Commencement Address

Between Hope and History
By Sen. Dede Feldman

The University of New Mexico
History Department
May 12, 2001

Thank you, for the opportunity to share a few thoughts with you on this very special day, a day that comes exactly one year after a historic devastating fire in New Mexico and amidst the first Springtime of a new century.

First of all Congratulations to the each and every one of you—not only graduates but families, faculty, friends and the constellation of people in the community who support you. Today is a day when I hope you will see just how many people there are out here in the community who are pulling for you, who are proud of you, and who believe in you. And although I know only a few of you, I count myself as one of those. I think you are very special people, and I want to tell you why.

The first reason has to do with the title of this talk, Between Hope and History.
You have graduated with a degree in history! You have recognized the importance of perspective, the relevance of the big picture, and the need to know and reflect on the past before charging off to make your mark on the future. That is a big "AH HA," which I can tell you firsthand that many politicians, bureaucrats and public figures have yet to experience.

You have chosen to study history, and that choice, that interest, will serve you well throughout your life as you reflect on who you are and where you, your family, and your generation are in relation to the" big picture." And of course, the big picture is always changing, especially as we enter the new world dot.com… a brave new world of the 21st century whose growing population, and dwindling resources will, I believe, intensify a struggle to sustain a threatened environment, and to reform an endangered political system.

A similar struggle over the values that guide our society once happened in the lives of your grandparents, and parents during the 1960s, now a full generation ago. And it is a history that will not go away,
This month’s news calls Sen. Bob Kerrey to account for his alleged role in a massacre of Vietnamese women and children 33 years ago, much like that which occurred in a small hamlet called My Lai. And suddenly the TV screen brings us snapshots of the little African American girls who were victims of a church bombing long ago in Birmingham, Alabama. With these images come memories of Martin Luther King, freedom rides and searing segregation that divided our nation. The history of Vietnam and the civil rights movement will not go away, not as long as you remember it—your family’s connection, and your own role as the inheritors of its idealism, its anger, its sense of history and hope for a new day.

The second reason I believe that you are special has to do with my own experience of people your age whom I have seen in action during the five years I have served in the New Mexico Senate. I am thrilled at the thousands of young people around New Mexico and the nation who are volunteering in political campaigns and in community programs, who are bringing back poetry readings, debunking advertising and the mass media, and who are protesting against sweatshops in the streets of Seattle and on college campuses throughout the country. The advent of the Green party, as damaging as it has been, speaks of a renewed idealism, a long-shot belief in change, a break with the cynicism, and selfishness of earlier decades. I have met so many of you who believe in something more than yourselves, who believe there is honor in working for a better world; that it’s all right to have faith in ordinary people, and to believe that even with the divine diversity that now characterizes our country…that there is more that unites us than divides us. You are keeping hope alive for many of us in another generation and for that I salute you.
Your challenge now, as you finish your college years, is to keep hope alive for yourselves and to put it into practice, to resist complacency, to hang on to your idealism, your energy, and hold fast to your dreams.
I have a few ideas how you can do that.

First, don’t be afraid to have heroes. And to look for them in unexpected places… like on the road from Pasadena, California, to Washington, DC where Dorris Haddock, at age 89, undertook an impossible, naive pilgrimage to publicize the cause of campaign finance reform, and the need to take the big money out of our political life. I had the privilege of meeting Granny D, as she is called, this year at the state capitol where she came to boost the campaign finance reform bill I sponsored. This simple, steady woman, only five feet tall, who has eleven great grandchildren, speaks very plainly. She is in love with Democracy; she is in love with the American dream and she has committed the rest of her life to making the votes of ordinary people count as much as the money of special interests. And look what has happened…. Her cause was embraced by Sen. John McCain during last years presidential primaries, and around the country thousands of ordinary citizens took her in to their homes, drove her to speak at their churches, and community centers. And this spring, on the steps of the capitol, she was embraced by one Senator after another as the move to ban soft money from national political campaigns finally passed the US Senate.

Heroes come in all stripes and colors. Some, believe it or not, are even historians… like Bill DuBuys, who knows more than anyone I know about the natural history of New Mexico, from the Sangre de Cristo mountains to the priceless, and threatened, cottonwood forest along the Rio Grande that we call the Bosque. But Bill is no academic, instead he uses his knowledge, his ability to evoke our common love of the New Mexico landscape to preserve places like the Baca ranch in the Jemez and to keep endangered rivers flowing.

Second, remember how much power you have. Power from the knowledge you have worked hard to accumulate, from your continued curiosity, and your energy. As the lives of Granny D and Bill DuBuys bear out, ideas matter, character counts, one person can make a huge difference and even small gestures of kindness have impact beyond imagination. Don’t’ be afraid to exercise your power by participating in public life, expressing your ideas, doing a lot, or just a little. Because the world is made up of the little things, and no one makes a greater mistake than those who do nothing because they can only do a little.
Finally, develop a passion for the possible, knowing that the ideal may be just beyond your grasp, but the good is near at hand, and there are many opportunities out there to fulfill your dreams if you know how to roll with the punches. And there will be punches. And challenges and fires. Because, as you know, history—even personal history-- does not run in a straight line, and there is no longer a straight and narrow path to one job, with one skill set, and one set of lifelong expectations.

That is precisely why I have faith in you, the class of 2001. You ,who have chosen history as your springboard, You who are balanced between one century and another—between hope and history.
Congratulations on your tremendous achievement and thank you so much for letting me share this great day with you.