Maybe Mr. President

10 days ago President Reagan admitted that although some people in this country seemed to be doing well nowadays, others were unhappy, even worried about themselves, their families and their futures  The President said that he didn't understand that fear.  He said, why, this country is A Shinning City on a Hill; and the President is right, in many ways we are A Shinning City on a Hill.  But the hard truth is that not everyone is sharing in this City's splendor and glory; a shinning city is perhaps all the President sees from the portico of the White House and the varanda of his ranch, where everyone seems to be doing well. But there is another city, there is another part to the shinning city, the part where some people can't pay their mortgages and most young people can't afford one; where students can't afford the education they need, and middleclass parents watch the dreams they hold for their children evaporate.  In this part of the city there are more poor than ever, more families in trouble, more and more people who need help but can't find it; even worse, there are elderly people who tremble in the basements of the houses there, and there are people who sleep in the city streets, in the gutter, where the glitter doesn't show; there are ghettos where thousands of young people without a job or an education give their lives away to drug dealers everyday;  there is despair Mr. President in the faces that you don't see, in the places that you don't visit in your Shinning City;  in fact, Mr. President, this is a nation... (applause),  Mr. President, you ought to know, that this nation is more A Tale of Two Cities than it is just a Shinning City on a Hill, maybe, maybe Mr. President, if you visited some more places, maybe if you went to Appalachia, where some people still live in sheds, maybe if you went to Lachahuana where thousands of unemployed steel workers wonder why we subsidise foreign steel (applause).  Maybe, maybe Mr. President, if you stopped in at a shelter in Chicago and spoke to the homeless there, maybe Mr. President, if you asked a woman who had been denied the help she needed to feed her children because you said you needed the money for a tax break for a millionaire or for a missile we could not afford to use (heavy applause), maybe Mr. Presdent, but I am affraid not, because the truth is ladies and gentlemen, this is how we were warned it would be.  President Reagan told us from the very beginning that he belived in a kind of Social Darwinism - Survival of the Fittest. Government can't do everything we were told so it should settle for taking care of the strong and hope that economic ambition and charity will do the rest.  Make the rich richer, and what falls from the table will be enough for the middle class and those who are trying desperately to work their way into the middle class (more applause).  You know, the Republicans called it trickle down when Hoover tried it, now they call it supply side, but its the same Shinning City for those relative few who are lucky enough to live in its good neighborhoods, but for the people who are exlcuded, for the people who are locked out, all they can do is stare from a distance at that City's glimmering towers.  The Republicans believe that the wagon train will not make it to the frontier unless some of the old, some the young, some of the weak are left behind by the side of the trail.  The strong, the strong they tell us, will inherit the land.  We Democrats believe in somenhting else.  We Democrats believe that we can make it all the way - with the whole family intact, and, we have more than once (very heavy applause).  Ever since Franklin Roosevelt lifted himself from his wheelchair to lift this nation from its knees, wagon train after wagon train to new frontiers of eduaction, housing, peace - the whole family aboard, constantly reaching out to extend and enlarge that famlily, lifting them up into the wagon on the way - blacks and hispanics and people of every ethnic group, and native americans;  all those struggling to build their families and claim some small share of America.  We Democrats must unite, we Democrats must unite so that the entire nation can unite, because surely the Republicans won't bring this country together, their policy is divide the nation into the lucky and the left out, into the royalty and the rubble; the Republicans are willing to treat that division as victory;  they would cut this nation in half - into those temporarily better off, and those worse off than before, and they would call that division: Recovery (heavy applause).  Now, we Democrats believe that we must be the family of America, recognizing that at the heart of the matter we are bound one to another, that the problems of a retired school teacher in Delouth are our problems, (applause) that the future of the child in Buffalo is our future, that the struggle of a disabled man in Boston to survive and live decently is our struggle, that the hunger of a woman in Little Rock is our hunger, that the failure anywhere to provide what reasonably we might to avoid pain is our failure; and I ask you now, ladies and gentleman, brothers and sisters, for the good of all us, for the love of this great nation, for the family of America, for the Love of God, please make this nation remember how futures are built.  Thank you, and God Bless You.

Keynote Address at the 1984 Democratic National Convention. By Mario Cuomo, Governor of New York.