Sworn in for fourth term, Kitzhaber cites RFK as inspiration for fighting inequality

Kari Chisholm FacebookTwitterWebsite

On Monday, as most Oregonians were gearing up for the big game (of which we will not speak), the 2015 Oregon Legislature was sworn in -- as was Governor John Kitzhaber.

His speech is absolutely worth watching. In his fourth inaugural (and his 13th speech, at least, as Governor to the Legislature), he dispensed with the pleasantries and challenged the Legislature take on inequality.

Throughout his 2014 campaign (on which I was a digital strategist), I was struck by how often Gov. Kitzhaber would cite equity -- the fight against inequality -- as a core principle of his work as governor. Not because it's unworthy, of course, but because so few politicians in America actually talk about poverty in meaningful ways.

In his inaugural address, Kitzhaber cited his inspiration:

I was a 21-year-old college student when Robert Kennedy ran for president. And it was a campaign unlike any I have witnessed before or after: a campaign that truly focused on equity and opportunity.

It was a campaign about unrepresented farm workers in California; about poverty and hunger and children starving to death in the Mississippi Delta and on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. And it was a campaign that asked profound and often disturbing questions: about a GDP that measured wealth but not well-being; about why such contradictions could exist in the wealthiest nation in the world; questions about who we were and how we wanted treat one another as Americans and as fellow human beings.

The campaign lasted only 82 days from when he announced until he was assassinated on June 6th. I was inspired because of his passion and sincerity and his courage to speak from the heart and to say what needed to be said. And from the moment he died in Los Angeles I knew I wanted to commit my life to public service.

And to me, the core message of Bobby Kennedy's last campaign was this: if a sense of common purpose is the one essential ingredient necessary to build community, and if community is what brings people together to do things collectively that would be difficult if not impossible to do individually ... then the strength of a community is inversely proportional to the level of disparity – the level of inequality – that exists within it; that we allow to exist within it.

What does this mean today?

One of the most basic premises on which our nation was founded is the belief that hard work will be rewarded with a better life. Yet for a growing number of Oregonians this is simply no longer the case. In the midst of this economic "recovery" a growing number of people are now trapped in low-wage and/or part-time jobs on which they cannot possible support a family – and with no hope of getting ahead. Why?

Why are one in five Oregon children still living in poverty? Why do over 30 percent of Oregon children face food insecurity on a daily basis? Why is poverty among Latinos 27% and poverty among African Americans, Native Americans, Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders and people with disabilities over 30%? And most importantly why is that acceptable to us?

Watch the full speech. It's just 19 minutes and absolutely compelling.

Also, breaking news: Kitzhaber announced that this would "complete the arc" of his public service. In other words, Kitzhaber fans, don't expect him to run for a fifth term in 2022 or 2026. Or, for that matter, for President of the United States in 2016.

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