principal said, “They see it in a presidential campaign and now it's OK for everyone to say this.”

We wouldn’t tolerate that kind of behavior in our own homes. How can we stand for it from a candidate for president?

This is a moment of reckoning for every Republican dismayed that the Party of Lincoln has become the Party of Trump. It’s a moment of reckoning for all of us who love our country and believe that America is better than this.

Twenty years ago, when Bob Dole accepted the Republican nomination, he pointed to the exits and told any racists in the Party to get out.

The week after 9/11, George W. Bush went to a mosque and declared for everyone to hear that Muslims “love America just as much as I do.”

In 2008, John McCain told his own supporters they were wrong about the man he was trying to defeat. Senator McCain made sure they knew – Barack Obama is an American citizen and “a decent person.”

We need that kind of leadership again.

Every day, more Americans are standing up and saying “enough is enough” – including a lot of Republicans. I’m honored to have their support.

And I promise you this: with your help, I will be a President for Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. For those who vote for me and those who don't.

For all Americans.

Because I believe we are stronger together.

It’s a vision for the future rooted in our values and reflected in a rising generation of young people who are the most open, diverse, and connected we’ve ever seen.

Just look at our fabulous Olympic team.

Like Ibtihaj Muhammad, an African-American Muslim from New Jersey who won the bronze medal in fencing with grace and skill. Would she even have a place in Donald Trump’s America?

When I was growing up, Simone Manuel wouldn’t have been allowed to swim in the same public pool as Katie Ledecky. Now they’re winning Olympic medals as teammates.

So let’s keep moving forward together.

Let’s stand up against prejudice and paranoia.

Let’s prove once again, that America is great because is America is good.

Thank you, and may God bless the United States.

 

Source: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/tran...

Enjoyed this speech? Speakola is a labour of love and I’d be very grateful if you would share, tweet or like it. Thank you.

Facebook Twitter Facebook
In 2010s MORE Tags TRANSCRIPT, RENO, ELECTION 2016, DONALD TRUMP, HILLARY CLINTON, PRESIDENTS, RALLY
Comment

Khizr M. Khan: 'Donald Trump, you have sacrificed nothing and no one', DNC - 2016

July 29, 2016

28 July 2016, DNC, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

Tonight, we are honored to stand here as the parents of Capt. Humayun Khan, and as patriotic American Muslims with undivided loyalty to our country.

Like many immigrants, we came to this country empty-handed. We believed in American democracy — that with hard work and the goodness of this country, we could share in and contribute to its blessings.

We were blessed to raise our three sons in a nation where they were free to be themselves and follow their dreams.

Our son, Humayun, had dreams of being a military lawyer. But he put those dreams aside the day he sacrificed his life to save his fellow soldiers.

Hillary Clinton was right when she called my son "the best of America."

If it was up to Donald Trump, he never would have been in America.

Donald Trump consistently smears the character of Muslims. He disrespects other minorities, women, judges, even his own party leadership. He vows to build walls and ban us from this country.

Donald Trump, you are asking Americans to trust you with our future. Let me ask you: Have you even read the U.S. Constitution? I will gladly lend you my copy. In this document, look for the words "liberty" and "equal protection of law."

Have you ever been to Arlington Cemetery? Go look at the graves of the brave patriots who died defending America — you will see all faiths, genders, and ethnicities.

You have sacrificed nothing and no one.

We can't solve our problems by building walls and sowing division.

We are Stronger Together.

And we will keep getting stronger when Hillary Clinton becomes our next President.

Source: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/re...

Enjoyed this speech? Speakola is a labour of love and I’d be very grateful if you would share, tweet or like it. Thank you.

Facebook Twitter Facebook
In 2010s MORE Tags KHIZR KHAN, FATHER, SERVICEMAN, KIA, SOLDERS, MUSLIMS, DONALD TRUMP, HILLARY CLINTON, ENDORSEMENT
Comment

Bill Clinton: "In the spring of 1971 I met a girl,", DNC - 2016

July 27, 2016

26 July 2016, Democratic National Convention, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

In the spring of 1971, I met a girl.

The first time I saw her we were, appropriately enough, in a class on political and civil rights. She had thick blond hair, big glasses, wore no makeup, and she had a sense of strength and self- possession that I found magnetic. After the class I followed her out, intending to introduce myself. I got close enough to touch her back, but I couldn’t do it. Somehow I knew this would not be just another tap on the shoulder, that I might be starting something I couldn’t stop.

 

And I saw her several more times in the next few days, but I still didn’t speak to her. Then one night I was in the law library talking to a classmate who wanted me to join the Yale Law Journal. He said it would guarantee me a job in a big firm or a clerkship with a federal judge. I really wasn’t interested, I just wanted to go home to Arkansas.

Then I saw the girl again, standing at the opposite end of that long room. Finally she was staring back at me, so I watched her. She closed her book, put it down and started walking toward me. She walked the whole length of the library, came up to me and said, look, if you’re going to keep staring at me…

…and now I’m staring back, we at least ought to know each other’s name. I’m Hillary Rodham, who are you?

I was so impressed and surprised that, whether you believe it or not, momentarily I was speechless.

Finally, I sort of blurted out my name and we exchanged a few words and then she went away.

Well, I didn’t join the Law Review, but I did leave that library with a whole new goal in mind.

A couple of days later, I saw her again. I remember, she was wearing a long, white, flowery skirt. And I went up to her and she said she was going to register for classes for the next term. And I said I’d go, too. And we stood in line and talked — you had to do that to register back then — and I thought I was doing pretty well until we got to the front of the line and the registrar looked up and said, Bill, what are you doing here, you registered morning?

I turned red and she laughed that big laugh of hers. And I thought, well, heck, since my cover’s been blown I just went ahead and asked her to take a walk down to the art museum.

We’ve been walking and talking and laughing together ever since.

And we’ve done it in good times and bad, through joy and heartbreak. We cried together this morning on the news that our good friend and a lot of your good friend, Mark Weiner, passed away early this morning.

We’ve built up a lifetime of memories. After the first month and that first walk, I actually drove her home to Park Ridge, Illinois…

…to meet her family and see the town where she grew up, a perfect example of post World War II middle-class America, street after street of nice houses, great schools, good parks, a big public swimming pool, and almost all white.

I really liked her family. Her crusty, conservative father, her rambunctious brothers, all extolling the virtues of rooting for the Bears and the Cuba.

And for the people from Illinois here, they even told me what “waiting for next year” meant.

It could be next year, guys.

Now, her mother was different. She was more liberal than the boys. And she had a childhood that made mine look like a piece of cake. She was easy to underestimate with her soft manner and she reminded me all over again of the truth of that old saying you should never judge a book by its covers. Knowing her was one of the greatest gifts Hillary ever gave me.

I learned that Hillary got her introduction to social justice through her Methodist youth minister, Don Jones. He took her downtown to Chicago to hear Dr. Martin Luther King speak and he remained her friend for the rest of his life. This will be the only campaign of hers he ever missed.

When she got to college, her support for civil rights, her opposition to the Vietnam War compelled her to change party, to become a Democrat.

And then between college and law school on a total lark she went alone to Alaska and spent some time sliming fish.

More to the point, by the time I met her she had already been involved in the law school’s legal services project and she had been influenced by Marian Wright Edelman.

She took a summer internship interviewing workers in migrant camps for Senator Walter Mondale’s subcommittee.

She had also begun working in the Yale New Haven Hospital to develop procedures to handle suspected child abuse cases. She got so involved in children’s issues that she actually took an extra year in law school working at the child studies center to learn what more could be done to improve the lives and the futures of poor children.

So she was already determined to figure out how to make things better.

Hillary opened my eyes to a whole new world of public service by private citizens. In the summer of 1972, she went to Dothan, Alabama to visit one of those segregated academies that then enrolled over half-a-million white kids in the South. The only way the economics worked is if they claimed federal tax exemptions to which they were not legally entitled. She got sent to prove they weren’t.

So she sauntered into one of these academies all by herself, pretending to be a housewife that had just moved to town and needed to find a school for her son. And they exchanged pleasantries and finally she said, look, let’s just get to the bottom line here, if I enroll my son in this school will he be in a segregated school, yes or know? And the guy said absolutely. She had him!

I’ve seen it a thousand times since. And she went back and her encounter was part of a report that gave Marian Marian Wright Edelman the ammunition she needed to keep working to force the Nixon administration to take those tax exemptions away and give our kids access to an equal education.

Then she went down to south Texas where she met…she met one of the nicest fellows I ever met, the wonderful union leader Franklin Garcia, and he helped her register Mexican- American voters. I think some of them are still around to vote for her in 2016.

Then in our last year in law school, Hillary kept up this work. She went to South Carolina to see why so many young…

…she went to South Carolina to see why so many young African- American boys, I mean, young teenagers, were being jailed for years with adults in men’s prisons. And she filed a report on that, which led to some changes, too. Always making things better. (APPLAUSE)

Now, meanwhile, let’s get back to business. I was trying to convince her to marry me.

