Political Quotes

“I feel fortunate, of course, to serve in the Senate and equally fortunate to represent the State of Illinois and the city of Chicago. What an amazing gathering place for America Chicago has been over the years--and still is to this day. When we talk about issues here in Washington, many times I can relate them not just to neighborhoods but to people in Chicago who feel so intensely about the land of their birth or causes of other countries. I have gone through that same experience myself--my mother an immigrant from Lithuania. I was fortunate to witness the freedom struggle in Lithuania when they finally broke from the Soviet Union. If you go down Chicago Avenue west of Michigan Avenue, you go into an area known as Ukrainian Village. That nomenclature speaks for itself. There are churches and gathering places, schools, and families who are watching the war in Ukraine with personal intensity. To them, it is a land where their mothers and fathers were born and where many of them were born, and they have prayers and pleas to the politicians not to forget. You can also step right outside of this Chamber, a few steps away, and find a group of Ukrainian Americans who have been demonstrating on behalf of the cause of Ukraine for as long as this war has gone on. I saw them this morning, and as we go by, the typical greeting in the Ukrainian Village is ``Slava Ukraini''--``Long Live Ukraine''--to which they reply that they agree with me.…”