Political Quotes

“And still I rise, Madam Speaker. I rise today with a heavy heart, and I say this because of the topic that I will share with persons based on a personal experience that I had. I often say I rise in the spirit of Maya Angelou. I rise with the notion that I bring the gifts our ancestors gave on the dream and the hope of the slave. That doesn't apply to me personally, but generally speaking it applies to people of my ethnicity, my race. I rise today with this heavy heart because of something that has haunted me since I saw it some many weeks ago, something that haunted me to the extent that I returned to my office after having seen it and called it to the attention of my staff. I have had a good deal of consternation in terms of how to respond and react to what I saw, so permit me to share this vignette with you and a bit of commentary thereafter. While visiting a local facility, a store in the area--I will not announce the name of the business. I can if I have to, but I choose not to today. While I was there for business purposes, I saw children come in. These children, I am going to guesstimate, 5 to 10. They came in the main entrance, they proceeded to move over to my left, their right, as they came in, and they had bags. They went up and down each aisle in the store collecting things. They proceeded to do this all the way through the store, traversing the entirety of the store. When they arrived at the very last aisle in the store, they walked out.…”