Thank you, I'm delighted to be here. This endorsement means an awful lot to me. Melody, I'm on board a hundred percent with the NOW agenda. You're going to have a Senator you can call your own come January.
I'd also like to say I'm particularly pleased to have this endorsement. It's the first national endorsement I've gotten. I meet people who say "I'm with you in my heart. I really want to support you. I'm there. You're on the right side of the issues. But national won't let me go forward. We have to wait and see."
Look, you guys are showing guts. You showed guts in 1966 when Betty Friedan came forward. You're the first ones to speak up about child abuse and family violence and a lot of issues that society would like to sweep under the rug. It's so important that we have courageous people like yourselves standing up and still standing up today. And I so appreciate that.
I believe that respect for women should be the hallmark of everything we do as a country and that we'd be a better society for it, a better world. And I believe that respect for women starts in the family. I look a my home... I grew up, my Dad respected and worshipped my Mom. She was a stay at home mom and the respect he showed for her we knew and felt and appreciated as kids.
I look at my own household now. My wife Annie is not a stay at home mom, she's not like the girl who married dear old Dad, or however that song went. She works outside of the house and also helps maintain a household full of teenagers. And I think the kids appreciate and respect the life she's chosen for herself. I know that I certainly do and I wouldn't be here without my family and my wife in particular, Annie.
I love the way that she comes home, it's all kids when she's home. She'll talk a little about the business, to the degree which the kids are interested. She's taken Emily, my nineteen year old daughter, to business on occasion. We're not imposing anything, but it's options and giving people a sense of what they can do. She'll be introducing me at the convention on Friday night and you'll get a chance to meet her. I'm so proud of her.
I can tell you it's meant a lot to me in my own business. I started up a small business from scratch. I've been involved in telecommunications. And I'm looking for the balance that we had in our family. Annie and I don't together make it to every single soccer game or every single teacher meeting, but one of us makes a point of being there. And I know what balance is about.
And I think as a guy that started up a business...and we've got an awful lot of women at Campus Televideo...I think it makes me more appreciative as a boss. I realize that not only you're working at a company but that you're also a Mom, your also a daughter, [unintelligible] and to have a good, healthy, productive team spirit at a company, there's nothing more important than that.
I think small business guys understand that. And I think that big businessees better appreciate it as we go forward into the 21st century, the balances people have and how business is going to have to better accommodate people going forward as a family.
I try and carry that forward in another endeavor I've got. I teach some classes at a Bridgeport high school. It's a course called "How To Start Your Own Business." Frankly, at Harding High School by far the most popular course among all the girls at the high school is the nursing module. You know, they tell me "It's a guaranteed $18 an hour when I graduate and there's nothing better than that." Look, I appreciate that, but in our class we're also giving people an opportunity to dream. They can meet role models -- there's a director of marketing for a company one day, we bring in folks, men and women, who've started up companies from within the Bridgeport community. And I just think it gives kids an opportunity to dream.
I think one of the great things about America in this day and age: Anybody can do anything if they have the confidence and will and the heart to go for it and that's one of the things we try to do in this little class of ours.
I can tell you that Swan doesn't give me too much free time -- my campaign manager -- but I did take a little time off on a Saturday evening. A friend of mine was being honored in New York. It was an organization I don't know if any of you have heard of. It's called UNIFEM. It's the United Nations Fund for Women.
And I was so proud to be there. It was women from all over the world in this colloquium, oh 500 of us or so, and we we're talking about a program in Rwanda. And we know about the violence against women, the mass rape in Rwanda, we know that the number of machete-wielding [unintelligible]
I didn't know there are twice as many women as men in Rwanda, more than that. And what UNIFEM tried to do was they tried to create some micro-credit programs for the women who were left in these villages, often by themselves. Their self-respect has been dashed, they've got a couple of kids, they're trying to make a go of it. [unintelligible]
And what UNIFEM did -- and I was struck by this -- they created a program of weaving of baskets. And now they've got this going from one village, to another village, to another village. They have thousands of women who are creating baskets that they're selling in Macy's and Bloomingdale's. They call them Rwanda Baskets. And it just gives a sense of confidence and hope going forward there. And it's an example of what a difference people can make if they care and if they try. This is a small program making such a big difference in this country.
