Why This Democracy

Transcriber: Giulia Sgarbossa
Reviewer: Amanda Zhu

Thank you very much for the warm welcome.

Listen, I’m worried about our democracy.

Nowadays, we have leaders who use
division itself as a political tool.

They downplay

or even encourage, in some cases,

a deadly assault to overturn an election.

And a bunch of them
are working really hard

to make it harder to vote.

The retreat from these
processes of democracy -

you know, ballot access
or legislative debate,

judicial review -

they are worrisome enough.

But what’s even more concerning to me

is the retreat from
the purposes of democracy:

these old-fashioned notions
of government of, by and for the people,

the rule of law as superior
to the rule of any one personality,

liberty and justice for all.

COVID made it harder
to overlook deep disparities among us

in health and wealth and education

and deep unfairness
in too much of our policing,

leaving a lot of Americans questioning

whether our national commitment
to social and economic justice is real.

For some time now,

in the words of one friend of mine,

the self-evident truth

that all people deserve life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness

seems a long way from settled
in the American mind.

So to me, American democracy,

the supposed model of the form,

is up for grabs.

I’m worried, not just as a lawyer
or a former public official,

but also and mainly as a patriot.

I grew up on the South Side of Chicago,
in a crowded two-bedroom tenement

with my mother, my sister, my grandparents
and various relatives who came and went.

I went to big, overcrowded,
under-resourced,

sometimes violent public schools.

And yet my grandmother
would never permit us to say we were poor.

“Just broke,” she’d say,

because broke is temporary.

Now, think about it, here is this refugee
from the Jim Crow South,

who still believed in an America

where with hard work,
preparation and faith -

both religious and civic -

you could lift yourself
from your circumstances of birth.

I am, for her, the result and the symbol
of her faith in America,

so you’d better believe I’m a patriot.

But patriotism for Black Americans

is tricky.

It’s tricky to love a country
that doesn’t always love you back.

I think of the Black men who set off
to fight for freedom in the World Wars

and then came home to be denied
those very freedoms,

some of them lynched
while wearing their military uniforms.

I think of the the Black laborers
who built great public universities

whose doors were closed to them,

the Black voters who elected
great public leaders

whose policies, like the GI Bill,
were closed to them.

For a lot of our history,

American democracy itself
has been closed to Black people.

Lots of grandmothers, like mine,
have grandsons and granddaughters

who never had their chance.

Still don’t.

I remember in college,
a white classmate asked me,

“Why on earth would you want to be Black?”

When I told her I hadn’t
considered the alternative

(Laughter)

and never would,

she seemed startled and confused.

I attribute this, in part, to the fact
that I spoke and dressed like a preppy,

I get that part.

But mostly, I think she was confused

because she couldn’t imagine
why any Black person,

in his or her right mind,

wouldn’t trade places with her.

I think it would blow her mind,
as it may some of yours,

when I say I am also proud
to be a patriot.

Given our history,

being Black and patriotic

will certainly strike some people
as strange, if not absurd.

I don’t know when patriotism
turned into, you know,

lapel pins and flyovers

and silly arguments about
pro football players taking a knee.

My love of country
is about national aspiration.

America is the only nation
in human history

organized not by geography
or a common culture

or language or religion or even race

but by a handful of civic ideals.

And we’ve come to define those ideals,
over time and through struggle,

as equality, opportunity and fair play.

Why?

Because that’s what makes
freedom possible.

That’s the America
my grandmother believed in.

That’s the America

that has made us a magnet
to talent from all over the world.

That’s the America that makes me

and countless other men and women,

from every race and background,

a patriot.

In a way, the founders,
for all their flaws,

designed America to be a nation of values,

a sort of a country with a conscience,

and we’ve struggled with and against
that conscience from the start.

But true patriots understand,
given that context,

that America cannot be great
without also being good.

So when we cage refugee children

to discourage their parents
from seeking sanctuary here,

true patriots know we cannot be great

without being good.

When bullets fly in houses of worship

or in schools or in nightclubs
or in grocery stores

and our leaders choose
the slogans of the gun lobby

over the lives of innocents,

patriots know we cannot be great
without being good.

When unarmed Black and brown citizens
are shot down by unaccountable police,

when our justice system
is not yet consistently just,

patriots know we cannot be great
without being good.

When the economy moves on

and leaves broken lives
and broken expectations behind

and our leaders just shrug,

or when the public schools
continue to fail poor children,

and when we can always find the money

for a weapons system
the military doesn’t want

but not the money for the health care
a young family or senior needs,

patriots know or must ask themselves,

“Can we be great without being good?”

And when we choose a power grab
over a fair vote,

every true patriot knows
we cannot be great without being good.

Patriotism demands more
than ceremony and sanctimony.

It’s about more
than what you say you believe.

It’s about living the values
of equality, opportunity and fair play,

even when it’s inconvenient,

even when it gets in the way
of partisan advantage,

even when it compels us to be mindful of
and compassionate towards the lowly,

the vulnerable, the different
and the despised.

Because that’s what
American democracy is for.

Of course, we have policies to fix,

whether in job growth or education,
in immigration or the justice system

or in these processes of democracy itself.

But before we can fix our policies,
we have to fix our politics.

