2006 Campus Progress National Student Conference - Morning Plenary Remarks from David Halperin

Campus Progress National Student Conference – Morning Plenary

Remarks by David Halperin, Director, Campus Progress and Senior Vice President, Center for American Progress
Wednesday, July 12, 2006

 
Welcome to the 2nd annual Campus Progress National Student Conference. Thank you all for coming.

We’ve had a great experience working with many of you this year, and I want to start by giving you an update.

Last year at the time of our conference, Campus Progress, five months old, supported 13 student publications on 13 campuses.

Today we work with you to support 45 publications, a wide range of student papers & journals all across America.

And we’ve published over 800 of your pieces on our web magazine CampusProgress.org.

Last year at the time of our conference, we’d supported a single student campaign – the energized Princeton students who filibustered Bill Frist, asking for fairness on picking judges.

Today we support your campaigns on divesting from Sudan, on the Iraq war, on living wage and poverty and the death penalty.

We’re also proud to be working in national coalitions that fight for clean energy, for academic freedom, and for affordable college.

And we’ve worked with students to create over 220 speaking events and film screenings.

Last year, this conference had 650 students from 150 schools and 47 states.

This year, so many of you wanted to be here that we stretched our resources. So we have 1000 students here, from over 275 schools, and at least 48 states.

We’ve expanded in other ways. Yesterday we did an all-day grassroots training with Wellstone Action and the Student PIRGs. Tomorrow, we’ll have an all-day journalism conference for students in our network.

Last year, our keynote speaker was President Bill Clinton. And we thought, how can we follow that? We had to look to the future. This year’s keynote is Senator Barack Obama, and you’ll meet him later today.

Last year our speakers included skinny indie rocker Ted Leo. This year, we’ve got Fat Joe.

Last year dozens of right wing publications distorted Paul Begala’s remarks at our conference.

This year, it could be you!

Last year, Oliver North attacked our conference because one group’s flyer out of the 300 we stuffed into your tote bags was not to his taste.

This year, Pat Robertson is predicting an earthquake and a tidal wave in this room.

Well maybe Rev. Robertson is on to something with all his talk about the weather. He was saying that God would use extreme weather to punish people who stood up for heretical things – like believing that people, including gays and lesbians, should have equal rights. Or believing that high school science classes should teach… science.

But I’m talking about something different. I’m talking about you all becoming a powerful force of nature.

Because you can generate some thunder here today. And you can go back to your campuses this fall and shake the ground. And you can reach across your campuses and come together like a full force wind.

Then maybe you can start changing things in your communities and this country. Maybe you can take on the people who have used intolerance and fear, cynicism and greed to divide and weaken this country.

These so-called leaders have let us down. Their policies have made it hard for you to pay for school, to pay for gas, to imagine that you can have a home and family the way many of your parents did. They’ve let the country down on Katrina and poverty, on global warming, on media monopolies, on the Iraq war and protection of our people. They spend their time avoiding the real problems, and instead work to attack your personal freedom and choices. Some of them have broken faith by engaging in blatant corruption – selling their offices for private gain. Meanwhile, forces in opposition often have failed to inspire and unite.

Older generations have not done the job. The country has so much promise. There are so many challenges and opportunities, and instead of meeting them we’re spinning our wheels.

But you all are doing innovative and powerful work already – activism, advocacy, and journalism. You are smart and bold and without fear.

You can change things. You can get us on the path to progress. There are just a few things you need to keep doing.

Learn the facts, dig deeper, and expose the truth – the truth is on our side.

Stand up for what you believe in.

And connect with each other and find common ground.

And there’s something we need to do – believe in you and invest in you. Progressives haven’t done that enough. But that’s changing.

For us at the Center for American Progress and Campus Progress, the chance to work with the next generation is a gift.

I’m proud that I know so many of you in this room, and proud of the work you do. Our team is excited to meet more of you today and going forward.

Campus Progress seeks to make a difference to your work in at least three ways.

First, instead of only enlisting you to support our campaigns, we are a giant megaphone that amplifies your voices – your campaigns, your journalism, your events.

Second, we look for new ways to tell the story and get the word out – new kinds of videos, events, publications.

Third, we are committed to bringing progressive young people together – across the boundaries of campus, state, background, and issues you care about. We’re not just trying to help build a progressive young people’s movement – we’re trying to build a progressive movement period. There isn’t one now.

You can build and you can be the leaders of that movement. There’s so much more that unites us than divides us. You are committed to opportunity, justice, freedom, accountable leaders, and a safer world. And you can win if your generation of leaders is better trained, better informed, more diverse, and more united than generations before.

In this work to build unity we’re proud to have great allies like USSA, the League of Young Voters, the PIRGs, Vox, Roosevelt, Young People For, and Energy Action.

And now I’m pleased to present, one after the other, two great leaders, each with three names.

First, the executive director of Voto Latino, Maria Teresa Peterson. And, then, the cofounder of the League of Young Voters, and now the executive director of the Ruckus Society, Adrienne Maree Brown.

That’s it for me. Today, listen, speak up, challenge what you hear, connect with each other. This is your day – make it count. Thanks.