Video: Rep. Jennifer McClellan (D-VA04)’s Powerful Speech on “The True Meaning of Democracy Ahead of America 250”

Excellent speech by Rep. Jennifer McClellan (D-VA04) on “the True Meaning of Democracy Ahead of America 250.” See below for video and a transcript. Superb job!

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. 250 years ago, the Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia gave birth to a  new nation built on the revolutionary idea that the power of government is derived from the people. The Continental Congress gave birth to a government by, of, and for the people based upon principles of liberty and justice for all. And today we can be extraordinarily proud that the United States of America still stands upon those principles. But we also have to acknowledge that the promise of America remains unfinished 250 years later.

Today, for Black Americans and historically marginalized communities, the ideals upon which this nation has been founded have too often been delayed, denied or defended only after bitter struggle – from the fight to end slavery to the struggle against Jim Crow, to the ongoing  battles for voting rights, equal justice, economic opportunity, quality health care. The story of America has always been a story of both promise and unfinished progress. And at this critical moment, we must be clear celebrating America’s extraordinary history cannot mean ignoring the work that is still before us to form that more perfect union. A true commemoration of 250 years must reckon with the reality upon which this country was founded, reconcile it with the ideals upon which this country was founded, and reckon with the communities who built this nation, fought to perfect it, and continue to demand that its promises are made real for all people.

Tonight, the Congressional Black Caucus  remains committed to ensuring our nation’s progress is measured not only by its past, but by its continued pursuit of  liberty and justice for all as we strive for that more perfect union. We hold these truths to  be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are  instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Mr.  Speaker, when Thomas Jefferson wrote those words in the Declaration of Independence, which the Continental Congress adopted on July 2nd, 1776, he did not include women. He did not  include nearly half a million enslaved men, women and children in the colonies, including his own children at  his beloved Monticello. Over a decade later, when James Madison wrote the Virginia plan that formed the foundation for our U.S. constitution, creating a government by, of, and for we  the people in order to form a more perfect union, he and the delegates to that convention did not include me.  They did not include over 300 enslaved people who lived and labored at his Montpelier estate under three generations  of the Madison family. And indeed the constitution, adopted in 1789, considered enslaved individuals like my ancestors, only 3/5 of a person for the purpose of how many  people would serve in this body, and for taxation. Beyond that, they were treated as property.

For 250 years, the story of America has been one of each generation trying to reconcile the ideals upon which this country was founded with the reality, and to make the ideals true for everyone. It has taken a civil war. The 13th, 14th,  15th, and 19th amendments at a minimum, to get us closer to that more perfect union. And we  have made progress. I would not be standing before you as the first Black woman elected to this body, or to serve in this  body, period, from the Commonwealth of Virginia, the birthplace of American democracy and the birthplace of American slavery. I wouldn’t be standing here if we hadn’t made progress. But every time we  have made progress as a nation towards that more perfect union, there’s been a backlash. And that backlash has involved  propaganda, violence and voter suppression. And yet we continue to strive for that  more perfect union. And I’m proud to be part of the Congressional Black Caucus, the conscience of the Congress that has fought for that progress, to keep that progress and to build upon that progress.

Virginia has played a leading role in this struggle of reconciling the ideals upon which our country was founded with its reality. Established on July 30th, 1619, Virginia boasts the oldest continuous lawmaking body in the Western Hemisphere, the first elected legislative assembly in the new world, the Virginia General Assembly, in which I and many of my fellow members of the Virginia delegation, have served. It was the  birthplace, the birth of American democracy. One month later, a Dutch privateer arrived on the shores of Virginia with 20 and odd Africans captured by Portuguese slavers in west central Africa, and they were traded for provisions. Three months after that, Virginia took steps towards becoming a permanent colony by recruiting English women to Jamestown to make wives to the inhabitants. And when those women arrived, they had no right to vote, no right to hold public office, no right to control their own property.

So since 1776 and particularly since 1789, America has been  faced with the question of how to make true for all Americans, the promise of our founding documents. How do we make true  a government by, of, and for the people when for so much of our history, too many people weren’t allowed to participate.  We have, again, as I said, made progress. A lot of that progress which was bought with  the blood of the Civil War, bought with the blood of people during the Civil Rights movement – marching, fighting, and in some cases dying for the right to vote. And yet today we  face a rollback of that progress, as we have a president who insists he will not sign another bill unless it  is a modern day poll tax, the SAVE America Act, which would require every American to prove their citizenship before they  could vote through documents that cost money. That is just as much a poll tax as the poll tax my father paid when he first registered to vote in Tennessee. And it is on the bible he kept, that receipt, that I took my oath of office to preserve, protect and defend  the constitution of the United States – all of it, not just the convenient parts.