I first proposed to her on a trip to Great Britain, the first time she had been overseas. And we were on the shoreline of this wonderful little lake, Lake Ennerdale. I asked her to marry me and she said I can’t do it.

So in 1974 I went home to teach in the law school and Hillary moved to Massachusetts to keep working on children’s issues. This time trying to figure out why so many kids counted in the Census weren’t enrolled in school. She found one of them sitting alone on her porch in a wheelchair. Once more, she filed a report about these kids, and that helped influence ultimately the Congress to adopt the proposition that children with disabilities, physical or otherwise, should have equal access to public education.

You saw the results of that last night when Anastasia Somoza talked.

She never made fun of people with disabilities; she tried to empower them based on their abilities.

 

So the second time I tried a different tack. I said I really want you to marry me, but you shouldn’t do it.

And she smiled and looked at me, like, what is this boy up to? She said that is not a very good sales pitch. I said I know, but it’s true. And I meant it, it was true.

I said I know most of the young Democrats our age who want to go into politics, they mean well and they speak well, but none of them is as good as you are at actually doing things to make positive changes in people’s lives. (APPLAUSE)

So I suggested she go home to Illinois or move to New York and look for a chance to run for office. She just laughed and said, are you out of you mind, nobody would ever vote for me.

So I finally got her to visit me in Arkansas.

And when she did, the people at the law school were so impressed they offered a teaching position. And she decided to take a huge chance. She moved to a strange place, more rural, more culturally conservative than anyplace she had ever been, where she knew good and well people would wonder what in the world she was like and whether they could or should accept her.

Didn’t take them long to find out what she was like. She loved her teaching and she got frustrated when one of her students said, well, what do you expect, I’m just from Arkansas. She said, don’t tell me that, you’re as smart as anybody, you’ve just got to believe in yourself and work hard and set high goals. She believed that anybody could make it.

She also started the first legal aid clinic in northwest Arkansas, providing legal aid services to poor people who couldn’t pay for them. And one day I was driving her to the airport to fly back to Chicago when we passed this little brick house that had a for sale sign on it. And she said, boy, that’s a pretty house. It had 1,100 square feet, an attic, fan and no air conditioner in hot Arkansas, and a screened-in porch.

Hillary commented on what a uniquely designed and beautiful house it was. So I took a big chance. I bought the house. My mortgage was $175 a month.

When she came back, I picked up her up and I said, you remember that house you liked? She said yeah. I said, while you were gone I bought it, you have to marry me now.

The third time was the charm.

We were married in that little house on October the 11th, 1975. I married my best friend. I was still in awe after more than four years of being around her at how smart and strong and loving and caring she was. And I really hoped that her choosing me and rejecting my advice to pursue her own career was a decision she would never regret.

A little over a year later we moved to Little Rock when I became attorney general and she joined the oldest law firm west of the Mississippi. Soon after, she started a group called the Arkansas Advocates for Families and Children.

It’s a group, as you can hear, is still active today.

In 1979, just after I became governor, I asked Hillary to chair a rural health committee to help expand health care to isolated farm and mountain areas. They recommended to do that partly by deploying trained nurse practitioners in places with no doctors to provide primary care they were trained to provide. It was a big deal then, highly controversial and very important.

And I got the feeling that what she did for the rest of her life she was doing there. She just went out and figured out what needed to be done and what made the most sense and what would help the most people. And then if it was controversial she’d just try to persuade people it was the right thing to do.

It wasn’t the only big thing that happened that spring my first year as governor. We found out we were going to be parents.

And time passed. On February 27th, 1980, 15 minutes after I got home from the National Governors Conference in Washington, Hillary’s water broke and off we went to the hospital. Chelsea was born just before midnight.

And it was the greatest moment of my life. The miracle of a new beginning. The hole it filled for me because my own father died before I was born, and the absolute conviction that my daughter had the best mother in the whole world.

For the next 17 years, through nursing school, Montessori, kindergarten, through T-ball, softball, soccer, volleyball and her passion for ballet, through sleepovers, summer camps, family vacations and Chelsea’s own very ambitious excursions, from Halloween parties in the neighborhood, to a Viennese waltz gala in the White House, Hillary first and foremost was a mother.

She became, as she often said, our family’s designated worrier, born with an extra responsibility gene. The truth is we rarely disagreed on parenting, although she did believe that I had gone a little over the top when I took a couple of days off with Chelsea to watch all six “Police Academy” movies back-to-back.

When Chelsea was 9 months old, I was defeated for reelection in the Reagan landslide. And I became overnight, I think, the youngest former governor in the history of the country. We only had two-year terms back then.

Hillary was great. Immediately she said, OK, what are we going to do? Here’s what we’re going to do, we’re going to get a house, you’re going to get a job, we’re going to enjoy being Chelsea’s parents. And if you really want to run again, you’ve got to go out and talk to people and figure out why you lost, tell people you got the message and show them you’ve still got good ideas.

I followed her advice. Within two days we had a house, I soon had a job. We had two fabulous years with Chelsea. And in 1982, I became the first governor in the history of our state to be elected, defeated and elected again.

I think my experience is it’s a pretty good thing to follow her advice. The rest of the decade sort of flew by as our lives settled into a rhythm of family and work and friends.

In 1983, Hillary chaired a committee to recommend new education standards for us as a part of and in response to a court order to equalize school funding and a report by a national expert that said our woefully underfunded schools were the worst in America.

Typical Hillary, she held listening tours in all 75 counties with our committee. She came up with really ambitious recommendations. For example, that we be the first state in America to require elementary counselors in every school because so many kids were having trouble at home and they needed it.

So I called the legislature into session hoping to pass the standards, pass a pay raise for teachers and raise the sales tax to pay for it all. I knew it would be hard to pass, but it got easier after Hillary testified before the education committee and the chairman, a plainspoken farmer, said looks to me like we elected the wrong Clinton.

Well, by the time I ran for president nine years later, the same expert who said that we had the worst schools in America said that our state was one of the two most improved states in America. And that’s because of those standards that Hillary developed.

Now, two years later, Hillary told me about a preschool program developed in Israel called HIPPY, Home Instruction Program for Preschool Youngsters. The idea was to teach low-income parents, even those that couldn’t read, to be their children’s first teachers.

She said she thought it would work in Arkansas. I said that’s great, what are we going to do about it? She said, oh, I already did it. I called the woman who started the program in Israel, she’ll be here in about 10 days and help us get started.

Next thing you know I’m being dragged around to all these little preschool graduations. Now, keep in mind, this was before any state even had universal kindergarten and I’m being dragged to preschool graduations watching these poor parents with tears in their eyes because they never thought they’d be able to help their kids learn.

Now, 20 years of research has shown how well this program works to improve readiness for school and academic achievement. There are a lot of young adults in America who have no idea Hillary had anything to do with it who are enjoying better lives because they were in that program.

CLINTON: She did all this while being a full-time worker, a mother and enjoying our life. Why? Well, she’s insatiably curious, she’s a natural leader, she’s a good organizer, and she’s the best darn change-maker I ever met in my entire life.

Look, this is a really important point. This is a really important point for you to take out of this convention. If you believe in making change from the bottom up, if you believe the measure of change is how many people’s lives are better, you know it’s hard and some people think it’s boring. Speeches like this are fun.

Actually doing the work is hard. So people say, well, we need to change. She’s been around a long time, she sure has, and she’s sure been worth every single year she’s put into making people’s lives better.

I can tell you this. If you were sitting where I’m sitting and you heard what I have heard at every dinner conversation, every lunch conversation, on every lone walk, you would say this woman has never been satisfied with the status quo in anything. She always wants to move the ball forward. That is just who she is.

When I became president with a commitment to reform health care, Hillary was a natural to head the health care task force. You all know we failed because we couldn’t break a Senate filibuster. Hillary immediately went to work on solving the problems the bill sought to address one by one. The most important goal was to get more children with health insurance.

In 1997, Congress passed the Children’s Health Insurance Program, still an important part of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. It insures more than 8 million kids. There are a lot of other things in that bill that she got done piece by piece, pushing that rock up the hill.

In 1997, she also teamed with the House Minority Leader Tom DeLay, who maybe disliked me more than any of Newt Gingrich’s crowd. They worked on a bill together to increase adoptions of children under foster care. She wanted to do it because she knew that Tom DeLay, for all of our differences, was an adoptive parent and she honored him for doing that.

Now, the bill they worked on, which passed with an overwhelming bipartisan majority, led to a big increase in the adoption of children out of foster care, including non-infant kids and special-needs kids. It made life better because she’s a change-maker, that’s what she does.

