Political Quotes

“Mr. President, thank you for the opportunity to appear tonight, and I share my praise for my colleague, the Senator from Connecticut. We came to the Senate together. His leadership on this issue is something I admire, but more than leadership on the issue, I admire his heart and his compassion. He has suffered because his citizens have suffered. And if you suffer and you don't try to change things--if you don't try to do things differently--then you are not fully alive. I honor that in the Senator, that he is willing to be vulnerable and in his suffering is trying to find help for others. I have a little scar tissue on this issue. I would love to describe the Virginia experience and my own personal experience on this and then ask a series of questions of my colleague from Connecticut. I was elected to office--to the Richmond City Council--for the first time in May of 1994. At the time I was elected, Richmond had the second highest homicide rate per capita in the United States. I was sworn in on July 1, 1994. On October 14, 1994--I will never forget that day--in my city council district, in a public housing community, Gilpin Court, which is the largest between Washington and Atlanta, a 35-year-old guy walked into an apartment and gunned down a family of six, from a 35-year old woman, to her younger sister, to tiny little babies and children. I got a call as a city council member. I raced to the scene, and it was chaos.…”