Given my schedule, I don’t often have the ability to go to rallies and other political events that happen during the week. But I’ve never seen Teresa up close, and I’d heard good things about her speeches. So along with a friend from Maria Cantwell’s campaign, I took the morning off and saw her speak at the convention center.
She was simply amazing. While she obviously had a set of topics to discuss, the speech seemed fairly extemporaneous. She was alternately soft-spoken and passionate, humble and strong, and in the end, very moving. She doesn’t speak in political catch-phrases or sound bites. Stories from her life and childhood growing up in a dictatorship illuminate her points about the idea and ideal of America. She spoke of complexity and how we must learn to embrace it, because we face no simple issues. She spoke of optimism, and our need to embody it while still facing the real work ahead. And she spoke of the disappointment internationally when we fail to live up to our own rhetoric, to be the role model we always tell ourselves America is.
It was a terrific speech and she’s an amazing person. If you haven’t had a chance to hear her speak, I recommend doing so.
