-
Over the decades,
-
my colleagues and I have exposed
terrible misdeeds and crimes
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by large corporations,
-
which have taken many lives
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and caused injuries and diseases,
-
on top of damaging economic costs,
-
affecting many incidents.
-
But exposure was not enough.
-
We had to secure congressional mandates
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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:
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"Ralph, how do you do all this?
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Your groups are small,
-
your funds are modest,
-
and you don't make campaign
contributions to politicians."
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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
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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 antislavery drives,
-
the pressures for women's right to vote.
-
They rose from farmers and workers
in industrial sectors
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demanding regulation of banks,
railroads and manufacturers
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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
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to adopt such measures,
-
such as the right to form labor unions,
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the 40-hour week,
-
progressive taxation, the minimum wage,
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unemployment compensation
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and social security.
-
More recently came Medicare
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and civil rights, civil liberties,
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nuclear arms treaties,
-
consumer and environmental triumphs --
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all sparked by citizen advocates
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and small third parties
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who never won a national election.
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If you're willing to lose persistently,
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your causes can become winners in time.
-
(Laughter)
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The story of how I came
to these civic activities
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may be instructive
-
for people who go along
with Senator Daniel Webster's belief,
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"Justice, sir, is the great interest
of man on Earth."
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I grew up in a small,
highly industrialized town in Connecticut
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with three siblings and parents
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who owned a popular restaurant
bakery and delicatessen.
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Two waterways,
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the Mad River and the Still River,
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crossed alongside our main street.
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As a child, I asked
why couldn't we wade and fish in them,
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like the rivers we read about
in our schoolbooks.
-
The answer: the factories
freely use these rivers
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to dump harmful toxic chemicals
and other pollutants.
-
In fact, the companies took control
of rivers that belonged to all of us
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for their own profitable pursuits.
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Later, I realized the rivers
were not part of our normal lives at all,
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except when they flooded our streets.
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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-sewers
-
started a straight line
to my eighth-grade graduation speech
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about the great conservationist,
national park advocate John Muir,
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then to my studies at Princeton
on the origins of public sanitation,
-
and then to Rachel Carson's
"Silent Spring."
-
These engagements prepared me
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for seizing the golden hour
of environmental lawmaking
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in the early 1970s.
-
I played a leading citizen role
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in lobbying through Congress
the Clean Air Act;
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the clean water laws, EPA;
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workplace safety standards, OSHA;
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and the Safe Drinking Water Act.
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If there's less lead in your body,
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no more asbestos in your lungs
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and cleaner air and water,
-
it's because of those laws over the years.
-
Today, enforcement of these
lifesaving laws under Trump
-
is being dismantled wholesale.
-
Rolling back these perils
is the immediate challenge
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to a resurgent environmental movement
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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,
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the first leading cause of death
in that age group.
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Then, the blame was put on the driver,
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derisively called
"the nut behind the wheel."
-
True, drunk drivers had responsibility,
-
but safer-designed vehicles and highways
could prevent crashes
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and diminish their severity
when they occurred.
-
There were no seat belts,
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.
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They sparked my writing
a paper at law school
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on unsafe automotive design and the need
for motor vehicle safety laws.
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One of my closest friends
at law school, Fred Condon,
-
was driving home one day from work
to his young family in New Hampshire
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and momentarily drowsed
behind the wheel of his station wagon.
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The vehicle went to the shoulder
of the road and tipped over.
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There were no seat belts in 1961.
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Fred became a paraplegic.
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Such preventable violence
created fire in my belly.
-
The auto industry was
cruelly refusing to install
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long-known lifesaving safety features
and pollution controls.
-
Instead, the industry focused on
advertising the annual style changes
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and excessive horsepower.
-
I was outraged.
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The more I investigated the suppression
of auto safety devices,
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publicized evidence from court cases
about the auto companies
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negligently harming vehicle occupants --
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especially the instability
of a GM vehicle called the Corvair --
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the more General Motors was keen on
discrediting my writings and testimony.
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They hired private detectives
to follow me in order to get dirt.
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After the publication of my book,
"Unsafe at Any Speed,"
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GM wanted to undermine
my forthcoming testimony
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before a Senate subcommittee in 1966.
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The Capitol Police caught them.
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The media was all over
the struggle in Congress
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between me and giant General Motors.
