Today's Possibilities Are Not Tomorrows

Rarely Have Americans Lived Through So Much Change, In So Many Ways, In So Short A Time. Quietly, But With Gathering Force, The Ground Has Shifted Beneath Our Feet As We Have Moved Into An Information Age, A Global Economy, A Truly New World.

Old Or Young, Healthy As A Horse Or A Person With A Disability That Hasn't Kept You Down, Man Or Woman, Native American, Native Born, Immigrant, Straight Or Gay - Whatever; The Test Ought To Be I Believe In The Constitution, The Bill Of Rights And The Declaration Of Independence. I Believe In Religious Liberty. I Believe In Freedom Of Speech. I Believe In Working Hard And Playing By The Rules. I'm Showing Up For Work Tomorrow. I'm Building That Bridge To The 21st Century. That Ought To Be The Test.

Demand That Your Government Pays More Attention. It's Immoral That People In Africa Die Like Flies Of Diseases That No One Dies Of In The United States. And The More Disease There Is, The More Political Unrest There Will Be, Leading To More Darfurs, Which The U.s. Will Have To Pay To Fix.

We Have Seen A Man Dragged To Death In Texas Simply Because He Was Black. A Young Man Murdered In Wyoming Simply Because He Was Gay. In The Last Year Alone, We've Seen The Shootings Of African Americans, Asian Americans, And Jewish Children Simply Because Of Who They Were. This Is Not The American Way. We Must Draw The Line. Without Delay, We Must Pass The Hate Crimes Prevention Act And The Employment Non-discrimination Act. And We Should Reauthorize The Violence Against Women Act.

If You Believe In Making Change From The Bottom Up, If You Believe The Measure Of Change Is How Many People's Lives Are Better, You Know It's Hard And Some People Think It's Boring. Speeches Like This Are Fun, Actually Doing The Work Is Hard.