Now, when you’re doing all this, real life doesn’t stop. 1997 was the year Chelsea finished high school and went to college. We were happy for her, but sad for us to see her go. I’ll never forget moving her into her dorm room at Stanford. It would have been a great little reality flick. There I was in a trance just staring out the window trying not to cry, and there was Hillary on her hands and knees desperately looking for one more drawer to put that liner paper in.

Finally, Chelsea took charge and told us ever so gently that it was time for us to go. So we closed a big chapter in the most important work of our lives. As you’ll see Thursday night when Chelsea speaks, Hillary’s done a pretty fine job of being a mother.

And as you saw last night, beyond a shadow of a doubt so has Michelle Obama.

Now, fast forward. In 1999, Congressman Charlie Rangel and other New York Democrats urged Hillary…

…urged Hillary to run for the seat of retiring Senator Pat Moynihan. We had always intended to go to New York after I left office and commute to Arkansas, but this had never occurred to either one of us. Hillary had never run for office before, but she decided to give it a try.

She began her campaign the way she always does new things, by listening and and learning. And after a tough battle, New York elected her to the seat once held by another outsider, Robert Kennedy.

And she didn’t let him down. Her early years were dominated by 9/11, by working to fund the recovery, then monitoring the health and providing compensation to victims and first and second responders. She and Senator Schumer were tireless and so were our House members.

In 2003, partly spurred on by what we were going through, she became the first senator in the history of New York ever to serve on the Armed Services Committee.

So she tried to make sure people on the battlefield had proper equipment. She tried to expand and did expand health care coverage to Reservists and members of the National Guard. She got longer family leave, working with Senator Dodd, for people caring for wounded service members.

And she worked for more extensive care for people with traumatic brain injury. She also served on a special Pentagon commission to propose changes necessary to meet our new security challenges. Newt Gingrich was on that commission, he told me what a good job she had done.

I say that because nobody who has seriously dealt with the men and women in today’s military believes they are a disaster. They are a national treasure of all races, all religions, all walks of life.

Now, meanwhile, she compiled a really solid record, totally progressive on economic and social issues. She voted for and against some proposed trade deals. She became the de facto economic development officer for the area of New York outside the ambit of New York City.

She worked for farmers, for winemakers, for small businesses and manufacturers, for upstate cities in rural areas who needed more ideas and more new investment to create good jobs, something we have to do again in small-town and rural America, in neighborhoods that have been left behind in our cities and Indian country and, yes, in coal country.

When she lost a hard-fought contest to President Obama in 2008, she worked for his election hard. But she hesitated to say yes when he asked her to join his Cabinet because she so loved being a senator from New York.

So like me, in a different context, he had to keep asking.

But as we all saw and heard from Madeleine Albright, it was worth the effort and worth the wait.

As secretary of state, she worked hard to get strong sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program. And in what The Wall Street Journal no less called a half-court shot at the buzzer, she got Russia and China to support them. Her team negotiated the New START Treaty with Russia to reduce nuclear weapons and reestablish inspections. And she got enough Republican support to get two-thirds of the Senate, the vote necessary to ratify the treaty.

She flew all night long from Cambodia to the Middle East to get a cease-fire that would avoid a full-out shooting war between Hamas and Israel in Gaza to protect the peace of the region.

She backed President Obama’s decision to go after Osama bin Laden.

She launched a team, this is really important today, she launched a team to fight back against terrorists online and built a new global counterterrorism effort.

We’ve got to win this battle in the mind field.

She put climate change at the center of our foreign policy.

She negotiated the first agreement ever — ever — where China and India officially committed to reduce their emissions. And as she had been doing since she went to Beijing in 1995 and said women’s rights are human rights and human rights are women’s rights…

…she worked to empower women and girls around the world and to make the same exact declaration on behalf of the LGBT community in America and around the world.

And nobody ever talks about this much, nobody ever talks about this much, but it’s important to me. She tripled the number of people with AIDS in poor countries whose lives are being saved with your tax dollars, most of them in Africa, going from 1.7 million lives to 5.1 million lives and it didn’t cost you any more money. She just bought available FDA-approved generic drugs, something we need to do for the American people more.

Now, you don’t know any of these people. You don’t know any of those 3.4 million people, but I’ll guarantee you they know you. They know you because they see you as thinking their lives matter. They know you and that’s one reason the approval of the United States was 20 points higher when she left the secretary of state’s office than when she took it.

Now, how does this square? How did this square with the things that you heard at the Republican convention? What’s the difference in what I told you and what they said? How do you square it? You can’t. One is real, the other is made up.

You just have to decide. You just have to decide which is which, my fellow Americans.

The real one had done more positive change-making before she was 30 than many public officials do in a lifetime in office.

The real one, if you saw her friend Betsy Ebeling vote for Illinois today…has friends from childhood through Arkansas, where she has not lived in more than 20 years, who have gone all across America at their own expense to fight for the person they know.

The real one has earned the loyalty, the respect and the fervent support of people who have worked with her in every stage of her life, including leaders around the world who know her to be able, straightforward and completely trustworthy.

The real one calls you when you’re sick, when your kid’s in trouble or when there’s a death in the family.

The real one repeatedly drew praise from prominent Republicans when she was a senator and secretary of state.

So what’s up with it? Well, if you win elections on the theory that government is always bad and will mess up a two-car parade…a real change-maker represents a real threat.

So your only option is to create a cartoon, a cartoon alternative, then run against the cartoon. Cartoons are two- dimensional, they’re easy to absorb. Life in the real world is complicated and real change is hard. And a lot of people even think it’s boring.

Good for you, because earlier today you nominated the real one.

Listen, we’ve got to get back on schedule. You guys calm down.

Look (INAUDIBLE) a long, full, blessed life, it really took off when I met and fell in love with that girl in the spring of 1971. When I was president, I worked hard to give you more peace and shared prosperity, to give you an America where nobody is invisible or counted out.

But for this time, Hillary is uniquely qualified to seize the opportunities and reduce the risks we face. And she is still the best darn change-maker I have ever known.

You could drop her into any trouble spot, pick one, come back in a month and somehow, some way she will have made it better. That is just who she is.

There are clear, achievable, affordable responses to our challenges. But we won’t get to them if America makes the wrong choice in this election. That’s why you should elect her. And you should elect her because she’ll never quit when the going gets tough. She’ll never quit on you.

She sent me in this primary to West Virginia where she knew we were going to lose, to look those coal miners in the eye and say I’m down here because Hillary sent me to tell you that if you really think you can get the economy back you had 50 years ago, have at it, vote for whoever you want to. But if she wins, she is coming back for you to take you along on the ride to America’s future.

And so I say to you, if you love this country, you’re working hard, you’re paying taxes and you’re obeying the law and you’d like to become a citizen, you should choose immigration reform over somebody that wants to send you back.

If you’re a Muslim and you love America and freedom and you hate terror, stay here and help us win and make a future together. We want you.

If you’re a young African American disillusioned and afraid, we saw in Dallas how great our police officers can be, help us build a future where nobody is afraid to walk outside, including the people that wear blue to protect our future.

Hillary will make us stronger together. You know it because she’s spent a lifetime doing it. I hope you will do it. I hope you will elect her. Those of us who have more yesterdays than tomorrows tend to care more about our children and grandchildren. The reason you should elect her is that in the greatest country on earth we have always been about tomorrow. You children and grandchildren will bless you forever if you do.

God bless you. Thank you.

Source: http://time.com/4425599/dnc-bill-clinton-s...

Enjoyed this speech? Speakola is a labour of love and I’d be very grateful if you would share, tweet or like it. Thank you.

Facebook Twitter Facebook
In 2010s MORE Tags BILL CLINTON, DNC, TRANSCRIPT, HILLARY CLINTON, ELECTION 2016
Comment

Michelle Obama: "I want a president who will teach our children that everyone in this country matters", Democratic National Convention keynote - 2016

July 26, 2016

25 July 2016, DNC, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

Thank you all, thank you so much. It is hard to believe that it has been eight years since I first came to this convention to talk with you about why I thought my husband should be president. Remember how I told you about his character and his conviction? His decency and grace? The traits we have seen every day as he has served our country in the White House.

I also told you about our daughters, how they are the heart of our hearts, the center of our world, and during our time in the White House we have had the joy of watching them grow from bubbly little girls into poised young women.

A journey that started soon after we arrived in Washington when they set off for their first day at their new school. I will never forget that winter morning as I watched our girls, just 7 and 10 years old, pile into those black SUVs with all those men with guns. And with all their little faces pressed up against the window, and the only thing I could think was, 'What have we done?'

At that moment, I realized that our time in the White House would form the foundation of who they would become. And how well we manage this experience could truly make or break them.

That is what Barack and I think about every day as he tried to guide and protect our girls from the challenges of this unusual life in the spotlight. How we urged them to ignore those who question their father's citizenship or faith. How we insist that the hateful language they hear from public figures on TV does not represent the true spirit of this country. How we explain that when someone is cruel or acts like a bully, you don't stoop to their level. Our motto is, when they go low, we go high.

