to my co -chairperson and all of the friends and lovers and devotees and followers and servers of Leo Burnett.
I believe the year's tower, the John Hancock building and the water tower, Leo Burnett is a Chicago institution.
For 50 years people talked about Madison Avenue, they should talk about Burnett in Chicago.
Chicago based companies including the Commonwealth Edison, the Interest Booth, the Harris Bank and the Chicago.
Well, keep talking turkeys and keep reaching for the stars.
Chicago is proud of your contribution, Leo Burnett.
Chicago is synonymous as I said before, and Burnett is synonymous with this great city.
We have a new spirit in our city, it's on a roll.
I would hope that some major advertising firm, most likely Leo Burnett, would catch the essence of that new spirit because I feel it as I move throughout this city and talk to laborers, to businesses, to the neighborhoods, to the churches, to the various institutions.
Once upon a time, in a prediction, it was not actually like that.
We would give one million votes for Chris Monahan.
And I must recognize a distinguished lady who is happening on the finest public service in this country, who is traveling throughout this country in support of Chris Monahan with one of the most dynamic, efficient, first rate players in the entire San Francisco, the Pine Towers.
Those steelworkers understood that those players had enough of this because they knew Chris was here today, and the message they left was, pay no attention to these folks because that's not what they mentioned.
One of the finest things we can do for the political structure of this country is to make a damn mile of food because we want to find a way.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The change in Chicago is just over to the finest Christine in the world.
Putting Chicago on at its best.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Mayor.
Just before we begin the parade, let me indicate that sharing this microphone as the master of ceremonies will be one of the outstanding communicators of Chicago.
Please give a nice round of applause for the man from Channel 7, WLS -TV, Mr.
Bob Petty.
He's going to be right here.
Okay, let me start it off, and Bob, you and I will be right together.
The ease of our people denotes strength and greatness.
That is why such wonderful people as Glenron Brooks, Carl Sandberg, and the inimitable Stubbs Turkle have spoken so poetically about our great people, our great institution, and this great civilization.
The communication center where the nation are upon this great city, and I've had the occasion to travel all over this country during the last four months and believe me, the eyes are upon us.
Not just because of our chaotic, ever -recurring, but delicious and delightful political confrontations, but because more than any other people, we have set higher goals for ourselves, for the excellence of our public schools, which we strive to make even better, for the candor of our political debate, and it is candor, for the fairness of our government, for the wealth of our business, for the beauty of our lakefront, the stability of our neighborhoods, Excelsior onwards and upwards, the safety of our streets, and that's more than a dream, for the mutual respect we pay to one another in our day of lives, in our daily lives.
Happy birthday, Chicago people, happy birthday to you.
We're all your children, and we owe to you an honor and respect.
We look at history, we are in the presence and the vortex of it, we look into the future, and we see not darkly, we see lightly through that tunnel, and there is much light at the end of that tunnel.
Not just because I am mayor, although that has helped.
But when this is...
Happy birthday to you.
Applause What are you doing? Mr.
Mayor, there's a lot of prices.
We're at the cake, it's the same size.
We have to get in on the other side.
Let's get over here.
OK, get in.
OK until everybody sings.
The gift we get...
the truth in public, the gift to say no and to teach others to say no, to distinguish knowledge from nationalism, to distinguish the fear of force from the fear of God.
We also have a message for those who are not here.
We need to make a correlation and make it clear to people that there is a relationship between the amount of money that goes into the defense budget and the amount of money that comes out of human service.
After Iran, does this country really think that it can fool those people? That jump doesn't work anymore.
It simply doesn't work.
I would suggest that in the process of trying to get to the bottom of this, I can offer this wonderful city an appreciation of all that you've done for me, Senator Netsch.
Well, thank you, Captain Gilliam, commander of the SS Clipper, for making this vessel available to us for such a wonderful occasion.
Thank you, Gail Sincotta, for doing it.
Well done speech.
And I think on an occasion like this, precision is called for.
And two, the speech was written by a woman.
And I'm afraid that if I don't read it, I'll be accused of male chauvinism and blow all those years of hard work.
So notwithstanding my limited ability to read what is written, I shall proceed forthwith.
This event launches a new era for women in Chicago and is purposely being held on the anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, which guaranteed the right, a long -awaited right, and a long -withheld right of women to vote in this country.
One, because she was the number one in my class in North Western Law School some years ago in the presence of Don Clark Netsch.
And at that time, I became very aware that notwithstanding man's refusal to recognize that women can excel, I had to face up to the brutal fact that this woman was brilliant and brilliant by my own standards, which made me brilliant and she was better than I.
So I've been a devotee of women's rights ever since, simply because I was taught a lesson.
Business women.
I personally wish to thank all the commission members, the executive staff, and all of those who contributed to those hearings.
You and I know that our work has just begun.
