My July 19th Address

I was honored to be asked to address the assembly in Asheville regarding Hillary Clinton's historic campaign on the 160th anniversary of Seneca Falls. My preparred remarks follow.


Sisters and brothers of the Clinton Nation, on behalf of Seneca 160 I’d like to thank the Asheville Hillary Meet-up for organizing this gathering. Thank you for joining us today to mark the 160th anniversary of the first women’s conference at Seneca Falls.


I have been asked to give remarks on the historic nature of Senator Clinton’s Presidential Campaign. In order to do so I will have to turn back the clock.


On March 25, 1911 a tragedy struck the city of New York that forever changed the Women's Movement. Near closing time, from an unknown source, a fire ripped through the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory killing 146 people. Of those, 126 were women. Though valiant efforts were made to save the Triangle workers, a locked exit and inadequate fire escapes doomed many of the immigrant men and women that worked there. The grizzly scene of young girls holding hands with their coworkers, leaping to their deaths rather than face the flames behind them, their burned and mangled bodies strewn upon the sidewalk, shocked the nation.


The women's labor movement had been called to action two years earlier by Clara Lemlich, a 19 year old Ukranian Jewish immigrant who had been savagely beaten for her union involvement. Her modest but impassioned call for a vote for action began a shirtwaist makers' strike that rocked New York City. The movement found new force in the deaths of the young women in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, an event which also drove the final push in the fight to secure the right of franchise for women in America, as was seen at the 1912 New York City March for Suffrage. Some 20,000 people marched. A reported half million lined the streets. But the coals that stoked the fires of these movements were not kindled on those ill fated floors of the Asch Building in Manhattan. The match was struck upstate, with relative quiet, 63 years earlier in the town of Seneca Falls.


On this day in 1848 Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott gathered with 380 women and men and began a conversation on women’s rights that gave birth to the first wave of feminism. After a long, and often brutal struggle, the conversation bore fruit in suffrage for women.


One hundred and forty-seven years later, then First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, went to Beijing to address an international women's conference themed, "Listen to the Women." In a singular act of bravery, and at great political and personal risk, Hillary Clinton, standing on the shoulders of Stanton, Mott, Susan B. Anthony, Lemlich, Alice Paul, Eleanor Roosevelt, and others too many to name, changed the course of the conversation of women's rights forever. Before this international gathering of women leaders Hillary Clinton gave birth to what I consider to be the fourth wave of feminism with the following words:


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.

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.


That speech was heard around the world and inspired the international women’s movement. But American society is still trying to catch up to where Hillary has been for thirteen years. She was ahead of the curve as usual.


About 18 months ago Senator Clinton asked us to engage in a new conversation when she began her historic campaign for the Presidency of the United States. Joining the ranks of Victoria Woodhull, Margaret Chase Smith, Shirley Chisolm, Carol Mosely Braun, and many others, she set out to smash what she has called, “…the highest and hardest glass ceiling.”


She made history by being the first woman candidate to win a Presidential primary. She made history by winning more congressional districts and counties than any candidate in the 2008 Democratic Party Primaries. She made history by garnering more primary votes than any candidate in the history of the Democratic Party. And had the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee seated the Michigan and Florida delegations at full strength, and with fair reflection of the votes cast in those states, she would have finished the primary season with more pledged delegates.


Senator Clinton has repeatedly thanked us for our support, generosity, and steadfastness. Today we thank you Senator Clinton; for taking your campaign to all 50 states; for refusing to give up or give in; for speaking out on the issues that really matter: a commitment to the withdrawal of our troops from Iraq; real universal healthcare that leaves no one behind; the building of a green economy that will put Americans back to work with jobs that cannot be exported overseas, free us from our dependence on foreign oil, help stem the tide of global climate change, and strengthen our national security; strengthening the middle class so that the American dream is once again in reach for every American willing to do the work it takes to get there; making college affordable without the crushing weight of predatory student loan companies, and setting all our children on the path to get there with universal Pre-K.


Through the thousands of appearances, speeches, photos, and interviews, Hillary’s drive inspired us. Those of us who stayed up into the wee hours of the morning after canvassing, cutting turf, making activate calls, lobbying super delegates, and only getting a few hours of sleep before going to our full time jobs, or hitting the streets for the campaign again, knew full well that no matter how tired we were, or how sore our throats got, she was going to get up and work ten times as hard as the rest of us.


Senator Clinton, we thank you for your hard work, your strength, your conviction, your compassion, and your pride in this great country of ours. Call on us and we will stand with you, and fight for you again to bring that glass ceiling with the 18 million cracks crashing down, so that we might have the privilege of calling you Madame President.