CA Women's Conference: Bono's Speech

The California Women's Conference ended on a high last night, with an inspiring speech from Bono and music by Bonnie Raitt.

Today, I'm home and moving slowly. I'm still digesting all the inspirational words I heard yesterday from luminaries like Maria Shriver, Gloria Steinem, Billie Jean King... and especially, Bono. The Irish rock star did not perform (except for a brief serenade of "Maria" to Ms. Shriver)... but his words sang. He spoke with humor and grace of the importance of women, of California... and America... and what we all can do to make this world a better place for us all.

Bono's words were inspiring and a fitting conclusion to a conference that used the word "empower" as its motto. I could not help repeating his words to the "Twitter-sphere" - at least, the ones I could catch, given the fact that I can't type as fast as he can speak.

I've been noodling around the Conference's website, and as far as I can tell, they have not put up a video there of his speech (though you can see Jill's video where she was front and center, fifteen feet away from Bono HERE!) . So until they do, here's my paraphrased tweet-transcription:

Bono arrived on stage to the tune of "(Pride) In the Name of Love." He paid tribute to Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who he said have helped him more than he can say. He spoke of walking into the Capitol with them and said that "no one is gonna mess with you" when you have Maria Shriver on one side and Arnold Schwarzenegger on the other.

He spoke of Maria's family: Her brother Bobby Shriver, who has worked with him for 10 years on DATA, Product Red and the One Campaign.

Maria's mom, Eunice Kennedy Shriver founded the Special Olympics and her dad started the Peace Corps and ran Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty.

"Who are these people, freaks?" he joked.

"To the Irish people, this isn't just an American family, they're an American mythology. They are people who believe the world is more malleable than we've been led to think."

He praised the women who were honored that evening with Minerva rewards. "We are in awe of you," he said.

"In the city that lays out the red carpet - the problem with celebrities is that we're not worthy of the attention we receive. We play at being heroes. THOSE women are actual heroes."

"Brevity is not the natural state of the Irish," he said, describing his style as "more of the Fidel Castro school of speechmaking."

"I'm like a traveling salesman. Sometimes I come to your door as a rock star selling melodies. Sometimes as an activist," selling you on ways to end poverty.

"We figure if you're here, you want to change the world too. We want you to join us in ending the most extreme forms of poverty."

"It's a serious plan, supported by sharpest minds in this country and around the world. Now Warren Buffet is a rock star!" he said.

"Warren came to one of our early meetings. He told us," (and now, Bono attemped to impersonate Buffet's midwestern American accent), "'Don't appeal to the conscience of America; appeal to the greatness of America.'"

"'And don't make it too easy for people. Make it difficult. They appreciate that.'"

"I'm here to sell you one more." (Audience sitting on a petition)

"I'm here to sell you on Red, the consumer wing. If you must buy jeans and t-shirts & ipods, buy Red."

He also referenced his wife, Ali Hewson, and her organic clothing line, Edun, which attempts to help solve "the trade piece of the puzzle for Africa. Consumers can do the right thing," he said.

"It is kind of fun and it should be, because rock stars have two urges. We want to change the world and we want to have fun."

"No one trusts music that lacks joy. It's the life force in rock and roll that we love, especially in traumatic times. We want to find joy in changing the world in a tiny way (in communities) and in a global way. Can't do it without changing how we look at the world."

Bono used a German phrase to describe what he was getting at. "Californians call it 'your attitude, dude.' My world view was shaped by rock n roll, growing up in the depressed sect of Dublin. It made me believe that my life could have some purpose."
He said it was the time of punk rock. "No more flowers in your hair; no more flowers period. I was weaned on the Clash."

"Three teenage boys and me, we made some music on our own. Then in the mid-80's my life changed in unexpected ways. U2 became part of Live Aid and We are the World. My wife and I went to Ethiopia to see what was going on; we lived there for a month."
They spent that time living at an orphanage. Bono says the kids there had a funny nickname for him. "The children in the orphanage called me the girl with the beard. We found it to be a magical place, with big skies and big hearts."

"It didn't just open our minds, it blew our minds and it challenged our world view."

"We have our own children now, four of them. It could have been five. Our daughters and sons mean more to us than anything. They are the beauty that can take away pain. It humbles me beyond belief that children in poverty look at you without accusation."

