Lauren’s Acceptance Speech
About a decade ago I used to volunteer with a pro-life religious order many of you may be familiar with—the Sisters of Life—in their Handmaids program. The concept was simple: while the Sisters provided many of the material resources necessary to help women through a crisis pregnancy, the Handmaids volunteers “walked with” the women through texts, phone calls, and meetings for coffee. They recognized that accompaniment was one of the biggest factors in helping these women to choose life.
That’s when I met a young woman I’ll call Mikayla. Mikayla was a teenager who lived in Harlem. Her parents were immigrants from Ghana. When her parents found out about her pregnancy, they offered her a “choice”: get an abortion or leave home. She chose to move out, and when I spoke with her she was living with a friend. The father of her child was in jail. When I asked her how I might help her, she admitted that she was a bit nervous about attending a parenting class the following Saturday morning. The program was run at the famous Harlem Children’s Zone school, one of the best charter schools in the area. On Saturday mornings, young moms-to-be could gather for parenting classes and, with perfect attendance, receive a lottery ticket for a chance to get their children into HCZ. If she could get through exhaustion, morning sickness, an unstable housing situation, and New York City public transit on a weekend and never miss a class, she might get her child a spot at the school–that’s how much she loved her baby already. As I sat with her through the class, I couldn’t help but think that if I found myself in the same situation, I would have had any number of supports to get me through it, including my parents and family. And here was Mikayla, braving it on her own.
A few months later I accompanied Mikayla to the Sisters’ Christmas party. She informed me that her father had left her mother to move in with a mistress, and her mother had taken her back in. “All men are dogs,” she told me as we watched the Sisters’ Nativity play unfold at the front of the room. My heart was breaking. I could not think of an example in her life to prove her wrong. As the play reached the point of Mary’s Visitation to Elizabeth, Mikayla put her hand on her stomach. “She’s kicking,” she told me.
One morning a short while later I woke up to a photo of a squishy newborn girl, with weight and height measurements, from Mikayla. As I lay there in a morning haze gazing at the photo of this child, thinking of everything her mother had gone through to reach this moment of holding her in her arms, I found myself wondering--would I have been as brave as Mikayla? How did she fail to buckle under the enormous pressure placed on her in bringing this child into the world? And how was it fair to ask a teenager to carry this all by herself? Shouldn’t society be built in a way that would help her welcome this new life?
At that time I had switched over to voting for what I considered to be the “pro-life party,” but I found myself increasingly dissatisfied by their failure to address the many factors that led to Mikayla’s situation—poverty, an underfunded school system, and family breakdown, among other things. My work with pregnant women brought me face-to-face with the reality of a truly broken system that I had always managed to avoid due to my own privileged upbringing. And so I entered a period of political disengagement, not uncommon among my millennial peers. I sat on the sidelines and watched the “dumpster fire.” I had friends with political ideals but nothing that seemed, at least to me, to be making any practical difference in the lives of the disadvantaged.
I share my story because I believe many of us have gone through a similar journey that has led us to this room. The prophet Isaiah says, “The Lord God has given me a well-trained tongue, that I may know how to answer the weary a word that will waken them.” The American people are weary. We’re tired of politics that are focused on fighting instead of fixing, on vitriol instead of virtues. Who can speak to our weary hearts? Who can keep us from hopelessness? Those of us who are Christians know and believe that only Christ can truly do so. And yet, we all have felt, there must be a way, here and now, to help put His teachings and His love into action in our country for the common good.
Since its founding, the American Solidarity Party has become a refuge for people of good will who wish to seek this common good together. The ASP stands against the prevailing political rhetoric that forces voters to choose between the lesser of two evils. Our party is admittedly still in its early years. To some, even those who are non-partisan, it may appear foolish to throw in one’s lot with us. And yet we would rather appear foolish, standing side by side with the poor, the sick, the immigrant,the unborn—than appear wise in the eyes of the world. Our party is young but we have innovative policy ideas and bold perspectives based on timeless values. Our pro-life for the whole life perspective cannot be found anywhere else on the political spectrum. We are offering the weary a word that will waken them.
In the many, many conversations I’ve had about the pandemic and post-pandemic life what I hear about most often is a desire for community. People found that it was something they had perhaps taken for granted and which had crumbled more easily than they had expected. “I wished I had lived closer to my parents,” or “I wish I had known my neighbors better so I would have had someone to reach out to.” Our human longing for connection and for solidarity has only been heightened by the disruptions of the past few years. The ASP has a chance in this election cycle to welcome those who want to return their focus to the community, to loving their neighbors well, to building an economy and a set of policies that allow families to flourish.
This brings us to our candidate. I think I can speak for Peter when I say that he never expected to be running for President of the United States. Though he’s been elected to local office multiple times, Peter’s sights were never set on the White House. Instead, he was hard at work in his local community—whether that was during his time in Washington, D.C., or back in his native New England. Through many roles and a variety of organizations, Peter has given himself to service--through the charitable work of the Knights of Columbus, his work organizing blood drives, or as a little league umpire. An overview of his overwhelming amount of civic engagement shows that he is a man dedicated to place and to community.
But above all, he is a man devoted to family. He is a loving husband, father of nine, and grandfather of six. I’m pretty sure his immediate family accounts for a significant fraction of the people in this room! One of the first things Peter did when he asked me to join his campaign team was to meet his wife Terri, his daughter Rachel, and his son-in-law Julian. When I asked Julian how he would describe Peter, he praised him in a way you don’t typically hear a young man speak about his father-in-law! Words like “inspiring conduct,” “pure of heart and free of ulterior motives,” and an “excellent example.” Perhaps most poignant was when he said it was clear to him that his wife Rachel “inherited her extraordinary capacity to love from someone special.” Let’s pause here—are these the sort of words used to describe politicians in our day and age? Certainly not. In fact I think we would agree that such a person would stick out in Washington like a sore thumb. But that’s what makes ASP different—an unwavering commitment to our ideals and to decency.
As Peter and I embark on this campaign, we will be counting on the support and prayers of you, our fellow pelicans. Each and every one of you has a role to play, not just in this campaign, but in speaking the word that will rouse the weary in your neighborhoods and hometowns. The word that tells each human being that he or she has immeasurable worth and an inherent dignity. Peter and I need your help to tell our fellow Americans: You are more than your sins and more than your past. You are more than the circumstances of your conception, the crimes you have committed, the country you’re from, the status of your residency, your disability. You are more than your productivity and your output. And empowered by these words, our friends and family will begin to also spread our principles to those around them. There is still much work to do. But now that we have put our hand to plough, let us not look back.