WASHINGTON — Emily Wood looked out at 1,200 or so of her fellow “bright-eyed and bushy-tailed” liberal students gathered at a Washington hotel and introduced them to a man who, she said, was once like her: a “20-something, scholarship-dependent college student from the middle of Arkansas.”
After a welcome from Wood, an incoming junior at Harding University who grew up in Bentonville, former President Bill Clinton took the stage and for the next hour lectured and exhorted participants at the Campus Progress National Conference, a gathering of liberal college students hosted by the Center for American Progress, a Washington research and advocacy group.
“You can’t get discouraged when the politics are going in a direction you don’t like,” Clinton told the crowd. “You have to keep fighting against the things you don’t like, but also find something that you do like. It’s important in life not just to be against a tide that you oppose, but also to make something good happen.”
Clinton criticized Republican leadership on Capitol Hill for efforts to cut the size of government.
He said that since Ronald Reagan occupied the White House in the 1980s, Republicans’ attitude is that “government would mess up a two car parade.”
“There’s not a single example today of a really successful, wealthy country that does not have a vibrant economy and a strong, effective government,” he said.
He said the stimulus package signed into law by President Barack Obama had helped mute the effects of the economy’s slide, and asked the event’s participants to spread that word.
“If you knew, and didn’t tell people, you were part of the problem,” he said.
In addition to Clinton, the scheduled speakers at the two-day event included Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, who is the first Muslim to be elected to Congress, and Jose Antonio Vargas, a former Washington Post reporter who immigrated to the United States illegally as a 12-year-old and wrote an account in the New York Times Magazine last month about how he used forged documents to escape detection for more than a decade.
During his Wednesday morning talk, Clinton thanked his fellow Arkansan, Wood, “for sticking up for the progressive causes in our native state which probably went further from Democrats to Republicans in the 2010 elections than any state in America.”
Before the elections, five out of six federal officeholders from Arkansas were Democrats. After the elections, the tilt was 4-2 Republican.
Wood, a political science and psychology of communication major, is spending the summer as an intern for the Center for American Progress.
With a walkie-talkie slung over her shoulder, Wood took a break from her duties at the event and explained that her interest in politics stemmed from her participation on the debate team at Bentonville High School.
She said that using Internet social-networking sites such as Facebook, young people show no qualms about posting personal information about their relationships, yet are hesitant to get involved in political issues.
“There’s so many people who have no problem saying they’re apathetic or that politics doesn’t do any good,” she said.
Wood said immigration and gay-rights issues were the two topics most important to her.
She said treating people equally was a hallmark of the nation.
Referring to the conference’s “gender-neutral restrooms,” she said, “There are a lot of people who don’t identify as a woman or a man or who don’t feel comfortable with label A or label B.”
Before her introduction, Woods said she and Clinton had a moment to chat.
“He said, ‘Are you one of the three progressives on campus?’” at Harding, a private Christian college in Searcy she described as conservative.
“He’s been one of my heroes,” Wood said. “It was awesome.”
Front Section, Pages 2 on 07/07/2011