Larry Smith '08

“Right now there is more at stake than we can ever begin to measure.  Right now we must stop the tide of corporate driven influence to cut our unions and flatten wages, these trade deals are grinding, chewing, and chopping the core of our families apart.  We cannot let the few take away the things that our grandparents and parents fought for that enabled the great expansion of the American economy and the rise of our great middle class.  We must stop the fight on our middle class and do so now.  Organize with me.  Speak out with me.  Let’s assert our opinions, we know the bread and butter facts that we see at the kitchen tables of our working families.  Organize with me.  This fight is not about any one person, it is about restoring the greatness of dignity to all American workers.  Stand with me.  This essential fight impacts every American who is not in the top 3% of income earners in America.  So in other words, if you are not part of the Mars family or Sam Walton’s heirs, this applies to you.  This fight is about those who work and wake up each morning with the fear that if they get sick they may lose everything.  This fight is about restoring the legacy that expanded the middle class, expanded the American economy, for everyone.  For everyone! That is why I want to go to Washington; I want to be your voice.  I refuse to sit on the sidelines and watch this assault on the middle class.   Stand with me.  I will speak loudly in Washington for the working men and women.  I have been doing that my whole life.  When you grow up in a home where you have heard the names of Mother Jones, and John Wesley Anderson, my great-granddad who died of Black Lung, it becomes part of who you are.  We know the guarantees they fought for that led to the end of child labor in America, brought at 40 hour work week.  And now they, they want us to sit by while they export their old, unfair and unjust practices dismissed in America to China and elsewhere.  Sweatshops with children taken from their families, to work 7 day work weeks, 19 hours a day for less than pennies a day.  That’s what their view is.  The view of Wal-Mart;;  Wal-Mart- you know that great American corporation that sent Fruit of the Loom, Etcha –Sketch and the Hoola Hoop to China to be made by children.  Congressman Bartlett, a supporter of CAFTA , voted to send 16,000 jobs from Maryland to Central America.   Our great grandparents and grandparents recognized that dignity wasn’t just a word.  It was a core principle essential to fulfill the promise of the America.  They fought to guarantee we would have it.  This battle, I suppose in many ways is like the one they fought for.  This fight is for us and our kids.  We must make American belong to us again.  Stand with me and I will fight to ensure just that.  Thank you.  Thank you, very much!”