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With remarkable speed compared to today,
-
in 1966, Congress and President Johnson
brought the largest industry in America
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under federal regulation
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for safety, pollution control
and fuel efficiency.
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By the year 2015,
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three and a half million deaths
were averted just in the US,
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millions more injuries prevented,
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billions of dollars saved.
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What did it take for a victory
against such overwhelming odds?
-
Well, there were:
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one, a few advocates who knew how
to communicate the evidence everywhere;
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two, several key receptive
congressional committee chairs
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led by three senators;
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three, about seven reporters
from major newspapers
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who regularly reported on
the unfolding story;
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four, President Lyndon Johnson,
with assistance,
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amenable to creating
a regulatory safety agency, NHTSA;
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and five, a dozen auto engineers,
inspectors and physicians
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who divulged crucial information,
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and who need to be better known.
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One more factor was critical:
informed public opinion.
-
A majority of people learned about
how much safer their cars could be.
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They wanted their vehicles
to be fuel-efficient.
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They wanted to breathe cleaner air.
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The result: in September 1966,
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President Lyndon Johnson signed
the safety legislation in the White House
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with me by his side, receiving a pen!
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(Laughter)
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Between 1966 and 1976,
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those six critically connected factors
were used over and over.
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It became the golden age
of legislation and regulatory action
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for consumer, worker
and environmental protection.
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Those connected elements
of our past campaigns
-
need to be kept in mind
by people striving to do the same today
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for drinking water safety,
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antibiotic resistance deaths,
-
criminal justice reform,
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risks from climate disruption,
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bio- and nanotech impacts,
-
the nuclear arms race,
-
peace treaties,
-
dangers to children,
-
chemical and radioactive perils,
-
and the like.
-
According to a solid study in 2016
by Johns Hopkins School of Medicine,
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preventable hospital deaths
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take a mind-boggling 5,000 lives
a week in America.
-
The 1980s climax:
-
our dramatic struggle
to limit smoking in public places,
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regulate the tobacco industry
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and establish conditions
for reducing smoking.
-
Their struggle began in earnest in 1964,
-
with the US Surgeon
General's famous report
-
linking cigarette smoking
to cancer and other diseases.
-
Over 400,000 deaths a year
in the United States
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are related to smoking.
-
Public hearings, litigation, media exposés
and industry whistleblowers
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joined with crucial medical scientists
to take on a very powerful industry.
-
I asked Michael Pertschuk,
a leading Senate staffer,
-
how many full-time advocates were working
on tobacco industry control at that time.
-
Mr. Pertschuk estimated no more
than 1,000 full-time champions in the US
-
pressing for a smoke-free society.
-
I say that's a remarkably small number
of people making it happen.
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They had a public opinion majority
of aroused people, nonsmokers,
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behind them.
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Many smokers were quitting
the nicotine addiction.
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Just think: from 45 percent of adults
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down to 15 percent by 2018.
-
The tipping point was when
Congress passed legislation
-
empowering the Food
and Drug Administration
-
to regulate the tobacco companies.
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Keep in mind that advances
for consumers and workers
-
are usually followed by
a variety of corporate counterattacks.
-
When the fervor behind such reform fades,
-
then legislatures and regulatory agencies
become very vulnerable to industry capture
-
that stalls existing
or further enforcement.
-
What's that saying?
-
"Justice requires constant vigilance."
-
We see the difference between
-
the driven stamina of counterattacking,
profit-driven corporate power
-
and the fatigue that overcomes
a voluntary citizenry
-
whose awareness and skill need renewal.
-
It is not a fair contest
-
between large companies
like General Motors, Pfizer,
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ExxonMobil, Wells Fargo, Monsanto,
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plus other very wealthy
companies and lobbyists,
-
compared to people protection groups
with very limited resources.
-
Moreover, the corporations
have immunities and privileges
-
unavailable to real human beings.
-
For example, Takata was guilty
of a horrific airbag scandal,
-
but the company escaped
criminal prosecution.
-
Instead, Takata was allowed to go bankrupt
and its executives kept nice nest eggs.
-
But organized people need not
be awed by corporate power.
-
Lawmakers still want votes
-
more than they need
campaign finance from corporations.
-
We far outnumber corporations
in potential influence.
