Remarks to Vermont Pride Gathering 
June 17th, 2000
Burlington

Good morning.  My name is Rick Hubbard. I’m a native Vermonter and candidate for the United States Senate. I’m also the guy who has recently walked over 400 miles throughout Vermont and visited over 70 of our 251 communities to highlight the need for meaningful national campaign finance reform.

I’ve been walking throughout Vermont to emphasize how big money from special interests causes the shameless sale of public policy by Congress. This practice costs your family over $1,000 per year and hundreds of billions of dollars collectively as citizens. It limits and defines our choices of candidates. It defers, misdirects, and blocks legislation to change our national priorities in our federal budget – even when these changes are in the common interests of American citizens. For example:

Ø     It prevents us from protecting and strengthening social security.

Ø     It prevents us from improving our national educational achievement.

Ø     It prevents us from more fully protecting our environment.

Ø     It prevents us from providing comprehensive health care for all Americans

Ø     And it prevents us from working more cooperatively with our world neighbors.

As important as it is to remove the corrupting effects of big special interest money in order to revise our national priorities, I’m here today for a different purpose. Today I’m here to walk with you --  to say I’m proud of Vermont and I’m proud to be a Vermonter as we blaze the trail toward recognition and support of the fundamental need of ALL people for loving and lasting relationships.

Today, other speakers will discuss the legal rights created in Vermont’s landmark Civil Union legislation. I therefore choose to focus my remarks more broadly on the fundamental values that underlie these rights.

We all must learn to live harmoniously in a diverse and increasingly interconnected world.  Our families and our communities depend on strong relationships among individuals. As citizens, it is important that we support, strengthen and expand, across America and throughout the world, those values which will, over time, strengthen relationships, build stronger safer, communities, promote more open and stable institutions and decrease the risk of conflict between individuals and neighbors worldwide.

To achieve this, our relationships must be based upon honesty, integrity, responsibility, equality, love, compassion and respect.

Relationships based upon these values can bring us together, regardless of race, religion, language, culture, sexual preference, or national origin.

Relationships based upon these values are more stable, longer lasting, more emotionally satisfying, and impart greater benefit to all involved.

Our Civil Union legislation supports and strengthens relationships here in Vermont. It furthers the values of honesty, integrity, responsibility, equality, love, compassion and respect and therefore I’m proud to support it.

One final item. If you’d like a way to show your support for these values, and for the importance of repairing our democracy by removing big special interest money and its corrupting effects, I invite you to walk with me and other Vermonters in the parade today.

Gather around the big green signs that say “Vermonters for National Campaign Finance Reform”. Let me point them out to you in the crowd below. Sally. will you and the others please move these signs around so everyone can see them. Come introduce yourself, and let’s march together! Thank you!

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