Dark Days

Floor Speech

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Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, still I rise.

I rise, Mr. Speaker, as a liberated Democrat.

I rise, Mr. Speaker, unbought, unbossed, unafraid.

I rise, Mr. Speaker, as the only Member of the House of Representatives to be removed from a joint session of Congress and, thereafter, to be censured. I have been censured, Mr. Speaker, but I have not been silenced. Censured, but not silenced.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in agreement with the President. This is, indeed, a dark day. Yesterday was a dark day--dark days because of lives that have been lost. This day, the USA Today has published an article styled: ``24 years after 9/11, alliances fractured,'' referring to what happened on 9/11, the lives that were lost to terrorism.

Then, Mr. Speaker, there is another article that I would call to your attention in The Washington Times. It is styled: Growing leftwing violence blamed for deadly shooting.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to address violence. I wish to address violence, and I wish to start by indicating that, yesterday, I published a tweet. This tweet, Mr. Speaker, indicated, in essence, that this is the time for all persons of good will to take a stand against violence and that persons should do this because Dr. King was right, and his words are right today:

``We must all learn to live together as brothers,'' he said. I would add: and sisters.

We must all learn to live together as brothers and sisters, or we will perish together as fools.

I did not know Mr. Kirk. I don't believe I have ever met him. I meet a lot of people, so I may have, but I don't believe that I have.

Here is what I know about him: He was a human being. He was a child of the same creator who created me. He had every right to express his views. He had every right to differ with me and anybody else as much as he wanted to. He had every right to be where he was and to speak on the issues of importance to him in ways that I might not agree with, but he had a right to do this.

He had a right to life. He had a right to say these things in venues across the length and breadth of this country and, I would say, across the globe. These were his rights.

He had the right to be where he was and to do what he was doing.

I don't know him as a person who has said things that I would always agree with, but I want his wife and his children to know that I am saddened by his demise.

I am saddened by the fact that he was assassinated. I am saddened by it. It is painful. I regret that it happened, and if I could have prevented it, I would have.

I don't believe that we should have a country that somehow would have people lose their lives, be assassinated, and then people gloat and celebrate an assassination.

I ask today: What did Mr. Kirk and the victims of 9/11 and the persons who have died in churches while praying, persons who were killed as they were praying in various religious institutions, children who have been murdered in schools, what did they all have in common? The one thing that they all had in common, and there may be others, is that they were innocent people. They were innocent people. They were innocent people going about their business. None of them were breaking the law.

This is bigger than any one of us or any group of us. It is bigger than any person's religiosity. It is bigger than where you happen to be at a given time. This is about the right to life and the right to speak freely. It is about what the Constitution affords all of us in this country and about the necessity for every one of us to protect these constitutional rights.

This is about people who have been fortunate enough to have been born in the United States of America or people who have come to the United States of America. It is about people who just happen to be passing through.

It is about the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and especially life, because without life, you cannot have the liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

All of these people have in common the fact that they were innocent and the fact that they have lost their lives, some to terrorism, persons who came to this country to impose and inflict terrorism upon people, and some from terrorists within the country, some from people who were just crazed, some from people who were persons who should not have had the opportunity to have the type of weaponry that they had. But they were all persons who were innocent. They were all persons who had this right to life that I stand for.

Today, I believe it appropriate that I first say a prayer, and then after the prayer, I will make some comments about current circumstances.

I don't ask everyone to pray with me. You pray with me if you desire. If you choose to do other things, then do those other things, but I pray this prayer for my country.

Most Gracious Creator, we know You by many names, but we also know that by any name You are the creator of all that was, is, and ever shall be. By any name, You created air, the breath of life. By any name, You created water, the elixir of life. By any name, You created the star that we call Sun, the light and warmth of life. By any name, You created the terra firma that we call Earth, the foundation and the home of life. And by any name, I beg that You would understand and pray that You would give me the courage to not only speak truth to power, to speak it in a righteous way, to have the courage to do all that I can to protect all of Your creation. I ask You to give me the strength as I speak today to talk about the circumstances that have created concerns that have to be addressed. I beg that You would give me the strength in Your name, by whatever name I make this appeal.

