Executive Session
Floor Speech
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Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, I thank my colleagues who are here and for all of the work that has been done around the Equality Act, not just here in the Senate but also in the House of Representatives.
I want to make this very clear. You look at history, and you see that the fundamental equality of all Americans has been denied for so many generations--for women who fought for equality under the law and the right to vote; for African Americans, who fought for equality under the law. We have seen from our founding they have struggled to make real the promise of this Nation--a promise of an ideal that we are all equal under the law.
Our Founders--these imperfect geniuses--enshrined these ideals. This Nation was not founded in perfection but in aspiration. The very Founders themselves referred to Native Americans as savages. They talked about women as not being equal citizens. They denied African Americans full and equal citizenship. Yet these aspirational documents were so profound that every generation of Americans has called to our founding ideals to overcome the inequality that has been inherent in our country.
Susan B. Anthony called to the founding documents for her equality and the equality of women. Martin Luther King, on The Mall, called to that check--to that promissory note--that it was time. Yet here we are, in the year 2020, still calling for the full equality of all American citizens when it comes to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans.
I think back to my own family--to my grandparents and great- grandmother--who talked about the excuses that were used to deny them equality. There were religious excuses. I am a big believer in religious freedom, but people sought to deny Blacks and Whites from marrying. In fact, when Loving v. Virginia passed, the majority of Americans were still against interracial marriage in this country. Somehow, people were using religion as a shield from establishing the fundamental ideals of this country. We overcame that.
These types of reasons were given for the dehumanizing treatment of Native Americans, and these kinds of excuses were used to justify the segregation of African Americans. In every generation, we fought and we struggled and we came together--multiracial, multiethnic, diverse coalitions--to overcome this.
This week, I was so grateful to see the decision of the Supreme Court, but I was of mixed feelings about it. Why would it take an action of the Supreme Court to justify what already is--equal humanity? equal dignity? Why would it take so long for a country to say: ``In this Nation, a majority of States cannot discriminate against you. You cannot be fired just because of who you are''?
I hear the echoes of my own ancestry growing up in a country in which children were told and saw clearly before them laws enshrined that were bigoted and biased; that they were not equal citizens, and even though, when we stand up in our grade schools, we have to say those words ``liberty and justice for all,'' what does it mean to a child who is denied those things?
I see us in a country now in which we are raising children who are in danger. LGBTQ kids are almost five times as likely as their straight peers to attempt suicide. LGBTQ kids--about 30 percent--admit to missing school because of being in fear for their safety. This is in America in 2020. Black trans women are dying at unacceptable, unconscionable rates. I say dying. They are being murdered. There have been 15 transgender or gender nonconforming people who have been murdered, and last week alone, two transgender women were killed-- Dominique Fells and Riah Milton.
We have work to do in this country to establish the fundamental ideals that have been said from the founding of this country that we will all be equal under the law, the fundamental ideals from the founding of this country that we are a nation of liberty and justice for all.
Here we are at the crossroads of history, forcing our fellow Americans to come and ask for what is fundamentally theirs already-- equal dignity, equal rights. The Equality Act is too late already. It is too late to do what was preordained by the very founding of this Nation. We are too late already to save the lives of children who have been forced to live in a nation that doesn't recognize their equal dignity. We are too late already to protect the shame of people who have been fired just because they are gay, who have been denied accommodation just because they are gay--the humiliation of which, I dare say, so many in this body know from their families' stories.
So we come here to the floor to ask for what is overdue, to ask for us to establish in law what is true in the spirit of this Nation, and to echo the words of our ancestors, great suffragettes, great civil rights leaders, great Native Americans, who have all come to this Capitol to say: This is who we are--equal citizens under the law.
To my colleagues who are with me today, I tell you that, no matter what happens with this unanimous consent, justice will come to this country. No matter who stands against this Equality Act, they stand on the wrong side of history, on the arc of the moral universe, but it bends toward justice. Well, it never bends automatically. We need some arc benders. For too many people in this country, justice delayed is justice denied. So we will not give up. We will not yield. We will not equivocate. We will not retreat. This will become the law of the land.
We have made some steps in the right direction of justice, but we are still in the foothills. We have a mountain to climb, but I know we will make it to the mountaintop. I know that this Nation will fulfill its promise to all of its people and, indeed, become the promised land.