So let's celebrate today and go back to work tomorrow.
At this time, may I ask for a report, please, from those long and faithful not servants, but partners in the running of this city.
Wilson, Tyler, and Ann Ross.
All signs.
All signs? Yes.
Thank you, guys.
So I'm going to begin.
How about that? And we held public meetings of the standards of trying to achieve something which is wrong with us.
So thank you very much.
The formal part of our activity is going to be concluded shortly.
I would just like to say.
Thank you.
Oh, yeah.
Cheeseburger.
Cheeseburger.
Cheeseburger.
Very nice.
Thanks.
Look around you.
You will see that Chicago is really the people who inhabit it, who live in it, and who work in it, and raise their families here.
The heart of the city is the people who live here.
Like other great cities of the world, Chicago abounds with cultural riches.
There is no major city with so beautiful a waterfront.
Right downtown, red tape is covering over the picnic area.
You know that in our state, Captain Kelly has planted three one -hand acres of wildflowers over the Grand Park garage and paid for themselves.
What a great and unusual gift to our city.
In London, the inner Chicago district is just that far.
Now you may think that's corny.
You think that's corny, don't you? It is.
But it's true.
My understanding is that both such a guideline as ours to walk through the streets of Chicago is to move to a living work of art.
As the brochure said, you can eat Picasso, Miro, Tarleton, Oliver, Chagall, Louboutin on the street of our great city.
How many cities grow such a unique amalgamation of ethnic neighborhoods as Chicago? We have put all of these assets of our great city into the most celebrated Chicago.
What's the program that brings so many barricades together in a common goal? The program is to develop a culture of culture and culture of culture.
What I'm going to talk about is the culture of culture and culture of culture.
What is going to be our vision of the future of our city? What do you see here as just a polishing pad for the future of our city? We have to build a great neighborhood.
And still make the assets of those neighborhoods come together in terms of cohesive five -year -old neighborhoods, but also to reach out to the entire community.
This polishing pad, I assure you, will go on and on and on.
I am sworn to assist the rebuilding of this great city.
And I swear to God that this is such a fine audience.
And I'm going to make it another project, which I never thought I would make.
I said that I would be mayor of this city for 20 years.
You mess around with that, I'll make it 24.
Thank you.
They hoped America had another war like Vietnam or Korea, so that they got to have a chance to lay flowers.
And the one thing I hope we remember on Veterans Day is not only those that went before, but those who may go in the future if we don't carry out actions to stop it.
So we're going to close with Dr.
Hoang Huy's return and with some difficulties who have re -entered American society.
We cherish the Vietnamese who have come to resettle in America, both immediately after the end of the war and more recently as both people.
They already have made our pluralistic America richer by their presence.
Oh God, we acknowledge that modern wars are getting more destructive.
We acknowledge that the objectives for which modern wars are fought are becoming yearly more ambiguous.
Thank you.
We remember the countless thousands of Vietnam veterans who, though they weren't suicides, managed to kill themselves by living in such a way that they were bound to die.
We remember those veterans who were wounded in the war physically and psychologically.
And we remember, too, the millions of Vietnamese who would be alive today if the United States had not fought the war in Vietnam.
We mean fight like hell for the living, Vietnam veterans of all groups and all the organizations, of all races and ethnic groups standing together and fighting to secure better lives for Vietnam veterans and veterans of all eras.
Thank you.
You know, when I first came back from Vietnam, I had problems not with the peace movement, but with older veterans, mostly World War II, who wanted to tell me I didn't know what a real war was being fought about.
They wanted to tell me that I should have been in the big one because Vietnam was undeclared.
And a lot of us had a lot of problems with older veterans because when we came back, we wanted to wear our hair a little longer, we came from a different generation, and because our war, unlike the Second World War, did not have that character of liberating people.
But I'll tell you something.
Our next speaker, who I've known since, or been lucky enough to have seen since he was a state assemblyman, has always been one of those people who has stood with Vietnam veterans.
I was on a stage with him luckily a few years ago at the University of Chicago, and I'm proud that he's our next speaker because the simple fact is we have not had this kind of coverage by the news media, except when the mayor himself said, I'm going to come out in the rain and stand with Vietnam veterans and give them some of the dignity and respect that they deserve.
The one thing you've got to say about Mr.
Washington, and that is that he doesn't just stand for symbols, he stands for real change.
And the people that want to detract from him are basically want to stay with the old and not come up with the new.
It is with a great deal of pleasure and respect that I introduce a fellow veteran and a friend, the honorable Mayor Harold Washington.
Well thank you very much for an unexpected and very pleasant and generous introduction, and thank you for inviting me once again to join you on this occasion to do honor to a large, unheralded, and unfortunately almost forgotten and disdained group of individuals.
We will rectify that.
I do recall some years ago in the mid -70s, when we met at the University of Chicago.
