SARASOTA — One person can make a difference.
That was the message delivered Wednesday by former Florida governor and U.S. Senator Bob Graham, who urged his audience to become more active and engaged in their communities and their government.
He cited as an example Candace Lightner, founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. She lost her 14-year-old daughter to a drunk driver in 1978, but rallied and went on to win stricter national standards for determining intoxicated drivers and other reforms.
“This one woman, more than any single American, is responsible for 11,000 fewer deaths per year in 2008 ... over what had occurred in this country 30 years ago,” Graham told an audience at the Hyatt Regency Sarasota.
“(It’s) a tremendous statement of what one American, using the rights and responsibilities that we have but willing to acquire the competencies to be effective, can achieve.”
But Graham had a caveat.
“Unfortunately, Candace Lightner is becoming an increasingly rare American,” he said. “In the last 40 years, there has been a significant decline of almost every indicator of citizenship in this country.”
Graham, who was appearing as part of a program put on by the nonprofit Sarasota organization Forum Truth, argued that citizen disinterest and inaction has produced a host of national and local ills: political corruption, an increase in partisanship and a preoccupation with the present and a disregard of long-term consequences.
He cited as one example of the latter Florida’s apparent rush to reverse a 60-year policy forbidding offshore oil drilling.
“It’s stunning to me how quickly we appear to be reversing our policy,” Graham told the audience of 230.
The decline in citizenship represents “a real decline in our democracy,” he said.
He urged his audience to engage their civic skills.
“It can start, it will start, with people just like you,” he said.
Graham, 73, a Democrat, is a former two–term governor of Florida, who also served 18 years in the U.S. Senate. Combined with 12 years in the Florida Legislature, he spent 38 years in public service.
Following a presidential campaign in 2004, he retired from public service, but has been a popular speaker and also has been writing books.
One of them is about civic participation, entitled, “America: The Owner’s Manual.” Its purpose is to provide ordinary people with the means and motivation to influence decision-makers and to improve their neighborhoods and communities.
Sara Kennedy, Herald reporter, can be reached at (941) 745-7031.
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