INTRODUCTIO ChaIrman Ron Brown. you've done difficult job well. You have brought down barriers. Your or rna proud. President Bill ainton. You ve urvived tough pring. It will make you tronger for the f 11. With your stripes you m t heal and make better. the hopes of many depend upon your q t. Be comforted that you do not stand lion. Vice President AI Gore comes to this te ted and prepared. He h s been a re oned voice for en­ vironomental anity, upporter of ocial justice, an original sponsor of DC tatehood. And I, for one, look forward to the vice-pre idential deb teo THE MORAL CE TER We stand as witnesses to a pregnant moment in history. Across the globe, e feel the pain that comes with new birth. Here, in our country pain abounds. We must be certain that it too leads to ne birth, and not a tragic miscarriage of opportunity. . We m t tum pain to power, pain into partnership, not pain into polarization. ' The great temptation in these difficult days of racial polarlzationand economic injustice is to makepolitica1 arguments Bl ck and white, aod miss the more impera­ tive of wrong and righL Vanity b-is it popular? Politics asks-will it win? Morality and conscience ask-is it right? We are part of a contipuing struggle for justice and decency, links in a chain that began long before we were bom and wlll extend long !ter we are gODe. History will remember us not for our positionina, but ror our principles. Not by our move to the pollUCil center, left or right, but rather by our grasp on the moral and ethical center of wrong and right. We who stand with working people and poor bave a special burden. We must stand for what is right, tand up to those who have the might. We do so grounded in the failh; that that which is morally wrong will never be politically righL But if it is morally sound, it will eventually be politically righL When I look at you gathered here this today, I hear the pain and see the truggles that prepared the ground that you tand on. we have come a long way from where we started. A generation ago-in 1964, Fanny Lou Hamer had to fight even to it in this convention. Tonight, 28 years later, the chair of the Party is Ron Brown from Harl.em; the manager is Alexis Herman, an African Amencan woman from Mobile, Alabama. We have come a long way from where we started. We are more interdependent that we realize. Not only African Americans benefitted from the movement for justice. It was only when African Americans were free to win and sit in these seats, that Bill Clinton and AI Gore from the new South could be able to stand on this rostrum. We are inextricably bound together in a ingle prment of destiny. Red, yellow, brown, black and white, we are all precious in God's sight. We have come a long way from where we started. , Tonight we face another challenge. Ten million Americans are unemployed, 2S mlllton on food stamps 35 million in poverty, 40 million have no health �re. From the coal miners in Bigstone Gap, ' West Virginia to the loggers and environomentalis_ts in . Roseburg, Oregon, from dfaplaced �xtile workel'l in . my home town of Greenville, South Carolina to plants closing in Van Nuys, Califomia, pain abounds. PlantS are closiag jobs leaving on a fast track, more are working for less, trapped by repressive anti-labor laws. The homeless are a source of national sbare and disgrace. there il a harshness to America that comes from not seeing and a growing mindless materialism. Our television sets bring the world into our living rooms, but too often we overlook our neighbors. We have a president who has traveled the world, but has never been to Hamlet, North Carolina. Yet we m t not overlook Hamlet. It was there that 25 workers died in a fire at Imperial Foods, more women than men, more white than Black. They worked making chicken parts in vats heated to 400 degree , with few window and no fans. The owners locked the doors on the outside. The workers died trapped by economic desperation and oppressive work laws. One woman came up to me after the flre--ehe sai� "I want to work. I don't want to go on welfare. I have three children and no husband," she said. "We pluck 90 wings a minute. Now I. can't bend my wrist, I lot the carpel thing. Then when we're hurt they fire us, and we have no health insurance, and no union to help UI. We can't get another job because we're crippled, 10 they put us on welfare and call us lazy bitch. " I said you are not lazy. You are not a bitch. You are not alone. We tand with you. Her friend, a white woman came up and said: "I'm seven months pregnant. We stand in two inches of water with two five-minute bathroom breab. Some­ times we can't hold our water, and then ow: bowels, and we faint." We wept together. If we ke�p Hamlet in our hearts and before our eyes, we will act to empower working people: We will protect the nght to organize and to strike. We will empower workers to enforce health and safety laws. We ill provide tio he Itb care y tern, mini­ mum cient to brin worke out of poverty, paid p rental Ie vee We m t build a movement for conomic j nee c the I 00. We f: ee a difficult Challenge. Our cities have been bandoned, farme forsaken, children neglected. Roods in Chicago; fire in LA. They ay they can't find $35 billion for the mayors, but the late t down payment for the SelL b ilout w $25 billion: It is time to brea the mold. Now is the tim to rebuild America. We must be the party with the plan nd the purpose. Four years go, we fought for program to reinve t in America, paid for by fair taxes on the rich and aving from the military. Thi • year Governor Bill Clinton has taken a ubstantial tep in that direction. He has expre ed Democratic support for DC statehood, arne day on He universal votet registration. He has vowed to challenge corpora­ tions to invest home, retrain their workers nd pay their share of taxes, He h made a commitment to raising the ize of our opportunity. Aero the world wall are coming down. The Cold War i over; the Soviet Union i no more. R ia w n tojoinNATO. We can change our prioriue ,reinv t in educating our children, train our workers, rebuild our citie . Tod y Japan fast trains; we make fa t mi iles, If we change our priori tie , and build a high peed national railroad, we could go from NY to LA in 8 hours. We could make the steel, lay the rail, build the cars and drive them. Scientists can top devi ing weapons we don't need and start working on environomental advances we can't live without. ' ' We must have an imagination trong enou to ea beyond war. In Israel, Prime Minister .Rabin' election is a tep toward greater ecurity and peace for the enti_� , region. Rabin' wi dom in affirming negotiation over confrontation, land' for pe ce, bargaining table over battle field has inspired hope, not only in the hearts of democratic Israel, but on the West Bank. Israeli security and Pale tinian elf-d termination are inex- ... .. and indexing the minimum wage. We must build upon that direction and go further till. In 1932, Franklin Roosevelt ran on a 'balance-tbe­ budget' platform in the middle of a recession. Working people In motion pushed him into the New Deal. The impetus for change will not come top down, it must come bottom up. . The Rainbow Coalition has put forward a 'Rebuild America Plan.' At its heart is a proposal, with the aid of Felix RObatyn, one of America's leading experts in public finance, or an American Investment Bank. There are $3 trillion in public and private pension funds, that with lovernment guarantees, could p'rovide SSOO billion in seed money, and attract an addition S500 billion, to create 'a ten-year, $1 trillion plan to rebuild America. Pension funds are the workers money. That money is now used to prop up South Africa, for LBO. and high risk peculation and greed. We should UK � workers' money, with the workers' consent and government guarantees, to secure our future by rebuild­ ing America. We must have a plan on a scale tbat corresponds with the size of the problems we face. Tai'wan has � $1 trillion-it is the size of Pennsylv nia. Japan has a $3 trillion plan over ten years. We found the money to help, rebuild Europe and Japan after World War II, we found the money to help Russia ao