Cynthia McKinney Acceptance Speech Transcript

Cynthia McKinney
Acceptance Remarks
Green Party Convention
Chicago, Illinois
July 12, 2008

"Let me introduce to you my family and your Power to the People Committee!

My mother and father, Billy and Leola McKinney.

My son, Coy, who just graduated from college in Canada!

I want you to know that there is no way I could do this without their love
and support.

Your Power to the People Committee members who are with us today:

You've all shared e-mails with her and heard her lovely voice on the
telephone: Lucy Grider-Bradley, the campaign manager of my 2004 comeback
campaign and FEC Compliance team leader for the Power to the People
Committee!

I've known him all of my political life. You've known him for years if
you're a Green party member. Hugh Esco, website man with the Power to the
People Committee!

In two long road trips from Georgia to Maine, one trip through California,
Oregon, and Washington, and by way of numerous e-mails, you all have come
to know my friend, personal assistant, proud Haitian-American activist, et
aussi, l'homme avec qui je pratique mon français, David Josué, standing firm
against the occupation of Haiti.

John Judge is my friend. He shared U.S. government COINTELPRO documents
with me that few except researchers have ever seen. John Judge is an expert
on the murders of Malcolm X, John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Bobby
Kennedy, COINTELPRO, other government covert operations directed at certain
U.S. citizens, and what really happened on 9/11. Maybe John can tell me how
our military and intelligence infrastructures failed four times in one day
after the taxpayers invested trillions of dollars in them.

Janet Young, proud accountant for the Power to the People Committee!
Learned the true meaning of politics when she saw what happened to me after
I put impeachment on the table.

I am also joined on the platform by members of the Reconstruction Movement
who have come into the Green Party to support our Power to the People
campaign! The Reconstruction Movement came into being as a result of
dissatisfaction around government failures and unmet needs of Hurricanes
Katrina and Rita survivors and the many communities across our country in
need of reconstruction.

The RunCynthiaRun visionaries from California who are responsible for
bringing me to the Party's Presidential process!

All of the Green Party candidates who are running for election in 2008!

And Rosa Clemente, your Vice Presidential nominee!

Thank you all for being here and standing with me today.

In 1851, in Akron, Ohio a former slave woman, abolitionist, and woman's
rights activist by the name of Sojourner Truth gave a speech now known as
"Ain't I a Woman." Sojourner Truth began her remarks, "Well children, where
there is so much racket, there must be something out of kilter." She then
went on to say that even though she was a woman, no one had ever helped her
out of carriages or lifted her over ditches or given her a seat of honor in
any place. Instead, she acknowledged, that as a former slave and as a black
woman, she had had to bear the lash as well as any man; and that she had
borne "thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I
cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And Ain't I a
woman?" Finally, Sojourner Truth says, "If the first woman God ever made
was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women
together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again!"

As it was in 1851, so too it is in 2008. There is so much racket that we,
too, know something is out of kilter. In 1851, the racket was about a
woman's right to vote. In 1848, just a few years before Sojourner uttered
those now famous words, "Ain't I a Woman?" suffragists met in Seneca Falls,
New York and issued a declaration.

That declaration began:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created
equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable
rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;
that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just
powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government
becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from
it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new
government . . . But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing
invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute
despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new
guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of
the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which
constrains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled."

Two hundred sixty women and forty men gathered in Seneca Falls, NY and
declared their independence from the politics of their present and embarked
upon a struggle to create a politics for the future. That bold move by a
handful of people in one relatively small room laid the groundwork and is
the precedent for what we do today. The Seneca Falls Declaration
represented a clean break from the past: Freedom, at last, from mental
slavery. The Seneca Falls Declaration and the Akron, Ohio meeting
inaugurated 72 years of struggle that ended with the passage of the 19th
Amendment in August of 1920, granting women the right to vote. And 88 years
later, with the Green Party as its conductor, the History Train is rolling
down the tracks.

The Green Party is making history today. According to one source, 45 women
have run for President in primary elections in the United States in the 20th
Century; 22 have made it on the ballot in at least one state in November.
Thank you, Green Party, for pulling this history train from the station.

