Thank you, Madam Vice President. We have been summoned here by history. This is not just another routine day in the Senate-this is a moral moment in America. And I recall the words of that great American patriot and prophet, Martin Luther King Jr., whose birthday all of us just observed. As he agonized over the difficulty and complexity of that moral moment, Dr. King said “history has thrust something upon me from which I cannot turn away.” We have been summoned here. All of us. We cannot turn away. And this is no time for politics as usual. The times cry out for moral leadership, for integrity, for empathy and for care for one another; for deep investment in the covenant that we have with one another as an American people. E pluribus Unum-out of many, one. What a grand doctrine, what a noble idea which our country has been driving to reach with fits and starts-with setbacks and comebacks-since the day of its founding.
This is one of those moments. We cannot turn away. We cannot hide from history. And I am truly honored to stand here with all of you-Democrats, Republicans, and Independents-in this moment, and on this, my 365th day, as a member of the United States Senate. The most conventional deliberative body on the planet, striving again for greatness. I was elected from Georgia on January 5. What an honor to represent the people of the state of Georgia, and what a great nation. A kid from the Kayton homes housing projects; the first college graduate in my family of 12 (my folks were both preachers; they read the scriptures, “be fruitful and multiply”). But this kid who grew up in poverty, now serving in the United States Senate. Only the 11th Black senator in the whole history of our nation. And during that same time Georgia also elected its first Jewish senator, my brother Jon Ossoff.
I believe somewhere Dr. Martin Luther King and Abraham Joshua Heschel are smiling because they marched together. Rabbi Heschel said that when he marched with Dr. King, he felt like his legs were praying. And so, what a moment. I won after a hard-fought election. And the next morning, I was feeling pretty good. My mother, who grew up in Waycross, Georgia, picking cotton as a teenager, had joined with other Georgians in record voter turnout, and the 82-year-old hands that used to pick somebody else’s cotton helped to pick her youngest son to be a U.S. Senator. Only in America is my story even possible. I was on several of the morning shows talking about what the people of Georgia had achieved, and I was feeling pretty good that morning. Man, I was on “The View” talking to Whoopi Goldberg. But by lunchtime the news alerts on my repair screen phone bray park began to buzz.
Something was happening in the Capitol, and we all know the rest of that sad and tragic story. A violent assault on our nation’s Capitol, driven by The Big Lie. Ugly words, signs and symbols of racism and antisemitism. An effort to stop the legal certification of an election. And in spite of those who want to hide, sadly, January 6 really did happen. And we must face up to it. We cannot hide from history. January 6th happened, but here’s the thing-January 5th also happened. Georgia, a state in the old confederacy, sent a Black man and a Jewish man to the Senate in one fell swoop. Our nation has always had a complicated history, and I submit to you that here’s where we are-we’re swinging from a moral dilemma. We are caught somewhere between January 5th and January 6th. Between our hopes and our fears. Between bigotry and Beloved Community. And in each moment, we the people have to decide which way are we going to go, and what are we willing to sacrifice in order to get there?
The question today is are we going to give in to a violent attack, whose aim is now being pursued through partisan voter suppression laws in state legislatures? Sadly, Georgia, the same Georgia that sent me and my brother Ossoff to the Senate-not the people of Georgia, partisan state politicians-have decided to punish their own citizens for having the audacity to show up. And it isn’t just about the restrictions around water and food distribution. The more fundamental question is, why are the lines so long in the first place? And why is that the case in certain communities? I know that some Americans listening to me right now don’t know what we mean, because that’s not your experience. But it is the experience of so many of your fellow Americans. We need empathy, compassion, care for one another. Why are local election officials working in Lincoln County, Georgia, to close all but one polling location for a county that’s bigger than 250 square miles?
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