Michelle Obmama addresses the audience.
Our previous coverage of the July 10th round table discussion at Pierson Auditorium on the campus of the University of Missouri – Kansas City:
Michelle Obama in Kansas City – photos
Michelle Obama in Kansas City – the audience gathers
Michelle Obama’s remarks:
[applause][cheers] Thank you so much. You guys, please. Sit down, rest your feet. [laughter] This is a round table for working women, so I don’t want you standing up anymore than you have to. You work hard enough as it is. [laughter] Even, even the men that are here, you can sit down. [laughter]
I want to thank Susan [Montee] for that wonderful introduction. It, it has meant so much for us to have strong early supporters in this candidacy. And have people who came out a year ago when nobody knew who Barack Obama was, really. It, it means a great deal and we are grateful to have her support.
I also want to thank Chancellor Bailey here at the University of Missouri for opening up this institution to us. I got an opportunity to meet him and the student body president. Would you gentlemen please stand up so that we can just say, “Hello.” [applause]
But I am just delighted to be here in this state to have a conversation about what’s on so many of our minds. I know it’s, it’s on my mind. And in this issue of balancing work and family and making sure we all have an opportunity to create sane home lives for our kids and keep ourselves together at the same time. I know that there’s so many people here like me who wear so many different hats. And I’ve done that all my life. I am not just the wife of a presidential candidate, which is like eight hats, [laughter] but I am a professional, still I had a job, [laughter] another job that, but I’m a daughter, a sister, a best friend, but the roll that I cherish most is, is the role of mom. That role means so much to me. [applause]
[garbled] Like so many of you my little precious girls are, are all that I think about. They are the first things I think about when I wake up in the morning and the last, the last things I think about before I go to bed at night. And it, it doesn’t really matter what I’m doing. In the whole, talking to folks, they are on my mind, whether I’m campaigning or working. I am constantly worried about how they’re doing, how they’re feeling, are they being loved, are they having fun. So, for me the policies that support working women and families, it’s not just about politics for me, this stuff is personal. these are the issues that I have mulled around my head my entire life. And no matter what the outcome is of this election, I’m gonna to continue to work and talk, and fight to make sure that we put women and families in a better place in this country. [applause]
And I don’t know about you all, but I’m, I’m always amazed at how different things have, are today for working women and families s compared to when I was growing up. As Susan alluded to, I’m the product of a working class community. I’m a proud product. I talk about it everywhere I go. But back then, a man like my father, who was a city worker, he worked a shift, could raise a family of four on a single city salary. And allow my mother to stay home to take care of me and my brother. And today one income, let alone the kind of income that would come from a man like my father, just doesn’t cut it anymore. [voice: “That’s right.”] What we’re finding in this country is that working families are finding that two people have to be working to make ends meet. And I don’t how people do it when there’s only one parent, a single parent in the household. But people are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet. And that’s not even including the kind of jobs that you do once we get off of work [voices: “Right.” “That’s right.”] and I know as women the truth of the matter is, is that those jobs still disproportionately fall on our laps. Those jobs like getting laundry done, making lunch, signing field trip form. I can tell you what I did before I got on the plane to come here, ’cause no matter who’s in the house, a grandma or me, the kids come to me for all of that. They look straight to me.
And then as those bills pile up, and the tasks seem to get harder and harder, we all have the job of late night worrier. And like many of you I have wished in, in those late hours that I had this magic machine that create more time [laughter] in the day that would allow me to get a little more sleep at night. Or maybe duplicate myself, once or twice, so that I could be at three places at once. But even as I dream in, in those late nights I, I do know, Barack and I know, that we are blessed. We are fortunate. We are among the lucky ones because we have the resources that we need to make sure that our family can hold it together. And I, of all people, have the most important resource of all. I’ve got my mom who lives near by me and is there to take care of my girls when I’m not there. And I’ve said this around the campaign trail, there’s nothing like grandma. When you were [applause], and I know that more and more families are finding it hard to have that informal support structure. When jobs are drying up in states and cities all over the, this country young families have to move away from grandma and great aunts. And they’re left to fend for themselves. So there’s so much more that happens when an economy crumbles. It’s not just the loss of jobs, but its the break down of those informal support structures. So, Barack and I know we’re blessed.
