Artist: Jesse Jackson
Album: Great Speeches of the 20th Century: Volume Two, The New Frontier
Thank you very much.
Tonight we come together bound by our faith in a mighty God, with genuine respect and love for our country, and inheriting the legacy of a great Party, the Democratic Party, which is the best hope for redirecting our nation on a more humane, just, and peaceful course.
This is not a perfect party.
We are not a perfect people.
Yet, we are called to a perfect mission.
Our mission: to feed the hungry; to clothe the naked; to house the homeless; to teach the illiterate; to provide jobs for the jobless; and to choose the human race over the nuclear race.
We are gathered here this week to nominate a candidate and adopt a platform which will expand, unify, direct, and inspire our Party and the nation to fulfill this mission.
My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected, and the despised.
They are restless and seek relief.
They have voted in record numbers.
They have invested the faith, hope, and trust that they have in us.
The Democratic Party must send them a signal that we care.
I pledge my best not to let them down.
There is the call of conscience, redemption, expansion, healing, and unity.
Leadership must heed the call of conscience, redemption, expansion, healing, and unity, for they are the key to achieving our mission.
Time is neutral and does not change things.
With courage and initiative, leaders change things.
No generation can choose the age or circumstance in which it is born, but through leadership it can choose to make the age in which it is born an age of enlightenment, an age of jobs, and peace, and justice.
Only leadership -- that intangible combination of gifts, the discipline, information, circumstance, courage, timing, will and divine inspiration -- can lead us out of the crisis in which we find ourselves.
Leadership can mitigate the misery of our nation.
Leadership can part the waters and lead our nation in the direction of the Promised Land.
Leadership can lift the boats stuck at the bottom.
I have had the rare opportunity to watch seven men, and then two, pour out their souls, offer their service, and heal and heed the call of duty to direct the course of our nation.
There is a proper season for everything.
There is a time to sow and a time to reap.
There's a time to compete and a time to cooperate.
I ask for your vote on the first ballot as a vote for a new direction for this Party and this nation -- a vote of conviction, a vote of conscience.
But I will be proud to support the nominee of this convention for the Presidency of the United States of America.
Thank you.
I have watched the leadership of our party develop and grow.
My respect for both Mr.
Mondale and Mr.
Hart is great.
I have watched them struggle with the crosswinds and crossfires of being public servants, and I believe they will both continue to try to serve us faithfully.
I am elated by the knowledge that for the first time in our history a woman, Geraldine Ferraro, will be recommended to share our ticket.
Throughout this campaign, I've tried to offer leadership to the Democratic Party and the nation.
If, in my high moments, I have done some good, offered some service, shed some light, healed some wounds, rekindled some hope, or stirred someone from apathy and indifference, or in any way along the way helped somebody, then this campaign has not been in vain.
For friends who loved and cared for me, and for a God who spared me, and for a family who understood, I am eternally grateful.
If, in my low moments, in word, deed or attitude, through some error of temper, taste, or tone, I have caused anyone discomfort, created pain, or revived someone's fears, that was not my truest self.
If there were occasions when my grape turned into a raisin and my joy bell lost its resonance, please forgive me.
Charge it to my head and not to my heart.
My head -- so limited in its finitude; my heart, which is boundless in its love for the human family.
I am not a perfect servant.
I am a public servant doing my best against the odds.
As I develop and serve, be patient: God is not finished with me yet.
This campaign has taught me much; that leaders must be tough enough to fight, tender enough to cry, human enough to make mistakes, humble enough to admit them, strong enough to absorb the pain, and resilient enough to bounce back and keep on moving.
For leaders, the pain is often intense.
But you must smile through your tears and keep moving with the faith that there is a brighter side somewhere.
I went to see Hubert Humphrey three days before he died.
He had just called Richard Nixon from his dying bed, and many people wondered why.
And I asked him.
He said, "
Jesse, from this vantage point, the sun is setting in my life, all of the speeches, the political conventions, the crowds, and the great fights are behind me now.
At a time like this you are forced to deal with your irreducible essence, forced to grapple with that which is really important to you.
And what I've concluded about life," Hubert Humphrey said, "
When all is said and done, we must forgive each other, and redeem each other, and move on."
