From 75300.3112@CompuServe.COM Mon Jul 13 22:51:38 1992 Date: 13 Jul 92 21:13:44 EDT From: Agran for President <75300.3112@CompuServe.COM> To: Subject: Agran Speech at Con Hi Harel -- Should Larry Agran be allowed to address the convention, what follows is a draft of the speech he intends to deliver on Wednesday night. Please feel free to post it anywhere and everywhere. Steve DRAFT REMARKS OF DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE LARRY AGRAN TO THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION JULY 15, 1992 I. I take this unusual opportunity to speak to you tonight not because I expect to change the outcome of your balloting for our Party's presidential nominee. For months now, the outcome has been clear: Governor Bill Clinton will be the 1992 Democratic Party nominee for President because he has won that right in hard-fought primaries and caucuses across America. I take this opportunity to speak tonight because I believe our Party's future -- our country's future -- requires that our presidential nominee stand before the American people Thursday night and make a clear, unwavering commitment to bold, new national priorities based on the end of the Cold War. If, in my remarks tonight, I can successfully encourage Governor Clinton to do that, then I will have served our Party, our country and our people well. Let me state the case bluntly -- and in terms of our fundamental national security. The plain truth is that in 1992, American national security cannot be purchased by continuing to spend nearly one-third of our entire national treasury -- more than $300 billion per year -- for military purposes. In fact, if we continue to squander our precious resources in this way, we will never achieve genuine national security. Worse, we will absolutely ruin this country that we love. You see, in my own city, Irvine, California -- as well as in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Denver, New York, and in every American city -- we've learned that national security means putting human need at home ahead of military overkill abroad. True national security comes from strong families and strong neighborhoods in economically vibrant communities. It comes from rewarding jobs in modern industries that are competitive in the global marketplace. It comes from public investment in health care, education, child care, and transportation. It comes from safe streets in all parts of town so that people can walk at night without fear. It comes from clean air and clean water and land free of poisons. In short, genuine national security means a quality of life worthy of human dignity -- and not just for the privileged few but for each and every American. II. This kind of national security -- what I call the New American Security -- is not only possible; it's what November's election is all about. The Cold War is over and it's time for the American people to decide on new national priorities that come from asking a simple question: What's important to us? Let's ask the American people: What's more important? Maintaining hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops in Europe at a cost of well over $100 billion per year? Or should we immediately bring home our troops from Europe -- and with them the billions of dollars that will permit us to reduce federal debt accumulation, provide quality health care to everyone, and put millions of Americans to work rebuilding our cities, repairing our roads, reopening libraries and museums and health clinics and child care centers? If we ask them, I believe the American people will answer -- as I do: The Cold War is over. Let's redeem our country and set an example for the world. What's more important? Maintaining thousands of U.S. armed forces in Japan at a yearly cost of tens of billions of dollars? Or should we immediately bring home our troops and return those billions of dollars to America's public school districts so that we can hire and rehire hundreds of thousands of teachers, improve teacher training, cut classroom sizes, and give teachers and students alike the chance they deserve to make our public school system work again? I believe the American people will answer: The Cold War is over. Let's redeem our country and set an example for the world. What's more important? Building B-2 bombers, dozens of huge new warships, and new generations of fighter aircraft that we no longer need? Or should we use these funds instead to challenge millions of scientists and engineers and skilled workers to design and build a modern railroad system worthy of the American people; a national railroad network that at once improves our mobility, cleans the air, and ensures that never again will an American president order thousands of America's sons and daughters into combat, costing hundreds of them to lose their lives; and never again will an American president order the killing of thousands of other people's sons and daughters -- all because of our demeaning dependence on foreign oil? The Cold War is over. Let's redeem our country and set an example for the world. What's more important? Spending $5 billion every year to research and develop Star Wars so we can put deadly weapons in the heavens? Or is it more important to use those funds to clean our rivers and reforest the Earth and research the means to conquer AIDS and cancer and cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy? The Cold War is over. Let's redeem our country and set an example for the world. What's more important? Producing more weapons-grade plutonium and building and testing more hydrogen bombs -- at a cost of more than $10 billion per year? Or is it more important to use those funds to help millions of families buy decent, affordable housing built by American workers? The Cold War is over. Let's redeem our country and set an example for the world. What's more important? Giving billions of dollars in lethal weapons every year to foreign dictators? Or is it more important to provide the full range of reproductive choice for everyone -- not just here in the United States but throughout the world? The Cold War is over. Let's redeem our country and set an example for the world. III. As we raise these fundamental questions of national priorities, we place our faith in the American people and in democracy itself. We turn to the American people and let them know that what's at stake here in 1992 is nothing less than the moral basis for governance in the late 20th Century. A generation ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. put it this way: "A nation that continues year after year to spend more on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." Dr. King understood that Americans had to make a moral choice because America was -- and is -- in moral crisis. The moral crisis we face -- a continuing militarism that destroys us spiritually just as it bankrupts us financially -- is a crisis every bit as acute as the tyranny that caused the American Independence movement of the 18th Century; or the enslavement of African-Americans that caused the Abolitionist movement of the 19th Century; or the outrage of segregation that caused the Civil Rights movement of the 20th Century. The moral crisis of militarism cannot be resolved by compromise any more than colonialism, slavery and segregation were susceptible to compromise. We cannot compromise with George Bush and the other Cold Warriors who still hold the Republican Party in their grip. Nor can we compromise with our misguided Democratic friends in Congress who counsel against military spending cuts for fear that we somehow appear "weak on defense." Nonsense. In this post-Cold War era, our country's interests can be fully defended with the strongest, the most modern military force on the face of the Earth -- but at half the current $300 billion per year cost. The truth of the matter is that a Democratic Party that in 1992 is still endorsing Cold War priorities and Cold War military budgets is a Democratic Party that will be weak on urban policy, weak on education, weak on health, weak on jobs, weak on environmental protection, weak on deficit reduction -- and just plain weak on everything that counts in America. If, in 1992, we are to convince the American people that ours is the Party of strength and purpose and progress, then the days of Democratic Party complicity in Cold War priorities must be put behind us now and forever. Furthermore, as Democrats we must level with the American people. This business of settling for a slight tapering off of military spending -- a $1 billion or $2 billion cut here or there -- is totally unacceptable. It's what Dr. King called "the tranquilizing drug of gradualism." He wouldn't stand for it in the 1960s and we shouldn't stand for it in the 1990s. IV. Sometimes, the forces of greed and reaction and militarism seem so large and, by comparison, our individual voices seem so small. But let me tell you something that we must never forget. In our struggle for new national priorities, we are not alone. In fact, we have many friends. Some are in Congress, strong and courageous liberals and progressives who have joined with members of the Congressional Black Caucus in developing a series of alternative budgets, sharply cutting military spending. Outside of Congress, we have friends by the thousands who are state legislators and mayors and city councilmembers and school board trustees -- all unafraid as elected officials to take a stand against mindless military spending and for progressive social, economic, and environmental policies. And most important, we count among our friends the majority of Americans who are ready for a dramatic change of direction. They are ready for new national priorities. They are ready because they know it's time. Just as they knew in the 1950s and 1960s that it was time to forever end legalized segregation in America, deep in their hearts they know it's time to forever end hunger and homelessness and poverty and environmental degradation -- not just in America but throughout the world. They know it's possible to do all of these things if we acknowledge and embrace the new global reality: The Cold War is over and an historic opportunity is at hand to sweep its debris aside, rebuild our country, restore the Earth, and rediscover the power and the majesty of democratic self-government in America.