Pelosi Remarks at Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr Labor Breakfast
San Francisco – Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi delivered the following remarks at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr Labor Breakfast, honoring the life and legacy of the great civil rights leader:
"Thank you all very much. Thank you everyone. Tim and I agree that, as fate would have it, it'd be perfect for us to end this beautiful occasion with a poem by Maya Angelou. I'd never be able to follow her, not at all. But I am happy to be here with all of you, wearing my 49er bracelet!
[Applause]
"It's such an honor to be here with the Speaker of the Assembly, a very powerful man, our State Senator, Mark Leno, and each and every one of you. There are so many friends and official family of San Francisco, with the Latin Jazz Youth Ensemble. Weren't they wonderful?
[Applause]
"And with all this great food – such a special and delicious occasion – so thank you. This has turned into sort of a fandango, which is a California tradition where people come from distances and come together, share stories about their families, talk politics maybe even, listen to beautiful music, enjoy wonderful food, build a sense of community, and that is what we are all about as our distinguished Mayor said earlier. And it's an honor to be here with him too. Tim Paulson, thanks to the San Francisco Labor Council. Aaron Grizzell, thanks to Northern California Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr Community Foundation. How many syllables was that? Nine?
[Laughter]
"Thank you for bringing us all together here to honor Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., to honor Willie B. Kennedy, to pay tribute to Nelson Mandela, as Maya Angelou would do perfectly. This past July we observed the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. You all know that, but you may not know that I was there as a student 50 years ago. Were any of you born yet? I don't know. I know Leroy was – my friend Leroy. Leroy, it's an honor always to be with you. This year, because of all of you and the privilege you gave me of serving in Congress, I had the great honor of speaking on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's Speech. That of course being the March on Washington, for jobs and justice. It was pretty thrilling, though I say to people that I couldn't stay for the whole thing because I had to leave to get married. As many of you know from my Christmas card, we celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary that day. Right, Christine [Pelosi]?
[Applause]
"But the whole world heard Dr. Martin Luther King, and the voice of truth and righteousness still rings out. And the legacy, the agenda that he put out is one that we must work on every day. And a person who made it her life's work to do so, and to raise this beautiful family, was your grandmother. She was a grandmother, a great grandmother, and a great-great grandmother. But she was a grand public servant, a great public servant, and a great, great public servant, as well. And she entered the challenge of her time, of putting her hand and heart to do what she could to make sure to ‘bend the moral arc of the universe toward justice,' as Dr. King told us then – opening up new opportunities for minorities and women, the great woman's leader, and doing business part-time with the city of San Francisco. And, as it has been mentioned, she worked every day to carry forth the legacy of Dr. King and drew inspiration from his example.
"It is fitting today that we honor the life of Willie B. Kennedy. We lost her this year, as you know – a woman who did so much to open up opportunity for women and people of color in San Francisco, and to inspire a whole new generation of women and women of color to participate in the civic process. Very much has been said about her accomplishments and we're all reinforcing, saying one way or another. We could talk all day about Willie B. Kennedy, probably think we ought to. She had the most beautiful smile. And all that she did took strength, but she did it with such perspective and humor and happiness. Isn't that right? Wasn't she just always that way? I know we would be having some really serious talks about things, and people would come together, and she'd be in that front row smiling away, or taking the stage and putting people at ease because of this personality that she was. Right Reverend? Right Micah? And so, that is a blessing. That's a blessing from God that she did that.
"Yet even half a century after Dr. King we're still working on various aspects of his agenda. As the distinguished Speaker mentioned, we face new challenges, even for old victories. After the woefully shortsighted Supreme Court – I'll never understand that one – decision on the Voting Rights Act, this is calling on Congress to renew and reinforce our plan and its guardianship of the heart of our democracy: the right to vote. Now I'm pleased to tell you that a bipartisan bill was introduced with leadership of Chairman John Conyers of Michigan, of the Judiciary – Ranking Member, but he will be Chairman soon again.
[Applause]
"And the House and the Senate, in the bipartisan way – again it's not the bill we would have written in the majority, but it is a bill that gets the job done and it will surely need all our energies to make sure it becomes the law. But that is what we expect to do and we expect to do it very soon.
[Applause]
"At the same time, respecting the dignity and worth of the people, we must pass an immigration bill – for all people, respecting that we are all God's children, with the spark of divinity existing in everyone and respecting what we said when we had an immigration bill. It doesn't say: ‘Some are legalized and some can be citizens.' Full citizenship.
[Applause]
"Others may have heard the Speaker talk about raising minimum wage. California and San Francisco have blazed the path for a minimum wage that moves closer to a minimum wage, but the rest of the nation lags far behind. The federal minimum wage is lower in real terms than it was at the time that Dr. King died. As you said, as the Speaker said, it would be $15. Stagnant wages are hurting families, holding back our economy and eroding the basic American principle that we respect work. And our friends of labor, if they were here today – who had to leave us to travel the country and meet with people – know that the work ethic is alive and well in our country. We must respect it, we must value it, we must raise the minimum wage.
[Applause]
"We have an agenda in Congress called ‘When Women succeed, American Succeeds' – well, at least the Democrats in Congress do.
