Sen. Ted Kennedy receives Otis Social Justice Award

NORTON--In an address at Wheaton College today, U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) criticized political leaders in Massachusetts and Washington for not working hard enough to improve access to education and healthcare and to eradicate poverty and injustice.

"We [in Congress] have increased our salary eight times in the last nine years," Kennedy said, "without an increase in the minimum wage. This is a women's issue because the great majority of those receiving minimum wage are women. This is a children's issue because a great majority of those women have children. It's a civil rights issue, because many of those receiving the minimum wage are men and women of color. It's a family issue, it's a moral issue, it's a fairness issue.

"Americans understand that it's a fairness issue, because American believe that if you're going to work 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, in the richest country in the world, they should not live in poverty. The Congress doesn't get it, the Senate doesn't get it, but I know the young people here understand it."

Kennedy took time to remember the more than 150,000 US troops in Iraq, and especially the more than 2,000 who have died.

"Without question the concern at the foremost of our minds this season is the war in Iraq," Kennedy said. "The best vote I ever cast in the U.S. Senate was to vote not to be rushed into war. [Our troops'] service under the most difficult of circumstances requires all of us to demand a policy worthy of their sacrifice and not to rely on empty slogans such as 'stay the course.'"

The senator also was critical of Congress for not implementing a healthcare plan that met the needs of all Americans.

"Today more than 46 million Americans have no health insurance," Kennedy said before explaining the members of Congress have access to the best health insurance system in the country. "It's good enough for the House of Representatives, good enough for the senators, good enough for this president all of his cabinet, good enough for Dick Cheney. If it's good enough for all of them, then it's good enough for all the people here in Massachusetts and throughout this country."

Kennedy toured the Wheaton campus earlier in the day, visiting the Science Center to view the college's state-of-the-art imaging equipment and later meeting with a group of student government leaders. Among those students was senior Alex K. Dewar of Portland, Ore., a 2006 Rhodes Scholar.

Wheaton President Ronald A. Crutcher presented Kennedy with the college's Otis Social Justice Award. Since 1990, the college has presented this award annually to an individual who has enriched understanding of the work that must be done to create a just society: promoting peace, human rights, economic parity and the protection of children. Former surgeon general C. Everett Koop and Children's Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman are among those who have received this award.

"Senator Kennedy shares our conviction that a grasp of science and its role in a complex society will be indispensable for the leaders of tomorrow," Crutcher said, "and that science literacy informs our understanding of some of the most pressing issues we face today—alternative energy development, stem cell research, flood control, sustainable agricultural and biological warfare, to name just a few."