Why WE must have the Power

Quick note from Renee, in between grading papers and trying to figure out what I could possibly pull together for dinner, seeing as how Demetrius is still outside (brrr!) working on the car--please do check out the comments from the Grapski Defense Committee as well as from Charlie in the previous thread. And please help spread the word.

Below is part of the speech our US Rep candidate for IL 16th district gave at his recent fundraiser. Dick Auman's is totally a grassroot campaign. His race has not been recognized as one that can get national support. Dick has excellent politics, too bad it is so difficult to get honest people like him into office.

I want to share some ideas with you this evening about what is at stake on November 7th and why I think this election is one of the most critical in my lifetime. I want to begin by reflecting on the vision of a small number of men who 219 years ago saw George W. Bush coming.

From the perspective of the 18th century, these men saw President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney coming over the horizon of the 21st century. That, ladies and gentlemen, is extraordinary vision. These men knew George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in their bones. They knew what unchecked power looked like. They knew that there are some, who, given some power, crave more. They knew that that craving can become insatiable, that there are those who can never get enough.

So, in the document they drafted in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, in Article One of the Constitution, they created first the House of Representatives, the peoples’ house and then the senate to check the power of the executive. They saw George W. Bush and Dick Cheney coming and they took steps to limit the damage they could do.

Unfortunately, they didn’t imagine that the people elected to check their power would include the likes of Tom DeLay, Dennis Hastert, John Boehner, and Bill Frist. They didn’t imagine that those charged with the responsibility to check the power of the executive would prostrate themselves before that executive thereby selling out the very people they went to Congress to represent. For all their vision, our founding fathers did not imagine the chief executive of our country being manipulated by a flimflam man named Karl Rove nor did they imagine a vice president with a defective conscious having the kind of power George Bush has allowed him to wield.

And, perhaps, they did not foresee our country’s foreign and domestic policies being driven by radical, right-wing ideologues who demand absolute fealty to Party and President at the expense of the institution and the people they were elected to serve. Yet, our founding fathers made sure that even faced with the kinds of assaults upon our democratic values that we have witnessed in recent months, democracy in the United States of America would prevail because they saw to it that the real power in this country would reside with the people.

When I decided to run for a seat in the Congress of the United States, I didn’t need the permission of any elected official or party leader. I didn’t need the permission of Rahm Emanual. I didn’t need the permission of Governor Blagojevich or Michael Madigan or Emil Jones.

I needed only the permission of the people. I needed the permission of 841 citizens, 841 residents of the 16th Congressional District, and, in the end, over 1500 people gave me their permission to have my name on the ballot. The people spoke and the government had to respond by placing my name on the ballot. That is something to celebrate in the United States of America.

We the people have the power to change the direction of this country, and we must.

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