Former Congresswoman Cynthia
McKinney (D-GA) delivered the following speech in Detroit, Michigan
on Women’s Equality Day, August 26. The “Trojan Horse”
she refers to is Denise Majette, who defeated McKinney in the Democratic
primary in August of last year.
Political women in this room will appreciate this.
Seems, my entire political career I’ve had my back against the ropes.
The Good Ol’ Boys in Georgia, trying to take me to the canvass for a
full ten count. But each time they thought they had me, women,
including women from Detroit, rose to stop the referee.
A few years ago, the issue was redistricting. They thought they
could redistrict me out of office. They put me in a district with
almost no black people in it and laughed as they wrote my political
obituary. But the women of Detroit responded with knowledge, unity,
and money. We won and started partying.
But we couldn’t celebrate long because the Good Ol’ Boys didn’t stop
plotting. Because down south, that’s what good ol’ boys do!
So finally, they hit on a formula.
They remembered the days of Helen of Troy. And how the Greeks
were able to penetrate even the tightest security by presenting what
appeared to be a peace offering, but that instead was nothing more than
an aggressive act of war.
Computer viruses today are sent through what are called Trojan Horses.
That is, seemingly innocuous e-mail messages—like the "Love Bug"
message that was sent out some time ago—that have embedded within them
nasty little files that just tear up your entire computer system.
So in like manner, these good ol’ boy strategists set about to find
a Trojan Horse. And this time, they hit upon what they considered
to be a winner: in my case, another black woman who would in actuality
be one of them. Imagine it. Good ol’ boys from the bad ol’
days making bad ol’ girls for today.
Now legend has it, that for ten years the Greeks laid siege on Troy
and for ten years they couldn’t get through. But only when they
decided to fool the people of Troy, and send in an offensive war machine
cloaked in a peace offering did they project themselves past a stiff
Troy defense.
Meanwhile, Troy believes that because it’s won every battle for the
past ten years that it has defeated the Greeks. Troy didn’t realize
that the Greeks had planned one more battle and that one would win the
war.
So, in my last election, 48,000 Republicans crossed over and voted in
the Democratic Primary.
Now, in Georgia the good ol’ boys think they’ve won the war; they’ve
set about in reverie. They even changed the state flag back from
the one confederate flag flag that we used to have to the two Confederate
flag flag that our former governor gave us to the new Confederate flag
flag that we now have that’s really still a confederate flag in drag.
But even as they revel in their successes, I would warn them, Don’t
mistake a mere battle for the war.
Now, today, I want to sing the song of a few women who are facing battles
big and small.
Of course, we have to start with the visionaries who began as abolitionists
and who then founded the Suffragist Movement: Sojourner Truth,
Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony. And
despite an imperfect movement, their vision that women can be thoroughly
integrated into every aspect of American society prevails as the ideal.
And as I can clearly see from the makeup of the Detroit City Council,
either ya’ll don’t have any plotting good ol’ boys up here, or woman
suffrage is alive and well and ya’ll have won every battle!
All I can say is Kenneth, Alonzo, and Kwame, ya’ll had better watch
out.
No one should ever talk about the voting power of women and not mention
Detroit!
Now, in December of last year, Time Magazine declared its person of
the year to be three women: Cynthia Cooper, Coleen Rowley, and
Sherron Watkins. All women whistleblowers who saw wrong and tried
to right it.
Cynthia Cooper had worked her way up to Vice President at Worldcom.
She knew what they were doing there and she knew it was wrong.
Moreover, it hurt the many people who had invested their last dollars
in Worldcom stock. So she wrote a letter to the Worldcom Board
and told them that the company was covering up $4 billion in losses.
Worldcom’s bubble suddenly burst and the rest is history.
Coleen Rowley’s now famous letter to Robert Mueller, her boss at the
FBI, exposed what FBI insiders knew: that something was terribly
wrong in Washington, DC where warnings and pleas, including hers, were
brushed off.
Sherron Watkins worked at Enron. She knew the company was lying
about its profits and so she wrote a letter to Ken Lay and told him
so. When that letter became public, she became another of Time
Magazine’s celebrated women whistleblowers of 1992.
Now, these women faced a tremendous decision. Should they turn
a blind eye to corruption? Or even could they? In the end,
we all know that they chose to do the right thing in the face of what
must have been incredible pressure to remain silent. In January,
May, and June, these three women stepped forward and won important battles
in our war for an America that lives up to its ideals.