Now, Mr. Speaker, allow me to address CNN. Yes, I am a Congressperson who believes that you have to speak truth not only to power but also truth about power.

I want to address CNN. I understand that when you do this, you are not likely to get an invitation to be on their airwaves. I understand it. They have the power to mute by simply denying you access, but I just thank God for C-SPAN, unfiltered C-SPAN. C-SPAN does not mute. C- SPAN does not conclude that because you are a person who will speak truth to power and about power that you shouldn't have access to the airwaves.

I am going to talk about C-SPAN now because it was on C-SPAN this day that I heard one of their reporters indicate that we should, not in these exact words perhaps, but that we should tone down the language, and indicate that we should probably be concerned about certain words, two were mentioned.

We should be concerned about saying ``fascism,'' language that is incitive is the way it was put--perhaps not in these exact words, but incitive language, language that would cause people to do ugly things, incitive language, ``fascism.''

Then, this reporter mentioned another word, allegedly a word that would create, what I would call, some spark within a person that might drive a person to say something or do something that would be harmful, incitive language. Well, that word was ``racism.''

Now, this reporter mentioned fascism and racism on CNN. Yes, I am going to continue to demean CNN for what they have done. I know that this reporter meant well.

By the way, I have respect for the reporter, but I know what is happening at CNN and how CNN has become a status quo news source. To maintain the status quo, CNN will do things that, quite frankly, don't allow us to make the change necessary to benefit all Americans.

This reporter mentioned these two words, ``fascism'' and ``racism,'' as incitive terms. Interesting to note, the reporter did not say ``anti-Semitism.'' By the way, I fight anti-Semitism every day of my life. I am antithetical to it, and I am going to fight it. I think we have to end anti-Semitism. I am going to fight to end anti-Semitism, but on CNN, ``anti-Semitism'' is a word that you can use to address the anti-Semite and to deal with those persons who are perpetrating and perpetuating anti-Semitism, but you can't use ``racism'' on CNN.

``Racism'' is an incitive word. CNN would have us end anti-Semitism and allow us to address it in all of its forms. These are all forms of invidious discrimination. It is all right to address anti-Semitism, but not racism.

If you are going to talk about racism, you have to use softer language because the word ``racism'' is incitive, according to CNN.

Well, CNN is saying to the world, they want to end anti-Semitism, as I do, but they are saying they want to manage racism. CNN manages racism by not allowing it to be addressed and confronted to the same extent as they would allow anti-Semitism to be addressed.

Again, I am antithetical to, I am going to fight anti-Semitism, but I am also going to fight racism. I am not going to kneel. I am not going to cower. I am not going to back off. Racism has to be fought. It has to be dealt with because it, too, exists in this country.

We cannot pretend that racism doesn't exist. If we are going to acknowledge invidious discrimination, we have to acknowledge it in all of its forms, and I would hope that CNN would get a better understanding of what it is doing by managing racism and doing what it can to eliminate anti-Semitism.

It is my belief that people of good will can fight both racism and anti-Semitism, and if we are going to do it, we have got to speak truth about power. We have got to speak truth to those people who have already concluded that the loss of Mr. Kirk, the conservative activist, as is stated in The Washington Times, already concluded that this was some leftwing person, and then they used plural language and say ``they,'' the leftwing.

If it was a leftwing person--I don't put any special boundaries around that person--whoever it is, ought to be punished to the fullest extent that the law allows. It doesn't matter what their party affiliation is. But what does matter is you shouldn't jump to conclusions. We don't have the empirical evidence of what happened, last I heard. Maybe it has been announced just recently. I am talking about the authorities. For people to come to the floor of the House and make statements about how leftwing people have caused this to manifest itself, Mr. Kirk's demise, without any evidence of it, and for CNN to infer in some way that ``racism'' is a term that may have promoted what happened to this man; they are wrong. They are wrong to do it. Members of Congress who do it are wrong.

To blame the harm that was caused to some person who is said to be on the left or on the right, that is wrong. You can't blame people in a wholesale fashion for things that happen to some individual person. Left or right, you can't blame everyone.