But we know that so many of families around this country are not as fortunate. As I’ve traveled around the country for the last year and a half I’ve heard stories, so many stories of families that are doing their best to keep it together. I’ve heard from so many mothers who are struggling to make ends meet. And were gonna talk to some of those mothers today. Folks who are seeing their income stagnate as prices continue to climb, making decisions about putting gas in the car or getting the grocery bill paid. And then there are the women who find it difficult to take time off of work to care for a sick child for fear that they’ll be penalized. Or mothers to be that don’t want to let their bosses know that they’re pregnant because they’re afraid of losing their jobs. And then there are the women who are working hard every single day doing some of the same jobs as men but they’re not getting paid the same thing. [applause]
And then there are military families. That’s a group of families that I’ve just begun to talk to as I’ve traveled around the country. And you just imagine all the struggles that the average families are dealing with and you take that struggle and you double it and you triple it and you add on two, or three, or four consecutive tours of duty. So these young families are struggling just as well trying to make it on one paycheck when there used to be two. They’re still dealing with the questions of how to cover the cost of child care, trying to get mental health support for their families and for themselves. And they welcome their loved ones home with open hearts, but often find that the government just isn’t there to provide the support to honor the service that some of these men and women have given.
So those are some of the struggles. These are the types of struggles that we hear all over the country. And the struggles aren’t new to me, not new to anyone in this room, but I want people to understand these struggles certainly aren’t new to my husband, Barack. He understands the struggles. He understands them because he was raised by strong women. He is the product of two great women in his life. His mother and his grandmother. [applause] Barack saw his mother, who was very young and very single when she had him, and he saw her work hard to compl
ete her education and try to raise he and his sister. And he saw through her struggle essentially what she tried to teach him, that you can do anything with a little hard work in this country. But he also saw her struggle to make ends meet, sometimes relying on food stamps. And the pain, that it effect, that hit her, the pride of ask, having to ask someone else for help. He saw his grandmother. who is now in her eighties, was the primary breadwinner in their household. Held the family together. He saw her rise from being the secretary at a bank to being a senior level executive. This woman in her eighties, a ground breaker in her own right. But he also [applause], but he also saw her hit that proverbial glass ceiling that even with her abilities and her hard work there was only so far that she’d be able to go. And he also sees me, his wife, who struggles every day with that guilt we all hold deep in our heart as women. That guilt that you don’t have the choice to stay home, and even if you do you feel guilty, you’re working. When you’re working you’re not with your kids, so you feel bad about that. And when you’re with your kids you know you need to be doing more somewhere else. It’s a guilt that we all hold. He has seen me struggle with this my entire life, so trust me, Barack, Barack understands the struggles of women. Because the women he loves the most in his life, he has learned these lessons from. So Barack, you have to know, carries our stories as women in his heart every day. And they have affected who he has become as a man. And they’ve impacted the choices that he’s made over his entire life.That’s why, when Barack graduated from college, he moved to Chicago to become a community organizer, working on the south side of Chicago and some communities that had been devastated by the closing of steel plants. He saw the struggles of single parent mothers, grandmothers raising grandchildren, and folks who had given up hope that the government could help them. He came into those communities and worked for years trying to help folks find their own power to build a life, better life for themselves and their children. That’s why Barack, when he became an Illinois state senate, worked to pass welfare reform law. That would move people from welfare to work so that generations of children would have a better life. And that’s why in the Illinois senate he fought to pass legislation to give three hundred thousand more women protection from paycheck discrimination.
And that’s why he’s been fighting so hard in the U.S. Senate to pass legislation to help women hold their employers more accountable when they’re not paid fairly. And that’s why as President of the United States Barack has determined to change Washington so that we don’t just talk a good game about family values, but we actually develop policies [applause], real policies that have meaning to working women and families.That help us raise our children, to care for them. And to insure that we;re not just surviving, but that we’re thriving.
