I first want to thank the Congressional Black Caucus for this distinguished award, and to also congratulate my fellow award recipients.

Paul Robeson once said that each generation makes its own history and that each generation is judge and defined by the history it makes. When I first attended the activities sponsored by the CBC in 1987, the center of focus and controversy was the struggle to impose sanctions on the South African apartheid government. Nelson Mandela was still imprisoned, the South African machinery of tyranny and repression seemed interminable, and there stood the CBC with its determined, defiant will, with its collective democratic voice and power fighting to impose those sanctions. And the rest is history!

Strategically and historically We, African-Americans, and our struggle for justice have been at the moral center of this nation’s consciousness. From slavery, to its abolition, through the subsequent years of segregation and discrimination, the civil rights movement and beyond, we have given new and imaginative vision to this word democracy.

What does this word, democracy, mean to us individually and collectively in the 21st century? How is this word to be used, not simply as a mechanism to vote, but as a force that changes the material consequences for the millions of this planet’s citizens who live in abject and structural inequity?

New democratic ideals and policies for peaceful cooperation and stability in this hemisphere are now challenging existing paradigms and defining new horizons for participatory democracy, and assaults on poverty and disease by the most marginalized citizens in thregion. Within the borders of many Caribbean and Latin American countries new voices and organizatiaonal structures within the political process are determined to affect sustainable democratic change. And at the forefront of this movement are not only indigenous peoples but African descendants.

The Civil Rights Movement played a significant role in attracting the rest of the world to see that America has the potential to be an ever qualitatively evolving democracy. “We Shall Overcome,” the signature African-American call for full democracy, was adopted by all kinds of social struggles around the world as a kind of freedom anthem.

At this moment of a global ethical crisis, manifested in an economic crisis, we once again need the kind of bold, visionary, transformative leadership, from African-American citizens and leaders of the scale we’ve demonstrated in the past.

My intention here is not to upstage President Barack Obama, whose speech tonight succinctly framed the issues regarding healthcare legislation. Yet, all across the nation we need leadership to educate the American people and to expand democracy by passing the healthcare bill with protection from the greed of insurance companies. We need bold leadership from all of you across the country, your local and national civic organizations, and local and national elected leadership, to ensure that the greed and corruption from banks and corporations, so evident and widespread in recent years, are banished by protective laws as the economy is stabilized. We need bold leadership from all of you to address the race-coded criminal justice laws and economy that have shut away two million mostly Black and Latino citizens.

And on the global front, we need Black community and Black political leadership to once again help galvanize our country’s vision of what America and the world can be as new expressions of democracy by taking on the challenging global issues like climate change.

I am disappointed that Mr. Ricardo Alarcon, the President of the Cuba National Assembly, was once again denied a visa to attend tonight’s event, despite the fact that he was invited by the Black Caucus leadership which is expressing the national U.S. consensus to normalize relations with Cuba.

We need bold leadership from our communities and political representatives to help secure a just peace for Israel and Palestine which guarantees Palestinian humanity in a sovereign, self-determined homeland. We need more Black leadership and Black community support for Afro-descendents in Latin America in their struggles against racism and for their projects to become full citizens in the advancement of new national democracies and national development. And in particular, we must assume responsibility for ensuring that the American government works uncompromisingly with the Afro-Garifuna peoples of Honduras and with Afro Colombians to gain full access to national resources, political participation, and government protection from displacement from their communities and lands and from murder and assassination by all armed groups, including government security forces.

I have commented on but a few of the most important national and global issues which require the heroic history of African-American leadership, vision, and action. Our historic contributions to the expansion of democracy, justice, and equality, and our willingness as a community of American citizens and elected representatives to address pressing national and global policy issues give me such pride and hope in receiving this award from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. Thank you.

For more information about the Phoenix Awards, visit: http://www.cbcfinc.org/images/pdf/ALC/awardsdinner.pdf

September 26, 2009