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Mr. BOOKER. Madam President, I rise today to discuss the Confederate monuments that are in our hallowed Halls of Congress. I would like to make a live UC request, but preceding that request, I want to make just a few very brief remarks.
The National Statuary Hall, where these Confederate statues are in the Capitol, is intended to honor the highest ideals of our Nation. It is intended to honor the spirit of our country and those who exhibited this spirit with heroism, with courage, and with distinction.
It is a rare honor that every State gets to pick two people, out of the entire history of the country, who so exemplify the values, the spirit, and the honor of America. There are only 100 statues--just 100 statues--two from every State.
Between 1901 and 1931, 12--12--Confederate statues were placed in the National Statuary Hall, that hallowed hall. During the vast majority of that same period, from 1901 through 1929, after a vicious period of voter suppression and violence against African-American voters and a stripping de facto of their rights, and often de jure, not a single African American served in either of the Congress. In fact, the exact same year the first Confederate statue was placed in the Capitol, 1901, was also the year that the last African-American person would serve in Congress for almost 30 years--almost 70 from just the South.
This is a period that we don't teach enough about in our country. It is a period of untold violence of domestic terrorism, of the rise of the Klan and other White supremacist organizations in which, from the late 1800s to about 1950, literally thousands of Americans--about 4,400 well-documented cases--were lynched in this country.
We cannot separate the Confederate statues from this history and legacy of White supremacy in this country. Indeed, in the vast history of our Nation, those Confederate statues represent 4 years--roughly 4 years--of the Confederacy. The entire history of our country hails as heroes people who took up arms against their own Nation, people who sought to keep and sustain that vile institution of slavery, who led us into the bloodiest war of our country's history, who lost battle after battle until they were defeated soundly. The relics of that 4-plus year period, giving this sacred space to these traders upon our Nation, is not just an assault to the ideals of America as a whole, but they are a painful, insulting, difficult injury being compounded to so many American citizens who understand the very desire to put people who represented 4-plus years of treason, the very desire to put them there in an era of vast terrorism, was yet another attempt at the suppression of some of our citizens in this country.
The continued presence of these statues in the halls is an affront to African Americans and the ideals of our Nation. When we proclaim this not just to be a place of liberty and justice for all, but as we seek to be a more beloved nation, a kinder nation, a nation of equal respect and equal dignity, it is an assault on all of those ideals.
I would like to ask for unanimous consent, but before I do so, I would like to yield to the Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer
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Mr. BOOKER. Madam President, as in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Rules Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 3957 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I further ask that the bill be read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
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Mr. BOOKER. Madam President, if I could just respond--I know how busy my colleague is. He has a well-earned reputation on both sides of this body for his sincerity, for his decency, and for his honor. I take to heart his words that this is often not a good forum in which to try to push a piece of legislation that might have controversy on both sides. I understand his sincere concerns with that.
I guess he also understands the sincerity with which I bring this up: the hurt and the pain that these statues represent in a place where millions of Americans come to the Capitol and see this as their body.
I say to the Senator, because there are complications in this and there are issues we would have to work through as a Senate, I guess the one last appeal to your more senior status and maybe your friendship is this: Will you join me, at least, on a letter to the appropriate committee, asking them to at least have a hearing on this issue so that we could have a full vetting of all of the complexities and have a real discussion on something that is a pressing concern? I note that you know it is a pressing concern because some States are already taking action.
You see this action being taken across various parts of our country. You see this issue being pushed into the national consciousness. You see Republicans and Democrats, from Nikki Haley to my dear friend, the former mayor of New Orleans, Mayor Landrieu--I think it would be just and right that, perhaps, you and I, in a show of bipartisan concern and sincere awareness of the complexity of this issue, could just join--the two of us--in a letter asking the committee to take up this issue in due time so that we can have an appropriate discussion from all perspectives on this issue.
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Mr. BOOKER. Of course.
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Mr. BOOKER. Thank you, sir.
If I may, I will make a personal appeal for a hearing on these matters. I hope that we can do that in due time. I know the pace at which the Senate often works, but I am grateful for this open dialogue and I know you had to adjust your schedule so I am grateful for your time and generosity.
Thank you.
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