REMARKS OF SENATOR EDWARD M. KENNEDY PRESENTATION OF THE 2005 RFK HUMAN RIGHTS AWARD TO STEPHEN BRADBERRY OF NEW ORLEANS (As Prepared for Delivery)

Thank you so much, Doug Brinkley, for that warm introduction. We're honored you could be here today to share in this special moment.

It's a privilege to be here with all of you today, and I thank you all for coming. We're very proud of Ethel, Kerry, and everyone else at the Memorial for their extraordinary leadership and commitment in carrying on Bobby's ideals, and we're grateful to the judges as well, who have given their time so generously in selecting this year's honoree.

This Sunday, November 20th, would have been Bobby's 80th birthday. I know my brother would be very grateful to all of you for advancing his work so well, and he'd be especially pleased with this year's recipient of the human rights award in his name.

Bobby dedicated much of his life to social justice in all nations and for all peoples, and this award was created to honor courageous individuals fighting for that ideal.

Often, the award has recognized human rights heroes from abroad. But this year, with the devastation of Hurricane Katrina so much in mind, we turn our sights homeward. No event in modern America has destroyed so much and uprooted so many in so short a time as that violent storm, with much of the magnificent City of New Orleans and the beloved Gulf Coast reduced to ruin.

I visited the area soon after the storm and was deeply shocked to see the devastation. For many of our fellow citizens in New Orleans and the Gulf Region, there is literally nothing to return to. Entire communities are completely gone. All that's left of endless blocks are the concrete slabs where family homes once stood.

The violent winds and flood tore away the mask that has long concealed the silent slavery of poverty in so much of our society. Katrina showed how long a journey we still have to make to live up to America's promise. For a new generation of Americans who did not live through the civil rights movement or the Vietnam War or Watergate -- Katrina was their American apocalypse. More than any event in their lifetimes, it revealed the consequences of our nation's neglect.

But new young leaders like our honoree understand that the darkest time often comes just before a dawn. On my visit to the Gulf Coast, I was moved by the caring and courage of ordinary people stepping up in extraordinary ways to rebuild lives and communities. Churches, police officers, firefighters, National Guard members, families, friends, neighbors, strangers -- they came together and became heroes in the wake of the storm. They saw the face of poverty and homelessness, and responded instantly by joining the fight against despair.

To their credit, some courageous and very dedicated people had joined that fight long before, even when the storms weren't arriving and the cameras weren't rolling. Among the best of those who have been fighting the good fight with great courage is this year's honoree, Stephen Bradberry of New Orleans. Stephen's parents, Gerald and Patricia, are joining us today as well, and I know they're very proud of him too.

Stephen is the lead organizer for the New Orleans chapter of ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. He's lived in New Orleans for 18 years. He's originally from Chicago, but stayed on in the Crescent City after graduating from Dillard University in 1992. At Dillard, his eyes were opened to new depths of poverty. He came face to face with the plight of people in poverty in the state with the largest proportion of men and women in the nation living on the minimum wage or less.

Ever since, he's been a relentless crusader for social and economic justice. He battles every day, and with great humility, to empower the poor of New Orleans and mobilize them to fight more effectively for themselves. Gladys Washington, who approves grants for New Orleans ACORN, calls Stephen "very humble and very much a behind-the-scenes person." She says he "epitomizes RFK's vision for social justice, fairness, and equality."

After Hurricane Katrina, he temporarily moved to Baton Rouge, where he fought all the harder and he became an even more dedicated warrior in the battle for justice. It's been an uphill battle for Stephen and his team. Organizing in shelters, and locating and supporting ACORN members displaced by the storm have been difficult, even in this era of the Internet, cell phones and text messages. But Stephen kept the faith, and is leading a new movement to give the low-income community of New Orleans a genuine voice in the redevelopment of their city. Survivors I met told me they don't want veto power over every proposal to rebuild their region -- they just need a voice in the rebuilding of their own communities, and ACORN is their voice.

The name is especially appropriate -- Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. That says it all. Typically, it plants seeds in communities across America that can grow into mighty oaks with strong roots and far-reaching branches in the ongoing struggle for progress, opportunity, and justice. It's the nation's largest community organization of low- and moderate-income families, with 175,000 member families and 850 neighborhood chapters in 75 cities in our country, Canada, the Dominican Republic, and Peru.

Robert Kennedy understood the critical importance of local activists like Stephen in these struggles. "In the fight for social justice," Bobby said, "national power can create and encourage, but local power is determinative." Stephen has been that kind of determined leader for ACORN, organizing the poverty community through marches, demonstrations, media campaigns, leadership training, door-to-door visits, e-mail, and the Internet. He's led New Orleans ACORN into battle for a living wage and for voting rights -- and against lead poisoning and predatory lending. Now he's waging a new battle in support of fair rebuilding after the hurricane.

In the aftermath of Katrina, affordable housing and living wage jobs are even more critical. ACORN activists are locating and organizing their 9,000 New Orleans member families to provide housing assistance and a strong community voice for the displaced, and to fulfill hope for all the victims of the nation's cruelest natural disaster.

Chapters in Washington and across the country have appealed to Congress in person, over the telephone, and by fax to provide faster relief and a genuine long-term rebuilding plan. They know, and they're teaching the rest of us, that if we rebuild New Orleans without the voice of the low-income community, we'll face the same desperate issues again in the future, and these communities will always remain vulnerable.

Stephen has had other missions as well. In New Orleans' Eighth Ward, he's worked with the local carpenters union to reduce exposure to lead poisoning in old homes. It's characteristic of ACORN that the local union is offering apprenticeships to young men and women ages 18 to 24 -- giving them a priceless opportunity to learn how to find their way out of poverty. As the Chinese saying goes, give people a fish, and you'll feed them for a day. But teach them to fish, and you'll feed them for a lifetime.

