I honor those who fought for U.S. and those who fought to make it more equal

The following is a condensed version of a floor speech given on Jan. 13 by Senate Minority Leader Morgan McGarvey, D-Louisville in response to Senate President Robert Stivers.

Last week domestic terrorists attacked the United States Capitol to stop the certification of a fair and valid election at the urging of the President of the United States. Marine General James Mattis, the former Secretary of Defense, was so appalled by the spectacle in Washington that he broke the silence he pledged when he left the Trump Administration. He chose this week to insist “that we live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation.”

As a widely respected Marine leader he concluded, “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us…(but) we can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society.”

Mattis cites James Madison in Federalist 41, when he wrote, “America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat.”

As for me, I honor those who have bled and died, and served in uniform, and put themselves in harm’s way, and defended the American promise, including my brother who has been deployed multiple times to battle zones where everyone is vulnerable, every day.

Like my big brother, my Grandpa is one of my heroes. He left the hollers of Perry and Owsley county where he grew up to fight overseas in WWII. He made it back from the Great War, received the benefits of the GI Bill, and attended the University of Kentucky. His service changed the trajectory of our family. I’m so grateful for his service and hard work, but we have to recognize these benefits weren’t available to the black soldiers who served in WWII. The GI Bill almost completely shut out black veterans. The University of Kentucky didn’t even allow black students. Black people were denied loans from banks, told where they could and couldn’t live, who they could marry, and whether they could vote. Worst of all, this discrimination was legal.

Service to this country is essential to me and my family. However, I also honor the memory of everyone who has risked their life – and those who have died – in the struggle to make us equal before the law.

People like the patriots John Lewis – who was met with the billy club of the sheriff for walking for freedom, and Martin Luther King, J. – who while popular today was shot for having the audacity to realize the dream that all people were created equal. People like four little girls in a bombed Birmingham Church who died because their congregation included patriots who thought black and white kids should be allowed to attend school together. People like three patriotic young men whose burned bodies ended up in an earthen dam in Neshoba County, Mississippi, because they tried to register Black people for the most fundamental right of citizenship — the right to vote.

Our great country was founded in irony. It began with a declaration that everyone is created equal and is divinely endowed with inalienable rights, but also with the adoption of a government run by white men of property in which slaves were counted as three-fifths human. Down through generations, tears have been shed for the victims of that irony, which we have struggled almost 250 years to resolve. We continue to weep over coffins in which we bury victims of our history’s foundational irony, people who died because they were Black.

I also honor those who didn’t just grieve over the coffins of George Floyd, Ahmad Arbery, and Breonna Taylor but who also advocated peacefully for a justice system not bent and blunted by racism. And yes, I honor the members of the University of Kentucky basketball team, and their coach, for peacefully and justifiably calling attention to the fact that the protection of the flag is still denied to some. When you think about history – from slavery, where in this state people were property, to the Tuskegee experiments, to the lynchings, Jim Crow laws – legal and systemic discrimination the impact of which we still see and feel today, it’s amazing they’re seeking unity and recognition, not unrest and revenge.

Tears by themselves won’t dissolve the tragic paradox that darkens the American story, but an enlightened stewardship can change the narrative. We are stewards of the Founders’ most important promise. We should be agents of change. We owe that much to past generations who bled to defend the promise of equal justice before the law.

The Senator from Clay is my friend. Period. And he is a good and caring person who cares not just about the problems in his own district, but how so many of those problems exist in our urban areas.

It’s easy to get caught up in headlines. It would be easy for me to take a cheap political shot at my friend. But that’s not who he is, and that’s not how we get through this. When we see each other – when we all see each other – we can work toward that more perfect union. Gen. Mattis saw the power of a unified country. The people of this body know the power of a unified Kentucky. For it truly is “united we stand, divided we fall.”

Morgan McGarvey, D-Louisville, is state Senate Minority Leader, representing Jefferson County’s 19th District.