Marcy Winograd Keynotes The Southern California Junior State Convention-- A Guest Post

Are the socialists in the house?

You bet. A boy unfurls a red flag with a hammer and sickle and races across the room amid Oh my God’s and robust laughter.

Are the Democrats in the house?

Cheers. Thumps. Hurrahs! We rule.

Republicans?

Rival cheers. Teens in suits, pressed white shirts, dark ties shoot up from their seats. We’re coming back!

Greens?

A plenty.

Libertarians.

Present.

Pirates?
 
Like a giant sea creature, several rows of chairs emit a boisterous collective “Aaargh” for the party formed solely to protect our Open Internet waters. One teen in a pirate hat is particularly enthusiastic.

Welcome to the bubbling-over southern California Junior State convention, held in Long Beach last weekend, where six-hundred politicos from dozens of high schools converged to hold a mock congress, parliamentary-style, with multiple parties represented, caucusing, debating bills, and wrestling with our nation’s future.

I was honored to be invited as the keynote speaker, though I was a bit mystified as to how this choice unfolded. I'm not exactly your "safe" lawmaker. 

I rock the boat.

Apparently, I came highly recommended by fellow anti-war activist Frank Dorrel, distributor of the serious comic book, Addicted to War, friend of one of the high school convention organizers, my escort who told me proudly, “I’m a Green” and would have kept on talking, eyes wide about politics and caucuses and bills had I not been summoned to the microphone to deliver my speech. Below is an excerpt:

I am a public school teacher, an anti-war leader, a health care activist running for Congress to work with others, like yourselves, to transform America, into a country where we put education before incarceration, where health care is a right, not a privilege, where, as Helen Keller, the blind woman who saw it all, once said, armies of destruction become armies of construction.

I cannot work alone to safeguard Social Security, to protect the right of states to enact single-payer health care, to end our multiple perpetual wars, to make education relevant, to ensure the Internet remains open and free, to reform our immigration laws, to make it easier for workers to organize a union, to defend the New Deal against those who are chomping at the bit to destroy or privatize Medicare.

I need you, to work with you, to work with my base, and to work with the Congressional Progressive Caucus for progressive change, for a shift in our way of thinking-- America: an equal partner, not a global dominator. Domination, occupation-- these are not sustainable choices. This is how the Roman Empire collapsed -- by spending all of its capital on the military and very little on its people.
 
These are difficult times

Unemployment

Foreclosures

Health care crisis

An insurgent racism, the Tea Party, cloaked in populism

A realization that one man in the White House cannot deliver on all our dreams.

In difficult times, we need courage-- because it takes courage to overcome the fear of failure, of impotence.

What if the world does not change?

What if I cannot make a difference?

What if, for all my protests, the masters of war get richer, the banks bigger, the gulf between the rich and the poor wider, the forests fewer, the earth hotter until we all burn in our own hell?

What if …

There will always be whispering what if’s to paralyze us, to make us complacent, to shrug our shoulders, to leave us disengaged.

To put others in charge of our fate.

Our challenge is to consider our fate a collective one and our role in creating our fate collaborative.
For as much as the American Dream caresses our notion of individualism & seduces us into narcissism, my struggle, my success, my dream … me …

The real love story is between us, what we create together.

I’m talking about movements for social change.

I’m talking about …

A tipping point.

A critical mass.

A moment when the world pivots.

Because of the words we dare utter, the marches we organize, the ideas we unveil, the boycotts we launch, the candidates we elect, the actions we embrace, not as individuals, but as a community, a silhouette of clasped hands ...

After my speech, a young member of the Tea Party movement, ran up to confront me.

She was offended by suggestion, no my accusation that the Tea Party, though its name sounds benign, patriotic, is really an insurgent racist movement seizing the mantle of populism from a too-quiet left.

"Why do you say we are racists?, she asked, looking angelic, so petite, hair all curls.

"Because," I said, "you scapegoat immigrants, vilify Obama, talk about returning to the real America. That’s just code for white America."

"No, it’s not."

"Yes, it is."

"No , it’s not."

I wanted to get away from this angle-devil-- and so I turned to talk to the parliamentarian, who told me, “My father is a die-hard Republican and he disagreed with everything you said, but he loved the way you said it. He loved your passion.”

It was easy to be passionate among passionate people. 

I mean this was my Nirvana, a room full of young people who love politics, who want to go to Washington, to Sacramento, to the United Nations, to the Streets to make a difference; a congress that isn’t just a two-party middle-finger fest but a parliamentary affair where everyone has a voice, where there is always the possibility that exotic and interesting alliances will forge something unexpected and monumental.

The parliamentarian gave me a gavel, engraved, “JSA Best Speaker.” 

It now sits proudly on my desk.

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It isn't a coincidence that Marcy Winograd was the first challenger endorsed by the Blue America PAC for the 2010 congressional cycle. She empitimizes our quest for "Better Democrats" and I hope the above post helps you grok who she is and what she's all about and what she would add to a Congress that has become a bulwark for conservatism through virtual ownsership by Wall Street and Big Business. Marcy's got something that we're wishing President Obama had. Help her get her message out to voters in southwest Los Angeles' 36th CD.