Maxine Waters
You try to manipulate the process. In Sacramento, I was very good at it, at getting legislation passed. And when I came to Washington I thought that I was going to approach it differently. That the conventional wisdom was such that you had to not be confrontational, not challenge too much, but understand that there was great tradition.
This nation has always struggled with how it was going to deal with poor people and people of color. Every few years you will see some great change in the way that they approach this. We've had the war on poverty that never really got into waging a real war on poverty.
The urban agenda, from my point of view, is what we are going to all help make it. I see myself as helping the White House forge an urban agenda.
The mayor's race is a very sad event for me. I feel no connection. I have no passion. And I don't feel compelled to do anything.
That's what mayors do. They lobby Congress to provide resources for their city.
Many of us are guilty of having allowed Tom Bradley to do whatever he has done without really challenging him, without making sense out of what was going on in City Hall. And so now we are confronted with a situation where we have two candidates and we don't know who they are really and what they care about.
It's all designed to keep people very much intimidated and not challenging the power. And I found the same old tactics worked in Congress too.
If you ask a young man in South-Central about the difference between the Democratic and Republican parties, he can't tell you. As you evaluate that whole discussion about what must be done to bring whites back into the Democratic Party, you can see why there is no urban agenda.
I've been in this struggle for many years now. I understand racism. I understand that there are a lot of people in this country who don't care about the problems of the inner city. We have to fight every day that we get up for every little thing that we get. And so I keep struggling.
I think Hillary and Bill are really liberals at heart. I think that, in addition to being liberals, they are very practical. They have made some decisions about what it takes to win.
I have a right to my anger, and I don't want anybody telling me I shouldn't be, that it's not nice to be, and that something's wrong with me because I get angry.
I don't understand people who say, "Aren't you disappointed with the Democrats, or Clinton?" I knew that Clinton's campaign was geared toward bringing whites back into the Democratic Party.
I don't have them down here asking me what my urban agenda is. I don't find them really doing in-depth stories on community-based organizations that have been struggling for a long time and who are out trying to get funds. They aren't interested in those stories.
How does he support Clinton's urban agenda? He doesn't know what it is.
Clinton never said, "My Administration is going to pour resources into the poor community." But I really do believe that Bill Clinton is more liberal than oftentimes his politics. He's practical. But I think his heart is decent.