
Thank you Dean Fluharty, and thank all of you for this opportunity to return to the place that for me was not only formative but fun. Most important of all, congratulations to each and every one of you.
I will keep these remarks concise, for many reasons not least of which is a conversation I had with my ten year old son Nate who reminded me in no uncertain terms that it is your accomplishments being celebrated here today, not mine.
Nate had noticed, on a shelf in my closet, an honorary degree from another University whose commencement speech I delivered a few years ago. He asked โdad, did you go there.โ I said โno,โ. He said โbut they gave you a diploma.โ I said โno, itโs not a diploma, thatโs an honorary degreeโ. He said, โbut you didnโt go there?โ โNoโ I replied. โSo you got it for doing absolutely nothing.โ
โWell not quite nothingโ I offered sheepishly. โI think they hoped my work and words might inspire the graduates.โ
โDad, do you seriously think it is inspiring to go to college every day for four years and see the first degree go to someone whoโs never been there a day in his life?โ A ten year oldโs logic is always hard to contest. โItโs just honoraryโ I said in retreat. He shook his head and walked out of the room uttering the worn word he uses for all adult pretension: โSad.โ
So, appropriately chastized, I will briefly share only three things and then sit down.
First, as much as I appreciated the generous introduction, that is not really who I am, or at least is only a part of who I am. I am also the son of a loving mother who died from a drug overdose before I completed my education. I was a principal architect of three losing Democratic presidential primary campaigns, one of which spent more than four years paying off debt. Iโm happily married, but only after a first marriage that failed. And after I graduated from Penn I went straight to law school and then failed the bar exam. Twice. As the infomercial says, โwait, thereโs more!โ But Iโll spare you.
I share this not for sensationalism or sympathy, or to hold your attention for the next 9 minutes as desperate as I am to do so, but to persuade you that no life, not even a successful life, perhaps especially not a successful life, is lived as an unbroken string of successes. The shortcomings, failures, and even bad luck that are an inevitable part of being human need not hinder your success if you know what to take from and do with them. Conversely, spend your life or career carefully avoiding any risk of failing and you will almost certainly guarantee it. Vice President Joe Biden, who is present with us today once said โFailure at some point in life is inevitable, but giving up is unforgivable.โ
So try to see the world whole and to let the world see who you really are. Not because it will always be as attractive as your Facebook page, but because in the long run people figure it out anyway. As my wife Rosemary taught me we live longer and healthier if our โon stageโ and back stage lives are one and the same, an undivided life. Itโs the richest blessing I can wish you.
Second, as diverse as you are in you intellect, appetites, energies, appearance and ambition, you share in common at least one gift and one power. The gift is the ability to share your strength.
The anti-hunger and anti-poverty organization I started in 1984 with a $2000 cash advance on a credit card is called Share Our Strength and was built on the belief that everyone has a strength to share, a gift that you may take for granted but that can be deployed to benefit others. By sharing strength I donโt mean writing a check or volunteering at a soup kitchen. Iโm talking about giving of yourselves, of your unique value added as chefs have done by cooking at food and wine benefits and teaching low income families nutrition education, and as have done teachers, corporate execs, authors, architects, journalists, and so many others including low income families themselves working in their communities.
Since then weโve raised and spent nearly three quarters of a billion dollars to help end hunger in the U.S. Weโve added millions of Americaโs poorest kids to school breakfast programs, and seen attendance and test scores improve accordingly. Weโve added tens of thousands of summer feeding sites when the schools are closed. Weโve help build the emergency food assistance network of foodbanks, etc. Solving poverty is complex, but feeding a child is not. Our success underscores what can be achieved when, in the words of the writer Jonathan Kozol, you pick battles that are big enough to matter but small enough to win.
Although itโs good work, good is not good enough. And we canโt finish what we started without you. There are 45 million Americans on SNAP (food stamps) today and nearly half are children. For the first time a majority of our public school students, 51%, live below the poverty line. 11% of American children live in deep poverty, below 50% of the poverty line.
The gap that exists between what we know and what we do when it comes to investing in children is so large as to be indefensible. Itโs a gap that might be thought of as our โfull potential gapโ. But itโs not only the full potential of children trapped in poverty that is being lost. It is our full potential as well. Yours and mine. We canโt have a strong America without strong kids. You and I wonโt achieve the full potential we have โ to live in peace, to travel the world freely, to benefit from shared prosperity and robust economic growth if we donโt close this gap.