[Laughter]
"When women succeed, America succeeds. And there are three principles: Pay fairness – raise the minimum wage, equal pay for equal work; paid sick leave; and childcare.
[Applause]
"Over 60 percent, over two thirds of people making the minimum wage, are women. When women succeed, America succeeds. We must raise the minimum wage, and Dr. King talked about that himself. He said, ‘We know of no more crucial Civil Rights issue facing the Congress today than the need to raise the minimum wage.' That's what he said after his passage of his Civil Rights and Voting Rights Act. So his legacy, his challenge, his agenda is still before us.
"Of course, there is another agenda on Congress' to-do list that cries out for action and cries out for justice. More than 1.5 million Americans and counting, including over 200,000 Californians and over 4,000 people in San Francisco alone, are dealing with the loss of emergency unemployment insurance. They depend on that to support their families as they search for work. So men and women, who worked hard and played by the rules, lost their jobs through no fault of their own. But some folks in Congress do not see this as the value that we do. We owe it to these people. We let Christmas come and go without passing it. We challenged them many times on the floor of the House. Three times we tried to force it, really force the vote, and three times the Republicans – I probably shouldn't say that – but they blocked even considering taking up extending the minimum wage.
"It's unconscionable that the House had been sent home this week, and ironic that we are celebrating the life of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr and his challenge to the conscience of America, and we're doing so with not having met that challenge by passing the extension of the unemployment insurance. We will do that. It's a fight, and you have to help us do it.
[Applause]
"And yet today we celebrate again victories against old challenges. Dr. King said this, and again his words lead us forward even today: ‘Of all the forms of inequality, injustice and health is the most shocking and most inhumane.' Dr. King told the Second National Convention of the Medical Committee for Human Rights this in 1966. This month, January 1, one of the greatest victories against that most pernicious disparity came into accord...
[Applause]
"…the Affordable Care Act. The Affordable Care Act honors the values of our founders for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Life, a healthier life; liberty to pursue your happiness – whether it is to be a writer, a singer, a cameraman, to be self-employed, to start a business, to change jobs – you're no longer chained to a policy, but free to follow your passions, your aspirations. That's a good thing, because we have it now as a right for all Americans, not just a privilege for a few in our country. No longer will being a woman be a pre-existing medical conditions.
[Applause]
"We haven't done it all. We haven't done it all. But we have taken a massive, transformative step towards ending the inequality in health that so rightly appalled Dr. King. And I've heard Dr. King referred to in one way or another. I call him a disrupter. He was a disrupter the way our Founders were disrupters. He had an idea. He had a vision for America. He knew what needed to be done. He had a plan to get it done and the eloquence to draw people to him. And his disruption is our marching order. We must continue to disrupt until we have a more perfect union.
"So here today, as we conclude and go into our poetry to talk about Nelson Mandela, I had the privilege of meeting Nelson Mandela – can you just imagine – when he came to the Capitol of the United States and made his first speech to a joint session of Congress. I wasn't able to go to the funeral because we were having a budget fight, but I sent our Congressional Black Caucus and we were magnificently represented from our area, by Barbara Lee as well as the delegation.
"For the rest of us who were at the National Cathedral, at the very same time that this was happening in South Africa, I was at the National Cathedral, and it was beautiful. Joe Biden spoke about when he went to South Africa as a new Senator with an all-black delegation of Congressional members. He got his loss of innocence on the subject. When he got off the plane, the leaders of the countries said: ‘You go this way, Senator, and they go that way.' And he said: ‘I'm going with them, I'm going with them.' But imagine that they would do that even to a Congressional delegation.
"But nonetheless, here we are many years later. And the whole world mourned the death of Nelson Mandela. But when I heard this one speech there, I said: ‘I have to tell you about this in case you missed it.' The South African Ambassador to the United States, I had visited him during the first news of the death of Mandela, when you heard a lot of things. And he gave me a clue as to what he was going to say at the service, and this is what he said. He said: ‘We no longer have to fear the police dogs and the fire hoses that were encountered down South.' People can recognize and know that that was wrong. But he said: ‘What we must fear most is the disconnectedness, and the insularity, and the selfishness that tells us that poverty is because of laziness, that disease is because of immorality and violence is because of our genes, and that we are not our brother's keepers.' That's what he said at Nelson's Mandela's funeral. But isn't that so? Isn't that so? He's rejecting that and calling for a spirit of community. Nobody does community better than San Francisco.
[Applause]
"Now is the time. What a perfect theme. Now is the time. Dr. King said in his speech 50 years ago – he talked about the ‘fierce urgency of the now.' What was fierce then is fierce now. Now is the time for us, inspired by Mandela, led by the agenda of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr, and again with the example of Willie B. Kennedy, to get the job done. This is going to be very good year – a good year for the Voting Rights Act, for immigration, for raising the minimum wage, for passing unemployment insurance; this and many other things: implementing the Affordable Care Act. It's going to be, because we understand that the time is now. Thank you all very much. Have a nice evening.
[Applause]
"And thank you very much, Aaron, for your wonderful leadership."
[Applause]