Roosevelt Reception

Good Evening Fellow Democrats,

I am David Henry, Chair of Your Monroe County Democratic Party.

Welcome to our 2023 Roosevelt Reception!

First, where are our first-time attendees?

You know, it's been over a year now since I’ve been chair, and folks have said it feels like just yesterday.

And with that, I wish you a good night, good evening, and good luck!

But we have a shorter show tonight, a meaningful event.

If you are a candidate in the Bloomington Municipal, let folks know you are here! Well, you already SHOULD have met them.

I’d like to make a prediction tonight, that one of our event sponsors will be our next mayor.

Congratulations to Mayor Ed Robertson!

Nah, we thank Ed and Claire, and the three campaigns for mayor, Kerry Thomson, Donald Griffin and Susan Sandburg are here. And I’d to thank for their sponsorships the local UA - The Plumbers and Steamfitters and Stonewall Democrats of South Central Indiana.

I thank all of our sponsors. And I’d also like to thank and recognize our sustaining donors in the Four Freedoms Circle. Those contributions keep us moving through to the general election and fund our soon to be new home for the MCDP.

We can’t really get going tonight until we acknowledge it’s been a Dark Winter in Indiana.

At the General Assembly, we continue to see the assault on the most vulnerable, the most marginalized. From Labor rights to open season on the environment, to doubling down on robbing reproductive justice to the bullying of the LGB and especially T community, it is another dark season in Indiana.

We are lucky to have Matt Pierce and Shelli Yoder in the Statehouse as our Bloomington voice in the General Assembly.

Here to tell us more about that is Senator Yoder.

We have to recognize that Bloomington can make national news not only for our successes, but our challenges. For this year, we heard of a brutal crime committed against an Asian-American student in our community simply for being an AAPI person on a bus at the wrong moment with an assailant fueled by hate.

Racism has no place in our community, and we thank the swift work of Bloomington Transit, Public Safety partners to save their life, and the justice that will certainly follow. We can’t look past that the rise in hate crimes - whether against AAPI people in a post-COVID world full of US-China relations challenges - or across the board, are stoked by a Far Right committed to fracturing our world into either/or thinking.

Our Diversity is our strength Period. And that is where our community stands. And we recognize the work done by people in this room, like our vice-chair, on those issues nationally.

But there are green shoots.

IN 2022, We elected and re-elected locally new leadership. We now see the fruit of those seeds, where Sheriff Ruben Marte has borne witness and taken actions to bring a constitutional jail to Bloomington. And we look to our elected officials who have stakes in our correctional facilities to bring the 21st Century Vision of Criminal Justice – based on the restorative justice that our party values.

When it comes to Labor, as chair I sought to re-center our Labor movement in our big tent. As one of those tent poles, working people in Monroe County need a strong party to balance the scales. For we know that affordable housing is only half the battle - it is a living wage where people don’t just survive but thrive that makes the difference. And that has always always been won by organization.

It is my hope that as we see a new season of leadership in our community, that it is a season where our party not only values Labor during election season, but protects our workers when the time comes - during budget time and during negotiations. That we put teeth back into prevailing wage laws in the city and become as progressive as Evansville - and see it in the county too.

I’d like to recognize our brothers and sisters in Labor in the room. Stand and let folks know you are here!

Now, over the past year, we worked with the Southern Indiana Area Labor Federation of the AFL-CIO on this. We held our first joint labor-candidate forum 2022. And we took a unanimous vote out of the party in support of the Indiana University Grad Workers in their right to organize. They are here too tonight - let folks know you are here!

My partner in that was both Jerry Sutherlin, and Jackie Yenna. We lost Jackie this year, just as we were getting going. And well, I can think of no greater tribute to Jackie than to say this party is gonna keep in the Labor movement. Jackie’s wife Linda and daughter Terri are here tonight. Let’s thank them for sharing Jackie with us.

Here to pay tribute to Labor, to teach us how to keep those bridges open, is Dave Bride. Brother Dave is not only a lifelong labor leader, former Central Indiana AFL-CIO president, but vice-chair of the Marion Democrats.

There are more green shoots in this season of leadership.

In 1950, Eleanor Roosevelt came to Bloomington as Delegate to the UN to promote a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and to tell Hoosiers about their place in global affairs. She asks “where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home—so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world.”

We do too. And this is why we now have as part of this event our annual Eleanor Roosevelt Keynote.

20 years after her visit, our Bloomington Common Council passed the first human rights ordinance in Indiana - one that extended rights to women and the LGBTQIA community. It was a first, and like so many firsts from Bloomington, instantly attacked by our establishment and our state. It took another 20 years to get it back on the books. Some in this room remember that.

Joining that heritage tonight are new leaders. April Hennessey is here tonight to pay tribute to students at the local schools that said enough is enough when it comes to racist bullying. They convinced the school board to not only put them to work on anti-racism, but to then adopt a whole policy on it. April will honor that hopeful story tonight.

Lastly, when it comes to LGBTQIA rights, I am proud of our entire slate, and the work in our community to say that there is no room for hate in Bloomington. Every municipal candidate signed a letter in defiance of laws that bully LGB and especially T kids.

And when it comes to how to work in a state that every day seems to want to do harm to that community, we called an expert. Tonight, our Eleanor Roosevelt Keynote comes from a contemporary voice for Human Rights that I believe Eleanor would recognize right away.

Rosemary Ketchum is the first openly transgender person elected in West Virginia - a “sister state” as Rosemary calls it when it comes to the struggle. But hers is also a story of activism turned into action and she is going to share that with us tonight. Please give a Bloomington welcome to her!

By no means do we rest on laurels tonight. We have to always find our blind spots. To be a Monroe County Democrat is to dust off defeats and get up the next day. We can celebrate a season of new leadership while taking on the challenges.

For this is who we always have been: a party for Labor, a party for human rights, a party for the whole community."