Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title United States Code, of the Rule Submitted By the United States Fish and Wildlife Service Relating to ``Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Lesser Prairie-Chicken; Threatened Status with Section 4(D) Rule for the Northern Distinct Population Segment and Endangered Status for the Southern Distinct Population Segment''

Floor Speech

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Mr. WARNOCK. Madam President, I rise today in shock and sorrow and in grief for my home State. And, if I am honest, I rise really with a deep sense of anger about what is happening in our country in the area of gun violence and death.

I stood here in March of 2021 after a gunman went on a rampage across Metro Atlanta and snatched eight precious souls--people with families and friends who loved them dearly. And here I am standing again, this time with the tragedy having occurred in midtown Atlanta, right in my own backyard.

While this is still a developing situation, according to media reports, so far, at least five people were shot--five--on a random afternoon. There has been one fatality. The others were taken to the hospital.

I want to take a moment and thank law enforcement officials for keeping us as safe as they can. I want to thank them for their work trying to apprehend this individual.

I am also thankful for local media who are keeping all of us informed, and I am grateful for our first responders, the people in healthcare, the people on the front lines. We count on them every day to care for those who are injured, to respond to people in peril. That is what makes this particular shooting ironic and deeply upsetting, because it underscores the fact that none of us is safe no matter where we are. This happened in a medical facility where people are trying to find healing.

So I want to underscore that, because there have been so many mass shootings--in fact, about one every day in this country this year-- that, tragically, we act as if this is routine. We behave as if this is normal. It is not normal. It is not right for us to live in a nation where nobody is safe no matter where they are.

We are not safe in our schools; we are not safe in our workplaces; we are not safe at the grocery store; we are not safe at movie theaters; we are not safe at spas; we are not safe in our houses of worship. There is no sanctuary in the sanctuary. We are not safe at concerts; we are not safe at banks; we are not safe at parades; we are not safe in our own yards and in our own homes. Now, today, we can add medical facilities to that list.

And, still, we have done so very little in this building to respond-- and in the American political square at large. I think there is an unspoken assumption. I think that the unspoken assumption is that ``This can't happen to me. This won't happen to me. It won't happen to people that I love.'' But, with a mass shooting every day, the truth is the chances are great.

I shudder to say it, but the truth is, in a real sense, it is only a matter of time that this kind of tragedy comes knocking on your door. Then, in a deeper sense, I think it is important for us to recognize that it is already happening to you. You may not be the victim of a mass shooting. You may not know anyone who is the victim of a mass shooting yet, but in a real sense, it is already happening to all of us.

Dr. King was right:

We are tied in a single garment of destiny, caught up in an inescapable network of mutuality. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

This is knocking on all of our doors, and I feel this this afternoon in a very real sense--I feel it in my bones--because my own two children were on lockdown this afternoon.

I have two small children, and their schools are on lockdown in response to this tragedy. They are there. I am here. I am hoping and praying that they are safe, but the truth is none of us are safe.

As a pastor, I am praying for those who are affected by this tragedy, but I hasten to say that thoughts and prayers are not enough. In fact, it is a contradiction to say that you are thinking and praying and then doing nothing. It is to make a mockery of prayer. It is to trivialize faith. We pray not only with our lips; we pray with our legs. We pray by taking action.

Still there are those who want to convince us that this is the cost of freedom. To them, we have to say no. This ongoing, slow-moving tragedy in our country--mass shootings as routine--is not the cost of freedom; it is the cost of blind obstinance, a refusal to change course even when the evidence suggests we must do something different. It is the cost of demagoguery--those who want to convince us that commonsense gun reform is somehow a call to take everybody's guns. This is not the cost of freedom. Dare I say it is the cost of greed--gun lobbyists willing to line their pockets even at the cost of our children.

And so we must act.

I am proud of the fact that we did, after 30 years, pass some gun safety legislation here in the last Congress. It was a significant piece of legislation, but, obviously, it was not enough. There are 87 percent or more of Americans who believe that we ought to have universal background checks, and still we can't get it. Think about that. In a country where everybody says we are divided--and there are deep divisions, to be sure. There is disagreement on this issue, to be sure. But in a country where there is 87-percent agreement on something, there is no movement on it in Congress, which means that that is a problem with our democracy. The people's voices have been squeezed out of their democracy, and there is a growing chasm between what the people actually want and what they can get from their government.

We saw it in a stark and ugly way a few weeks ago when we had two brave, young legislators stand up in Tennessee--three, in fact. The same legislature that refused to do anything on gun violence came down on them with all of their might and expelled them from the legislature.

We have to stand up against these anti-democratic forces at work in our country, and we have to give the people their voices back. If we refuse to act while our children are dying and in a moment when no one is safe, then shame on us. Shame on us if we allow this to happen, and we do absolutely nothing.

Saint Augustine, the African bishop of the early church, said that hope has two beautiful daughters. He said they are both beautiful, Anger and Courage--anger with the way things are and courage to see that they do not remain as they are.

I am pleading; I am begging all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to remember the covenant that we have with one another as an American people. Stand up in this defining moment, and let's do everything we can to protect all of us and, certainly, all of our children. We owe it to the people who have sent us here.

I know there are those who will look at this moment and say: Politically, do you really think we can get anything done here? They will ask if this is the time given the state of politics in our country right now.

I respond with the words of Dr. King, who said that the time is always right to do what is right, and that time is right now.

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Mr. WARNOCK. Thank you so much.

I am deeply honored to participate in this great tradition started by Senator Doug Jones of Alabama during his tenure and carried out by my colleague Senator Brown.

I am always honored to revisit these words from Dr. King from the letter from a Birmingham jail. So without delay:

My Dear Fellow Clergymen:

While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities ``unwise and untimely.'' Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my working ideas. If I sought to answer all of the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of a day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I will try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against ``outsiders coming in.'' I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Frequently we share staff, educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago the affiliate here in Birmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a non-violent direct action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise. So I, along with several members of my staff, am here because I was invited here. I am here because I have organizational ties here.

But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their ``thus saith the Lord'' far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial ``outside agitator'' idea.

Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

Now, you deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action. We have gone through all these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case. On the basis of these conditions, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistently refused to engage in good faith negotiation.

Then, last September, came the opportunity to talk with leaders of Birmingham's economic community. In the course of the negotiations, certain promises were made by the merchants--for example, to remove the stores' humiliating racial signs. On the basis of these promises, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to a moratorium on all demonstrations. As the weeks and months went by, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. A few signs, briefly removed, returned; the others remained. As in so many past experiences, our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us. We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves: ``Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?'' ``Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?'' We decided to schedule our direct action program for the Easter season, realizing that except for Christmas, this is the main shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic-withdrawal program would be the by product of direct action, we felt that this would be the best time to bring pressure to bear on the merchants for the needed change.

Then it occurred to us that Birmingham's mayoral election was coming up in March, and we speedily decided to postpone action until after election day. When we discovered that the Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene ``Bull'' Connor, had piled up enough votes to be in the run off, we decided again to postpone action until the day after the run off so that the demonstrations could not be used to cloud the issues. Like many others, we waited to see Mr. Connor defeated, and to this end we endured postponement after postponement. Having aided in this community need, we felt that our direct action program could be delayed no longer.

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