And I wonder about the Bush Administration. Maybe they still care but I'm not sure they're really trying anymore. And they're taking away an awful lot of hope from folks that need hope. Or they're making the situation worse. Now look at Africa where they're restricting the distribution of condoms. Here we are, in a continent that's being ravaged by AIDS for so long.
And that's why we're in this race. We're going to change the way we do business.
I go around the state and I get the same question, every evening in a different way. And that question is "How come we can afford to spend $250 million a day -- $250 million a day -- on the war in Iraq and yet we can't fully fund Head Start, we can't provide free preschool for all four-year-olds who need it?"
We're cutting back on student loans. You know, the high school I'm teaching at closes down at three o'clock. They shut down the arts, they curtailed drama, not sports. Kids are going home to often an empty home. And how come we can't keep that high school going a little bit longer at the end of the day? Maybe give parents a chance to come back on their way home from work to pick up a child. Have a chance to see a teacher, get involved in some other things, help inspire and give these kids some hope going forward. We can do that in this country. We can do it if we put our mind to it.
Y'know what I think about this war is, it's not just an incursion into a Middle Eastern country. It says an awful lot about what kind of a country we are, where our priorities are, and where we want to go forward. And I think we can do an awful lot better than we're doing right now.
And it seems to me we have a Bush Administration that is walking away from some of the fundamental obligations that our country has had with folks for a long time, through Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Cuts in these programs particularly disadvantage women. They're the first ones hit by cuts in programs like that.
But at the same time, they're intruding into our private lives every day in ways the Founding Fathers never, never, never anticipated. One of the first things that got me inspired was the Terri Schiavo case. You remember that case, don't you?
I mean, my gosh, George Bush flying back from one of his endless vacations in Crawford, Texas. Tom Delay. "We've got to intervene in a case like this."
This is a decision that belongs with the family -- decisions like this, life and death decisions that families are making every day around the country -- the last place you want the federal government intruding.
Tom Delay said "Of course, the federal government has to be there." Joe Lieberman said, "Yes, we want the federal government here when it comes to questions of life and death." I think that was wrong.
I look at the intrusions into our private lives with the illegal wiretaps. I look at science in politics and the blending of what's going on there. Be it Creationism in the classroom, be it stem cell research, be it emergency contraception for women.
Look, the FDA, this scientific group, they looked at this, they found the safety of it, the scientists opined on it. And then the politicians stepped in. The politicians said "We're going to step all over the scientists again. And we're not gonna let emergency contraception be available over the counter."
And I look at the callousness, the callousness of the response when it comes to rape victims going to -- any hospital. We talk about universal health care in this country. We ought to have a basic level of health care that's available for everybody.
My God, how can you deny that basic level of health care to rape victims when they go to a hospital? They don't choose the hospital they're going to. That's a basic right that ought to be there and you're going to have a Senator who's going to stand up and say "You're going to be required to provide emergency contraception to every rape victim, wherever they may go. We're going to make this available over the counter. We're not going to put women into this impossible situation where they're forced to make these terrible choices."
And what will happen, we'll reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies and there'll be less need for abortion. And with universal health care for everybody, including pre-natal, post-natal... you know, that to me is a real pro-life agenda. That's what we're standing for as Democrats, that's what we're [drowned out by applause]
I'll just say one last thing. As I look at the war and I look at our priorities as a country, and I look at the middle class who feel that their dreams are slipping away a little bit right now, let's talk about the moral authority of our country and what we stand for right now.
This is... around the world there's a war of ideas and a war on terror and we've got to be true to what America believes. We've got to be true to the Statue of Liberty. We've got to be true to the values we hold dear. Not Abu Ghraib, not Guantanamo. We can't forsake the values that have carried us so far.
And right now I just sense that the United States has forsaken some of our key values, our core values, what we stand for. And America starts winning again and Americans start winning again when we stand for what we believe. When we say it proud and clear.
And I've got to tell you that I think NOW is at the forefront of that. Because the way we treat our women, the way we treat our girls says so much about who we are as a country. And the way we go out and fight around the world for those same values I think says a lot about who we are to the rest of the world.
I think we've got to capture what makes America America again and that's why I'm in this race and thank you so much for your support. I needed it.
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