With every word we utter, with every action we take, we know our kids are watching us. We as parents are the most important role-model.

Let me tell you, Barack and I take that same approach to our jobs as president and first lady because we know that our words and actions matter, not just to our girls but the children across this country. Kids who say, "I saw you on TV," "I wrote the report on you for school." Kids like the little black boy who looked up at my husband, his eyes wide with hope, and he wondered, 'Is my hair like yours?'

Make no mistake about it, this November, when we get to the polls, that is what we are deciding. Not Democrat or Republican, not left or right. In this election, and every election, it is about who will have the power to shape our children for the next four or eight years of their lives. I am speaking to you tonight because in this election, there is only one person who I trust with that responsibility, only one person who I believe is truly qualified to be president of the United States, and that is our friend Hillary Clinton.

I trust Hillary to lead this country because I have seen her lifelong devotion to our nation's children. Not just her own daughter, who she has raised to perfection, but every child who needs a champion: kids who take the long way to school to avoid the gangs. Kids who wonder how they will ever afford college. Kids whose parents don't speak a word of English, but dream of a better life; who look to us to dream of what they can be.

Hillary has spent decades doing the relentless work to actually make a difference in their lives. Advocating for kids with disabilities as a young lawyer, fighting for children's health care as first lady, and for quality child care in the senate.

And when she did not win the nomination eight years ago, she did not get angry or disillusioned. Hillary did not pack up and go home because ... Hillary knows that this is so much bigger than her own disappointment. She proudly stepped up to serve our country once again as secretary of state, traveling the globe to keep our kids safe. There were moments when Hillary could have decided that this work was too hard, that the price of public service was too high, that she was tired of being [torn] apart for how she looked, or how she talked, or even how she laughed.

But here's the thing: What I admire most about Hillary is that she never buckles under pressure. She never takes the easy way out. And Hillary Clinton has never quit on anything in her life. And when I think about the kind of president that I want for my girls and all our children, that is what I want. I want someone with the proven strength to persevere.

Somebody who knows this job and takes it seriously. Somebody who understands that the issues of our nation are not black or white. It cannot be boiled down to 140 characters. Because when you have the nuclear codes at your fingertips and the military in your command, you can't make snap decisions. You can't have thin skin or a tendency to lash out. You need to be steady and measured and well informed.

I want a president with a record of public service. Someone whose life's work shows our children that we don't chase fame and fortune for ourselves; we fight to give everyone a chance to succeed. And we give back even when we are struggling ourselves because we know that there is someone worse off. There but for the grace of God, go I. I want a president who will teach our children that everyone in this country matters.

A president that truly believes that our founders put forth all those years ago that we are all created equal, each a beloved part of the great American story. When crisis hits, we don't turn against each other, we listen to each other. We lean on each other. We are always stronger together. I am here tonight because I know that that is the kind of president Hillary Clinton will be and that is why in this election, I'm with her.

You see, Hillary understands that the presidency is about one thing and one thing only. It is about leaving something better for our kids. That is how we have always moved this country forward by all of us coming together on behalf of our children. Volunteering to coach the team, teach the Sunday school class, because they know it takes a village.

Heroes of every color and creed who wear the uniform and risk their lives to pass on those blessings of liberty; police officers and protesters in Dallas who all that really want to keep our children safe; people who lined up in Orlando to donate blood because it could have been their son, or their daughter in the club.

Leaders like Tim Kaine, who show our kids what decency and devotion look like. Leaders like Hillary Clinton, who have the guts and the grace to keep coming back and putting those cracks in the highest and hardest glass ceiling until they finally break through, lifting all of us along with her.

That is the story of this country. The story that has brought me to the stage tonight. The story of generations of people who felt the lash of bondage, the shame of servitude, the sting of segregation, who kept on striving, and hoping, and doing what needed to be done. So that today, I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves. And I watch my daughters — two beautiful intelligent black young women — play with the dog on the White House lawn.

And because of Hillary Clinton, my daughters and all of our sons and daughters now take for granted that a woman can be president of the United States.

Don't let anyone ever tell you that this country is not great. That somehow we need to make it great again. Because this right now is the greatest country on Earth.

And as my daughters set out on the world, I want a leader who is worthy of that truth, a leader worthy of my girls' promise and all of our kids' promise. A leader who will be guided every day by the love and hope and impossibly big dreams that we all have for our children.

In this election, we cannot sit back and hope that everything works out for the best, we cannot afford to be tired or frustrated or cynical. Hear me: Between now and November, we need to do what we did eight years ago and four years ago. We need to knock on every door, we need to get out every vote, we need to pour every last ounce of passion into electing Hillary Clinton as president of the United States of America. Let's get to work.

Thank you all and God bless.

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/am...

Enjoyed this speech? Speakola is a labour of love and I’d be very grateful if you would share, tweet or like it. Thank you.

Facebook Twitter Facebook
In 2010s Tags DNC, MICHELLE OBAMA, ELECTION2016, HILLARY CLINTON, BARACK OBBAMA, TRANSCRIPT, WOMEN, CHILDREN
Comment

Elizabeth Cady Stanton: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal', Declaration of Sentiments, Seneca Falls Conference - 1848

June 9, 2016

19 July 1848. Seneca Falls, New York, USA

This is the founding moment of American feminism that Hillary Clinton referred to in her victory speech accepting the Democratic nomination.

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a course.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer. while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled. The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyrranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.

He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.

He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men--both natives and foreigners.

Having deprived her of this first right of a citizedn, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides.

He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.

He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.

He has made her, morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master--the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement.

He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes, and in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given, as to be wholly regardles of the happiness of women--the law, in all cases, going upon a flase supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands.

After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single, and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it.

He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration. He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction which he considers most homorable to himself. As a teacher of theoloy, medicine, or law, she is not known.

He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education, all colleges being closed against her.

He allows her in church, as well as state, but a suborinate position, claiming apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and, with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the church.

He has created a false public sentiment by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society, are not only tolerated, but deemed of little account in man.

He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and to her God.

He has endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy her conficence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.

Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation--in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States.

Source: http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/sene...

Enjoyed this speech? Speakola is a labour of love and I’d be very grateful if you would share, tweet or like it. Thank you.

Facebook Twitter Facebook
In Pre 1900 Tags WOMEN'S RIGHTS, SUFFRAGETTE, SENECA FALLS, FEMINISM, TRANSCRIPT, DECLARATION OF SENTIMENTS, HILLARY CLINTON
Comment

Hillary Clinton: 'We are all standing under a glass ceiling right now', Taking Democratic Party Nomination - 2016

June 9, 2016

7 June 2016, Brooklyn, New York, USA

[…] one that you have taken with me and I am so grateful to you. It is wonderful to be back in Brooklyn, here in this […]. And it may be hard to see tonight, but we are all standing under a glass ceiling right now. But don’t worry, we’re not smashing this one.

Thanks to you, we’ve reached a milestone – the first time in our nation’s history that a woman will be a major party’s nominee for president of the United States.

Tonight’s victory is not about one person. It belongs to generations of women and men who struggled and sacrificed and made this moment possible. In our country, it started right here in New York, a place called Seneca Falls, in 1848. When a small but determined group of women, and men, came together with the idea that women deserved equal rights, and they set it forth in something called the Declaration of Sentiments, and it was the first time in human history that that kind of declaration occurred.

So we all owe so much to those who came before, and tonight belongs to all of you.

I want to thank all the volunteers, community leaders, the activists, and organizers who supported our campaign in every state and territory. And thanks especially to our friends in New Jersey for such a resounding victory tonight. Thanks for talking to your neighbors, for making contributions. Your efforts have produced a strong majority of the popular vote, victories in a majority of the contests, and after tonight, a majority of pledged delegates.

I want to thank all the people across our country who have taken the time to talk with me. I’ve learned a lot about you and I’ve learned about those persistent problems and the unfinished promise of America that you are living with. So many of you feel like you are out there on your own, that no one has your back. Well, I do. I hear you, I see you.

And as your president, I will always have your back. I want to congratulate Senator Sanders for the extraordinary campaign he has run. He has spent his long career in public service fighting for progressive causes and principles, and he’s excited millions of voters, especially young people. And let there be no mistake: Senator Sanders, his campaign, and the vigorous debate that we’ve had about how to raise incomes, reduce inequality, increase upward mobility have been very good for the Democratic Party and for America.

This has been a hard-fought, deeply-felt campaign. But whether you supported me, or Senator Sanders, or one of the Republicans, we all need to keep working toward a better, fairer, stronger America.

Now, I know it never feels good to put your heart into a cause or a candidate you believe in – and to come up short. I know that feeling well. But as we look ahead to the battle that awaits, let’s remember all that unites us.