But we make history today only because we must. In 2008, after two stolen
Presidential elections and eight years of George W. Bush, and at least two
years of Democratic Party complicity, the racket is about war crimes,
torture, crimes against the peace; the racket is about crimes against the
Constitution, crimes against the American people, and crimes against the
global community. The racket is even about values that we thought were long
settled as reasonable to pursue, like liberty and justice, and economic
opportunity, for all. Yes, Sojourner, there's a lot out of kilter now, but
these two women, Rosa and me, joined by all the men and women in this room,
are going to do our best to turn this country right side up again.

And just like the women and men at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 who
declared their independence from the Old Order, I celebrated my birthday
last year by doing something I had done a dozen times in my head, but had
never done publicly: I declared my independence from every bomb dropped,
every threat leveled, every civil liberties rollback, every child killed,
every veteran maimed, every man tortured, and the national leadership that
let this happen. At that pro-peace rally in front of the Pentagon, I noted
that nowhere on the Democratic Party's Congressional Agenda for their first
100 days in the majority was any mention at all of a livable wage, the right
of return for Katrina survivors, repealing the Patriot Acts, the Secret
Evidence Act, the Military Commissions Act, or bringing our troops home
now. Nowhere on the Congressional Democrats' agenda was an investigation
into the Pentagon's "loss" of $2.3 trillion that Rumsfeld admitted to just
before September 11th. And nowhere was there any plan to get that money
back for jobs, health care, education, and for veterans. Not even repeal of
the Bush tax cuts that have helped to usher in, according to some, levels of
income inequality not experienced in this country since the Great
Depression. And instead of Articles of Impeachment to hold the criminals
accountable, impeachment was taken "off the table."

And so, taking these words directly from our own Declaration of
Independence, and from the Seneca Falls document "it is the right of those
who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it."

There is no doubt that the people of this country and in the global
community are suffering from Washington, D.C.'s policies today.

Even as the ice in the Arctic Ocean reportedly was melting, the United
States was obstructing an international discussion of climate change
goals-setting for 2020 at the recently-concluded G-8 Summit. Even while
George Bush has made himself an international climate change villain by not
signing onto the Kyoto Protocol, his own scientists at the U.S. Climate
Change Science Program have predicted more heat waves, intense rains,
increased drought, and stronger hurricanes to affect the U.S. due to the
worsening effects of climate change.

Public policy can be our friend or it can be our foe in understanding and
working through the immense changes our planet is undergoing. We the
voters, the activists, the policy wonks, the candidates, and the elected
officials all have a role to play in making public policy. As I have said
so many times during this campaign for the Green Party nomination, politics
is not a beauty contest; it is not a fashion show; it is not a horse race.
Politics is the authoritative allocation of values in a society. Politics
is about values being reflected in public policy. It is about having power
over public policy. And we engage in the political process because we want
our values reflected in public policy.

Had the Green Party's values been reflected in public policy since the
beginnings of the Green Party in this country, the United States would have
long ago implemented a livable wage; there would be no civil liberties
erosion; diversity would be respected, appreciated and welcomed; education
would be interesting and relevant to students' lives and no student would
graduate from college $100,000 in debt in a Green Party USA because
education, not incarceration and militarization, would be subsidized by the
state. In a Green Party USA, health care would be provided for everyone
here through a single payer, Medicare-for-all type health care system. We
would have no homeless men and women sleeping on our streets and everyone
who could work would have work. Rebuilding our infrastructure,
manufacturing green technology, retooling our economy so that those who
protect us, train us, heal us and prepare us for tomorrow are compensated in
what is their true value to our culture and our society, based on their
contribution to our civilization. Vietnam War-era veterans would be our
last war veterans because we would never have been engaged in war and
occupation against Afghanistan and Iraq. We would forego imperial designs
on our neighbors to the north and south, never building any wall of
division, not ever encroaching on their geographic or cultural sovereignty.
In fact, if Green Party values were now reflected in U.S. public policy, our
country not only would not be engaged in war and occupation, there would be
peace in the Middle East based on self-determination, respect for human
rights, and justice. We would strive to perfect our democracy at home
through election integrity and no one would be denied their rightful place
in our Union due to discrimination. Our neighbors in the global community
would look up to us for our cultural and technological accomplishments. We
would have apologized for genocide against the indigenous peoples of this
land and the abomination of chattel slavery. Our country would have dignity
on the world stage and in every international forum, and no one in this
country would be made to live in fear.