You can blame the person who did this. If you want to talk about language that precipitates this kind of behavior, language that may in some way influence people, then you are going to have to start at the top. You are going to have to start at the top. You are going to have to start with a President of the United States who told police officers: You don't have to be nice when you are arresting people. The President of the United States told people at one of his rallies that they could assault someone who was there and not to worry about it. The President of the United States says ugly things about people. The President of the United States came right here, and right at that podium just below the Speaker called Democrats lunatics. It was the same night that I was evicted from the joint session of Congress, the only person ever to be evicted. The President was right there at that podium. That President at the podium said that the Democrats were lunatics. Is that incitive language?

I say to CNN, here is what is interesting about it. You allow the President's language to be spoken, but you won't allow people to come on your station and talk about the racism that exists, and it does.

If we are going to talk about how these things are developed, speak in terms of individuals. The President of the United States of America has decided that the Department of Defense will be the Department of War now, taking us a quantum leap backwards in time to when it was previously the Department of War, but we had the good sense to understand that it would be better to be a Department of Defense than to be warmongers.

The same President who says he wants the Nobel Peace Prize changes the Department of Defense to the Department of War. The same President who has promoted what is happening to the Palestinians in Gaza; who has gone so far as to say: Let's just buy that property or take it and make it some sort of resort. The same President who went so far as to say to Mr. Netanyahu: Yes, you can go on, you can do what you need to do. It was not in those exact words, but that was the implication. This is the same President who wants the Nobel Peace Prize.

I cannot believe that the Nobel Committee, the Nobel authorities would ever give a person who has behaved as this President has--who wants a Department of War, who has sanctioned the collective punishment against the Palestinians, sanctioned the ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians, sanctioned ethnic cleansing, collective punishment--the Nobel Peace Prize.

I know you are waiting for me to say the other word. Yes, I am going to say it. This President has sanctioned the most heinous of crimes against humanity, and those are crimes against humanity that are being committed on the Palestinians. He has sanctioned the most heinous crimes against humanity, and he wants the Nobel Peace Prize. I say to the President, you are not deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize.

To those people who want to blame the leftwing for things, if a leftwing person has done something, I am not opposed to that person being blamed. I will blame that person. However, don't blame all people who happen to be on what you call the leftwing for what is happening. Don't do that. Explain what the person has done.

I came to this floor. I am here in this House now, and I am giving you explicit things. Tell me what the so-called leftwing has done. They speak in these broad, general terms about people without giving the explicit evidence of the thing that they claim that they have done. Speak with specificities. Have the courage to speak with specificities. They don't have the courage to speak with specificities. They just want to use a broad brush.

Yes, I am going to say it, the President doesn't deserve the Nobel Peace Prize because he has sanctioned genocide in Gaza. The world sees it, and this Congress sees it, with not one resolution to condemn the genocide taking place in Gaza, not one. There won't be one. There won't be one. Not one.

Few people are going to come to this floor and say it even exists. We are going to manage genocide in Gaza and condemn what is happening in Ukraine. How can you condemn what is happening in Ukraine and not condemn what is happening in Gaza? You can't do it, not in a righteous way, not in a righteous way.

The Congress of the United States of America ought to be on record condemning what is happening to the Palestinians. For those who would claim that they have no reason to be, that this is just something that we should allow the Israelis and the Palestinians to resolve, here is my retort. Your tax dollars, your tax dollars are fueling the genocide that is taking place. If you wanted to do something about it, you wouldn't fund it. Those planes are our planes. The munitions are our munitions.

Now, someone is going to say that I am somehow creating the fervor, the incitive response that may take place because I speak the truth. Truth has, in and of itself, an absolute defense. Who can deny? Who will deny in good faith that what is happening in Gaza is something other than genocide? It is genocide. We have the blood of what is happening to those innocent people on our hands.

I started by talking about innocent people. They are among the innocents. We can't care more about some babies than other babies. We will allow the killing of Palestinian babies and maybe every now and then say something about how wrong this is, but we are not going to say that about other babies. We want to make sure that people understand that those babies have the right to life, that those babies should grow up, and they should have an opportunity to succeed in the world. Palestinian babies and children haven't been to school in years now. What is going to happen to them?