-
But voters must be connected clearly
-
to what organized voters want
from the lawmakers.
-
Delegating the constitutional
authority of "we the people,"
-
we want them to do the people's work.
-
A people's Congress,
-
the most constitutionally powerful
branch of government,
-
can override, block, or rechannel
the most destructive corporations.
-
There are only 100 senators
and 435 representatives
-
with just two million
organized activists back home,
-
a Congress watchdog hobby.
-
Congressional justice
can be made reliable and prompt.
-
We've proved that again and again
with far fewer people.
-
But today, Congress,
marinated in campaign money,
-
has been abdicating its responsibilities
to an executive branch
-
which too often has become a corporate
state controlled by big companies.
-
President Franklin D. Roosevelt,
in 1938, in a message to Congress,
-
called concentrated corporate power
over our government
-
quote -- fascism -- end quote.
-
A modest engagement
of one percent of adults
-
in each of the 435
congressional districts,
-
summoning senators and representatives
or state legislators
-
to their own town meetings,
-
where the citizenry presents their agenda,
-
backed by a majority of voters,
-
can turn Congress around.
-
Our representatives can become
a fountainhead of democracy and justice,
-
elevating human possibilities.
-
I dream of our schools,
-
or after-school clinics,
-
teaching community civic action skills,
leading to the good life.
-
Adult education classes
should do the same.
-
We need to create citizen training
and action libraries.
-
Students and adults love knowledge
that relates to their daily lives.
-
Large majorities of Americans,
regardless of political labels,
-
favor a living wage,
-
universal health insurance,
-
real enforcement against
corporate crime, fraud and abuse.
-
They want a fair, productive tax system,
-
public budgets returning value
to the people back home
-
in modern infrastructure,
-
and an end to most corporate subsidies.
-
Increasingly, they're demanding
serious attention to climate disruption
-
and other environmental
and global health perils and pandemics.
-
Big majorities of people
want efficient government,
-
an end to endless,
aggressive wars that boomerang.
-
They want clean elections
and fair rules for voters and candidates.
-
These are changes
that bring people together,
-
changes Congress can make happen.
-
People around the world favor democracy
-
because it brings the best
out of its inhabitants and its leaders.
-
But this objective requires citizens
to want to spend time
-
on this great opportunity
called democracy,
-
between and at elections.
-
History gives examples
that encourage us to believe
-
that breaking through power
is easier than we think.
-
People say to me,
"I don't know what to do!"
-
Start to learn by doing.
-
The more they practice citizen action,
-
the more skilled and innovative
they become at it.
-
Like learning a trade, a profession,
a hobby, learning how to swim,
-
their doubts, prejudgments and hesitancy
-
begin to melt away
in the crucible of action.
-
Their arguments for change
become deeper and sharper.
-
From 1965 to 1966,
-
when I was making the case
for safer automobiles,
-
I realized that there were a lot
of industries making a lot of money
-
from dealing with
the horrific results of crashes:
-
medical care, insurance sales,
repairing cars ...
-
There was a perverse incentive
to do nothing but maintain the status quo.
-
By contrast, preventing these tragedies
-
frees consumer dollars to spend or save
in voluntary [routes?]
-
for better livelihoods.
-
What it takes is a small number of people
to exert their civic muscle,
-
both as individuals and organized groups,
-
on our legal decision makers.
-
Ideally, it only takes a few enlightened
rich people contributing funds
-
to accelerate citizen efforts
against the commanders of greed and power.
-
Why, in our past, rich people
donated essential money
-
for the antislavery, women's right
to vote and civil rights movements.
-
We should remember that.
-
With the onset of climate catastrophe,
-
every one of us needs to have
a higher estimate of our own significance,
-
of our own sustained
dedication to the civic life,
-
as part of a normal way of daily living,
-
along with our personal family life.
-
Showing up thoughtfully
is half of democracy.
-
That's what advances life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness.
-
Remember, our country
is full of problems we don't deserve
-
and solutions which we do not apply.
-
That gap is a democracy gap
that no power can stop us from closing.
-
We owe this to our posterity.
-
Don't we want our descendants,
-
instead of cursing us
for our shortsighted neglect,
-
don't we want them to bless our foresight
-
and bright horizons which can
fulfill their lives peacefully
-
and advance the common good?
-
Thank you.
-
(Applause)