Sen. Obama speaks about his plan to bring hope to Urban America in DC:
It’s been four decades since Bobby Kennedy crouched in a shack along
the Mississippi Delta and looked into the wide, listless eyes of a
hungry child. Again and again he tried to talk to this child, but each
time his efforts were met with only a blank stare of desperation. And
when Kennedy turned to the reporters traveling with him, with tears in
his eyes he asked a single question about poverty in America:
"How can a country like this allow it?"
Forty years later, we’re still asking that question. It echoes
on the streets of Compton and Detroit, and throughout the mining towns
of West Virginia. It lingers with every image we see of the 9th Ward
and the rural Gulf Coast, where poverty thrived long before Katrina
came ashore.
We stand not ten miles from the seat of power in the most
affluent nation on Earth. Decisions are made on both ends of
Pennsylvania Avenue that shape lives and set the course of history.
With the stroke of a pen, billions are spent on programs and policies;
on tax breaks for those who didn’t need them and a war that should’ve
never been authorized and never been waged. Debates rage and
accusations fly and at the end of each day, the petty sniping is what
lights up the evening news.
And yet here, on the other side of the river, every other
child in Anacostia lives below the poverty line. Too many do not
graduate and too many more do not find work. Some join gangs, and
others fall to their gunfire.
The streets here are close to our capital, but far from the
people it represents. These Americans cannot hire lobbyists to roam the
halls of Congress on their behalf, and they cannot write
thousand-dollar campaign checks to make their voices heard. They suffer
most from a politics that has been tipped in favor of those with the
most money, and influence, and power.
How can a country like this allow it?
Read the rest of the speech after the jump. Watch it here.
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September 19th, 2007 