We all want an economy with more opportunity and less inequality, where Wall Street can never wreck Main Street again. We all want a government that listens to the people, not the power brokers, which means getting unaccountable money out of politics. And we all want a society that is tolerant, inclusive, and fair.

We all believe that America succeeds when more people share in our prosperity; when more people have a voice in our political system; when more people can contribute to their communities. We believe that cooperation is better than conflict, unity is better than division, empowerment is better than resentment, and bridges are better than walls

It’s a simple but powerful idea. We believe that we are stronger together. And the stakes in this election are high. And the choice is clear.

Donald Trump is temperamentally unfit to be president and commander-in-chief. And he’s not just trying to build a wall between America and Mexico – he’s trying to wall off Americans from each other. When he says, ‘Let’s make America great again,’ that is code for, ‘Let’s take America backwards.’ Back to a time when opportunity and dignity were reserved for some, not all, promising his supporters an economy he cannot recreate.

We, however, we want to write the next chapter in American greatness, with a 21st century prosperity that lifts everyone who’s been left out and left behind, including those who may not vote for us but who deserve their chance to make a new beginning.

When Donald Trump says a distinguished judge born in Indiana can’t do his job because of his Mexican heritage – or he mocks a reporter with disabilities – or calls women ‘pigs’– it goes against everything we stand for. Because we want an America where everyone is treated with respect and where their work is valued.

It’s clear that Donald Trump doesn’t believe we are stronger together. He has abused his primary opponents and their families, attacked the press for asking tough questions, denigrated Muslims and immigrants. He wants to win by stoking fear and rubbing salt in wounds. And reminding us daily just how great he is.

Well, we believe we should lift each other up, not tear each other down. We believe we need to give Americans a raise – not complain that hardworking people’s wages are too high. We believe we need to help young people struggling with student debt – not pile more on to our national debt with giveaways to the super-wealthy. We believe we need to make America the clean energy superpower of the 21st century – not insist that climate change is a hoax.

To be great, we can’t be small. We have to be as big as the values that define America. And we are a big-hearted, fair-minded country. We teach our children that this is one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Not just for people who look a certain way or worship a certain way or love a certain way. For all. Indivisible.

This election is not, however, about the same old fights between Democrats and Republicans. This election is different. It really is about who we are as a nation. It’s about millions of Americans coming together to say: We are better than this. We won’t let this happen in America.

And if you agree – whether you’re a Democrat, Republican or independent – I hope you’ll join us.

In just a few weeks, we will meet in Philadelphia, which gave birth to our nation – back in that hot summer of 1776. Those early patriots knew they would all rise or fall together. Well, today that’s more true than ever.

Our campaign will take this message to every corner of our country. We’re stronger when our economy works for everyone, not just those at the top, with good-paying jobs and good schools in every ZIP code, and a real commitment to all families and all regions of our nation.

We’re stronger when we work with our allies around the world to keep us safe. And we are stronger when we respect each other, listen to each other, and act with a sense of common purpose.

We’re stronger when every family in every community knows they’re not on their own, because we are in this together. It really does ‘take a village’ to raise a child – and to build a stronger future for us all.

I learned this a long time ago, from the biggest influence in my life: my mother. She was my rock, from the day I was born till the day she left us. She overcame a childhood marked by abandonment and mistreatment, and somehow managed not to become bitter or broken. My mother believed that life is about serving others. And she taught me never to back down from a bully, which, it turns out, was pretty good advice.

This past Saturday would have been her 97th birthday, because she was born on June 4th, 1919. And some of you may know the significance of that date. On the very day my mother was born in Chicago, Congress was passing the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. That amendment finally gave women the right to vote. And I really wish my mother could be here tonight. I wish she could see what a wonderful mother Chelsea has become, and could meet our beautiful granddaughter Charlotte. And of course, I wish she could see her daughter become the Democratic Party’s nominee for president of the United States.

So yes, yes, there are still ceilings to break – for women and men, for all of us. But don’t let anyone tell you that great things can’t happen in America. Barriers can come down. Justice and equality can win. Our history has moved in that direction – slowly at times, but unmistakably – thanks to generations of Americans who refused to give up or back down.

Now you are writing a new chapter of that story. This campaign is about making sure there are no ceilings – no limits – on any of us. And this is our moment to come together.

So please, join our campaign. Volunteer. Go to hillaryclinton.com. Contribute what you can. Text Join, J-O-I-N, to 4-7-2-4-6. Help us organize in all 50 states. Every phone call you make, every door you knock on will move us forward.

Now, I’m going to take a moment later tonight and the days ahead to fully absorb the history we’ve made here. But what I care about most is the history our country has yet to write. Our children and grandchildren will look back at this time, at the choices we are about to make, the goals we will strive for, the principles we will live by. And we need to make sure that they can be proud of us.

The end of the primaries is only the beginning of the work we’re called to do. But if we stand together, we will rise together, because we are stronger together. Let’s go out and make that case to America.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

Source: https://bluenationreview.com/full-transcri...

Enjoyed this speech? Speakola is a labour of love and I’d be very grateful if you would share, tweet or like it. Thank you.

Facebook Twitter Facebook
In 2010s Tags HILLARY CLINTON, DNC, ACCEPTING NOMINATION, TRANSCRIPT, ELECTION2016, BERNIE SANDERS, DON
Comment

Hillary Clinton: 'We are living in what I call the Age of Participation', Women in the World summit - 2012

January 19, 2016

10 March 2012, Women in the World Summit, New York, 2012

So how do you like my jacket? (Laughter and applause.) I cannot believe what just happened. (Laughter.) I really had no idea what was going to be portrayed or done by Meryl. I thought we might get some extraordinary renditions of everyone from Aung San Suu Kyi to Indira Gandhi, a reprise of Margaret Thatcher. And it was quite astonishing because I’ve always admired her. And as she said, we do unfortunately throughout our lives as girls and women often cast an appraising eye on each other. I’m just glad she didn’t do a movie called The Devil Wears Pantsuits. (Laughter.)

But just as I marked various stages of my life by remembering what amazing role she was playing at the time, it is quite a humbling experience to have someone who I admire so greatly say what she said today. Because the work that I’ve done has been work that I felt drawn to for some of the same reasons that Meryl and I share these generational experiences, particularly these big-hearted mothers who challenged us to go as far as our efforts could take us.

So here we are at the end – it truly is the end – of the conference that has brought all of these women of the world, in the world, to New York. And I want to thank Tina Brown and her entire team that worked so hard to enable everyone to see what I get to see all the time. (Applause.) I just can’t thank you enough. (Applause.) 

Because for me, it has not been so much work as a mission, it has not been as strenuous as it has been inspiring, to have had the chance throughout my life, but certainly in these last 20 years, to have the privilege of meeting women and girls in our own country and then throughout the world who are taking a stand, whose voices are being heard, who are assuming the risks that come with sticking your neck out, whether you are a democracy activist in Burma or a Georgetown law student in the United States. (Applause.)

My life has been enriched, and I want yours to be as well. I am thrilled that so many of you have taken the time out of your own lives to celebrate these stories of these girls and women. And of course, now I hope that through your own efforts, through your own activism, through the foundations, through your political involvement, through your businesses, through every channel you have, you will leave here today thinking about what you too can do. Because when I flag in energy, when I do recognize that what my friends are telling me – that I need more sleep – is probably true, I think about the women whom I have had the honor to work with. Women like Dr. Gao, who Meryl met, who is about – well, she’s shorter than the podium. She is in her 80s now. She did have bound feet. She became a doctor and she was the physician who sounded the alarm about HIV/AIDS despite the Chinese Government’s efforts for years to silence her.

Or I think about Vera, the activist from Belarus whom I met. She’s worked so hard to shine a spotlight on the abuses happening right inside Europe one more time – another regime that believes silencing voices, locking up dissidents, rigging elections, is the only way to stay in power. So she and her allies brave the abuse every single day to say no, there is another way. 

Or Inex, who Meryl also mentioned, who I got to know during our efforts on behalfof the peace process in Northern Ireland. And she was reaching across all of these deep divides between the communities there, trying to forge understanding and build bridges. And like Muhtaren, the Pakistani young woman who had been so brutally assaulted for some absurd remnant out of an ancient belief in settling scores between families which should have no place in any country in the 21st century – (applause) – she was expected to kill herself. Well, of course; you’ve been shamed, you’ve been dishonored; through no fault of your own, you are now dead to us, so just finish the job. Well, she not only didn’t, but she is a living rebuke to not only those who assaulted her but to the government that did not recognize it needs to protect all of its girls and women, because without their full involvement in their society, there can never be the progress that is so necessary.

Now, I doubt any of these women would have ever imagined being mentioned on a stage by an Oscar-winning actress. I know I didn’t imagine I would be so mentioned on this stage. (Laughter.) But they are because they are special. We know about their stories. Somehow, we have seen their struggles break through the indifference and the resistance to telling the stories of girls and women who are struggling against such odds across the world. 

