Transcript of David Crosby's speech
The Shadow Convention held during the Democratic Convention in LA
Augus 18, 2000David Crosby 8/16/00
DAVID
Hello. Hello.
Why would an eighty-eight year old citizen of the United States Of America decide
that she had to walk across the country?
[AUDIENCE]
(unintelligible)
Mother Earth!
DAVID
Maybe for some of the reasons I’m gonna tell you…she’s gonna tell you, and I
don’t want to say what she’s going to say, but I know why an awful lot of us are
gathering together to try and work for campaign finance reform.
[APPLAUSE]
DAVID
I know… In a sense here I’m preaching to the converted, but I’m gonna say it
anyway, because it’s boiling inside me and I want to say it. We feel disenfranchised.
We feel as if our votes don’t count. We feel… well, the voter turnout shows that.
We feel that the elections are for sale, and we know that that wasn’t how it was
designed to work. When they wrote the Constitution, they did it in the Guttenberg
age. Mass media was moveable type. They never envisioned a world in which the
guy with the most television ad money and the cleverest spin doctors would run this
country. They never intended that to happen. They intended an informed electorate
to make those choices. They intended a participatory Democracy. Well, people
aren’t participating because they don’t feel that it’s gonna mean anything. They
don’t feel…that any longer…
[APPLAUSE]
DAVID
They feel, in essence, that they can’t fight city hall. Well, I encourage you to
remember several things. Remember Ghandi. Remember this little man. He’s a little
prune of a man, [applause] wrapped in a bedsheet. Didn’t have two nickels to rub
together, stopped the British Empire in its tracks!
[APPLAUSE]
DAVID
How? With the force of his convictions. [imitating] "No, I will not be quiet. I will
not sit down. No!" [laughter] "This is not right!" Well, that kind of courage works.
We know that he read Thoreau. We know that Dr. King read Ghandi, we have
pictures of him doing it. I’ve been studying this for a while. I just wrote a book and
made a documentary about activism, so I believe in it very strongly. And I say to
you that people sticking up for what they believe in… Individuals standing up and
saying `This isn’t right.’ Or, `this is how it should be.’ Or, `can I help you?’ These
are acts of exemplary humanity and they send out ripples all across the world. King
did it, Ghandi did it, the Dali Llama’s doing it. People do it all the time. They stand
up for what they believe in… They say `Hey! I can help here. I can make that
better. I can change this person’s life condition. And they inspire other people. Not
long ago I had the fortune to be in (well, I don’t know if it’s good fortune to be in)
Washington DC. But I was in Washington DC, and I was at the Capitol when
Granny D walked up to the Capitol.
[APPLAUSE]
DAVID
It inspired me so much that now were doing a rally in Washington on the 19th of
September for campaign finance reform, with McCain and Feingold and a lot of
other people on both sides of the aisle. What inspired me was that it was an
American thing. There were people there from both political parties, people of all
kinds, and they were all there because they admired one human being’s courage,
because they said `Gee! I could be like that!’ That person is Granny D.
[APPLAUSE]