Over the last 25 years my work has been in the public arena.
I began with an inner city Christian newspaper that I founded,
moved on to start my current organization CURE - Coalition for Urban
Renewal and Education, wrote three books, and have written a weekly
opinion column for the last five years. I’ve spoken at over 200
universities and in 49 of 50 states.
All of this effort has been aimed to deliver one basic message. That
the barrier between America’s chronically poor and the American
dream is the welfare state socialism which was supposed to be our
answer to poverty.
As a young woman I was on welfare myself. I saw from inside the
perverse and destructive culture it created. A dehumanized culture
of dependence and irresponsibility that encourages behavior exactly
the opposite of what a successful life demands.
The result speaks for itself. Fifty years and a trillion plus
dollars in spending after President Johnson announced the War on
Poverty, poverty rates are unchanged.
I’ve often been approached to run for public office. However, I
always deferred because I felt I could make the greatest difference
delivering my message as a free agent, outside the formal structure
of politics.
But things have changed and now I’ve decided to run.
We’ve totally reversed the direction we started in after we reformed
welfare in 1996.
As I wrote a little over a year ago: “I thought we were on the road
to moving socialism out of poor black communities and replacing it
with wealth producing American capitalism. But, incredibly, we are
going in the opposite direction. Instead of poor America on
socialism becoming more like rich America on capitalism, rich
America on capitalism is becoming like poor America on socialism.”
The leaders of many of our largest corporations, whose founders were
among our nation’s great entrepreneurs, are now bureaucrats content
to bargain away our nation’s future, happy to play ball with
government, if it means carving out politically protected profits
for themselves.
The government health care takeover which has just been forced on an
unhappy America could not have happened without the cooperation of
our large pharmaceutical firms and insurance companies. They should
be ashamed of themselves.
Just a few weeks ago, the chairman of Citigroup, one the largest
banks in the world, came to Washington to testify and thanked
American taxpayers – you and me – for bailing out his bank.
There is a reason why eight of ten Americans say that our nation is
on the wrong track and why, according to Gallup, only 28% of voters
now believe most members of congress deserve to be re-elected.
Most citizens retain their common sense because they run a household
and have to pay their bills. They see through the duplicity and
deception that our political class tries to pass off as governing.
It’s estimated that our national debt plus unfunded obligations of
Social Security and Medicare is now $100 trillion. As with the
health care bill, those holding power in Washington will try to deal
with this through even greater tax increases and expansion of
government – sealing for good the welfare state transformation of
America.
I’m challenging a Black Caucus incumbent in a district that
political pundits rate “safe” for Democrats.
But this year no Democrat representing low income Americans should
feel safe peddling the same plantation policies that already have
produced our broken schools, broken families, and broken spirits.
Now they’re bringing these bankrupt ideas to the whole country.
Even California Senator Barbara Boxer recently admitted that this
year no seat is safe.
Will we resign ourselves to an America where freedom and prosperity
are distant memories and where 40% out-of-wedlock births and
abortion as birth control are our new social norms?
I won’t. It’s why I’m stepping into this race.
