Speech concerning Ronald Reagan, 1982

-16In the 70s, corporations raised prices when deman dropped in order to maintain high profits.

The larger world has changed as well.

First, the United States "lost" what it had never owned: Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Cuba, and Iran, despite our excessive ability to fire missiles and drop bombs. We "lost" because we allied ourselves with the forces of reaction and colonialism and opposed mass movements armed with a popular political appeal bound to defeat a superior military machine.

In Ethiopia, Angola, and Mozambique, the United States lost again, as the oppresive regimes we supported were overthrown. In El Salvador, Nicaragua, Namibia, and Anzania we are sure to lose, as we continue to mislearn the lessons of our own imperial history.

More specifically, America's position as the richest society on the planet too often identified us with an old order that was passing and against a new order struggling to be born.

At home, the corporate system became more interested in its own protection, and reinforced terms of trade which discriminated in favor of the wealthy nations against the impoverished.

The prices the world's poor pay for their imports have been going up, and the prices they receive for their exports to the rich natins have been in relative decline.

With the exception of the OPEC states, the economically-inferior position of the third world has worsened.

American investments in Canada and Europe increased; American investments in the third world went down.

-17European money came here, seeking labor which could be more easily dismissed, a human commodity which this nation offers for sale.

Both transfers of capital reinforced the reactionary theory which pits the workers of advanced countries against those in nations that are poor, just as workers in the frost belt are made to forego jobs today so that employers in the sun belt can avoid unions, decent wages, and human benefits.

About a year and a half ago, on October 28, 1980, candidate Reagan asked the voters of America to ask themselves if they were better off than they had been four years before when Jimmy Carter was elected president of the United States.

After one year of the Reagan presidency, that question must be asked again.

For some Americans, the answer is a definite yes.

If you earn more than $100,000 a year, the answer must be yes. You'll haul in an extra $2,000 a year from the Reagan tax give-a-way, and even at that level, $2,000 can't hurt.

If you're an oil executive or an oil company, the answer must be yes again. You're so busy counting your windfall profits you don't have time to explore for oil, so you just gobble up smaller oil companies instead.

If you dump poisonous wastes in a river or a lake, its smooth sailing ahead; the EPA has cut back its enforcement forces.

Only 60 EPA cases were referred for prosecution in 1981 against a customary average of 200 cases in past years.

-18if you manufacture products that could be dangerous to the public, your're in good shape. Today, the consumer products safety commission has dropped investigations of products linked to 60,000 injuries and 500 deaths each year.

If you own a factory that's dangerous to your employees, (OSHA) inpections are down 17 per cent in 1982.

If you expect to inherit a large estate, the answer is a definiteyes. Estate taxes have almost been replealed.

If you own a big drug firm, you've got to say yes. Uncle Sam isn't regulating what you sell the public as closely as he did a year ago.

If you're a Christian Academy -- that's shorthand for segregated school -- you're much better off. You don't have to pay taxes, and you don't have to have students whose skins are dark.

A new kind of social darwinism has been foisted upon us -- the survival of the richest.

Despite the oppressive forces around us, despite the heavy weight of the self-satisfied, the cold-heartedness of neo-conservative confederacy, a great deal of the solution to our current condition lies within our hands.

There is much we can do for ourselves.

If the Regan presidency forces us to do tomorrow that which we should have done on yesterday, then we may someday say that the early eighties were the years when black America awakened from a heavy

-19-

The power of the ballot box is an undeveloped resource in most of Black America.

Only 61 percent of eligible blacks were registered on November 4, 1980.

Only 55 percent of them had the energy and initiative to actually vote.

One one-third of those blacks between 18 and 25 were registered to vote.

Almost nowhere does black registration equal registration for whites.

Almost nowhere do black and white Americans vore equal percentages of their registered population.

Almost nowhere do black voters specify the demands we make on those who represent us.

Almost nowhere are we able to punish enemies as easily as we reward friends.

Almost nowhere is Africa a part of our agenda.

Almost nowhere do we work in effective coalition.

Our economic strength is undervalued, too.

We abuse our purchase power and dissipate our dollars among a merchant class that takes and never gives.

We persist in the belief that others' ice is colder, sugar sweeter, medicine stronger.

By marshaling our polical and economic power, we can begin to secure our rights once again.

Although the task before us is immense, the road forward is clear.

-20There is a large number whose vision of their future does not match the view from the oval office.

There is a sizeable body of opinion in America which refuses to surrender yesterday's goals to the occupants of power and the princes of privelege.

But these -- our countrymen and women, young and old, of all races, creeds, and colors -- mistakenly believe themselves to be impotent. Unable to influence the society in which they live.

Twenty years ago, black young people in the south sat down in order to stand up for their rights.

The marched and picketed and protested against state-sanctioned segregation, and brought that system crashing to its knees.

In later years, another generation said "no" to aggressive, colonial war waged by their country, and put their bodies in the path of the war machhine.

Today's times require no less, and, in fact, insist on more.

There is a large space created by the lack of any effective political opposition to the selfishness that surrounds us -- that space can be filled and the foreful opposition moblizied, but it will take hard work.

New voters must be registered and organized and educated and energized.

This year's congressional contest should become 435 Referenda or Reganomics. Surveys on the continuation of an aggressive, foreign policy.

Here will come a first national opportunity to purge the congress of th moral majoritorians.