Hillary Clinton for POTUS "We have an opportunity to lift everyone"

[McCamy Taylor]

“My running for president is a way of sending a message — we have an opportunity to lift everyone,” she (Clinton) said.



Irish-Americans: This spring Clinton was inducted into the Irish American hall of fame for her work in bringing peace to Northern Ireland. This had not won her friends in Great Britain, btw. Some members of the British press can be downright catty when it comes to the former SOS. But who needs Great Britain,m our former colonial master? Not me. Vive la revolution!

http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/03/16/first-draft-focus-hillary-clinton-gets-irish-honor/

Mrs. Clinton spoke about her work with women in Belfast when her husband worked on the 1998 Good Friday agreement, a major step toward ending the long sectarian conflict known as the Troubles.

Burma Hillary Clinton was the first US SOS to visit Burma since 1955. One year later, Aung San Suu Kyi, with whom Clinton met during her Burma visit came to the US to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor.

https://ajws.org/blog/aung-san-suu-kyi-accepts-u-s-congressional-gold-medal/

Clinton went on to note that “[o]vercoming the past, healing a wounded country, building a democracy, would require moving from icon to politician.”

“People,” she continued, “fight and die for the right to exercise politics.”

South Africa

Hillary Rodham Clinton remembered the power and grace of Nelson Mandela, calling the late South African president a "giant among us" as she accepted a human rights award on Friday.

snip

Mandela "demonstrated unequivocally how each of us can choose how we will respond to those injustices and grievances, those sorrows and tragedies that afflict all of human kind," Clinton said on Capitol Hill. "He will certainly be remembered for the way he led, his dignity, his extraordinary understanding — not just of how how to bring democracy and freedom to his beloved South Africa — but of how important it was that he first brought freedom to himself."

Clinton's remarks came as she was honored by the Tom Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice, an organization created to carry on the work of the late Democratic congressman. Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor elected to Congress, died of cancer in 2008.

The former secretary of State noted the similarities between Mandela and Lantos. She said they "had seen the worst that humanity can offer" and noted they had been "denied their right to be a Jew in Hungary (and) a black man in South Africa during apartheid.

China "Women's Rights are human rights." We all know who said that and when. Here is the back story on the speech that made Clinton famous around the world as a champion of the rights of the oppressed.

In planning the speech, Mrs. Clinton’s clashed with White House aides who thought a first lady should not dive into delicate diplomatic issues. Mr. Clinton read the speech in its early stages, but his advisers did not. The White House chief of staff, Thomas F. McLarty, told the curious press corps that Mrs. Clinton would not break any new ground in her trip to Beijing.

“Before I went there was a lot of handwringing and concern in the Congress as well as in the administration, but I made it clear that I was going to go,” Mrs. Clinton said in the interview on Friday.

snip

Aides who traveled with Mrs. Clinton to Beijing remember the staid United Nations delegates pounding their feet as she declared “it is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food or drowned” simply because they are born female, and “it is a violation of human rights when women and girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution.”

After the speech, women dressed in traditional garb from various nations poured over an escalator to try to touch Mrs. Clinton, who wore a powder pink suit. Tens of thousands of workers with nongovernmental organizations who were not allowed to attend the conference, gathered amid a downpour and the heavy security in Huairou, 30 miles outside Beijing, to hear Mrs. Clinton deliver a version of the speech.

http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/09/05/20-years-later-hillary-clintons-beijing-speech-on-women-resonates/

[jkbRN]

1. human rights are insanely important

& this isn't much, at least for me. Especially when it comes to her involvement with the TPP, Malaysia and their horrendous human trafficking record.

[McCamy Taylor]

2. Thanks. I almost forgot her work to battle human trafficking.

Writing in the WaPo 2009

We must build on this work. When I began advocating against trafficking in the 1990s, I saw firsthand what happens to its victims. In Thailand, I held 12-year-olds who had been trafficked and were dying of AIDS. In Eastern Europe, I shared the tears of women who wondered whether they'd ever see their relatives again. The challenge of trafficking demands a comprehensive approach that both brings down criminals and cares for victims. To our strategy of prosecution, protection and prevention, it's time to add a fourth P: partnerships.

The criminal networks that enslave millions of people cross borders and span continents. Our response must do the same. The United States is committed to building partnerships with governments and organizations around the world, to finding new and more effective ways to take on the scourge of human trafficking. We want to support our partners in their efforts and find ways to improve our own.

Human trafficking flourishes in the shadows and demands attention, commitment and passion from all of us. We are determined to build on our past success and advance progress in the weeks, months and years ahead. Together, we must hold a light to every corner of the globe and help build a world in which no one is enslaved.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/16/AR2009061602628.html

Speaking to a group of Methodist women several years later.

The former secretary of state shared stories about her upbringing in the United Methodist Church with more than 7,000 people attending the United Methodist Women's Assembly here.

She spoke of how her grandmother, who worked in a Pennsylvania factory to help support her family, was always eager to help others — a characteristic of most Methodist women — she said.

snip

She told the audience she met a 12-year-old girl whose family sold her into prostitution in Thailand. When the girl contracted AIDS, she was forced out of her brothel and her family would not accept her, leaving her to die from the disease.

The girl "suffered the worst possible mistreatment," Clinton said.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/04/26/hillary-clinton-methodist-women/8209073/

[Suich]

3. Nice!

Well-handled, McCamy Taylor!

[left-of-center2012]

4. She finally got around to same sex marriage !

And she finally got around to opposing the Iraq War !