Oh, if it could be true: that the values of the Green Party were reflected
in the Federal Government's public policy. Let me wake up and snap out of
my reverie. Yes, today's reality is harsh. Abu Ghraib, torture, rendition,
lying, spying, war, stolen elections, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, New
Orleans, poverty, racial profiling, Sean Bell, the San Francisco 8, Benton
Harbor's Reverend Pinkney, the Holy Land Foundation, 9/11/01.

Embargo, blockade, friendly fire, depleted uranium, white phosphorus,
cluster bombs, bunker busters, shock and awe.

Predatory lending, mortgage crisis, foreclosures, a country $53 trillion in
debt. And while Bear Stearns gets a bailout, you and I sink or swim.

Harsh? Today's reality is harsh. But what's even harder for many to accept
and admit is that our quality of life today is the making of the Democratic
and Republican Parties.

What our country has become through their public policy is reflective of
their values.

We will never get a United States that is reflective of different values if
we continue to do the same thing. Those who delivered us into this mess
cannot be trusted to get us out of it.

That's why I signed up to do something I've never done before so I can have
something I've never had before: My country, made in the likeness of the
values of the Green Party.

When my father first started out in the world of politics in Georgia, he
began as a Republican, because Georgia Democrats would not allow blacks to
vote in their primaries. Some of my father's closest friends today are
still Republicans because of that history.

My father served 30 years in the Georgia Legislature as a Democrat. Because
of him, I served 4 years in the Georgia Legislature, where we were the
country's only father daughter legislative team. And then I went to
Congress and served 12 years working with the Democratic Party and its
current leadership representing the State of Georgia.

My son grew up playing on the Floor underneath my desk in the Chamber of the
Georgia House of Representatives. His buddies were the legislators down
there, under the Gold Dome, who were my and my father's colleagues.

My mother is the genteel Southern lady who keeps our family glued together.
A nurse by profession, a nurturer by instinct, she could patch over all the
times I had a political disagreements with my Dad and it ended up being
discussed, not only at the family dinner table, but also on the evening
news.

My father and I stumped for candidates, and helped keep Georgia in the
Democratic Party fold, until on my election night in 2002, I was forced to
admit that the Republicans wanted to beat me more than the Democrats wanted
to keep me. Both my father and I were put out of office after being
targeted by a convergence of special interests operating in both the
Democratic and Republican parties. In November of 2002, after the Primary
Election losses of my father and me, Georgia went Republican: the first
time since Reconstruction. With all kinds of certainty, I can say that my
father and I—we McKinneys—we know too well how both the Republican and
Democratic Parties operate.

And that's why I know we need an opposition party in this country. With 200
elected officials already, the Green Party can become this country's premier
opposition Party. One thing is clear, Democratic and Republican values are
not Green Party values. And honestly, I believe, Green Party values are the
values held by the majority in this country. And through our vigorous Power
to the People campaign, we will proclaim our presence to every nook and
cranny of this country. We are needed now, more than ever and here's an
example of why.

It is hard to not hear the warning signs of a new war: a war against Iran.
Dick Cheney told us to expect war for the next generation. The Republicans
launched this war economy and their presumptive nominee said that we could
stay in Iraq for the next 100 years and even sang a song for the bombing of
Iran. The Democratic majority in Congress just voted to fund the war into
2009 and has 200 sponsors on a bill that declares war on Iran by calling for
a naval blockade. A naval blockade is a declaration of war. The Democratic
presumptive nominee wants to increase the size of the overused military and
the budget for an already-bloated and wasteful Pentagon. I am the only
candidate who has consistently voted against the Pentagon budget, voted
against the war in Iraq, and I voted against the bills that funded it. The
Green Party was against the war when it started, is against the war now, and
is against any military action against Iran that might take place tomorrow.
The Green Party is a peace party. A Green vote is a peace vote.