And by that, I am not just talking
about better tone

or hyper partisanship

or a willingness to compromise.

As important as all of that is,

I’m talking about our purpose.

Sure, we should debate -
and we always do -

what role government
should play in any of this,

in meeting our civic obligations.

But let’s try for once not to forget,
in the heat of the debate,

that social and economic justice
was the point from the start.

These are challenging times,
but I will tell you I am encouraged.

I’m encouraged by the many polls
and other reporting,

as well as a number
of recent articles and books

that suggest we are a lot less divided
on the fundamentals

than we sometimes seem.

But I think saving our democracy

will take more,

not just from elected officials
or civic leaders or the media,

but more from each one of us.

And we’re going to have to start, I think,
by putting our cynicism down.

I’m going to give you
an example of what I mean.

Near the end of my time in office,

America faced a crisis,
not unlike today’s,

when there were all these
unaccompanied children,

some as young as three and four years old,

who were flooding
across the southern border,

having fled over thousands of miles
from violence in Central America,

and then, just like now,
the federal authorities were overwhelmed.

So President Obama,
who was in office at the time,

called on a number of states

to temporarily shelter
and care for some of these children

while they were being
processed under our laws.

Feelings around immigration
ran hot then, just like now.

Even so, I agree that our
commonwealth would help,

because sheltering poor children
fleeing unspeakable violence

was, to me, an act of patriotism

America has given sanctuary
to desperate children

for more than a century.

We’ve rescued Irish children from famine,

Russian and Ukrainian children
from religious persecution,

Cambodian children from genocide,

Haitian children from earthquakes,

Sudanese children from civil war,

our own New Orleans children
from Hurricane Katrina.

Once, in 1939, we turned our backs
on Jewish children fleeing the Nazis.

And it remains a blight
on our national reputation

as I fear the separation of children
in the last administration

will be remembered.

The point is that our esteem and our power

is enhanced when we rescue the desperate

and diminished when we don’t.

Still, I’m not naive.

I knew my decision would be controversial,

and indeed, for that decision,

I was called, on hate radio
and in social media,

everything but a child of God.

A couple of days
after I announced my decision,

on an unusually quiet Saturday morning,

my wife Diane gave me a list of stuff
to go get at the Home Depot,

proving for some of you who know her

that there is no office high enough

that excuses you
from one of her honey-do lists.

(Laughter)

It was early in the day,

and I thought I’d just slip out quickly,
you know, on my own

without bothering my security detail.

What harm could come of that, right?

I knew exactly where I was going
and where to find everything on my list.

So I set off in the truck in a T-shirt
and jeans and flip flops,

dark glasses and a baseball cap,

and it didn’t matter.

I was outed by the manager
in the very first aisle:

“Good morning, Governor.

Welcome to the Home Depot.

How can I help you?”

I encountered a man in the checkout line
who was red-hot mad,

you know, not hostile or threatening,
just really angry and loud.

And he let me have it.

“Governor,” he said,

“I couldn’t disagree with you more
about your decision.”

He said, “My own wife is an immigrant.

She came here legally.

That’s the way it ought to be.

And I just want you to know
I think you’re wrong.”

Now, in that circumstance,

there was no point
in trying to engage with him

about how being a refugee
is legal under American law.

I just thanked him for his feedback.

But everybody in the checkout line
and in that area of the store

knew who was mad at whom
and what he was mad about.

Now, I had six other encounters
in the store on the same subject.

And in every one of those,
someone came up and whispered,

“Governor, you’re doing the right thing.”

“Governor,

thanks for looking out for those kids.”

“Governor, I’m with you.”

The calls to the office

were two and three to one
in favor of sheltering those children.

And when I reflect on that,
I think to myself,

when did we learn to shout our anger
and to whisper our kindness?

It’s completely upside down.

I don’t know if that’s the reality
TV culture we live in or what,

but it’s totally backwards.

It’s time we learned again
to shout kindness,

to shout compassion,

to shout justice.

That’s the purpose of American democracy

and the source of our greatness.

Blessedly, we’re starting to see

more and more expressions
of this kind of thing across this country:

more and more people
coming off the sidelines,

overcoming their cynicism and fatalism

and standing up for America
at her generous and optimistic best,

from women who are demanding to be treated

with the respect and decency
everyone deserves,

from survivors of domestic
violence and abuse

demanding to be seen
and heard and believed,

from Black and brown people
who are demanding

consistent professionalism
and the presumption of innocence

from police,

from students who are demanding
we choose their lives and safety

over the proliferation
of military weapons in civilian hands,

from all those lawyers who showed up
at polling places in 2020 or at airports

after the so-called Muslim ban

demanding respect for the rule of law.

Black Lives Matter,

Time’s Up,

Black Girl Magic,

Occupy Wall Street,

Families Belong Together -

at any given time on any given issue,

they may make any one of us uncomfortable.

But they have taken to the legislatures,

to the ballot boxes, to the courtrooms

and peacefully to the streets

to lay claim to their democracy -

its purpose as well as its processes -

and ultimately, to affirm
the American conscience.

They are shouting kindness.

If American-style democracy
is to have a chance,

more of us had better
put our own cynicism down,

summon up our own patriotism

and join them.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)