But they also represent so much more. Because this hall – I know because I know many of you – are filled with women and men who are on the front lines fighting for change, for justice, for freedom, for equal rights. And there are tens of millions more who need our support. So what does it mean to be a Woman in the World? Well, I too believe it means facing up to the obstacles you confront, and each of us confront different kinds. It means never giving up – giving up on yourself, giving upon your potential, giving up on your future. It means waking early, working hard, putting a family, a community, a country literally on your back, and building a better life.

You heard from Zin Mar Aung, the Burmese democracy activist who spoke earlier. When I met her late last year when I, on your behalf, on behalf of our country, went to Burma, I discussed with her and other activists what civil society would now be able to do to further the political and the economic reforms that the people so desperately need. And we did honor her along with nine extraordinary other women as International Women of Courage at the State Department. 

She, as you could see, came out of prison not embittered, although she had every right to be so, but determined, determined to make her contribution. She didn’t have time to feel sorry for herself, to worry whether her hair was the right shade or the right length. She got to work. And because of her, she’s founded four organizations, she’s working with young people and women to build civil society and citizenship. She raises funds for orphanages, she helps the families of political prisoners trying tore-enter into society, and she is one of those watering the seeds of democracy.

Or consider the young Nepali woman Suma, who sang so beautifully for us. (Applause.) You know what her story was. Six years old, sold into indentured servitude, working under desperate conditions, not allowed to go to school, not even allowed to speak her own native language. But then finally rescued by an NGO, an organization supported by the United States State Department, your tax dollars, called Room to Read, helped her enroll in a local school. We’ve helped 1,200 girls across India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka complete their secondary education.

So there is much we can do together. And I have to tell you, I thought it was exquisitely appropriate as I woke up and was getting ready this morning to open The New York Times front page and see Christine Lagarde and Angela Merkel there. (Applause.) I know both of them and I think they are worthy of our appreciation and admiration, because boy, do they have hard jobs. Christine, who was here, is demonstrating not only her leadership at the IMF but also sending a message that there is no longer any reason that women cannot achieve in business, finance, the economy. And Chancellor Merkel is carrying Europe on her shoulders, trying to navigate through this very difficult economic crisis.

Now, I also heard a report of the call to action and the passion that Leymah Gbowee, our Nobel Peace Prize winner, along with President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf from Liberia summoned you to. Now, for those of you who have seen the movie Pray the Devil Back to Hell, you know what happened in Liberia in the spring of 2003. But for others of you who may not yet have seen it, I urge you to do so, because thousands of women from all walks of life – Christians and Muslims together – flooded the streets, marching, singing, praying. Dressed all in white, they sat in a fish market under the hot sun under a banner that said: “The women of Liberia want peace now.” 

And they built a network and they delivered for their children and for future generations. It was an extraordinary accomplishment. (Applause.)

And when the peace talks finally happened in Ghana – not in Liberia – they went to Ghana. They staged a sit-in at the negotiations, linked arms, blocked the doors until the men inside reached an agreement. So the peace was signed, the dictator fled, but still they did not rest. They turned their energies to building an enduring peace. They worked to elect Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who became the first woman ever elected president of an African country. And in January, I had the honor of attending her second inauguration. (Applause.) 

I just saw my good friend, President Jahjaga of Kosovo. She’s a very young president, but already her life is a testament for what women can do to promote peace and security. She was still a student when the war started. She saw so much suffering. She wanted to help. So after finishing her studies, she became a police officer. She worked closely with international troops to forge a fragile peace. She rose through the ranks and eventually became the leader of the new Kosovo police force. And then just last year, she became the first woman elected president anywhere in the Balkans. (Applause.) And she has worked to bring her country together to promote the rule of law, ethnic reconciliation, regional stability – all the while standing up for the rights and opportunities of women and girls.

You can look around the world today and you can see the difference that individual women leaders are making. Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, who’s now leading UN women. They carry an enormous load for the rest of us, because it is hard for any leader – male or female. But I don’t fear contradiction when I say it is harder for women leaders. There are so many built-in expectations, stereotypes, caricatures that are still deeply embedded in psyches and cultures.

When I sat down alone for dinner with Aung San Suu Kyi back in November, it really did feel like meeting an old friend, even though it was the first time we’ve had a chance to see each other in person. Of course, from afar I had admired her and appreciated her courage. I went to the house where she had been unjustly imprisoned. Over dinner, we talked about the national struggle, but we also talked about the personal struggle. How does one who has been treated so unjustly overcome that personal sense of anger, of the years that were lost, families that were no longer seen, in order to be a leader that unites and brings people together? Nelson Mandela set such a high standard, and he often told me how going to prison forced him to overcome the anger he felt as a young man, because he knew when he walked out that prison door, if he were still angry, if he still was filled with hatred, he would still be in prison. 

Now, Aung San Suu Kyi, like Nelson Mandela, would have been remembered in history forever if she had not made the decision to enter politics, as he did as well. So there she is at, I think, 67, out traveling in an open car through the heat of the countryside, meeting crowds of tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, absorbing their hopes that they are putting on to her. She knows that when she crosses into politics, even though it is ultimately the way change is made that can last, she moves from being an icon to a politician. I know that route. (Laughter.) And I know how hard it is to be able to balance one’s ideals, one’s aspirations, with the give and take of any political process anywhere in the world. 

Now, we can tell stories all night and we can talk about the women who have inspired us. But what inspires me is not just who they are, but what they do. They roll their sleeves up and they get to work. And this has such important implications for our own country and for our national security, because our most important goals – from making peace and countering extremism to broadening prosperity and advancing democracy – depend to a very large degree on the participation and partnership of women. 

Nations that invest in women’s employment, health, and education are just more likely to have better outcomes. Their children will be healthier and better educated. And all over the world, we’ve seen what women do when they get involved in helping to bring peace. So this is not just the right thing to do for us to hold up these women, to support them, to encourage their involvement; this is a strategic imperative. 

And that’s why at the State Department, I’ve made women a cornerstone of American foreign policy. I’ve instructed our diplomats and development experts to partner with women, to find ways to engage and build on their unique strengths, help women start businesses, help girls attend school, push that women activists will be involved in peace talks and elections. It also means taking on discrimination, marginalization, rape as a tactic of war. I have seen the terrible abuses and what that does to the lives of women, and I know that we cannot rest until it is ended. 

In December, we launched a U.S. National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security, which is our roadmap for how we accelerate and institutionalize efforts across the United States Government to advance women’s participation. And we’re taking on some really tough problems. We’re trying to build local capacity. We’re giving grants to train women activists and journalists in Kenya in early-warning systems for violence. We’re supporting a new trauma center for rape victims in Sudan. We’re helping women in the Central African Republic access legal and economic services. We’re improving the collection of medical evidence for the prosecution of gender-based violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

And that’s just the beginning, because from around the world, from Iraq and Afghanistan to Sudan to the new transitional democracies in the Middle East and North Africa, we’re expecting our embassies to develop local strategies to empower women politically, economically, and socially. 

But we are watching carefully what is happening. We are concerned about the revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa. They held so much promise, but they also carried real risks, especially for women. We saw women on the front lines of the revolutions, most memorably in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. They marched, they blogged, they tweeted, they risked their lives alongside their sons and brothers – all in the name of dignity and opportunity. But after the revolution, too often they have found their attempts to participate in their new democracies blocked. We were delighted that our great Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg went on a State Department-sponsored trip to Egypt and Tunisia. And while there, she rightly said the daughters of the Middle East “should be able to aspire and achieve based on the talent God gave them and not be held back by any laws made by men.” (Applause.) 

Just a few weeks ago in a town hall meeting in Tunis, a young woman wearing a headscarf stood up and talked about her experience working in partnership with the U.S. Embassy in a program that we call Bridge to Democracy. She said that often people she met were surprised that a young women wearing a hijab would work with Americans, and that we would work with her. Gradually, she said, these preconceptions broke down and increasingly people are just eager to find new partners to help build their new democracy. I told her that in America, in Tunisia, anywhere in the world, women should have the right to make their own choices about what they wear, how they worship, the jobs they do, the causes they support. These are choices women have to make for themselves, and they are a fundamental test of democracy.

Now, we know that young woman in Tunisia and her peers across the region already are facing extremists who will try to strip their rights, curb their participation, limit their ability to make choices for themselves. Why extremists always focus on women remains a mystery to me. But they all seem to. It doesn’t matter what country they’re in or what religion they claim. They want to control women. They want to control how we dress, they want to control how we act, they even want to control the decisions we make about our own health and bodies. (Applause.) Yes, it is hard to believe that even here at home, we have to stand up for women’s rights and reject efforts to marginalize any one of us, because America needs to set an example for the entire world. (Applause.) And it seems clear to me that to do that, we have to live our own values and we have to defend our own values. We need to respect each other, empower all our citizens, and find common ground.

