Cynthia McKinney
World Can’t Wait Press Conference
National Press Club
January 4, 2007
I am pleased to join Debra Sweet, Cindy Sheehan, John Nichols, Michael Ratner, David Swanson, and Gore Vidal in declaring that The World Can’t Wait any longer for us in the United States to rein in the Bush Administration and its cohorts among the Democratic Party who trample the values of the American people and perpetrate unfettered criminality against us and innocent peoples around the world.
As I travel across our vast and beautiful country, all I can see is
that we Americans have been blessed with a bounty to be shared with the
rest of the world. The diverse backgrounds of our people give us a
unique ability to greet the world in its many languages and cultures.
However we squander that opportunity every time the ugly sting of
discrimination punishes people for being different.
We are blessed with rich agricultural lands that can truly feed the
world; but instead we give to our own farmers and to poor and hungry
farmers in the developing world, seeds that propagate only once and
foods with genetic mutations that can cause unknown and dangerous
health effects.
And while we say that democracy is a value worth fighting for, it’s
clear that the platitudes are not reflected in our policies, and so we
build on our legacy of racial exclusion with faith-based voting and
stolen elections for all.
And finally, instead of money for education, health care,
infrastructure, and technology, our country has stationed almost 1.5
million troops in more than 100 countries across the planet, making
the war machine our biggest export.
The world now knows that this emperor wears no clothes.
It is clear that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was right when he said:
We have guided missiles and misguided men. It is time to get rid of the
misguided men and women! And only the activism of the American people
can do that.
We must act now and not give up because the world can’t wait!