"I know my rage is apparently with no end and I do hold it against the world for thinking such things are inevitable. They are not."

He asserted: "History has a way of making ideas that were once acceptable look ridiculous. Let's not forget the back of the bus,, apartheid, Jim Crow. Let's not forget [that it was once thought] women can't vote or run corporations. That's totally absurd."

"Our trip to Ethiopia told me what I needed to do. Anything to end the absurdity of what I'd seen."

"That's how I became the least attractive thing - a rock star with a cause."

He cited a laundry list of statistics that keep Africa in poverty.

"That is not a cause. That's an emergency." Like a fire.

"The fires we know how to put out. If someone on our street was dying and we had the medicine, we'd get them the medicine."

"We can't fix everybody but the ones we can, we must. We have the technologies to change public health. I don't have to convince you the power of technology."

California is the frontier of the imagination. More people live here off imagination than anywhere else on earth. I don't have to tell you how connected we are, because [thanks to the achievements of those imaginative people in places like Silicon Valley] we are connected in ways previously unimaginable."

"Africa is just down the lane. We see what's happening. We know exactly what's happening. It burns and we smell the smoke. It stings our eyes and sears our conscience but not as much as it should, because we live with it. Men, especially. A lot of men have developed the ability to live with this absurdity."

"Women have not." And then, in a girlish voice, he said "Oh, Bono I bet you say this to all the girls."

He joked about having "the audacity to use gender stereotypes in the presence of Gloria Steinem."

But...

"I say it because it's true. Because it hits women. You do not have to explain to the mothers of America the value of a child's life. If you agree, why would that be? Biology? That second X chromosome? Do men have a gene that gives them a penis but no conscience?"

"I'm no scientist but there is some anecdotal evidence. Biology is not destiny but it does seem women are more empathetic."

"I think women care more because they bear more of the burdens of life."

"When AIDS is rampant, women are hardest hit...More than 2/3 of AIDS victims in Africa are women. When women are shut out of politics, it's women and children shut out the most."

"In Africa, the odds of dying in childbirth are 1 in 20."

"Women can't own the land in much of the developing world, but 80% of those who work the land are women."

"It's going to take women to stand up for other women and do something about that."

"This is a strange time to talk about this. You might not mind me asking you to care, but to do something about it? The most reasonable response would be to tell the Irishman to go back to his posh house and come back when the Dow is up or a new U2 LP is out. But these are momentous times in America. Capitalism on trial. Americans are struggling. Not just the US, the world changing in unsettling ways."

"Tectonic plates are starting to shift. (Can I say that in California?) But this is exactly the right time to try to change the world. Because nothing is set in stone. Everything is up for grabs."

"It is during times of destruction when America often rediscovers what it's really about. We are NOT about having our scientists come up with miracle drugs and then failing to find a way to bring them to the world."

"We're not about charity. We're about justice and equality. "

"Amen? That's really powerful, that word, Amen. Can I use that here?"

"Do we actually believe that a child's life in Africa has the same value as one in America or Ireland? I think we do. That's what it says in that beautiful document of yours, the Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'"

"When Dr. King said I have a dream, he wasn't just talking about the American dream. I thought it was an Irish dream."

He said that people all over the world thought it was their dream, too.

"Dr. King's dream was a dream big enough to include all human life. And if we really believe that. If we really believe we are all equal, Africans are our brohters and sisters."

"America is not just a country, It's an idea. It's a great idea."

"The idea that all men and women are created equal, that the poorest equals the richest,that where you live should not determine whether you live."

"That is the America I've always loved. Watching you all on television when I was a kid, on a black and white TV. You put a man on the moon. Americans, you're crazy. We love that America.

"The funny thing about the astronauts when they came home they didn't talk about the moon. It was the earth.

"They marveled at the earthrise. The world at war. So fragile."

"The trip to the moon changed their world view. Changed America's world view. Changed everyone's world view."

"It changed the way we all saw ourselves. "

"America, we are not asking you to put another man on the moon. We are asking you to put humanity back on this earth. "

Original LA Moms Blog post by Donna Schwartz Mills, who is trying to use her newfound empowerment to make sense of her usual routine as SoCal Mom.