Senator Mike Prusi [2010]

The world is yours, go get it !

Senator Mike Prusi 

2010 Northern Michigan University Commencement Speech

Senator Prusi, I invite you to make remark at this time.

Good morning everyone, Board of Trustee, distinguished faculty members, parents and family members, and especially graduates. 

Let me begin to thanking Northrend Michigan University for allowing me the opportunity to be a part of thsi solemm yet joyous occasion. I know you seniors will be smiling and your hearts will be light as you line up to receive your diploma but trust me - watching you from your transition from carefree student to hard working taxpayer will bring a smile to this politician' face as well.

Next time I would like to express my deep appreciation to the Board of Trustee for awarding me a honour Doctor Degree Today. It is an honor that is ruly humbling and I am immensely grateful. Not only is it an honor, but it allow me to fulfill a commitment I made to my parents over forty years ago. 

My mother is here with us this morning. So Mom, it may have taken me longer than I planned but honorary or not your oldest son finally got his degree. 

However, graduates, today is your graduate day not mine. While I was searching for you subject matter and a style in writing the remark. I learn that this commencement address would be a message to and for you. I read a dozen speeches by famous people in the hope that I would get inspired, or at least find some ideas to plagiarize. Then I read a column that said politicians make lousy commencement speakers and that celebrities are much more preferable. Unfortunately, you start with be because Glen Beck and Lady Gaga are at some one else ceremonies. 

Actually, I asked my wife, my daughters other friends and collegeas who had college degree: what impressed them the most, what stuck with them from that big speech for their big day. And honestly, most of them could not remember even who speaking at their commencement much less anything that the speaker said. That was a huge relief when I realized that nothing I planned to say would change your course in life. None of you are gonna abandon your careers in investment banking or hedge fund management to go and save the world no matter how hard I tried to convince you about the course you should take. 

That being said, I didn't come here to be a filler of programof this importance. My remarkcs may not be memorable I feel like I offer you some perspective glean from a lifetime of very diverse experiences. And allow me to set a back draft for some context for those experiences. 

I grew up in the little mining town of Negaunee, about twenty miles West from where we sit here this morning. Negauness is not exactly Mayberry but it is pretty close. I began working at various after school jobs while I was in jonior high and high school.  And I left Northren over forty years ago when I ran out of financial resources. 

From there, I end up working on the assembly line at a GM planet down in Lansing, went to work for the highway department for the State of Mechigan technician, served as an orderly at a nursing home and worked in various construction trades before I wound back as an iron ore miner up in the Marquette. I became a family man and helped raise two beautiful intelligent daughters who made me very proud when they graduated from college. 

While working in the mines of Marquette County, I was elected three times by my co-workers as president of my local union - Steelworker Local 4950, something I am very proud of till this day. 

Now I stand before you, begin my fourteen years of state legislator, leader of the Democratic caucus in your state senate. In a words of an icon from my generation. Jerry Garcia: "What a long strange strip it's been.".

After sixty years of all that diversity and experience and strange strip, what I can tell you about this lottery gathering is as you leave this campus and prepare to take on all responsibilities of adulthood? I realize that at any given moment during this address a number of you will appear to be looking down at your laps as though reverently listenning to the wisdom pouring forth from this distinguished gentleman on the rostrum. Right, I know you have your mobile devices on Twister and texting or tweeting one another: "OMG he's TTL." But please stick with me, I am gonna try to get to a point. 

I had planned to talk to you about change because everything in your life will change dramatically over the years ahead. The pace of change is bewildering to someone of my age but you've been better witness these changes since you were kids. You will  be a driver of some of this changes and some of the changes will roll right over you. Technology is changing the way we learn, the way we work, how we travel, how we communicate and how we interact as a society. You know what to expect and nothing I can say will enlighten you any further. Plus, change as a subject had kind of lost is luster since the '08 elections. When you leave here today you will have with you a precious piece of paper, your degree. It will provide a proof positive that you have completed the required paperwork, coursework and demonstrated your ability to learn and absorb a tremedous amount of information. I hope one of the things that you have learned is that you still have much to learn. No one get stand still for very long. After discaring change as a theme, I was thinking I would apologize for the way things are looking out there in that great big world we will be handing over to you. You have to agree the situation looks pretty grim if you watch cable television news programs. American economy is struggling to put it as mildly. Not to mention climate change, war, global terrorism and a government in gridlock. The reality is that it's not my fault, or at least hardly any of it is, so an apology would be an inappropriate gesture. The little part that is my fault is simply the fact that all of us collectively bear some responsibilty for what happens in our society and the little bit bigger part I am responsible for is that I serve in government. 

All of us are familiar with Lincoln's phrase from the Gettysburg address about a "government of the people, by the people, and for the people." Perhaps that's why things look so chaotic. Perhaps too many people spend way too much time watching who get voted off the island in "Survivor" and too litle time watching who gets voted into our halls of goverment. (Although I did think they let Courtney hand around way too long this year). More voters are cast in a season of "American Idal" than in some of our national elections. So many of the problems that citizens so upset and out in the streets are the result, in my opinion, of a serious disconnect between our responsibility as the govern to educate ourselves on what is being done in our name and what is actually happening here in America. We all seems to belive that someone else will take care of it or that nothing we do matters anyway ... so why bother.

