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Floor Speech

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Ms. SMITH. Mr. President, I will wait for my colleague to receive her hugs of gratitude, and I have a few words I would like to say.

Mr. President, I wanted to just take a moment to add my thanks and congratulations to our colleague Senator Laphonza Butler.

You know, I look around this Chamber, and this is a Chamber that is filled with people who were once lawyers or Members of Congress, Governors or Lieutenant Governors--all incredibly fine and honorable professions--but there are not that many people in this room who came here because they were organizers. This is something that Senator Butler and I talked about when she first came to the Senate.

Now, organizers are different because we understand that the power of accomplishing important things comes certainly from our leadership and the work that we do, but fundamentally it comes from the people we work with every single day, the folks that are out there on the ground, living the lives and doing the work. If you understand that your power to do good work comes from those people, then you approach everything, every problem, from a different perspective.

I know this is where Senator Butler comes from as an organizer at SCIU and in her life, and I want to pay tribute to that because I think that kind of approach to problem-solving is something we can all learn from.

I have watched you in the short time you have been in the Senate-- only 14 months, which, in the life of many Senators, is barely a blink of an eye--and I watched you figure out how to organize in this Chamber for the good of the people you represent.

I noticed, Senator Butler, as you were preparing to give your opening remarks, that Senator Roger Wicker from Mississippi came up and gave you a big hug. This is our Senator who was born in Magnolia, MS. And I saw you start your building of a relationship with him on one of your very first days in the elevator when I was standing with you. That, I think, is a message and a lesson for all of us; that as you leave to go on to whatever you do next--and we can't wait to see what you do next-- we should all keep in mind the power of those relationships and building power to actually make a difference--make a difference in this world.

The last thing I want to say, as we say farewell to you--only in this Chamber but not in our lives--is that your constant reminding us and using your platform to lift up the voices, as you say, of ``now leaders''--we have a tendency sometimes--those of us who are 50, 60, 70, 80--to talk about the next generation of leaders and that ``Your time will come, and we will need you.''

You always speak of our young leaders in the present tense because they are the leaders that we need now.

So as I think about your service here in the Senate and the work that you have done, those are the two lessons that I will carry forward in my work in this Chamber. I offer this with much gratitude for your leadership both here in this Chamber, the work that you have done before, and the work I know you will continue to do. Thank you.

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