Charles Rangel speech, Tuesday 8/15/00
Transcribed by Monte Montgomery 310-474-0403

My brothers and my sisters, let me thank you for the political courage that
it takes for you, day after day, to stick with those beliefs that you have –
notwithstanding sometimes the cross you have to bear and the lack of
popularity.

What has made our country so great is that the leaders like Dr. King and
Adam Clayton Powell, and so many others who fought and indeed died for this
country . . . while we laud them after they have died, they were not martyrs
when they were alive. They were indeed the subjects of scorn and criticism.
But then, their ideas are the ones that survive. And we do have a
responsibility to do and to say and to speak out for those things that we
truly believe in.

Some of those things that we talk about today are just so basic. How we can
hold ourselves as the most civilized, the most prosperous, the most advanced
nation in the world, and still believe that we can take some mother’s child
and snuff the life away from that child . . . it is murder when it is done
one to another – it is no less than murder if it’s done by any state.
[applause]

I recently went to meet with Fidel Castro [applause]. Don’t applaud too
loud, I went with the Pope. [laughter] But I asked President Clinton before
I left, whether there was anything that I could suggest to Fidel Castro that
we could do to normalize the relationship between these great countries, and
to make certain we did not do any further harm to the health and the
prosperity of the people on the great island of Cuba. And he said that we
should ask the Cuban government to move more swiftly in the area of
democracy. I said to President Clinton, "It’s easy for me to talk about
democracy to foreigners. But Mr. President, what happens if while we’re
talking about their political prisoners, he asks me about our political
prisoners? [applause]

I am so impressed by Arianna’s crusade. Not just for America, but for
humankind. To be able to say that a person is not born – is not raised to be
locked up and treated worse than some of the ways we treat animals. We
cannot expect that anyone that is treated like this – or expects to be
treated like this – is going to be very kind to their fellow man.

But it is the numbers, Arianna, that are so shocking. For us to truly
believe that we have over two million human beings warehoused in our jails
and our prisons . . . my brothers and sisters, listen to this: China, which
has over a billion people . . . we have more people jailed in the United
States than they have [in prison] in all of the population of China.

In addition to that, we have to know that it is costing us $250 billion a
year, not to educate, not to rehabilitate, not to invest, but just to
warehouse Americans like this. How insane is it for us to say that we should
change the immigration laws to allow skilled foreign workers to come to do
jobs, when we refuse to invest in our own young people that can learn and
can do the jobs that are there? [applause]

The whole idea that you can have a so-called criminal justice system, and
yet in Washington, or in the capitals of the states, that we would mandate
that a judge will listen to the facts, and that he would have mandatory
sentences, defies common sense and belief . . . that there’s something in
the book that you can say, "one sentence fits all, and justice is going to
be done" . . . it is wrong for these things to happen. [applause]

And so, the relationship between the crime and time served . . . clearly the
kindest word you can find for it is that we are talking definitely about
political prisoners. It is nothing less than that. Because if you take the
profile of who is locked up in jails, you have the poorest of the people.
They are the people of color. They are the people who don’t have access to
education. They are the people that people in this country would like to
believe don’t exist. But I can tell you this: in the United States Congress,
we have 38 African-American brothers and sisters, 17 Latino members, and we
have dedicated members that are going to make certain that in this Congress,
and the next Congress, we are not going to allow these injustices to go by
without our voices and our bodies being seen and being heard, to make this
country what she can be. [applause]

At some point in time, we all have to be held accountable for not only what
we have done, but for our silence when things are being done to other
people. [applause] You can expect that as we view the killings that are
taking place in the prisons, by the Governor from Texas, and the killings
that took place before Clinton became President, by the Governor from
Arkansas, that we will find these killings unacceptable.

We don’t all have to read from the same page of everything that we dream and
believe in. But you can bet your life you will not be going to any
neighborhood, any valley, any community or any city, that I won’t be
standing up there with you, defending your right to speak out about the
injustices that are happening to people, especially as relates to this
so-called war against drugs. It has been a war against people. It has
warehoused our young. It has denied us the opportunity to educate. It has
forfeited the dreams and the aspirations of young people. It has allowed
drugs to come into our community as a substitute for hope. This is
unacceptable in any society, and it should be just obscene as it relates to
the great United States of America. [applause.]

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