aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Saturday, September 29, 2007

Bravo Barack!

From Obama’s Howard University speech Friday:

I commend those of you at Howard that have spoken out on Jena Six or traveled to the rally in Louisiana. I commend those of you who have spoken out on the Genarlow Wilson case. I know it can be lonely protesting this kind of injustice. I know there’s not a lot of glamour in it. Because when I was a state senator in Illinois we have a death penalty system that had sent 13 innocent people to their death--13 innocent men that we know. I wanted to reform the system, and I was told by almost everyone that it was not possible, that I wouldn’t be able to get police officers and civil rights activists to work together, Democrats and Republicans to agree that we should videotape confessions to make sure they weren’t coerced. Folks told me that there was too much political risk involved, and it would come to haunt me later, when I ran for higher office. But I believed that it was too risky not to act. And after a while people with opposing views came together and started listening. And we ended up reforming that death penalty system, and we did the same when I passed the law to expose racial profiling.

So don’t let anyone tell you that change is not possible. Don’t let them tell you that standing out and speaking up about injustice is too risky. What’s too risky is keeping quiet. What’s too risky is looking the other way. I don’t want to be here standing and talking about another Jena four years from now because we didn’t have the courage to act today. I don’t want this to be another issue that ends up being ignored when the cameras are turned off and the headlines disappear. It’s time to seek a new dawn of justice in America.

From the day I take office as President of the United States--has a ring to it, doesn’t it? From the day I take office as President America will have a Justice Department that is truly dedicated to justice, the work it began in the days after Little Rock. I will rid the department of idealogues and political cronies, and for the first time in eight years the civil rights division will actually be staffed with civil rights lawyers who prosecute civil rights violations, and employment discrimination and hate crimes.

Andrew Sullivan has the text of the full text. Says he:

A strikingly expansive speech, a reminder of what Obama can deliver when he wants to. My sense is that he is holding back, or rather has been holding back. He is very, very careful not to get too angry as a black candidate. Perhaps too careful for his core message: real change. What he needs to do is find a way to explain how serious he is about change while explaining that he alone can overcome the boomer polarization that has prevented it. And that’s true on the race issue as well. Yesterday, the message got sharper.

RELATED: Newsweek has polling on the Iowa caucuses, Obama 28, Clinton 24, Edwards 22.