We will  continue as the Congressional Black Caucus to fight for progress. We stand on the shoulders of those who paved the way before us. We are building a path for those who will come after us. Because, as  John Lewis said, democracy is not a state, it is an act that requires every generation to do  its part to build the beloved community. Because democracy in and of itself is not the point.  It’s what you do with it. It’s what you do to build that more perfect union. And my parents  growing up during the depression, under the tyranny of Jim Crow, as they fought to participate in their government, saw the best of government.  When the full force of the federal government was used during the New Deal to help people and solve problems  beyond their control caused by the Depression. But they saw the worst of government, a government that oppressed them solely for the color of their skin, for the benefit of others.  They sparked in me a desire to make government that force that helps people and solve problems.

That is what gets me through the chaos. Quite frankly, Mr. Speaker, because I am very cognizant every day that I serve in this body, and especially on certain days that court decisions come out of the Supreme Court, I am very cognizant that I’m fighting the same fights that my parents, my  grandparents and my great grandparents fought. And I could be angry about that, but I’m joyful. I’m joyful because I fight those fights from a position of more strength and power than they ever imagined.  And I fight those fights so that my children and their children don’t have to. But if they do, they fight from a position of more strength and power than I do. Because at the end of the day, in a government  by, of, and for the people, government reflects the perspective and therefore meets the needs of the people who  participate. And that’s why the right to vote is so sacred. And that is why the Congressional Black Caucus will fight tooth and nail to protect it. It was purchased through blood, sweat and many tears. It was promised  in our founding documents creating this government by, of, and for the people. And we will  not rest while some are denied the exercise of that right  because of barriers put in their way that have absolutely nothing to do with their ability to determine their own destiny.

Now, Mr. Speaker, behind every founding father and mother who fought to give birth to our nation and make  those ideals upon which this country was founded true for everyone, there’s a family. Today, American families face  serious strains as it becomes increasingly difficult to afford a home, childcare,  education, health care, retirement, groceries, paying their energy bills.  And Black families especially face challenges amidst the cost of living crisis that makes it much harder to pay rent or  mortgages, put food on the table, keep the lights on and get the health care they need when they need it. And a year ago, the policies put forward by congressional Republicans in what I call the big ugly bill made that even worse. Stripping health care away from millions of Americans, putting our  safety net, our health care safety net, shredding it into tatters, taking food out of the  mouths of hungry families, all to benefit the wealthiest top  10% in this country. The administration’s policies to separate families, slash health care funding, continue to threaten the well-being of families across the country.

Our country faces not only a record low fertility rate, as the cost of raising a child  surpasses $300,000, but it continues to face maternal mortality rates, infant mortality rates and pre-term birth rates that are worse than any other industrialized nation.  And if you’re a Black woman, you are more than three times as likely to die as a white woman from childbirth-related  death. But when you have a child in America, because we are one of the only developed nations without a national paid leave policy, 1 in 4 American mothers have to return to work within two weeks of giving  birth because they cannot afford to stay home. Even though you need at least six weeks to recover from childbirth – eight if you’ve had a c-section and believe me, you really need more than eight as  I know as I had one when my placenta ruptured and my daughter was born nine weeks  before her due date, and I needed more than eight weeks to recover.

For our families, the  basic necessities of life housing, health care, child care are increasingly out of reach. And the Heritage Foundation has issued their blueprint for American families, the Saving America by Saving the Family blueprint, which is  a blueprint for a conservative domestic and social policy plans. But instead of putting  forward solutions to the problems that all American families face, such as the high maternal infant mortality rates, high preterm birth rates, high costs of childbirth, high cost of childcare, high cost of  health care, lack of national paid leave, and the skyrocketing costs of everyday life, the plan focuses on a  narrow view of what constitutes a family, and ignores the wide  diversity of families that call America home.

I have a different vision. And that’s why this week I will release the All American Family agenda, which illustrates a plan to  make family life accessible and affordable for every American family, not just the ones that  look like mine, regardless of how they are formed, regardless of where they lived, what they  earn, how they worship. But everyone.  The All American Family agenda will call for a future where American families are free to plan when, whether and how to have children; free from fear that a pregnancy may be too costly or complicated; free from the fear that if they need medical intervention, that their provider will have to wait until they’re close enough to death to intervene. They’re free to work and care for loved ones without living paycheck to paycheck. As we mark 250 years of this nation, American families deserve opportunities  to grow, afford, and care for their families for the next 250 years – every American family, not just a few.