We have now allowed Mr. Netanyahu to go into Palestine, into Gaza, and go to Gaza City. It is obvious that he is trying to destroy it. Yes, he is trying to destroy it. There will be no home for the Palestinians. They have already destroyed roads, bridges, schools, hospitals. Mr. Netanyahu doesn't want peace. He wants all of Palestine. I speak in specificities, all of Palestine. He doesn't want peace.

In fact, the Knesset just last year took a vote, and the vote was to say in explicit terms there will be no Palestinian state from the river to the sea, from the river to the sea, not in those exact words. They said west of the Jordan. That is the river, and west of the Jordan is Gaza. From the river to the sea, west of Jordan, West Bank, from the river to the sea.

If you say ``from the river to the sea,'' you will be sanctioned by this Congress. We can't say that. The Knesset in Israel can pass in that body legislation saying that there will be no Palestinian state from the river to the sea.

Here is my point. From the river to the sea, Palestine and Israel must be free, both of them, two states. I stand for a two-state solution. There are others who stand for evicting the Palestinians, sending them to some other place. This is their land, their home. They have got every right to live where they live, and this war has gone on too long, taken too many lives.

What happened at the genesis of this with the attack on Israel was wrong. It was sinful. It was harmful. It was terrorism. It was something that merited a response, but it didn't merit collective punishment. It didn't merit ethnic cleansing, and it didn't merit genocide. Those are crimes against humanity.

Today, dear friends, I will mourn the death of Mr. Kirk and all of the persons who have died in their places of worship, killed at the hands of assassins, all of the children who have died in schools. It is about all of them and all of the people who died on 9/11.

Any person who is on the left who has committed a crime against another person, violence against another person, I condemn you. Any person on the right who has committed a crime against another person, I condemn you. I speak with specificities about the incitive commentary emanating from the highest office in the United States of America. We see it, but we ignore it.

I refuse to ignore it. I don't believe in committing crimes. I have spoken from this very podium, this very area about peaceful protests. I have indicated to people, no violence. I am a person who does not promote violence. There are people who will say that I promote violence by fighting racism. That is not promoting violence. That is ending the violence that racism perpetrates on people, and I am going to continue to fight racism.

I have stood right here at this podium and talked about peaceful protest and how we must engage in peaceful protest. Peaceful protest is what got me to Congress. Most of the people who are minorities in Congress, somehow peaceful protest has benefited them.

If I could cite a single moment in time, it would be at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, 1965, on what we now call Bloody Sunday, because at that moment when they were trying to cross and they were beaten, this is violence we are talking about, with specificity, I might add. Date: 1965. Place: Edmund Pettus Bridge, Selma, Alabama. People wanted to peacefully march.

My dear brother, John Lewis, told me the story of how he thought he was going to die on that bridge, how they were beaten all the way back to the church where they started.

At the moment that happened and the moments that followed, when Lyndon Johnson was accorded the opportunity to sign the Voting Rights Act of 1965, when he signed that Voting Rights Act of 1965, when he signed it. Yes, he signed it with ink. Yes, it was a pen.

Mr. Speaker, it was written with the blood at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. That is why it is called Bloody Sunday. It was on a Sunday that it occurred. It is Bloody Sunday.

Mr. Speaker, I speak in specificities. When he signed it, yes, there were only six Members of Congress who were of African ancestry that we know of. There may have been some others that we didn't know of because of the definition of how someone becomes a person of African ancestry, their blood and that sort of thing. We knew there were six. There were five persons who were Latinos. There were four persons who were Asian.

Since the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, section 4 of voting right act, section 5 of Voting Rights Act. All of these in concert, working together, we acquired more than 60 people of African ancestry in this Congress. More than 50 persons in this Congress are Latinos. More than 20 persons in this Congress have Asian heritage.

It is the Voting Rights Act. Yes, that Voting Rights Act was there to deal with racism. It says so in the act. It says race. We can't discriminate against people based on race. It also goes into some other aspects of discrimination, all of them invidious, but we can't do it.

