Artur Davis, Member of the US House of Representatives, Alabama
Remarks as Prepared for Delivery
August 27 2008

I'm honored to second the nomination of the man whose victory tonight takes us closer to becoming what we know America can be: a place where who you are, what you have and where you come from pose no permanent barriers; where our destiny is what our God and our dreams determine it to be.

In a cavernous auditorium in Birmingham, Alabama, this past January, I heard Barack Obama tell my state that our generation can find its way again. I heard him tell my state on a Sunday afternoon that if you really want to see a politics of faith and morality, you'll find it in a politics with an abiding conviction for the fate of the least and the lost among us.

I heard him remind my red state that there is no such thing as a Democratic way or Republican way to build strong families; that work and personal responsibility are Democratic standards, too; that to sustain our veterans and protect our soldiers is neither a liberal value nor a conservative value, but an American value. Because the men and women who wear the American uniform and fight under the American flag belong not to some of us, but to all of us.

And I saw a band of people, 20,000 strong, who don't live together, don't send their children to school together, who have no history of voting together, linked in a common cause together, ready to take action together.

And ladies and gentlemen, this is our cause: a president and a country who will lead and inspire the free world; who will stand for the rule of law; who will remember that torture is the way of the people who hate us and not our way. Our cause is a president and a country who will affirm that terrorism can never win, unless it warps us and makes us forget who we are and what we are.

Ladies and gentlemen, 20 years ago, I watched the Democratic Convention on a little TV in a tiny motel room in Montgomery, Alabama. My mother and grandmother and I were forced to live in that room for three weeks because our home had been foreclosed. The fact that I could go from a foreclosure and watching the convention in a tiny motel room to standing before you and the nation 20 years later nominating the next President of the United States tells you very little about me, but tells us everything that is right about our country.

My fellow Democrats, my fellow Americans, I have never seen a moment like this. I have never seen a sense of urgency like this. In my 40 years, I have never seen my country as energized as this. As our next president has said, from the places where people hurt to the places where people dream, "our time is now."