Congressman Rush

December 21, 2007

It is, indeed, an honor and a privilege for me to be here today with President Chuck Middleton, the distinguished faculty members and staff of this great institution, and — most importantly — it is my honor and privilege to be here with all of the graduates and your family members and friends. When I was in your shoes as a Roosevelt University graduate in 1974, little did I know that one day I would be standing up here on this dais, not only as Commencement speaker but, also, as the grateful recipient of an honorary doctorate from my alma mater. I am so moved by this occasion. Without a doubt, this is an occasion that I will personally always cherish; and, I sincerely pray that my words today will help make this Commencement an occasion that you, too, will never ever forget.

It was Roosevelt University's uncommon commitment to the cause of equal rights and social justice that brought me here to speak for the first time back in 1969 — the year that American astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon. My own journey has been an amazing voyage as well — from becoming a member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to becoming a co-founder of the Illinois Black Panther Party to becoming a Chicago City Council member and, now, congressman of the First Congressional District in Illinois and what I believe is my highest calling, pastor of Beloved Community Christian Church. Just as Roosevelt's dedication to social justice — be it on Chicago's south side or in the Sudan — remains solid as a rock, this same commitment has remained the foundation for all my entire life. Therefore, it is fitting that the subject I will discuss with you today is social justice. I will offer to you that the next "giant step" we must take must be right here on Earth to finally and fully achieve freedom, equality and justice for all.

Graduates, I know that you thought that your exams were all over, but I have one last test question for you: How many social scientists does it take to change a light bulb? Give up? The answer is none. Social scientists do not change light bulbs; they search for the root cause for the last bulb going out.

While that certainly may be the case at other institutions of higher learning, it is not totally true here at Roosevelt where, from its inception, academic study has been inextricably associated with action to achieve positive social change. Take, for example, the involvement of Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal in Roosevelt's establishment. It was Myrdal's search for the root cause of inequality and injustice for blacks in America that produced the landmark study entitled An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, which was published in 1944. At the same time, however, Myrdal served on an early advisory board that worked to establish a college in Chicago whose doors would always be open to all people.

Myrdal, like other scholars involved in creating this break-the-mold, progressive institution, knew the need not only to study, but to replace the burned out bulb of justice and equality in America. With its radical mission of "providing higher education to students of diverse racial, ethnic and religious backgrounds without quotas or restrictions," Roosevelt University, since 1945, has shone forth as a light of leadership and a beacon of hope for a better future for countless Americans and Chicagoans, including 1949 Roosevelt graduate Harold Washington, who went on to become mayor of Chicago.

As I look out at you, today's graduates, it is clear that Roosevelt has achieved its mission of higher education for all — regardless of race, creed or color. And, it is all the more auspicious to recognize and applaud your success in this, the season of celebration. In light of the diversity that is evident here, I understand that you may be observing different expressions of this holy season. However, whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanzaa, at this time of year most people end up viewing on television one of the many film versions of Charles Dickens' classic novel, A Christmas Carol, which was published in 1843 at a time of industrialization and great economic and social change in England.

In the unlikely event that you have never heard, seen or read A Christmas Carol, it is — in brief — the tale of the mean and miserly money changer Ebenezer Scrooge, who is visited on Christmas Eve by three spirits — the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future. With these three spirits as his guides, Scrooge journeys through time and realizes the error of his ways. The tale's joyful conclusion of Scrooge's redemption never fails to bring forth cheers and tears no matter how many times we see this story. In fact, A Christmas Carol has been described as "the quintessential tale of self-interest and greed transformed into compassion and charity."

At this season, and in these times of great injustice and inequality in our own society, I want to take a moment to share with you what I have titled An American Carol: The Spirit of Social Justice — Past, Present and Future. At the conclusion of this tale, I trust that you, as graduates of Roosevelt, an institution whose mission, I might remind you, is to educate "socially conscious citizens for active and dedicated lives as leaders in their professions and in their communities," I trust that you will be more committed than ever to taking action to achieve the driving democratic ideals of Roosevelt's founders.

So, let us see first what the "Spirit of Social Justice Past" has to show us. Our journey begins at the end of World War II, which happens to be the time when I was born in a place called Albany, Ga., born into the segregated America that has been so well-documented by Myrdal in An American Dilemma and born into a society truly separate and unequal. To escape the perils of segregation and racism for African Americans — and particularly black boys in the white supremacist, segregated society of rural Georgia — when I was only a mere lad, seven years of age, my mother joined the 1.6 million African Americans migrating between 1950 and 1960 from the South to the North. My family's destination was a working-class neighborhood on the near north side of Chicago, where I saw for the first time blacks, Latinos, Jews, Italians, Asians and Appalachian whites living alongside one another, and where I glimpsed for the first time the possibility of justice and equality for all.

While the brutal murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till by whites in Mississippi in 1955 underscored my mother's wisdom in deciding to get her sons out of the South, the "Spirit of Social Justice Past" also wants us to view the significant victories achieved as the fledgling American civil rights movement began to gather steam. So, we see the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision overturning the sad story and history of this nation, the "separate but equal" legal doctrine, handed down in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. We also see the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas in 1957. We see the successful 1955-56 Montgomery bus boycott, and we see the emergence of Martin Luther King, Jr. as a national leader.

