John Garamendi’s Address to the California Democratic Convention

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

[Editor’s note: Here is the full text of California Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi’s speech to the state Democratic Convention this morning in San Jose. Garamendi is a bit more than rumored to be running for Governor in 2010 and is seen here pressing the flesh and having his picture taken with many well wishers.]

My Friends:

Last Friday, the Garamendi family gathered to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the arrival of Santorino Jose Garamendi on Ellis Island. March 21, 1908.

The second of eight children, he left Ispaster, Spain in the Basque country seeking opportunity in America. He was filled with the hope our great democracy has inspired in millions of immigrants, and probably a good deal of anxiety. He moved west and became one of those individuals that JFK spoke about in his famous new frontier speech in 1960. JFK said:

“For I stand here tonight facing west on what was once the last frontier. From the lands that stretch three thousand miles behind us, the pioneers gave up their safety, their comfort and sometimes their lives to build our new West. They were not the captives of their own doubts, nor the prisoners of their own price tags. They were determined to make the new world strong and free --an example to the world, to overcome its hazards and its hardships, to conquer the enemies that threatened from within and without.

“Some would say that those struggles are all over, that all the horizons have been explored, that all the battles have been won, that there is no longer an American frontier. But I trust that no one in this assemblage would agree with that sentiment; for the problems are not all solved and the battles are not all won; and we stand today on the edge of a New Frontier.“

Each generation faces its own set of challenges. Its own New Frontier. My grandfather certainly did as he moved about the west seeking success: His inability to speak English, facing discrimination, lack of an education, the Great Depression, railroads that refused to ship his harvest of melons. Nevertheless he persevered, and found success in his marriage, in his numerous occupations, in a Basque hotel in Stockton, but most of all in his two children who graduated from college and built their families and their own measure of success. For five generations this great and generous country has provided my family the opportunity to achieve what my grandfather set out to accomplish when he left his homeland in 1908.