Our party is emerging from one of its most hard fought battles for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in our history.
But our healthy competition should make us better, not bitter.
We must use the insight, wisdom, and experience of the late Hubert Humphrey as a balm for the wounds in our Party, this nation, and the world.
We must forgive each other, redeem each other, regroup, and move one.
Our flag is red, white and blue, but our nation is a rainbow -- red, yellow, brown, black and white -- and we're all precious in God's sight.
America is not like a blanket -- one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size.
America is more like a quilt: many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread.
The white, the Hispanic, the black, the Arab, the Jew, the woman, the native American, the small farmer, the businessperson, the environmentalist, the peace activist, the young, the old, the lesbian, the gay, and the disabled make up the American quilt.
Even in our fractured state, all of us count and fit somewhere.
We have proven that we can survive without each other.
But we have not proven that we can win and make progress without each other.
We must come together.
From Fannie Lou Hamer in Atlantic City in 1964 to the Rainbow Coalition in San Francisco today; from the Atlantic to the Pacific, we have experienced pain but progress, as we ended American apartheid laws.
We got public accommodations.
We secured voting rights.
We obtained open housing, as young people got the right to vote.
We lost Malcolm, Martin, Medgar, Bobby, John, and Viola.
The team that got us here must be expanded, not abandoned.
Twenty years ago, tears welled up in our eyes as the bodies of Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney were dredged from the depths of a river in Mississippi.
Twenty years later, our communities, black and Jewish, are in anguish, anger, and pain.
Feelings have been hurt on both sides.
There is a crisis in communications.
Confusion is in the air.
But we cannot afford to lose our way.
We may agree to agree; or agree to disagree on issues; we must bring back civility to these tensions.
We are co-partners in a long and rich religious history -- the Judeo-Christian traditions.
Many blacks and Jews have a shared passion for social justice at home and peace abroad.
We must seek a revival of the spirit, inspired by a new vision and new possibilities.
We must return to higher ground.
We are bound by Moses and Jesus, but also connected with Islam and Mohammed.
These three great religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, were all born in the revered and holy city of Jerusalem.
We are bound by Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
and Rabbi Abraham Heschel, crying out from their graves for us to reach common ground.
We are bound by shared blood and shared sacrifices.
We are much too intelligent, much too bound by our Judeo-Christian heritage, much too victimized by racism, sexism, militarism, and anti-Semitism, much too threatened as historical scapegoats to go on divided one from another.
We must turn from finger pointing to clasped hands.
We must share our burdens and our joys with each other once again.
We must turn to each other and not on each other and choose higher ground.
Twenty years later, we cannot be satisfied by just restoring the old coalition.
Old wine skins must make room for new wine.
We must heal and expand.
The Rainbow Coalition is making room for Arab Americans.
They, too, know the pain and hurt of racial and religious rejection.
They must not continue to be made pariahs.
The Rainbow Coalition is making room for Hispanic Americans who this very night are living under the threat of the Simpson-Mazzoli bill; and farm workers from Ohio who are fighting the Campbell Soup Company with a boycott to achieve legitimate workers' rights.
The Rainbow is making room for the Native American, the most exploited people of all, a people with the greatest moral claim amongst us.
We support them as they seek the restoration of their ancient land and claim amongst us.
We support them as they seek the restoration of land and water rights, as they seek to preserve their ancestral homeland and the beauty of a land that was once all theirs.
They can never receive a fair share for all they have given us.
They must finally have a fair chance to develop their great resources and to preserve their people and their culture.
The Rainbow Coalition includes Asian Americans, now being killed in our streets -- scapegoats for the failures of corporate, industrial, and economic policies.
The Rainbow is making room for the young Americans.
Twenty years ago, our young people were dying in a war for which they could not even vote.
Twenty years later, young America has the power to stop a war in Central America and the responsibility to vote in great numbers.
Young America must be politically active in 1984.
The choice is war or peace.
We must make room for young America.
The Rainbow includes disabled veterans.
The color scheme fits in the Rainbow.
The disabled have their handicap revealed and their genius concealed; while the able-bodied have their genius revealed and their disability concealed.
But ultimately, we must judge people by their values and their contribution.
Don't leave anybody out.
I would rather have Roosevelt in whe
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