We see the sit-ins starting in Greensboro, N.C., in 1960, and the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, known as SNCC. We see the March on Washington, D.C. in 1963, where King delivered his riveting I Have a Dream speech; the Freedom Rides and Freedom Summer in Mississippi in 1964; and the marches from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., in 1965 led by, among others, SNCC Chairman John Lewis, who is now my colleague in the U.S. Congress from Georgia. Then, in 1966, we see the emergence of the Black Power movement with the founding of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, Calif.

We see the legislative gains achieved in the wake of direct action for social justice: the Civil Rights Act of 1957, which was the first anti-discriminatory federal legislation since Reconstruction; the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which banned discrimination in employment practices and public accommodations; the Voting Rights Act of 1965; and the Civil Rights Act of 1968 that banned discrimination in the sale or rental of housing.

Then, we see the assassination of King in 1968, and the subsequent uprising that struck at the fabric of democracy all across this nation in our inner cities; the police riot at the Democratic National Convention here in Chicago in the same year; and the release of the Kerner National Commission on Civil Disorders Report, with its damning conclusion that America was "moving into two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal." And, right here in our own city, hopes for social justice were dashed even further on Dec. 4, 1969, with the assassination of my fellow Black Panther Party leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark by Chicago police.

Still, as noted in Black Collegian's demographic profile of African Americans, 1970 to 2000: "For many of today's college students, the late 1960s and early 1970s may only be a period of time studied in history books, or revisited in television and movies. But the groundbreaking changes that took place during that significant period of social and political change continue to have a rippling effect on the America we know today." For example, compared to 1970, three times as many African Americans, age 25 and over, had earned at least a bachelor's degree in 2000. However, this record proportion of 17 per cent remains significantly lower than that of 28 per cent for comparable whites.

Thus, as the "Spirit of Social Justice Present" enters to escort us on the next leg of our journey, we see that the gap between blacks and whites in America persists despite undeniable social, economic and political advances of the recent past. You may recall that in 1903, premier African American scholar and National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) founder W.E.B. DuBois observed in The Souls of Black Folk that "the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line." As we look out upon the present day America, we may safely say that the problem of the color line is also the problem of the 21st Century.

Since the recent dawn of this new millennium, we see disparity based on race evident in everything from Katrina to Jena; in unemployment rates for African Americans and other minorities more than twice those for whites; and in academic achievement rates for black children that are only half those for whites. Moreover, we see racism and sexism running rampant in the mass media, and the celebration of a youth culture of violence, hatred, self-destruction, greed and death.

We also see the cause of social justice abandoned in general in the current Washington, D.C. administration's Scrooge-like pursuit of self-interest and greed. As a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, I have learned that just in my district alone, which stretches from the near south side of Chicago to the far southwest suburbs, taxpayers will pay $1 billion for the cost of the Iraq war through the end of this year. For the same amount of money, we could provide, for example, 609,343 children with decent health care; for this same billion dollars, nearly 1.4 million homes could have renewable electricity; for this same billion dollars, we could provide nearly 7,335 affordable housing units, or for this same billion dollars, we could give 117,164 scholarships to university students.

Dare we continue our journey now to look at what the "Spirit of Social Justice Future" has to show us? Roosevelt University graduates of 2007, I am here to tell you that it is truly up to you. It is now your responsibility to remember the commitment of your alma mater's founders to eradicate injustice and inequality in modern-day America. It is now your responsibility to carry out into the world the same spirit that led Roosevelt to establish the Mansfield Institute for Social Justice here in 1999 in order to prepare students to address issues of globalization, labor, housing, politics, environment, inequality and discrimination. As Roosevelt University graduates, you have a great legacy behind you and great preparation to be "socially conscious citizens" pursuing active and dedicated lives as leaders in your professions and communities. The world is waiting for you to take your place as its leaders. In the words of Mahatma Gandhi, "Be the change you want to see in the world."

As a fellow Roosevelt alumnus, this is my commitment as well. Otherwise, we face a future as horrifying as the one shown to Ebenezer Scrooge by the ghost of "Christmas Yet to Come" if he did not change his ways, ending in torment at his own grave. Thus, let us work together to create the society envisioned by Roosevelt's founders. Let us heed the words of the prophet, Micah, in the sixth chapter of the book of Micah, eighth verse: "And what does the LORD require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?" Only then can we be the justice — and the peace — we wish to see.

As we go forward from this place in that spirit, we may also remember the words of Maya Angelou in "Amazing Peace: A Christmas Poem," which she delivered on the occasion of the White House tree lighting in 2005. It says, in part:

We clap our hands and welcome the Peace of Christmas.
We beckon this good season to wait a while with us.
We, Baptist and Buddhist, Methodist and Muslim, say come,
Peace.
Come and fill us and our world with your majesty.
We, the Jew and the Jainist, the Catholic and the Confucian,
Implore you, to stay a while with us,
So we may learn by your shimmering light
How to look beyond complexion and see community.

It is Christmas time, a halting of hate time.

Look heavenward and speak the word aloud.
Peace. We look at our world and speak the word aloud.
Peace. We look at each other, then into ourselves
And we say without shyness or apology or hesitation.

Peace, My Brother.
Peace, My Sister.
Peace, My Soul.

Thank you. And, God bless you all.