We have to say ``racism'' if we are going to talk about the case involving race. CNN doesn't want that to be said. If this were anti- Semitism, we could say that anti-Semitism is being imposed. We could fight it and use that language. We can't use ``racism.'' By the way, I would support saying ``anti-Semitism.'' I would. I do support saying it. We have to be able to say ``racism,'' too.

That is what is happening now across this country, especially in Texas, where the President of the United States--specificities--had the Justice Department to send a letter to the Attorney General of the State of Texas, indicating that four districts, all of which had minority representation, four districts should be redrawn because the State of Texas drew them specifically such that minorities would be elected.

Then the Attorney General from the State of Texas had a retort. He refuted what the Justice Department said. He said: No, our lines were drawn for partisan advantage.

That is lawful. If you draw the lines with race in mind, then that is unlawful. We can't draw lines to prevent people from acquiring a representation based upon race. We can't do that.

The Attorney General refuted it. That should have ended it; but, no, it didn't. Notwithstanding the evidence that the Attorney General presented, indicating that they didn't do what the letter from the Justice Department alleges, Texas went on.

What Texas has done is racist. We can't say that on CNN. If we say that it is racist on CNN, we become persona non grata. We are not going to be back on CNN. If we are there, the host would send little signals to let people know that this was something that was imposed and not something that was desired.

CNN is a status quo news network. I am not a status quo Representative. I want to change the status quo. I don't want to manage the status quo. CNN does. CNN wants to manage racism and eliminate anti-Semitism.

I want my dear friends to know that what Texas has done is racist, and I am using specificities. I have called to the attention of the public those two letters, and they are available.

Mr. Speaker, I have to do what I do. I don't ask others to follow me. I am uniquely qualified to do what I do. I only ask those others who know that I am speaking truth: Don't be the one to try to trip me up. Just let me do what I can do. My friends will do as best they can to do what they can do. Together, we will get things done.

We have to be truthful about our circumstances, or we will never end them. They will always remain the same.

I close, my dear friends, my dear brothers and sisters--and I say this because, like Dr. King, I believe that there is but one race and that is the human race. Like Dr. King, I believe that all persons have been created equal, as has been indicated and elucidated in many documents that we hold near and dear in this country. I believe in one race. That is the human race.

My dear friends, as a human being, I knew Mr. Kirk. I know the humanity that he had. I know the decency that should have been afforded him. I know that what happened to him was wrong, and it doesn't matter who did it. It was wrong.

If it turns out it is a leftwing person, as defined by people, that is wrong. I am not going to stand for that. Quite frankly, I don't know any Democrats that would stand for that. It doesn't matter. We aren't going to say the person shouldn't be punished.

I speak in specificities. I don't come to the floor and paint with a broad brush. I don't think all of my colleagues on the other side are racist. I don't label all of them as rightwing nuts. If I see someone do something, I am going to call them out. I am not going to label everybody.

Mr. Speaker, I knew his humanity. I knew that he had every right to say what he was saying. He had every right to say things that I would never agree with. He had every right, if ever given the opportunity, to vote against me. That is not a reason for anybody to impose violence upon him.

He had every right to do these things and walk away and go back home to his family. He should have spent the night either with his family or knowing that his family was secure and they knew that he was secure. He had every right to raise those babies.

This was a wrong that was perpetrated. I want to go further and say the people who have been killed in their places of worship had every right to worship as they chose and to do it in their various places of worship.

Children have the right to go to school. Their parents have the right to pick them up at the end of the school day.

I don't label the attempt on Congresswoman Giffords' life as a rightwing plot. I don't do that.

I believe that people are responsible for their behavior. On a day such as this, I don't know that we ought to allow this to go unnoticed when there is a headline that reads: Growing leftwing violence blamed for deadly shooting.

I believe in specificities. I believe in the decency that human beings should afford each other.

I am going to continue to do that because Dr. King was and is right. We do have to learn to live together, all of us, as brothers and sisters, or we will all perish together as fools.

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