We are living in what I call the Age of Participation. Economic, political, and technological changes have empowered people everywhere to shape their own destinies in ways previous generations could never have imagined. All these women – these Women in the World – have proven that committed individuals, often with help, help from their friends, can make a difference in their own lives and far beyond.

So let me have the great privilege of ending this conference by challenging each of you. Every one of us needs to be part of the solution. Each of us must truly be a Woman in the World. We need to be as fearless as the women whose stories you have applauded, as committed as the dissidents and the activists you have heard from, as audacious as those who start movements for peace when all seems lost. Together, I do believe that it is part of the American mission to ensure that people everywhere, women and men alike, finally have the opportunity to live up to their own God-given potential. So let’s go forth and make it happen. Thank you very much. (Applause.)


 

Source: http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english...

Enjoyed this speech? Speakola is a labour of love and I’d be very grateful if you would share, tweet or like it. Thank you.

Facebook Twitter Facebook
In 2010s Tags HILLARY CLINTON, SECRETARY OF STATE, WOMEN'S RIGHTS, GENDER EQUALITY, WOMEN IN THE WORLD, TRANSCRIPT
Comment

Hillary Clinton: 'Women's Rights are Human Rights', 4th World Congress on Women - 1995

October 26, 2015

5 September, 1995, 4th World Congress on Woemn, Beijing, China

Thank you very much, Gertrude Mongella, for your dedicated work that has brought us to this point, distinguished delegates, and guests:

I would like to thank the Secretary General for inviting me to be part of this important United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women. This is truly a celebration, a celebration of the contributions women make in every aspect of life: in the home, on the job, in the community, as mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, learners, workers, citizens, and leaders.

It is also a coming together, much the way women come together every day in every country. We come together in fields and factories, in village markets and supermarkets, in living rooms and board rooms. Whether it is while playing with our children in the park, or washing clothes in a river, or taking a break at the office water cooler, we come together and talk about our aspirations and concern. And time and again, our talk turns to our children and our families. However different we may appear, there is far more that unites us than divides us. We share a common future, and we are here to find common ground so that we may help bring new dignity and respect to women and girls all over the world, and in so doing bring new strength and stability to families as well.

By gathering in Beijing, we are focusing world attention on issues that matter most in our lives -- the lives of women and their families: access to education, health care, jobs and credit, the chance to enjoy basic legal and human rights and to participate fully in the political life of our countries.

There are some who question the reason for this conference. Let them listen to the voices of women in their homes, neighborhoods, and workplaces. There are some who wonder whether the lives of women and girls matter to economic and political progress around the globe. Let them look at the women gathered here and at Huairou -- the homemakers and nurses, the teachers and lawyers, the policymakers and women who run their own businesses. It is conferences like this that compel governments and peoples everywhere to listen, look, and face the world’s most pressing problems. Wasn’t it after all -- after the women’s conference in Nairobi ten years ago that the world focused for the first time on the crisis of domestic violence?

Earlier today, I participated in a World Health Organization forum. In that forum, we talked about ways that government officials, NGOs, and individual citizens are working to address the health problems of women and girls. Tomorrow, I will attend a gathering of the United Nations Development Fund for Women. There, the discussion will focus on local -- and highly successful -- programs that give hard-working women access to credit so they can improve their own lives and the lives of their families.

What we are learning around the world is that if women are healthy and educated, their families will flourish. If women are free from violence, their families will flourish. If women have a chance to work and earn as full and equal partners in society, their families will flourish. And when families flourish, communities and nations do as well. That is why every woman, every man, every child, every family, and every nation on this planet does have a stake in the discussion that takes place here.

Over the past 25 years, I have worked persistently on issues relating to women, children, and families. Over the past two and a half years, I've had the opportunity to learn more about the challenges facing women in my own country and around the world.

I have met new mothers in Indonesia, who come together regularly in their village to discuss nutrition, family planning, and baby care. I have met working parents in Denmark who talk about the comfort they feel in knowing that their children can be cared for in safe, and nurturing after-school centers. I have met women in South Africa who helped lead the struggle to end apartheid and are now helping to build a new democracy. I have met with the leading women of my own hemisphere who are working every day to promote literacy and better health care for children in their countries. I have met women in India and Bangladesh who are taking out small loans to buy milk cows, or rickshaws, or thread in order to create a livelihood for themselves and their families. I have met the doctors and nurses in Belarus and Ukraine who are trying to keep children alive in the aftermath of Chernobyl.

The great challenge of this conference is to give voice to women everywhere whose experiences go unnoticed, whose words go unheard. Women comprise more than half the world’s population, 70% of the world’s poor, and two-thirds of those who are not taught to read and write. We are the primary caretakers for most of the world’s children and elderly. Yet much of the work we do is not valued -- not by economists, not by historians, not by popular culture, not by government leaders.

At this very moment, as we sit here, women around the world are giving birth, raising children, cooking meals, washing clothes, cleaning houses, planting crops, working on assembly lines, running companies, and running countries. Women also are dying from diseases that should have been prevented or treated. They are watching their children succumb to malnutrition caused by poverty and economic deprivation. They are being denied the right to go to school by their own fathers and brothers. They are being forced into prostitution, and they are being barred from the bank lending offices and banned from the ballot box.

Those of us who have the opportunity to be here have the responsibility to speak for those who could not. As an American, I want to speak for those women in my own country, women who are raising children on the minimum wage, women who can’t afford health care or child care, women whose lives are threatened by violence, including violence in their own homes.

I want to speak up for mothers who are fighting for good schools, safe neighborhoods, clean air, and clean airwaves; for older women, some of them widows, who find that, after raising their families, their skills and life experiences are not valued in the marketplace; for women who are working all night as nurses, hotel clerks, or fast food chefs so that they can be at home during the day with their children; and for women everywhere who simply don’t have time to do everything they are called upon to do each and every day.

Speaking to you today, I speak for them, just as each of us speaks for women around the world who are denied the chance to go to school, or see a doctor, or own property, or have a say about the direction of their lives, simply because they are women. The truth is that most women around the world work both inside and outside the home, usually by necessity.

We need to understand there is no one formula for how women should lead our lives. That is why we must respect the choices that each woman makes for herself and her family. Every woman deserves the chance to realize her own God-given potential. But we must recognize that women will never gain full dignity until their human rights are respected and protected.

Our goals for this conference, to strengthen families and societies by empowering women to take greater control over their own destinies, cannot be fully achieved unless all governments -- here and around the world -- accept their responsibility to protect and promote internationally recognized human rights. The -- The international community has long acknowledged and recently reaffirmed at Vienna that both women and men are entitled to a range of protections and personal freedoms, from the right of personal security to the right to determine freely the number and spacing of the children they bear. No one -- No one should be forced to remain silent for fear of religious or political persecution, arrest, abuse, or torture.

Tragically, women are most often the ones whose human rights are violated. Even now, in the late 20th century, the rape of women continues to be used as an instrument of armed conflict. Women and children make up a large majority of the world’s refugees. And when women are excluded from the political process, they become even more vulnerable to abuse. I believe that now, on the eve of a new millennium, it is time to break the silence. It is time for us to say here in Beijing, and for the world to hear, that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as separate from human rights.

These abuses have continued because, for too long, the history of women has been a history of silence. Even today, there are those who are trying to silence our words. But the voices of this conference and of the women at Huairou must be heard loudly and clearly:

It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls.

It is a violation of human rights when women and girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution for human greed -- and the kinds of reasons that are used to justify this practice should no longer be tolerated.

It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire, and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small.

It is a violation of human rights when individual women are raped in their own communities and when thousands of women are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war.

It is a violation of human rights when a leading cause of death worldwide among women ages 14 to 44 is the violence they are subjected to in their own homes by their own relatives.

It is a violation of human rights when young girls are brutalized by the painful and degrading practice of genital mutilation.

It is a violation of human rights when women are denied the right to plan their own families, and that includes being forced to have abortions or being sterilized against their will.

If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights once and for all. Let us not forget that among those rights are the right to speak freely -- and the right to be heard.

Women must enjoy the rights to participate fully in the social and political lives of their countries, if we want freedom and democracy to thrive and endure. It is indefensible that many women in nongovernmental organizations who wished to participate in this conference have not been able to attend -- or have been prohibited from fully taking part.

Let me be clear. Freedom means the right of people to assemble, organize, and debate openly. It means respecting the views of those who may disagree with the views of their governments. It means not taking citizens away from their loved ones and jailing them, mistreating them, or denying them their freedom or dignity because of the peaceful expression of their ideas and opinions.

In my country, we recently celebrated the 75th anniversary of Women’s Suffrage. It took 150 years after the signing of our Declaration of Independence for women to win the right to vote. It took 72 years of organized struggle, before that happened, on the part of many courageous women and men. It was one of America’s most divisive philosophical wars. But it was a bloodless war. Suffrage was achieved without a shot being fired.

