Barack delivered a speech today at Cornell College calling on a new generation of Americans to step up, serve their country, and change the world: "The decisions that we make today will shape the century that my daughters and your children will grow up in."Here's some of Barack's remarks:
[They say] Americans won't come together. Our allegiance doesn't go beyond our political party...Young Americans won't serve our country. They're too selfish or they're too lazy. This is the soft sell of the status quo. The voice that tells you to settle. Because settling isn't that bad. [But] You go to the first school west of the Mississippi to grant women the same rights as men. You go to a school that resolved in 1870 that race would not be a factor in admission. Now these may be small changes on the vast canvass of history, but the America we live in is the sum total of that kind of courage...if it weren't for that kind of change it wouldn't be possible for someone like me to stand here today... I am tired of hearing about how America is on the wrong track. I want to have us come together to put it back on the right track. ... We need your service, right now, in this moment – our moment – in history. I’m not going to tell you what your role should be; that’s for you to discover. But I am going to ask you to play your part; ask you to stand up; ask you to put your foot firmly into the current of history. I am asking you to change history’s course. And if I have the fortune to be your President, decades from now – when the memory of this or that policy has faded, and when the words that we will speak in the next few years are long forgotten – I hope you remember this as a moment when your own story and the American story came together, and history bent once more toward justice.
[They say] Americans won't come together. Our allegiance doesn't go beyond our political party...Young Americans won't serve our country. They're too selfish or they're too lazy. This is the soft sell of the status quo. The voice that tells you to settle. Because settling isn't that bad.
[But] You go to the first school west of the Mississippi to grant women the same rights as men. You go to a school that resolved in 1870 that race would not be a factor in admission.
Now these may be small changes on the vast canvass of history, but the America we live in is the sum total of that kind of courage...if it weren't for that kind of change it wouldn't be possible for someone like me to stand here today...
I am tired of hearing about how America is on the wrong track. I want to have us come together to put it back on the right track.
...
We need your service, right now, in this moment – our moment – in history. I’m not going to tell you what your role should be; that’s for you to discover. But I am going to ask you to play your part; ask you to stand up; ask you to put your foot firmly into the current of history. I am asking you to change history’s course.
Barack took some questions, and then closed by saying that we are in a rare window where the country is trying to figure out where to go. He asked the young people at the event to recognize the power they have in shaping our collective future as Americans---that they are the lever that can change our direction.
I spoke to Ellen (below) after the event: She's a junior here at Cornell College and is from Amana Colonies. Majoring in sociology and political science, Ellen said that she was really glad that Barack came to speak at Cornell today, and that his service plan would help get America back on the right path. As someone who has been involved with her community, she said that it was great to be there in person to hear Barack set out this vision for Americans. For more details on the plan, click here to check out Sam's post.
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