Charles Rangel: “thank you so much for giving me this opportunity to share with this body the life of a great American named Ron Brown…”

“thank you so much for giving me this opportunity to share with this body the life of a great American named Ron Brown, and I'm asking your support to have a Federal building, a U.N. missions building if you will, to be named after him. Even though Ron Brown was an African American from Harlem, his story is more of an American story than one of color, because on the streets of Harlem you don't find too many people exposed to dreams of ever becoming a Secretary of Commerce, indeed an ambassador for this great country. But Ron never forgot Harlem, and it was the Urban League that drove him to do things in the civil rights movement. It was his dedication to his country that drove him to spend 4 years in the military, but everywhere that Ron Brown would go as Secretary of Commerce, he was there not just to sell businesses to the country. He was there to sell the American flag, the principles of that flag and the thing that we stand for. I went with him to South Africa to see him negotiating with leaders, political leaders there, but all the time that he was talking to them, it wasn't which party was right or which party was wrong or how to bring about solidarity. He was asking how could America help the people to get clean water, to get medicine, to get food and to let them know that our multinationals were there, not just for the shareholders of their firm but the shareholders of the world.”