Bob Filner: “I rise today, and many of my colleagues will submit statements to the Record to support this special order, to…”

“I rise today, and many of my colleagues will submit statements to the Record to support this special order, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of a great organization called Americans for Democratic Action, an organization we fondly call ADA, an organization that has worked tirelessly for 5 decades to improve American society. It was on January 3, 1947, that 130 people gathered at the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC, to form Americans for Democratic Action. Included were political activists, academics, housewives, labor union leaders, and former New Dealers. They were idealists, the well-known and the unknown, all dedicated to the basic principle that government has a positive role to play in the lives of its citizens in promoting individual liberty and economic justice. Among the founders of ADA were such well-known figures as Eleanor Roosevelt, John Kenneth Galbraith, Walter Reuther, David Dubinsky, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Reinhold Niebuhr, Joseph L. Rauh, Jr., and Hubert Humphrey.”