Stephen's also led the most effective voting rights campaign in New Orleans. "A lot of other organizations have been doing big, flashy events," he says, "but we've been out there in the neighborhoods where people are, signing them up door-to-door, at bus stops, wherever people congregate. Slow and steady wins the race." Of the 460,000 residents of Orleans Parish, over 302,000 are registered to vote in this historic treasure of an American city, including almost 200,000 African Americans.

Stephen works especially hard to teach people their voting rights. "We're an issue-based organization," he says. "For instance, we've been fighting for the living wage for the past few years. We want to engage people in the electoral process now. As we get them engaged…we'll have a number of registered voters interested in passing a living-wage bill in Louisiana."

In fact, that's ACORN's defining cause -- and it's effective. In November 2004, because of ACORN, 71 percent of voters in Florida and 68 percent in Nevada approved ballot initiatives to raise their state's minimum wage. Similar initiatives are now underway for next year's elections in Ohio, Michigan, Arizona, and Colorado. These campaigns are strong and successful tributes to the power of the grassroots. They draw people to the polls because the people know it makes a difference in their daily lives.

In New Orleans, Stephen won a major recent success, working with labor, religious leaders, and community groups to heed the call for economic justice. In 2002, 63 percent of New Orleans voters demanded a raise in the city's minimum wage from the federal level of $5.15 an hour to the more livable wage of $6.15 an hour for 75,000 city workers. Sadly, seven months later, the Louisiana Supreme Court struck down the increase, so the battle goes on.

In the wake of Katrina, that struggle in New Orleans is especially important. Before the hurricane, one of every 20 workers in Louisiana earned the minimum wage or less -- almost twice the national average. A quarter of the population lived in poverty -- 77 percent higher than the national average.

The challenge facing these low-wage workers was aggravated by the Administration's harsh decision to suspend the protection of prevailing wage laws for reconstruction workers in the Gulf Coast -- a needless and appalling insult to suffering workers and their families. ACORN made its outrage known. Thanks to its efforts, the Administration admitted the error of its ways and reinstated the long-standing federal wage protections for these hard-working Americans.

But there is much more to do. Stephen sees the living wage as indispensable in attracting residents back to New Orleans. As he says, "people have moved away from this city and have seen that they can make more money in other places. The simple fact of the matter," he says, "is you can't pay a minimum wage in New Orleans right now, because there is nobody in the city. So you have to pay people in order to have them come to work."

In 1968, Bobby spoke about this need, in words that ring even more true after Katrina. As he said, "We need jobs, dignified employment at decent pay; the kind of employment that lets a person say to his community, to his family, to his country, and most important, to himself, 'I helped to build this country. I am a participant in its great public ventures. I am somebody.'"

Perhaps the most invisible of all among the invisible poor are those in the immigrant neighborhoods and communities of New Orleans. A century and a half ago, thousands of Irish immigrants gave their lives digging the New Basin Canal, which linked the city with Lake Ponchartrain at the time. Lost from public view today are thousands of contemporary immigrants, especially from Mexico, Honduras, and Vietnam, who had been living in the areas hit hardest along the Gulf Coast. Few have sought help from relief agencies or gone to shelters, for fear they'll be deported. Whatever violations of the immigration laws they may have committed, we can't wash our hands of their plight and let their suffering continue.

As this disaster reminds us, we're all part of a family -- and we have a responsibility to help members of our family in need. More than ever, as we have learned so painfully in recent weeks, the war on poverty has casualties like any other war -- and so far, we are losing this war.

Government must respond in ways that are as good and as compassionate as the American people. We know what must be done. We're a stronger country when we're a fairer country. Inequality and injustice undermine our economy, our security, our standing in the world, our future. We need to wage a wiser war on poverty. That means a broader effort and a new spirit of cooperation to reduce poverty, a genuine new dedication carried out by leaders in government at every level, in religion, in industry, and in the academic community.

This is our opportunity and our calling -- and it's our duty -- to get it right. We can rebuild the Gulf Coast in a manner that lifts people up and gives them a voice. We can reduce and even eradicate poverty in the nation, and reclaim our moral standing in the world. Other nations still desperately want to look to us for moral guidance and leadership, and we cannot fail again.

Brenda Marie Osbey, the Poet Laureate of Louisiana, is Artist-in-Residence at Dillard University. Two weeks after the storm, she paid homage to her great city, its people, and their hope for rebuilding it, in these eloquent words:

Believe on those hands, And they will see you through seasons of drought and flood. Believe on these hands, And you will cross the grandy-water. Journey with me, and see what I see.

Stephen Bradberry does that. What he sees so clearly is a bright future for his New Orleans.

As Bobby said, "The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike. Rather, it will belong to those who can blend vision, reason, and courage in a personal commitment to the ideals and great enterprises of American society."

He believed that we must "learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others."

"All of us," he said, "from the wealthiest and most powerful of men to the weakest and hungriest of children, share one precious possession: the name 'American.'"

In April 1968, he ended his remarks about the Bedford-Stuyvesant community in New York City with words that ring especially true today about Stephen. "We live in a time when the nation is deeply divided. But you have proven that we need not remain so. Together we can attack the problems that seem so overwhelming, and master them. Your example should give courage to all Americans in the difficult days before us."

Stephen, you honor my brother immensely in your mission to make this a more just and peaceful land. Bobby would be very, very proud of all you're doing to carry on his unfinished work, and to help all those living in even the deepest shadows, about whom he cared so much.

It's an honor for me now to join Ethel in commending you for your inspiring, good works, and in presenting you with this Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award.