And so, Mr. Speaker, there’s so much more I could say as we celebrate 250 years of this extraordinary country. It is one I’m proud to  live in. It is one I am proud to serve as a member of Congress. It’s also one I love enough to ask it to live up to  its promises to all people who live here. We have come a long way, but we also have seen a lot of that progress rolled back. We are in that backlash again. We are in the same backlash that my great grandfather saw. The backlash to Reconstruction, the backlash that told him that he had to take a literacy test in Alabama and find three white men to vouch for his character, just to be able to register to vote.  It was the backlash that he faced in his community as racial terror lynchings tried to put Black people back in their place as defined by white supremacists and former Confederates who came back into power. It was the  same backlash in his generation that created the lie of white supremacy to break up coalitions between formerly enslaved people and poor, non-landowning white people. That  was beginning to make progress for life, liberty and justice, and the pursuit of happiness  for all.

We’re now in the same backlash that my parents faced.  My mother, who the third youngest of 14 children, who was  the first in her family to go beyond the eighth grade. Because in her town, the state of Mississippi, didn’t think it  was important enough to educate black children. She had to move after working for a year just to get a high school diploma. She had to move to go to college. And she saw firsthand in her family that because her siblings, her parents and her other family members and  friends didn’t have that opportunity, that they were limited in the jobs they could take. And that’s why every woman in her family was a  domestic, caring for white people’s children. And every man in her family was a laborer, because that’s all that was  available to them under the tyranny of Jim Crow.

My father, who had to pay that poll tax; my mother, who didn’t vote until after 1965. We’re facing  that backlash now. We’re facing the violence of people who stormed this building to take by force what they couldn’t win at the ballot box for only the second time in American history. We are facing the voter suppression of a modern day poll tax. We are facing the  propaganda of stolen elections, birtherism and the creation of villains in a limited view of what the American dream and the American story should be. But just like generations before us fought that backlash, the Congressional Black Caucus is standing up here today to fight back against this one. In a  government by, of, and for the people, government reflects the perspective and therefore meets  the needs of the people who participate. We fought long and hard to expand that participation beyond the white land-owning men that signed the declaration of independence and ratified the  constitution. We fought too hard for too long to ensure every American had the ability to pursue life, liberty, and  the pursuit of happiness. And it is our job as members of Congress to help the American people today achieve those by protecting their rights, not rolling them back.

So, Mr. Speaker, we’re not going back. Mr. Speaker, we’re going forward. We’re fighting to  ensure that the ideals upon which this country was founded become true for everybody; that when we say liberty and justice for all, we mean all- not just people who look like us, not just people who worship like us, not just people who were born  in this country, not just people who love like us, but everybody. We will fight for that more perfect union every single day. And if necessary, we’ll die for it. Because too many people did.

And I’ll close with this. As the president wants to reshape what history is taught in our schools, what history is shown in our public  spaces, what history has shown in our museums; as he wants to  ignore what he considers to be uncomfortable or put America in a dark and  unflattering light. We’re not that perfect union yet. There’s good, there’s bad and there’s ugly, and we have  to embrace all of it because it makes us who we are today, and we will never achieve that more perfect union if we don’t understand where we are and how we got here. But it’s also important that we learn the good, the bad, and the ugly, because the bad and the ugly help us celebrate how far we’ve come. And that came home to me when I took my children back to the African American history museum last year during spring break. And as I stood in the exhibit on the middle passage, which I’d been in many, many times, that time, in the midst  of the chaos we find ourselves in, I realized that somebody survived that so that I could be here in this moment, right now, celebrating years of  the ideal of liberty and justice for all that I can fight, for the reality of liberty and justice for all.  And I’m not going to let anybody take away the ability to celebrate that. I am not going to let anybody take away my joy at coming from an unknown member of my family. We think we know, but we don’t. DNA has allowed us to figure out maybe where they came from, but we have no idea who they are. But to come through the Middle Passage and end up with a descendant serving in this body, that’s an extraordinary American story. But you can’t celebrate it if you don’t  celebrate how it began. And you can’t fully celebrate how it began if you’re not honest about how it began.

So as we  each commemorate in our own way, what 250 years of America means, it means to me that I will fight as a member of the Congressional Black Caucus with my now 61 colleagues, a record number, as we face challenges  to our strength through redistricting and efforts to suppress votes, we’re going to  fight every day to strive for that more perfect union, because we believe in the  promise of the Declaration of Independence. We swore an oath to preserve, protect and defend  the constitution that created a government by, of, and for the people. And we will not rest until the ideals upon which this country was founded become true for everyone that calls America home.”