For those in this election year debating what it will take for America to win again, one thing on which we can all agree is that America doesnโt win if our kids donโt win when it comes to nutrition, health, literacy, inequality, and opportunity. James Baldwin: โThese are all our children and we shall either profit by or pay for whatever they become.โ
The other thing you have in common, the greatest power on the planet, which each of you has in equal measure, is the power to bear witness.
I went to Ethiopia during a devastating famine more than a decade ago, to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, to Haiti after the earthquake. I had less of a sense that I could effect change than that I would be changed by what I saw and felt, by the emotions โ sadness, sympathy, despair, anger, outrage, and ultimately hope โ that are the inevitable response to such a situation.
When something affects us powerfully we often say we have been moved. The literal implication is having started out in one place and ending up in another. In this way being moved means being transformed and personal transformation is what powers social change.
Bearing witness makes us complicit. What weโve seen canโt be unseen โ and we are left with a profound choice: do something or do nothing.
Take the opportunity to bear witness in your own way and time. Go somewhere you havenโt been and see something you havenโt yet seen. Look until you feel something and then tell someone what youโve seen and felt. This is what it means to bear witness. This is what it takes to change the world.
Third, and finally: Donโt wait. Martin Luther King once said โIn this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is the thief of time. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood, it ebbs.โ These are more than eloquent words. I went to Ethiopia during the onset of a terrible famine there in 2000 and met a 13 year old girl at a school we were supporting and where we were helping to build a hospital next door. Her name was Alima Dari and we stayed in touch, exchanging letters and photos.
But one day a colleague of mine went to Ethiopia and I gave him a letter to give to Alima, but didnโt hear from him for ten days. He wrote and said โI hate to tell you this but Alima died of cerebral malaria. Sheโs been misdiagnosed with Tuberculosis, the hospital we were building was not yet finished, and by the time they got her to Addis Ababa it was too late.โ Dr. Kingโs very words.
You donโt have to go to Ethiopia to find your Alima. She is here in Philadelphia, or Memphis, or L.A. Share your strength on behalf of an Alima somewhere in this world. The time weโre allotted to solve problems is limited and precious. Donโt wait!
Donโt wait until the mortgage is paid, or until you get the promotion, or until it stops raining. No one conveys this better than the commencement speaker you are fortunate to hear tomorrow, Lin Manuel โI am not throwing away my shotโ Miranda. Iโve been lucky enough to see Hamilton twice. One this past week with Lin in the starring role, and a month ago, on a Sunday, with his understudyโs understudy who had his first and only star turn on Broadway and gave the performance of a lifetime. You never know when your moment to shine will arrive. Be ready. Donโt wait.
Most important of all, when your intentions meet the inevitable obstacles donโt just wait. Jaywalk if you can, break a window if you must, pick a lock.
What distinguishes Share Our Strength, and other effective social change efforts. Every time a door closes we pick the lock. In the Baltimore school system the answer to everything we wanted to do to feed more kids was to check with the director of school food and nutrition. And who is that person we would ask? โOh, the position has been vacant for two years.โ
When told โWe canโt afford the salaryโ, we replied, โweโll pay it.โ
When told โweโre not allowed to hire a search firmโ, we replied, we will hire them.
I could give you a thousand similar examples. Social change is not about having a good plan. Itโs not about being well funded. Though that helps. Success at social change is about knocking down the obstacles between you and your plan which arise more often than the clock strikes the hour. Often the key is in picking the lock.
I gave my son Nate the first words and so Iโll give him the last.
It had long been his fantasy that he and I would โcamp outโ in the living room of our apartment in Washington DC. I said we could do it, but only once, and we used the fireplace as a campfire and I sang him songs and we put some sleeping bags under a tent made of blankets and kitchen towels. He slept like a rock and I tossed and turned all night. The next night he wanted to do it again but I said โOh no, Iโm sleeping in bed with momโ. He was disappointed, even angry with me, and said โfine but Iโm sleeping out here.โ I walked down the hall to our bedroom and before I could even pull back the covers he was standing in the doorway, blanket in one hand, teddy bear in the other and said: โWho am I kidding, I wouldnโt last a minute out there on my own.โ
Well who among us would truly make it on their own? Where would we be without our classmates, our teammates, our professors, our parents, our-coworkers, our lovers, and our friends? Where would we be without extending our hand or reaching for one? If anyone has ever helped you in any way, you are now in a position to honor it as you leave here by committing to bear witness and sharing your strength.