Daniel's Speech at the Kickoff Rally

Sunday, August 19, 2007, at the Wilmette Community Recreation Center, 3000 Glenview Road, Wilmette, IL

Thank you, Jan Schakowsky, for being such an extraordinary model of what a legislator should be, of what an organizer should be, and, a decade ago, of what a State Representative should be. Your support has meant the world to this campaign.

Thank you Lou Lang, first of all, for being a voice of reason in Springfield right now. We know it's a frustrating task these days, but we appreciate your service. Thank you of course for your support and the support your organization brings, and for all I expect to learn from you in the legislature.

Thank you Larry Suffredin for, in what seems to be a recurring theme, being such a voice of reason in Cook County government. You're an inspiration to us all.

And thank you Debra Shore for being such a model, someone who knows that sweet spot, that intersection of idealism and pragmatism, someone who knows how to make idealism winning.

But, more importantly and I'm sorry, but this IS more important, thank you so much for coming today. What an amazing crowd!

We are here today to make a statement. In the 17th District, we are no longer willing to accept status quo politics.

As many of you know, my day job is as a mathematics professor at the University of Chicago, but in the past six years, as I watched the direction our country was headed, and as I grew increasingly upset about it, I found myself unable to stand by and watch anymore. I HAD TO do something to make change.

So I tried to bring my problem-solving skills to help good Democratic candidates get elected, starting during the John Kerry campaign of 2004 when so many of us worked so hard to make change. And as terrible as the result of that election was, I think even more important - and wonderful - is the way that group of people stayed together. We became a genuine community, working as one in pursuit of a common political goal. Today, as I stand here as a candidate, I can't tell you how proud I am to be a part of this amazing community. And I want you to give yourselves a hand because once again, we're doing an amazing thing that nobody could have predicted.

Because according to conventional political thinking, you're not supposed to even be here. You know, I sure am glad that nobody remembered to tell you that you're not supposed to care about state government. I sure am glad they didn't tell you that all that matters to you 15 months before the election is the Presidential race. And I sure am glad they didn't tell you not to care about our campaign just because my opponent isn't absolutely terrible.

All the old rules say that you're not supposed to care about this race. So to see a crowd like this at this event has me grateful, honored, and moved. It has me fired up and ready to win!

Now, it's not my place to tell you why you care about this race, but let me try to at least guess. Let's do an experiment: raise your hand with me if - like me - you're much more politically active than you were a decade ago.

That's incredible. Look around: isn't that a beautiful sight? We represent a new generation of activists and leaders. And when I say "generation," I'm not talking about age, I'm talking about how long we've been actively participating in politics. I consider my father, who first knocked on doors for a campaign in 2004 in Ohio, to be a part of our generation. Some people in our generation are in their 70's, and some are in their teens.

So what is it that unites us? What is it that drew us to political activism around the same time? I think it's that we felt called to service by a series of events that weakened our faith in our leaders. Almost a decade ago, the impeachment shocked us, told us that they were willing to put silly games above the will of the people and the best interests of the republic. Then, the recount in 2000 shook our faith in the very electoral system that is the foundation of our democracy. Finally, the Iraq war taught us that reason and common sense didn't mean much to leaders who preferred to manipulate patriotism and mislead.

The common thread is that these are all instances where we placed our trust in political leaders, and we learned - the hard way - that this trust was not justified. This betrayal awoke a deep and genuine patriotism inside of us. We knew that without our active participation, our country could not live up to its promise.

So we had to participate. But how?

To answer that question, we had to understand the problem more precisely. And I submit to you that the real problem was the erosion of community's role in politics. Our leaders could betray us because nobody was holding them accountable. We lacked the kind of communities that would be able to hold them to account.

What does holding them to account mean? Surely it means watching their actions and voicing our opinions about the legislation they vote on. But more importantly, it means inserting ourselves into the debate in Springfield and in Washington. If existing leaders were betraying us, then we had to provide new leaders. Our leaders would derive their power from the broad support of our community, and they would govern in accordance with the values of our community. They would work to solve the problems that matter to us. Illinois would no longer rank 48th in the country in education funding per student. Illinois would no longer sit around and wait for other states to take the lead in curbing carbon emissions. Illinois would no longer be the state with hardly any campaign finance laws and largely meaningless ethics legislation.

If all that was keeping us from this brighter society was an absence of communities that were organized around politics, then the solution was to build them. That was where we came in. We went to festivals and events, and the internet, to find each other. We made phone calls and held meetings. Like we will today, we knocked on doors and circulated petitions, spreading our message and growing our community. We volunteered and we socialized and we spent hours together, laughing and arguing. And we built something real and lasting.

We stand here today, after years of hard work and dedication, as a powerful community, ready to exercise our strength and choose Illinois's leaders.

That is our responsibility: to foster Illinois's new progressive leadership, and to nurture our own community so that we can continue to expand and develop.

And so we do our community-building here at home. But we work knowing that all across the country, communities like ours are doing the same thing, rejuvenating the peoples' role in government. Together, these communities make up a movement.

The goal of this movement is nothing less than to redistribute power in American society, so that our politics will no longer be controlled by lobbyists and insiders, by coal and oil, by insurance and pharmaceutical companies, or by the children of the powerful. Our politics will no longer be dominated by petty games and dishonest debates. Political power will not lie only in the hands of the wealthy, the connected, and the fortunate. And so, I ask you, when we succeed, in whose hands will political power lie?

Ours. Everybody's. It's really that simple.

So I thank you again, I thank you for all you've done, and for all you will do. I thank you for having the optimism to envision an America that is greater than the America we live in today, and for having the tenacity and strength to make that greater America come to be.

This campaign belongs to us. We begin today.