But we have also been reminded, in V-J Day observances last weekend, of the good that comes when men and women join together to combat the forces of tyranny and to build a better world. We have seen peace prevail in most places for a half century. We have avoided another world war. But we have not solved older, deeply-rooted problems that continue to diminish the potential of half the world’s population.

Now it is the time to act on behalf of women everywhere. If we take bold steps to better the lives of women, we will be taking bold steps to better the lives of children and families too. Families rely on mothers and wives for emotional support and care. Families rely on women for labor in the home. And increasingly, everywhere, families rely on women for income needed to raise healthy children and care for other relatives.

As long as discrimination and inequities remain so commonplace everywhere in the world, as long as girls and women are valued less, fed less, fed last, overworked, underpaid, not schooled, subjected to violence in and outside their homes -- the potential of the human family to create a peaceful, prosperous world will not be realized.

Let -- Let this conference be our -- and the world’s -- call to action. Let us heed that call so we can create a world in which every woman is treated with respect and dignity, every boy and girl is loved and cared for equally, and every family has the hope of a strong and stable future. That is the work before you. That is the work before all of us who have a vision of the world we want to see -- for our children and our grandchildren.

The time is now. We must move beyond rhetoric. We must move beyond recognition of problems to working together, to have the comment efforts to build that common ground we hope to see.

God's blessing on you, your work, and all who will benefit from it.

Godspeed and thank you very much.

Source: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/h...

Enjoyed this speech? Speakola is a labour of love and I’d be very grateful if you would share, tweet or like it. Thank you.

Facebook Twitter Facebook
In 1980-99 Tags HILLARY CLINTON, WORLD CONGRESS ON WOMEN, HUMAN RIGHTS, GENDER EQUALITY, TRANSCRIPT
Comment

See my film!

Limited Australian Season

March 2025

Details and ticket bookings at

angeandtheboss.com

Support Speakola

Hi speech lovers,
With costs of hosting website and podcast, this labour of love has become a difficult financial proposition in recent times. If you can afford a donation, it will help Speakola survive and prosper.

Best wishes,
Tony Wilson.

Become a Patron!

Learn more about supporting Speakola.

Featured political

Featured
Jon Stewart: "They responded in five seconds", 9-11 first responders, Address to Congress - 2019
Jon Stewart: "They responded in five seconds", 9-11 first responders, Address to Congress - 2019
Jacinda Ardern: 'They were New Zealanders. They are us', Address to Parliament following Christchurch massacre - 2019
Jacinda Ardern: 'They were New Zealanders. They are us', Address to Parliament following Christchurch massacre - 2019
Dolores Ibárruri: "¡No Pasarán!, They shall not pass!', Defense of 2nd Spanish Republic - 1936
Dolores Ibárruri: "¡No Pasarán!, They shall not pass!', Defense of 2nd Spanish Republic - 1936
Jimmy Reid: 'A rat race is for rats. We're not rats', Rectorial address, Glasgow University - 1972
Jimmy Reid: 'A rat race is for rats. We're not rats', Rectorial address, Glasgow University - 1972

Featured eulogies

Featured
For Geoffrey Tozer: 'I have to say we all let him down', by Paul Keating - 2009
For Geoffrey Tozer: 'I have to say we all let him down', by Paul Keating - 2009
for James Baldwin: 'Jimmy. You crowned us', by Toni Morrison - 1988
for James Baldwin: 'Jimmy. You crowned us', by Toni Morrison - 1988
for Michael Gordon: '13 days ago my Dad’s big, beautiful, generous heart suddenly stopped beating', by Scott and Sarah Gordon - 2018
for Michael Gordon: '13 days ago my Dad’s big, beautiful, generous heart suddenly stopped beating', by Scott and Sarah Gordon - 2018

Featured commencement

Featured
Tara Westover: 'Your avatar isn't real, it isn't terribly far from a lie', The Un-Instagrammable Self, Northeastern University - 2019
Tara Westover: 'Your avatar isn't real, it isn't terribly far from a lie', The Un-Instagrammable Self, Northeastern University - 2019
Tim Minchin: 'Being an artist requires massive reserves of self-belief', WAAPA - 2019
Tim Minchin: 'Being an artist requires massive reserves of self-belief', WAAPA - 2019
Atul Gawande: 'Curiosity and What Equality Really Means', UCLA Medical School - 2018
Atul Gawande: 'Curiosity and What Equality Really Means', UCLA Medical School - 2018
Abby Wambach: 'We are the wolves', Barnard College - 2018
Abby Wambach: 'We are the wolves', Barnard College - 2018
Eric Idle: 'America is 300 million people all walking in the same direction, singing 'I Did It My Way'', Whitman College - 2013
Eric Idle: 'America is 300 million people all walking in the same direction, singing 'I Did It My Way'', Whitman College - 2013
Shirley Chisholm: ;America has gone to sleep', Greenfield High School - 1983
Shirley Chisholm: ;America has gone to sleep', Greenfield High School - 1983

Featured sport

Featured
Joe Marler: 'Get back on the horse', Harlequins v Bath pre game interview - 2019
Joe Marler: 'Get back on the horse', Harlequins v Bath pre game interview - 2019
Ray Lewis : 'The greatest pain of my life is the reason I'm standing here today', 52 Cards -
Ray Lewis : 'The greatest pain of my life is the reason I'm standing here today', 52 Cards -
Mel Jones: 'If she was Bradman on the field, she was definitely Keith Miller off the field', Betty Wilson's induction into Australian Cricket Hall of Fame - 2017
Mel Jones: 'If she was Bradman on the field, she was definitely Keith Miller off the field', Betty Wilson's induction into Australian Cricket Hall of Fame - 2017
Jeff Thomson: 'It’s all those people that help you as kids', Hall of Fame - 2016
Jeff Thomson: 'It’s all those people that help you as kids', Hall of Fame - 2016

Fresh Tweets

  • Tony Wilson
    “Just because we own these teams doesn’t mean they belong to us” — beautiful, beautiful speech from Rebecca on Ted… https://t.co/gmDSATppss
    May 17, 2023, 11:51 PM

Featured weddings

Featured
Dan Angelucci: 'The Best (Best Man) Speech of all time', for Don and Katherine - 2019
Dan Angelucci: 'The Best (Best Man) Speech of all time', for Don and Katherine - 2019
Hallerman Sisters: 'Oh sister now we have to let you gooooo!' for Caitlin & Johnny - 2015
Hallerman Sisters: 'Oh sister now we have to let you gooooo!' for Caitlin & Johnny - 2015
Korey Soderman (via Kyle): 'All our lives I have used my voice to help Korey express his thoughts, so today, like always, I will be my brother’s voice' for Kyle and Jess - 2014
Korey Soderman (via Kyle): 'All our lives I have used my voice to help Korey express his thoughts, so today, like always, I will be my brother’s voice' for Kyle and Jess - 2014

Featured Arts

Featured
Bruce Springsteen: 'They're keepers of some of the most beautiful sonic architecture in rock and roll', Induction U2 into Rock Hall of Fame - 2005
Bruce Springsteen: 'They're keepers of some of the most beautiful sonic architecture in rock and roll', Induction U2 into Rock Hall of Fame - 2005
Olivia Colman: 'Done that bit. I think I have done that bit', BAFTA acceptance, Leading Actress - 2019
Olivia Colman: 'Done that bit. I think I have done that bit', BAFTA acceptance, Leading Actress - 2019
Axel Scheffler: 'The book wasn't called 'No Room on the Broom!', Illustrator of the Year, British Book Awards - 2018
Axel Scheffler: 'The book wasn't called 'No Room on the Broom!', Illustrator of the Year, British Book Awards - 2018
Tina Fey: 'Only in comedy is an obedient white girl from the suburbs a diversity candidate', Kennedy Center Mark Twain Award -  2010
Tina Fey: 'Only in comedy is an obedient white girl from the suburbs a diversity candidate', Kennedy Center Mark Twain Award - 2010

Featured Debates

Featured
Sacha Baron Cohen: 'Just think what Goebbels might have done with Facebook', Anti Defamation League Leadership Award - 2019
Sacha Baron Cohen: 'Just think what Goebbels might have done with Facebook', Anti Defamation League Leadership Award - 2019
Greta Thunberg: 'How dare you', UN Climate Action Summit - 2019
Greta Thunberg: 'How dare you', UN Climate Action Summit - 2019
Charlie Munger: 'The Psychology of Human Misjudgment', Harvard University - 1995
Charlie Munger: 'The Psychology of Human Misjudgment', Harvard University - 1995
Lawrence O'Donnell: 'The original sin of this country is that we invaders shot and murdered our way across the land killing every Native American that we could', The Last Word, 'Dakota' - 2016
Lawrence O'Donnell: 'The original sin of this country is that we invaders shot and murdered our way across the land killing every Native American that we could', The Last Word, 'Dakota' - 2016