2008 Democratic National Convention: Remarks as prepared for delivery by Tom
Balanoff, President, SEIU Local 1 (Chicago)
/EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UPON DELIVERY OF SPEECH, SCHEDULED FOR 11:00 P.M. EDT
TODAY, AUGUST 25/
/ADVANCE/ DENVER, Aug. 25 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The following is a
transcript of a speech, as prepared for delivery, by Tom Balanoff at the
Democratic National Convention on Monday, August 25, 2008:
Scheduled for delivery: August 25, 2008 - 7:00-8:00 p.m. MT
EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE ON DELIVERY
(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080331/DNCCLOGO )
I bring you warm greetings from 175,000 hard-working members of the SEIU of
Illinois. I was born in 1950. My father was a steelworker in south Chicago.
Like millions of other industrial workers in this country, he believed in the
American dream: if you worked hard, you could build a good life for yourself
and your family and create better opportunities for your children.
My parents, like millions of other working families, were able to own a home
and car and put their children through college. Back then, in that City of Big
Shoulders, the Chicago of the 1950s and '60s and '70s, the American dream was
a reality. By the early 1980s, as our economy began to globalize, the steel
industry was in decline, and industrial plants were closing all over our
country--and especially in Chicago.
That's what Barack Obama found when he moved to Chicago in 1984. On the south
side of Chicago, in the aftermath of steel plant closings, this enormously
talented man, who undoubtedly had many other opportunities, chose to begin his
political career at the grassroots level.
As a community organizer, he devoted his considerable gifts to helping
displaced workers and their families try to rebuild their lives. He worked
with church-based groups to bring job training programs to poor neighborhoods.
He organized tenants in successful efforts to remove asbestos from public
housing. He committed himself to improving the future of hard-working people
devastated by the decline of the manufacturing sector.
It was this experience as a community organizer that has greatly influenced
Barack Obama's political perspective and which is at the core of his identity.
He understands the challenges that working families face. He knows that they
are the strength of this nation. He knows that in the current economic
climate, many of these families struggle despite how hard they work every day.
Barack Obama believes that if you go to work in the United States, you should
not have to live in poverty. He believes that hard work should be rewarded
with a living wage, health care, and a secure retirement, and that these
rewards will build stronger families and communities and a stronger America.
John McCain looks to Wall Street and says the economy is OK. Barack Obama
looks to Main Street and knows that it is not OK. The working families of this
country cannot afford four more years of Bush-McCain economic policies.
Barack Obama offers the change we need to revive the American dream for
millions of America's workers and their families.
SOURCE 2008 Democratic National Convention Committee
Democratic National Convention Press Office, +1-720-362-2006