Sherron Watkins said that Enron passed out a quote from Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr. that she had to look at every day. Dr. King’s quote
reminded us that "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent
about things that matter." Watkins said she saw that quote
every day and was compelled to act.
Now, I won’t get into what I think about Ken Lay passing out quotes
from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. But suffice it to say that Sherron
Watkins found the courage to act because Ken Lay had failed to do so.
Time Magazine goes on to say that these women didn’t wait for a higher
authority to tell them what to do. These women, as each
of us must also be prepared to do, took the helm to steer the ship of
our community. That these women saw the ship in citizenship and
they stepped up to that wheel.
Now, I’m not surprised that in three of the biggest political stories
of the year, maybe even the decade, a woman’s conscience lies at the
base of what we now know. What is surprising is that Time Magazine
recognized them.
But how many of you know women who do this literally every day of their
lives yet who remain unsung; some are even stung. Like the young
woman, Cathy Harris who told on the US Customs racial screening policy
at America’s airports. Cathy Harris from Georgia gave us "Flying
While Black."
Or like the young women who joined our military to get a college education
and who now find themselves on the frontlines of what the international
community has labeled an illegal war.
What about the young 22-year old woman soldier who took both the anthrax
and smallpox shots and who died before she could even be deployed overseas.
Or the young woman of the military who refused to take those shots and
who is now being court-martialed. Isn’t it a shame that the Administration
can’t tell those young women what the effect of these vaccines is on
them and their as yet unborn children, but it can jail them for not
taking them?
What about the young women, scared literally to death, and threatened
with having their organs sold if they don’t submit themselves to the
sex slave business that’s thriving in Eastern Europe today and one of
the worst offenders is DynCorp corporation, the very company that peddles
its anthrax and smallpox vaccines to the Pentagon through its sole source
contract with the Pentagon.
What about the young frontline females who are too young to drink in
their hometown pubs, but who are not too young to find themselves in
the quicksands of Iraq.
And, my sisters, what kind of America do they come home to?
What about a sister, Catherine Austin Fitts, who served as Assistant
Secretary of HUD under the Bush One Presidency, but is being harassed
today by lawsuits to deprive her of a living and who uncovered massive
financial fraud at HUD and reported it.
My mother, an Emergency Clinic nurse of 40 years in our big public hospital
in Atlanta, warned me the very first time the TV cameras showed the
first responders walking in the dust and smoke of the September 11th
tragedy. She called me on the phone and told me that I needed
to make sure that those workers got adequate treatment because there
were certain to be health effects from their presence in whatever known
and unknown toxins were present. A caring woman, skilled at saving
lives knew that those workers in particular, and New Yorkers in general,
could soon have a massive health problem.
But what none of us knew was that the Bush Administration would tell
the EPA to lie about the health hazards faced by the 9/11 workers at
Ground Zero. The New York Times tells us that the White House
was motivated by a strong desire to see the Stock Market quickly reopen
on Wall Street. No wonder Christie Todd Whitman threw in the towel
and went back home to her loving husband.
And what about me? I tried to call attention to the fact that
$2.3 trillion dollars was missing from the Pentagon and that they didn’t
need any more money until they could account for what they already had
lost.
And that those close to this Administration were poised to make huge
profits from any increase in defense spending. Shouldn’t the President’s
father and our current Vice President protect themselves and our country
from the appearance of conflict of interest?
In addition, I asked the question that could expose the Administration’s
secrets. I asked, What did the Bush Administration know and when
did it know it about the tragic events of September 11th. Who
else knew? And why did no one warn the innocent people of New
York.
When I asked that question I was called looney; my words were intentionally
twisted by journalists who should have known better. But we all
know better now, and what we know is that this Administration has not
leveled with the American people on so many issues.
What we also learned is that in politics, when the going got tough,
many men got going. Through some of the most important issues
confronting our country, you have heard the voices of women.
Women will ask the questions that no one else will ask. Why?
I believe it’s because we haven’t lost our souls yet.
But just as sure as I can
tell you that today, please know that at some far away place, some good
ol’ boy is taking the souls out of their cloned bad ol’ girls.
Now is a particularly dangerous time. Because sister will turn
against sister and most casual observers won’t even know why.
They will send us Trojan Horses. But some gift horses deserve
to be looked at in the mouth!
The Founding Mothers of Woman Suffrage envisioned a better America and
women helping to make it so.
Let us live up to their vision and to the mantle they’ve left us; let
us celebrate each victorious battle, but also let us recognize that
winning a battle is not the same as winning the war. Nor is a
battle lost a lost war.
And as for me, stay tuned for 2004!