What it takes to create social change against all odds

Over the decades, my colleagues and I
have exposed terrible misdeeds and crimes

by large corporations

which have taken many lives

and caused injuries and diseases,

on top of damaging economic costs

affecting many innocents.

But exposure was not enough.

We had to secure Congressional mandates
to prevent such devastation.

As a result, many lives were saved
and many traumas prevented,

especially in the areas of automobile,
pharmaceutical, environmental,

and workplace health and safety.

Along the way, we kept getting
one question again and again:

"Ralph, how do you do all this?

Your group is so small,

your funds are modest,

and you don't make campaign
contributions to politicians."

My response points to an overlooked,

amazing pattern of American history.

Just about every advance in justice,

every blessing of democracy,

came from the efforts of small numbers
of individual citizens.

They knew what they were talking about.

They expanded public opinion,

or what Abraham Lincoln called
"the all-important public sentiment."

The few citizens who started
these movements

enlisted larger numbers along the way

to achieving these reforms
and redirections.

However, even at their peak,

the actively engaged people

never exceeded one percent
of the citizenry, often far less.

These builders of democracy and justice

came out of the anti-slavery drives,

the pressures for women's right to vote.

They rose from farmers and workers
in industrial sectors

demanding regulation of banks,
railroads and manufacturers

and fair labor standards.

In the 20th century,

improvements of life

came with tiny third parties
and their allies

pushing the major parties
in the electoral arena

to adopt such measures,

such as the right to form labor unions,

the 40-hour week,

progressive taxation, the minimum wage,

unemployment compensation
and social security.

More recently came Medicare
and civil rights, civil liberties,

nuclear arms treaties,

consumer and environmental triumphs,

all sparked by citizen advocates

and small third parties

who never won a national election.

If you're willing to lose persistently,

your causes can become winners in time.

(Laughter)

The story of how I came
to these civic activities

may be instructive

for people who go along
with Senator Daniel Webster's belief,

"Justice served

is the great interest of man on Earth."

I grew up in a small,

highly industrialized town in Connecticut

with three siblings and parents

who owned a popular restaurant
bakery and delicatessen.

Two waterways,

the Mad River and the Still River,

crossed alongside our main street.

As a child, I asked,

"Why couldn't we wade and fish in them

like the rivers we read about
in our schoolbooks?"

The answer: the factories
freely use these rivers

to dump harmful toxic chemicals
and other pollutants.

In fact, the companies
took control of rivers

that belong to all of us
for their own profitable pursuits.

Later, I realized the rivers
were not part of our normal lives at all,

except when they flooded our streets.

There were no water pollution regulations

to speak of then.

I realized only strong laws
could clean up our waterways.

My youthful observation
of our town's two river's sewers

started a straight line
to my eighth grade graduation speech

about the great conservationist
national park advocate John Muir,

then to my studies at Princeton
on the origins of public sanitation,

and then to Rachel Carson's
"Silent Spring."

These engagements prepared me

for seizing the golden hour
of environmental lawmaking

in the early 1970s.

I played a leading citizen role

in lobbying through Congress
the Clean Air Act,

the clean water laws, EPA,

workplace safety standards, OSHA,

and the Safe Drinking Water Act.

If there's less lead in your body,

no more asbestos in your lungs,

and cleaner air and water,

it's because of those laws over the years.

Today, enforcement
of these life-saving laws

under Trump is being dismantled wholesale.

Rolling back these perils
is the immediate challenge

to a resurgent environmental movement,
for the young generation.

As for consumer advocates,
there are no permanent victories.

Passing a law is only the first step.

The next step, and the next step,
is defending the law.

For me, some of these battles
were highly personal.

I lost friends in high school
and college to highway collisions,

the first leading cause of death
in that age group.

Then the blame was put on the driver,

derisively called
"the nut behind the wheel."

True, drunk drivers had responsibility,

but safer-designed vehicles and highways
could prevent crashes

and diminish their severity
when they occurred.

There were no seatbelts,
padded dash panels,

no airbags or other
crash-worthy protections

to diminish the severity of collisions.

The brakes, tires and handling stability
of US vehicles left much to be desired

even in comparison
with foreign manufacturers.

I liked to hitchhike,

including back and forth
from Princeton and Harvard Law School.

Sometimes, a driver and I came upon
ghastly crash scenes.

The horrors made a deep impression on me.

They sparked my writing
a paper at law school

on unsafe automotive design and the need
for motor vehicle safety laws.

One of my closest friends at law school,

Fred Condon, was driving home
one day from work

to his young family in New Hampshire,

and momentarily drowsed
behind the wheel of his station wagon.

The vehicle went to the shoulder
of the road and tipped over.

There were no seatbelts in 1961.

Fred became a paraplegic.

Such preventable violence
created fire in my belly.

The automobile industry
was cruelly refusing to install

long-known lifesaving safety features
and pollution controls.

Instead, the industry focused
on advertising the annual style changes

and excessive horsepower.

I was outraged.

The more I investigated the suppression
of auto safety devices,

publicized evidence from court cases
about the auto companies

negligently harming vehicle occupants,

especially the instability
of a GM vehicle called the "Corvair,"

the more General Motors was keen
on discrediting my writings and testimony.

They hired private detectives
to follow me in order to get dirt.

After the publication of my book,
"Unsafe at Any Speed,"

GM wanted to undermine
my forthcoming testimony

before a Senate subcommittee in 1966.

The Capitol police caught them.

The media was all over
the struggle in Congress

between me and giant General Motors.

With remarkable speed, compared to today,