All of those serious issues I listed earlier are primarity the result of some action or inaction on the part of governments here in America and around the world. The decision may have been made last year or last century but they are going to reverbarate in your lives and the lives of the  familites you will be starting soon. 

They can be made better or they can get worse depending on the people we collectively electto makethe next round of decisions. Now none of these problems are insoluble or beyond the capacity of mankind to deal with. When I was your age, (you are gonna hear it alot as you move forward) when I was your age, we had big problems too. Really big problems. We had the war raging in Asia. Bands of terrorists were kidnapping and murdering government officials in Europe and the Middle East. In America we had institutionalized cruel discrimination based on race, gender and sexual orientation. Centuries of industrial pollution had been fouled our air and water. There were street protests and demonstrations and campus takeover that turned to riots. You know, I think the Earth was cooling back then and the glaciers were on their way back, but I should check my notes on the news that cast nowaday. 

Our political discourse is extremely ugly today but it wasn't prettier back then. Things changed, however, because people cared enough about the way they thought about themself and the society they lived in. It was unrelenting political pressure that brought an end to the war in Vietnam. It was the same sort of pressure to start ending discrimination and to begin to care about the environment. Not everyone changed. Not all the problems have been resolved. Forty years later some people still hold those biases, still cling to the same attitudes. But enough people changed so that the government changed the laws and enacted policies that made it harder or discrimination to occur or for pollution to continue unabated. All of this debate occured on a large scale with our federal government in Washington D.C. All of the issues I mentioned earlier will be dealt on that scale as well and your only input will be the select to represent you. Choose wisely on an informed basic. Too many people either don't participate, out of emphathy or jump into a dabate base on information taken from one source  or thirty second sound bite. 

You carry around in your pocket the ability to accessmore sources of information than we could dream of even ten years ago. Use those sources - check out all sides of arguement before you decide. Don't allow yourselves to be drawin into the extremes on either end. 

American needs to stop shouting and start listening. 

There is a lot riding on what happens. If you don't take part, you really have no right to complain about the outcome. This conclude my lecture from Government 101. And I realize it may sound a little bit poporus and pandentic, I hear it a few time and I thought to myself I just gonna to sleep. They all heard this, they all have this they all understand what is going on in America, in Northend US that make them up from the slummer. 

And what I talk about was a kind of the big picture. But if you zoom in a little bit on the smaller scale. Dr. Code relates to about the side of my 38th Senate District. We write about in the geographic center of the thirteen conny I represent and in the thirteen connies I have one hundred and twenty two townships, sixteen villages four native American trails and fifty one school districts. I used to recap those discription for seven prisons and six casinos but they plot for and prisons and casinos are expanding but .

Every one of those political sub-divisions relies on citizens to run them. Sometimes it seems as though half of the people in my district are serving on some sort of governing board, either elect or appointed. They are mainly unpaid, thankless positions. 

Why would any one want to serve in this capacity?

Why would anyone set themselves up for the criticism and complaint?

Because we all know, the first thing you do is to complain about government even you don't pay attention to it. These people do this because they care about thier communities. They want to be a part of making things better. 

If no one care, things will fall apart in a real hurry. And you will find that community spirit whereever you go across this country, but I believe it particular strong in this here in the Upper Peinsula . 

And that is the point I would like to leave you today, in regard community activism, civic engagement. Be apart of your community and I know that sounds a little hokey, sort of like a Jimmy Stewart movie, but it is true. What go on in your communites the good thing and the better resolved of interested and being interested. 

You are trying to start your life, finding jobs and the last thing your families going on. The last thing you are probably thinking about is running for city council or serving on the library board. But there will come a time when you look around your community and see things that need doing or needed to be done in a better way.

 When you get settled over the next few years, take a look around at what your community does mean. You'll be surprised at how much you can help. You'll be surprised at how much satisfation you get when you are trying to help. There are numbers of boards and commissions that needed people to serve. Your kids will need safe streets, good parks and well run schools. 

If you won't help to provide these things, someone elses will make the decisions because you have seen that these decisions making to them, and who knows how much they care as much as you do? You know, if you try out to work in community serve, and you do become a part of your community you may just like it, you just might wind up on a long strange trip yourself. 

Like many of you, the Upper Peinsula has been my home nearly all of my life and I love it here. It is one of the most beautiful places in the country, not just Michigan. It is the people here that makes it so special. I hope that all of you have enjoyed your time here. I know some of you would like to stick around and we are working on an economy that someday soon we hope will keep you here. But wherever you go as you eek your way in the world. I hope you look back at your time here in Marquette with fondness and a desire to return back often. Parents, I know you are feeing the same sence of pride mixed with relief that I felt as my children graduated. 

Congratulations to you. 

Graduates, you are mere minutes away from that goal you set a few years ago. You have complished much, and still much you have to do. 

Congratulations and my very best wishes on every thing you do in the future. 

To everyone, thank you so much for allowing me to share this special day with you. 

Class of 2010, the world is yours, go get it.