Not a word has been mentioned in this political season about the disparities
that exist within our country with the recognition that public policy can
erase them. And even though for the first time a woman and an
African-American were being taken seriously in national primaries, a real
discussion of race and gender has been studiously avoided on all sides. At
a time when the United States is under review, itself, by the United Nations
for its poor record on domestic respect for human rights, particularly in
the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, a real discussion of race and
gender is needed now more than ever. On some indices, according to United
for a Fair Economy, the racial disparities that exist today are worse than
at the time of the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Right here in
Chicago, Hull House reported that it would take 200 years, without a public
policy intervention from elected leadership, for the quality of life
experienced by black Chicagoans to equal that of white Chicagoans.

Women are still the overwhelming profile of the minimum wage worker in this
country. 65% of all minimum wage workers are women, according to 2005
statistics. Despite the law, women still go to work every day, performing
the same tasks as men, yet bring home less pay than their male
counterparts. Asian-American and Pacific Island women make 88 cents for
every dollar earned by men, but African-American women earn only 72 cents
and my Latina sisters earn only 60 cents for every dollar earned by men.
Overall, according to 2007 statistics, women with similar education, skills,
and experience are paid 77 cents for every dollar a man makes. Equal pay
for equal work is not yet a reality for working women in this country. And
the glass ceiling is all too real.

I'm very proud of my second cousin, Shonté, whose mother, a divorcée, raised
her pretty much as a single mother. Shonté's mother, Shara, understood the
value of her child getting a good education and helped her as much as she
could with university tuition. The rest Shonté was able to secure by
working on campus and in student loans. Shonté graduated from college, and
then took a one-year Master's program in Social Work, and now wants to get
her Ph.D. But she's already over $90,000 in debt. It doesn't have to be
this way and we don't have to accept it. In other countries around the
world, higher education is valued and is made affordable to all who want
it. Only a sick government would place a banker in-between a student and
her teacher.

An insurance lobbyist in-between a patient and his doctor.

Lying and spying before 9/11 Truth and the Constitution.

Only a sick government would place a wealthy family and their huge
corporation and its genetically-modified frankenfood peddled by force
in-between us and the organic food that's healthy for us to eat and that
farmers would prefer to grow.

Only a sick government would do this.

And I am no longer willing to trust the ones who are responsible for getting
us into this mess to provide the solution to get us out of it.

The Green Party long ago took a stand for racial justice: against
profiling, against police brutality, against discrimination of any sort, and
for reparations stemming from the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

The Green Party long ago took a stand for gender equity.

The Green Party long ago took a stand against all discrimination.

The Green Party is a justice party. A Green vote is a justice vote.

And the day after the election, if voters have been disfranchised and don't
believe the announced election results, it will be the Green Party that will
be there, as it was in 2004, to demand election integrity.

It is for all these reasons and more that I redeclare my goals in the
language of my sisters who convened at Seneca Falls, NY 160 years ago. They
wrote:

"It is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards
for their future security."
That declaration not only avoids the politics of the past, it contains a
kernel for the future. How can those new guards for the future be won?

Here's how:

When I was first running for Congress and it was the year of the woman,
women all over the country were saying, "We want our seat at the table."
And when I got to Washington, I saw that policy was really made in a room,
at a table. There were real seats at the table. Well, imagine what has
happened to public policy making now.

There is a real room, with a window and a door and there's two seats at the
table. The window is for us to look through while our representatives make
policy for us so we can see what they're doing. At the table, one seat is
for the Democrats and one seat is for the Republicans. Now, we don't know
who did it, but one of them put a lock on the door and slipped a key to the
corporate lobbyists who can come and go at will and whisper what they want
to the Democrats, and then whisper what they want to the Republicans, and
the result is that we the people, who pay for those seats and determine who
sits in them, want one thing, but because the corporate lobbyists can come
and go at will, our values get overridden and our representatives give us
something else.

That's how we end up with everyone saying they're against the war and
occupation, but war and occupation still gets funding.

That's how we end up with everyone saying they're against illegal spying on
innocent people, yet end up with a telecom immunity bill being signed into
law.