Right now in this country thousands of women don’t have any family leave, nothing. And for those who do many of them don’t take it because it is unpaid. And people can’t afford to do something unpaid. Right now in this country [applause], twenty two million working women don’t have a single paid sick day. Not a single paid sick day. And that’s, it’s not only unacceptable, it’s unrealistic. [voice: “Right.”] In this country families shouldn’t be punished because somebody gets sick or there’s a family emergency. That’s why Barack is going to be working hard to expand the Family and Medical Leave Act, so that millions of additional Americans will be able to take a little time off when they need to. Maybe take care of a sick child, or elderly parent, or go, heaven forbid, to a school play or a parent teacher conference. Or just spend a few hours reading to your child, that they need a little extra attention. Barack is going to require every single employer to make sure that all their workers have at least seven paid sick days a year. [applause]
Barack has also put, to committed to insuring that women are paid fairly for the work that they do. And today although a majority of women are now the primary bread winners in their households, women still earn seventy seven cents for every dollar that a man earns. And a recent Supreme Court decision made it actually harder for women to hold employers accountable for paying them less for the same amount of work. And that’s why Barack was a proud supporter of legislation that would overturn that Supreme Court decision. And let me know, just want to let you know as president Barack is gonna keep fighting and working hard until that gap in equity is closed once and for all. [applause]
So in my famous Michelle Obama honesty [laughter] that sometimes gets me in trouble [laughter] I have to say that when Barack approached me, when he was seriously considering this run for president I said, “No way.” [laughter] “Absolutely not. Please don’t.” Because the truth be told it’s, I thought politics was mean rough business. I don’t know that I feel any differently about it today. [laughter] But the last thing in the world that I wanted for my girls was to have their lives turned upside down. I mean, you can understand that. {voices: “Uh, huh.”] I couldn’t bear the thought of them being in the public eye or hearing their parents being criticized on national TV. Or having their dad away from them for weeks on end. It broke my herat just to think about it. I, I wanted, like all mothers and parents, do I want the best possible life for my girls. But then I had to take a step back. And I had to take off my me hat. And I had to put on my citizen hat. And I started thinking more broadly about the kind of world that I would want my girls to grow up in. And I thought about a world where when they grew up they’d be paid equally and fairly for the work that they’d do. A world where they could choose a career and not have to worry about choosing between their kids and earning a living. I wanted them to be in a world where they could dream as women without limitations and imagine anything for themselves. And then I realized that’s the kind of world that I wanted for my girls and for all of our children. And I had no choice but to work hard to make sure that a man like Barack Obama would be the next President of the United States. [applause][cheers]
So, so that’s why I’m here. [laughter] That’s it. Because I’m gonna do my part to make sure that we get this man in office. And we’re gonna need your help every step of the way.
So, I’m gonna stop now [laughter] and we’re gonna open this conversation up to the wonderful women on this panel who have so eagerly agreed to share their stories.
I see breathing a little hard it’s. [laughter] Ignore the cameras [laughter] if you can. [garbled] is like, “Oh, just keep talkin’.” [laughter] You’re doin’ just fine [laughter][garbled] by me. [laughter] I feel that way, too, when there’s a good speaker, I’m just sort of like, “Oh good!” [laughter][garbled] But we’re gonna have a conversation that we’ve had, I’ve, I’ve helped to organize these conversations all over the country for the last year and a half. And this is the best thing I’ve done in my life because we need to start sharing our challenges and our struggles, first of all, so that we know that we’re not alone.
I don’t care what city I’m in, what state I’m in, whether it’s rural or urban – the stories that you will share are the same stories we hear everywhere. Folks are hurting in ways that sometimes we don’t want to admit. But in order to fix it we have to admit it. But this is only the beginning. These are the kind of conversations that I know we have to continue to have, not just for the rest of this campaign season, but for, for the next four or eight years. So this is just the beginning.
So I want you guys to relax [laughter], breathe deeply, drink water. And also we’re gonna ask everyone else to join in, share stories, ask questions. And thank you again for giving us the time. let’s begin. [applause]…
