The Mugging of the American Dream

Editor's Note: The following is the prepared text of the speech Bill Moyers gave June 3 at the Take Back America conference in Washington, D.C. The transcript of the speech as delivered can be found at ourfuture.org.

It's good to be with you again. Your passion for democracy is inspiring and your enthusiasm contagious. I can't imagine a more exuberant gathering today except possibly at the K Street branch of the Masters of the Universe where they are celebrating their coup at the Securities and Exchange Commission

I wish that I could have attended all your sessions, listened to all the speakers, and heard all the points of view that have been raised here. But thanks to C-Span I was able to catch enough of your proceedings to realize you covered so many subjects and touched on so many ideas that you've left me little to say. That's okay, because as Bob Borosage reminded us back in January, what matters most isn't what is said in Washington but what you do on the ground across the country to build an independent infrastructure, generate ideas, drive local campaigns, persuade the skeptic, organize your neighbors, and carry on the movement at the grassroots for social and economic justice.

Before you go home, however, Bob has asked me to talk about what's at stake in what you are doing. Given all that has already been said, I will take my cue from the late humorist Robert Benchley who arrived for his final exam in international law at Harvard to find that the test consisted of this one instruction: "Discuss the arbitration of the international fisheries problem in respect to hatcheries protocol and dragnet and procedure as it affects (a) the point of view of the United States and (b) the point of view of Great Britain." Benchley was desperate but he was also honest, and he wrote: "I know nothing about the point of view of Great Britain in the arbitration of the international fisheries problem, and nothing about the point of view of the United States. I shall therefore discuss the question from the point of view of the fish."

That's what I have done in much of my work in journalism. Thirty-five years ago almost to the day I set out on a three-month trip of over l0, 000 miles to write a book called "Listening to America." I completed the book but I've never finished the trip; never was able to come off the road; never could stop listening. My worldview has been a work in progress, molded largely by the stories I've heard from the people I've met. I want to tell you this morning about some of those people. They tell us what's at stake.

I begin with two families in Milwaukee. The breadwinners in both households lost their jobs in that great wave of downsizing in 1991 as corporations began moving jobs out of the city and out of the country. In a series of documentaries over the next decade my colleagues and I chronicled their efforts to cope with the wrenching changes in their lives and find a place for themselves in the new global economy. I grew up with people like them. They're the kind my mother called "the salt of the earth" (takes one to know one!) They love their children, care about their neighborhoods, go to church every Sunday, and work hard all week. But like millions of Americans, these two families in Milwaukee were playing by the rules and still losing. By the end of the decade they were running harder but slipping behind, and the gap between them and prosperous America had reached Grand Canyon proportions.

I want to show you a very brief excerpt from that first documentary. It aired on PBS in January 1992 with the title "Minimum Wages: The New Economy." You'll see the father of one family as he looks for work after losing his machinist's job at the big manufacturer, Briggs and Stratton. You'll meet his wife in their kitchen as they make a desperate call to the bank that is threatening to foreclose on their home after failing to meet their mortgage payments. During our filming the fathers in both families became seriously ill. One was hospitalized for two months, leaving the family $30,000 in debt. You'll hear the second family talk about what it's like when both parents lose their jobs, depriving them of health insurance and putting their children's education up for grabs. Take a look.