That's how we end up with everyone saying they're in favor of universal
access to health care and no one implementing what the physicians, nurses,
and health care providers support, and that's a single payer health care
system in this country.

That's why my cousin and so many other students in this country face
staggering personal debt just to get an education, yet our elected
representatives keep voting to spend 720 million dollars a day on war and
occupation, war crimes, and crimes against the peace.

Now, if we can entice people who have stopped voting because they see the
system as rigged, to become active again, and to vote Green . . .

If we can convince those first-time voters from the previous two
Presidential elections, though they might be discouraged because they saw
their vote obstructed and then not counted while neither of the big parties
fought to protect them, if we can convince them to vote Green . . .

If we can convince those who see two parties, but only one political agenda,
to vote Green, then it is possible for the Green Party to get 5% of the
national vote.

5% of the vote makes the Green Party, not a minor party in the eyes of the
federal government, but a major party.

5% confers on the Green Party major party status. And with that 5%, we can
pull up another chair at the table of public policy making. It only takes
5% of those who vote, including the near majority who don't vote, to come
out for a Green Party President and then we will have an official third
party in this country, and public policy that truly reflects our values.
Now, I'm known for taking bold positions, based on my own research, that
have put me ahead of the curve. I was there on private militaries hired by
the Pentagon and our State Department long before Blackwater began
patrolling the streets of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

I was there on corporate accountability and military contracting scandals
before Iraq and Afghanistan.

I was there on enlisted members' and veterans' rights and health issues,
like forced vaccinations and conscientious objection.

I was there on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita recovery and detoxification,
restoration, and return issues.

I was there on 9/11 foreknowledge.

And I put impeachment "on the table."

I'm not afraid to address the issues that no one else will dare to talk
about.

I'm not afraid to speak truth to empower.

Let me close with this.

Don't expect me to keep a count of the major party flip flops from now to
November. I'm sure there will be many. But, in the end, that's not the
important issue to understand. What is more fundamental to understand is
this: the other political parties find themselves in this flip-flop
predicament because they have to appear to share our values while they serve
someone else's.

The Green Party doesn't have to engage in shapeshifting because the Green
Party is funded by and belongs to you.

All over the world, Green Party members are working as elected leaders in
government to make public policy reflect our Green values. Wangari Mathai,
former Parliamentarian from Kenya, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. Green Party
member. Ingrid Betancourt, recently released hostage in Colombia, former
Senator and Presidential candidate. Green Party member. Green Party members
make public policy at the national level on every Continent, but not yet in
our country.

Twenty years ago, Green party activists saw through this two-party box that
voters have been put into in this country and started the Green Party here.
And what we have to remember is this: whatever it is that we want in the
realm of public policy, we can get if we have the right elected officials in
office. Nothing for us is impossible. Politics is about shared values
being reflected in public policy. And these Green party candidates standing
with me are the right kind of people who will implement the right kind of
public policy that reflects our shared values.

Voters in this country are scared into not voting their hopes, their dreams,
their aspirations. But in Bolivia and Ecuador and Argentina and Chile and
Nicaragua and Spain, and India and Cote d'Ivoire and Haiti, voters were not
afraid to vote their hopes and dreams and guess, what. Their dreams came
true. Ours can, too.

Every one of you in this room today and each of the individuals I've met and
communicated with online across our country has made a difference in my
life. And moreover, the 5% who will vote for us, will help us make a
positive difference in the lives of people around the world. Who we are
makes a difference. What we do makes a difference.

We are in this to build a movement. We are willing to struggle for as long
as it takes to have our values prevail in public policy. A vote for the
Green Party is a vote for the movement that will turn this country right
side up again.

I want to invite everyone who shares our values to join our Power to the
People campaign. C-Span viewers can learn more about us at
www.runcynthiarun.org. I want to work with the nominees of the other small
political parties so we can form a united front. I'm asking for your vote
because in reality the only "wasted" vote is a vote against conscience, a
vote against our dreams. Vote your dreams, Vote your conscience. Vote our
future. Vote Green.

Thank you, Green Party, for granting Rosa and me this supreme honor. Now
let's go out there and get busier. We've got a lot of work to do.

Power to the People!"