Governor Mario Cuomo in 1984:
"Ten days ago, president admitted that although some people in this country seem to be doing well nowadays, others were unhappy, even worried. About themselves, for their families and for their futures.
President said that he didn't understand that fear. He said:"Why this country is a shining city on a hill!"
And the president is right. In many ways we are a shining city on a hill. The hard truth is that not everyone is sharing the new city's splendour and glory. Shining city is perhaps all the president sees from the portica of the White House, of the verandah of his ranch, where everyone seems to be doing well.
But there's another city. There's another part to the shining city.
A part where some people can't pay their mortages, and most young people can't afford ...
Where students can't afford the education they need and middle-class parents watch the dreams they hold for their children vaporate.
In this part of the city there are more poor than ever.
More families in trouble, more and more people who need help but can't find it.
Even worse, there are elderly people who tremble in the basements of the houses they live. And there are people who sleep in the city streets, in the gutter where the glitter doesn't show. There are ghettos with thousands of young people without a job or an education. Give their lives away to drug dealers every day.
There is despair.
There is despair, Mr President. In the faces that you don't see. In the places that you don't visit in your shining city. Mr President you are denying that this nation is more a tale of two cities than it is just a shining city on a hill.
Maybe, maybe Mr President if you visited some more places, if you went to Appalachia where some people still live in sheds. Maybe if you went to Lackawanna where thousands of unemployed steel-workers wonder why we subsidize foreign steel. Maybe, maybe Mr President if you stopped in at a shelter in Chicago and spoke to the homeless there. Maybe, Mr President if you asked a woman who had been denied the help she needed to feed her children because you said you needed the money for a tax-break for a millionaire or for a missile we couldn't afford to use."
Not for honour,
not for glory,
not for profit,
but for love!
Not for honour,
not for pleasure,
not for profit,
but for love!
Read more at
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