I listened to your speech at last week's 20 th anniversary dinner, Reverend Al Sharpton's National Action Network, talk to friends and family supporters. It was the annual dinner of African-American, a very important question. Even if I know any Democrat would have kept their promise to return if they won the '08 election, I also know the importance and special rates, it puts on you, as the first African American at the same time.
However, I woke up the next day feeling uncomfortable, not because you do not have issues of direct importance to the black community on its head - as one of three children in the black to go to jail, once in your life or that black people in the unemployment rate twice as many white people - but because nowhere in your comments reflected deep and you talked about the elephant in the room, which affects all Americans, regardless of color: a growing number of poor Americans, not just the Americans are trying to fulfill their mortgage payments, and to eat, sleep under a roof, raise their children and pay their bills through.
As an ardent supporter of yours since I joined the campaign in 2008, there is something you need to hear, trying to fly over the political parties, you can forget your commitment to the importance of inclusion and empowerment. When you are preparing your speech to the nation tomorrow night, I am writing this letter to you as a friend and staunch supporter.
The rich are already on the table, as well as Democrats, Republicans, tea and trade unions, business and property interests. The poor can not afford for you to forget, and you can not afford either. Among all Americans, the poor are not only real victims of this recession, they are the victims of a campaign thirty years of humiliation and neglect, strengthening the rich on the backs of the rest of America in the dark fantasy and ultimately useless, as the rich get richer, somehow "trickle down" .
Well, it does not drip. While wages for the middle class have declined in the face of unprecedented wealth creation and technology since 1980, poverty in our country is the highest it has been in 51 years. This brings us to the beginning of 1960. Shame on all of us, otherwise we would be proud of the achievements of our country's rich and powerful.
If you do not put the poor at the heart of your policy for the next two years, with interests aligned in favor of the rich, too many middle class will join them in their sufferings. This "trickle-up poverty that poor countries with an unfair concentration of wealth at the top. This is what destroyed the great nations.
After the devastating 2008 financial crisis - that orgies are the wealthiest among us - and the recession that forged generations, and now on the agenda of cuts on the backs of the poor in America, we divide the loss of the fabric that makes us strong.
A few months ago, I sat on the bench during the celebration of the beautiful life of one of my heroes, and one of Yours, Kennedy adviser and architect of the policy, inclusion and empowerment, great Sargent Shriver. It was Sargent Shriver, who influenced and encouraged President Lyndon B. Johnson declared war on poverty in America in 1964.
Service, Mr. Shriver was very touching, but there was a noticeable lack. The First Lady, President Clinton, Secretary of State, Clinton, Oprah, Bono, Governor Schwarzenegger and too many other celebrities, politicians and supporters to celebrate all been there, and you were in the corner to the White House. We must seize this occasion to extend the dream of Mr. Shriver and the address of our country with an emotional speech to remember your vows campaign and a lifetime commitment to fight the war against diseases of poverty that plagues our country, and that more and more Americans fall into.
If we do not solve this problem with the same zeal with which we are talking about the national debt, History in Washington will continue to move towards more poverty and misery on the horizon, more suffering, lost their young minds and greatness denied. Why? Because we left the property interests that have played with the economy and come up to you to update your account painting that the poor, is not it, to blame.
By your own admission you were too busy "to do things" to depict the story of transformation of the presidents of both parties, as you respect. Where is this story today? Why are not Democrats and independents and even Republicans considered buying the amazing success of your mandate at the moment: to save the economy, management of two wars, you have not entered the health care reform, financial reform? Because the heart of your story is missing, the hard crushing realities faced by ordinary Americans who could not pay $ 1.000 for participation in the National Action Network dinner, but had to think about the Uptown subway ride $ 2.50. The heart of your story is the "other America", which is or may be poor. It can not poll well today, but only because there are more attacks, that "do things". And you're the only person who can lead.
When it comes to cut, if we're not talking about reversing Bush's tax cuts unfairly on people like me who are getting richer, it seems, just breathing, if you do not personally call day America and day for a more balanced economy between the rich and poor, between just and unjust results of education and for basic services in the reform of human rights, you may even passion that you need - in your electorate, and in my heart deeply compassionate - to win today, forget the future.
My business has always been to give voice to those outside the mainstream, which could change their creativity and transformation, in America, rappers, comedians, poets, designers, people who need a bank account, bloggers who use the same site, where the letter appears, GlobalGrind.com, talking to a new America who is multiracial, Tech-Smart, including a deeply compassionate. I never got to deviate from its mission to give voice to these communities. You can not afford not to do so.
We have a difficult time. difficult times. After a traitor. But we must begin with the victims, the poor, pay the least and the rich, who made incredibly well, giving the lion's share of the victims hard to come by. And for this fight, I'll be on your side for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Your friend,
Russell Simmons
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